An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together.
In the near future, large vessels carrying vehicles or other cargo across the ocean could be powered by wind, thanks to innovative sail technology.
Oceanbird, designed by Swedish engineering company, Wallenius Marine, is a futuristic concept for a PCTC (Pure Car and Truck Carrier) with capacity to carry 7,000 cars on long-distance ocean journeys. The project aims to prove that the global shipping community can transport goods in a sustainable way, and that low or zero-emission shipping is possible by using wind as the main energy source.
“We are proud to present our third iteration of our design, which we have worked with for several years,” said Per Tunell, COO of Wallenius Marine. “Shipping is a central function in global trade and stands for 90% of all transported goods, but it also contributes to emissions. It is critical that shipping becomes sustainable. Our studies show that wind is the most interesting energy source for ocean transports and with the 80-metre-high wing sails on Oceanbird, we are developing the ocean-going freighters of the future.”
In 2019, Switzerland-based Flyability had a mystery to solve at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Was nuclear waste still present in one of the plant’s decommissioned reactors?
“At the time of the disaster, the fifth block of the Chernobyl Plant was under construction and nearing completion,” a Flyability spokesperson said. “Given the rush to leave, there was no record of whether the holding pools in Reactor Five had ever received the depleted uranium fuel bars for which they had been made.”
Fast forward 33 years – Chernobyl’s decommissioning team needed to know whether any nuclear waste remained in the reactor. Like a flying Sherlock Holmes, Flyability drones took the case.
Johns Hopkins University study of 10 billion years of microwaves reveals a warming predicted by dark matter theory.
Who says you can’t get hotter with age?
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun’s outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
An epic photo shows the ESO’s Very large Telescope firing four orange lasers at a distant star system.
This discovery opens the door to topological quantum computing. Current quantum computing systems, where the elemental units of calculation are qubits that perform superfast calculations, require superconducting materials that only function in extremely cold conditions. Fluctuations in heat can throw one of these systems out of whack.
“The properties inherent to materials such as TaP could form the basis of future qubits,” says Nguyen. He envisions synthesizing TaP and other topological semimetals — a process involving the delicate cultivation of these crystalline structures — and then characterizing their structural and excitational properties with the help of neutron and X-ray beam technology, which probe these materials at the atomic level. This would enable him to identify and deploy the right materials for specific applications.
“My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer,” says Nguyen. “With infinitely better heat management, these quantum computing systems and devices could prove to be incredibly energy efficient.”
Amazon has announced a second-generation version of its Echo Frames smart glasses for Alexa, adding longer battery life, better sound quality, and an end to the previous invite-only availability. It’s also discontinuing the Echo Loop smart ring.
Some of the greatest medical discoveries of the 20th century came from physicists who switched careers and became biologists. Francis Crick, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology and helped identify the structure of DNA, started his career as a physicist, as did Leo Szilard who conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, writing the letter for Albert Einstein’s signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb, but spent the last decades of his life doing pioneering work in biology, including the first cloning of a human cell.
Today, a group of world-renowned researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics with expertise from cosmology to quantum gravity are using physics to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.