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This Stone Predates the Sun.

Recent analysis of a stone found in the Libyan Desert Glass area of southwest Egypt, has sparked debate and a rethink of the current consensus on the formation of the solar system.

In a study, due to be published next month, a team of international researchers announced the resulting analysis of a stone that was subsequently named Hypatia after the ancient female astronomer of Alexandria.

Utilizing techniques from electron scanning microscopy, to proton induce X-ray emission and micro-Raman spectroscopy – the results revealed compounds not found anywhere on our planet, solar system or any known meteorite. As well, a lack of silicates was found which sets it apart from interplanetary dust particles and all known cometary material. Previous analysis of noble gas and nitrogen isotope studies suggest an extraterrestrial origin, which along with these new results strongly suggests a pre-solar origin and could indicate a high degree of heterogeneity in the solar nebula.

Continue reading “Egyptian stone predates the Sun” | >

Circa 2020 o,.o!

Every robot is, at its heart, a computer that can move. That is true from the largest plane-sized flying machines down to the smallest of controllable nanomachines, small enough to someday even navigate through blood vessels.

New research, published August 26 in Nature, shows that it is possible to build legs into robots mere microns in length. When powered by lasers, these tiny machines can move, and some day, they may save lives in operating rooms or even, possibly, on the battlefield.

This project, funded in part by the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, demonstrated that, adapting principles from origami, nano-scale legged robots could be printed and then directed.

Continue reading “Nano Robots Walk Inside Blood When Hit With Lasers” | >

Space mining. 😃

Is Space Mining Our Future Gold Mine? Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! Rare-earth metals and other minerals are essential for green tech like EVs and renewable energy. Trouble is, we need a lot of them and their availability on Earth is limited. But what if we could tap into all the materials flying around in space? Some scientists claim we could mine asteroids in the future. Yes, asteroids. Is it just an Armageddon remake or will we eventually…dig into them…?

Watch “The Future of Solid State Wind Energy — No More Blades”: https://youtu.be/nNp21zTeCDc?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi4dFnLD9622FK77atWtQVv7

Continue reading “Does Space Mining Solve Our Resource Problem?” | >

Researchers observed more than 500 of these mysterious cosmic explosions, unraveling the hidden nature of their sources.

The most popular theory suggests that FRBs come from neutron stars, the collapsed cores of massive stars. Scientists believe that the explosions could be a result of a specific type of neutron star known as a magnetar, named so for their powerful magnetic fields, thousands of trillions of times more powerful than Earth’s fields.

“The reason we think that’s true is because they are the only thing that we know of that could plausibly produce such energetic flashes in such a short duration of time,” Masui said. “Otherwise, we don’t really know how they’re created.”

Continue reading “Scientists just took a big step toward mapping out the structure of the universe” | >

“This can be hugely damaging in the event of ransomware attacks, where high privileges can enable the attackers to stop or destroy backups and other security tools,” Breen explained. “The ‘exploit detected’ tag means attackers are actively using them, so for me, it’s the most important piece of information we need to prioritize the patches.”

If you need any further incentive to update, these seven zero day exploits are part of 50 security vulnerabilities (including another five labelled ‘Critical’) which June’s Patch Tuesday will address. Google has also issued a similar warning for Chrome users.

If you are blocking Windows 10 system updates (a popular pastime for many users), now would be a very good time to stop doing so. Go to Start Settings Update & Security and in the Windows Update Window look to see if the update has already been downloaded. If not, click Check for Updates.

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When particles are cooled down to temperatures just above absolute zero, they form a BEC – a state of matter in which all the particles occupy the same quantum state and thus act in unison, like a superfluid. A BEC made up of tens of thousands of particles therefore behaves as if it were just one single giant quantum particle.

An international team of researchers led by Carlos Anton-Solanas and Christian Schneider from the University of Oldenburg, Germany; Sven Höfling of the University of Würzburg, Germany; Sefaattin Tongay at Arizona State University, US; and Alexey Kavokin of Westlake University in China, has now generated a BEC from quasiparticles known as exciton-polaritons in atomically thin crystals. These quasiparticles form when excited electrons in solids couple strongly with photons.

“Devices that can control these novel light-matter states hold the promise of a technological leap in comparison with current electronic circuits,” explains Anton-Solanas, who is in the quantum materials group at Oldenburg’s Institute of Physics. “Such optoelectronic circuits, which operate using light instead of electric current, could be better and faster at processing information than today’s processors.”

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But what struck me about his essay is that last clause: “if we as a society manage it responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right then A.I. will generate phenomenal wealth largely by destroying countless jobs — that’s a big part of how everything gets cheaper — and shifting huge amounts of wealth from labor to capital. And whether that world becomes a post-scarcity utopia or a feudal dystopia hinges on how wealth, power and dignity are then distributed — it hinges, in other words, on politics.

Will A.I. give us the lives of leisure we long for — or usher in a feudal dystopia? It depends.

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Using an ultrafast transmission electron microscope, researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have, for the first time, recorded the propagation of combined sound and light waves in atomically thin materials.

The experiments were performed in the Robert and Ruth Magid Electron Beam Quantum Dynamics Laboratory headed by Professor Ido Kaminer, of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Solid State Institute.

Single-layer materials, alternatively known as 2D materials, are in themselves novel materials, solids consisting of a single layer of atoms. Graphene, the first 2D material discovered, was isolated for the first time in 2004, an achievement that garnered the 2010 Nobel Prize. Now, for the first time, Technion scientists show how pulses of light move inside these materials. Their findings, “Spatiotemporal Imaging of 2D Polariton Wavepacket Dynamics Using Free Electrons,” were published in Science following great interest by many scientists.

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“It was so easy to get support from Northeastern, especially considering that we were fresh out of college,” Gurijala says. Through the Venture Mentoring Network, the co-founders were advised on how to create a business model and pitch investors. “They even connected us to our first investor. I’m not sure we could have started Boston Materials without the support of the whole entrepreneurial ecosystem at Northeastern.”

Boston Materials, which recently raised $8 million from investors, is looking to expand its team.

“We’re looking to grow across the company, from the manufacturing team, to the engineering team, to the technical sales team,” Gurijala says. “It’s an exciting time. There’s so much momentum behind us right now.”

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With the established success of flexible computer screen displays, many users are wondering how display technology will advance next. So far, free-form displays have grown popular as a next-generation product that offers both portability and high-resolution visuals.

While this technology is still quite new, a wealth of research already exists into the stretchable displays that make up free form displays, products that can stretch into any direction like rubber.

On June 4, 2021, research at Samsung appeared in the well-known journal Science Advances discussing a technology that bypasses the limitations of stretchable devices. The associated experiment showed stable performance even when the was significantly elongated. As these products can already be used in existing semiconductor processes, Samsung researchers have high hopes about what this could mean for the commercialization and salability of stretchable devices.

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