Lifeboat Foundation

VTT researchers have successfully demonstrated a new electronic refrigeration technology that could enable major leaps in the development of quantum computers. Present quantum computers require extremely complicated and large cooling infrastructure that is based on mixture of isotopes of helium. The new electronic cooling technology could replace these cryogenic liquid mixtures and enable miniaturization of quantum computers.

In this purely electrical refrigeration method, cooling and thermal isolation operate effectively through the same point like junction. In the experiment the researchers suspended a piece of silicon from such junctions and refrigerated the object by feeding electrical current from one junction to another through the piece. The current lowered the thermodynamic temperature of the silicon object as much as 40% from that of the surroundings. This could lead to the miniaturization of future quantum computers, as it can simplify the required cooling infrastructure significantly. The discovery has been published in Science Advances.

“We expect that this newly discovered electronic cooling method could be used in several applications from the miniaturization of quantum computers to ultra-sensitive radiation sensors of the security field,” says Research Professor Mika Prunnila from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

How to build an entire ML pipeline, including data transformation and model training, without code.

Could use magnetism to pull the iron back inside. O,.,o.

Earth’s molten core may be leaking iron, according to researchers who analyzed how iron behaves inside our planet.

The boundary between the liquid iron core and the rocky mantle is located some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth’s surface. At this transition, the temperature drops by more than a thousand degrees from the hotter core to the cooler mantle.

Continue reading “Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core” »

SAN FRANCISCO — German launch services provider Exolaunch announced plans April 14 to send multiple small satellites into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission scheduled for December.

Exolaunch has integrated payloads and arranged launches for almost 100 satellites, but this is the company’s first launch services agreement with SpaceX, Exolaunch Commercial Director Jeanne Medvedeva told SpaceNews.

“Participation in SpaceX’s smallsat rideshare program will allow Exolaunch to offer reliable and cost efficient rideshare options out of the United States,” Medvedeva said by email. “Most of our customers have been proactively requesting such opportunities.”

Simple rules generating complicated networks may be how to build the universe.

Contributing Correspondent

Most of the pieces of Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux are already in place. Tesla’s mass-market cars, the Model 3 and Model Y, have already been released. The Solar Roof is finally seeing a ramp. And the release of a feature-complete version of the company’s Full Self-Driving suite seems to be drawing closer.

For Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite to be feature-complete, the electric car maker would need to master inner-city driving. FSD already works for highway driving with Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes. But when it comes to inner-city streets, Full Self-Driving still has some ways to go. Fortunately, if Tesla’s v10.2 2020.12.5 release is any indication, it appears that more and more aspects of city driving are becoming recognized by the company’s neural networks.

Mathematicians and neuroscientists have created the first anatomically accurate model that explains how vision is possible.

Students from Australia have unearthed a trove of rare treasures at a site in Israel and may have solved the mystery to King David’s long-lost city of Ziklag.

Strange particles observed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down.