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Oct 2, 2019

The world’s first hydrogen-powered superyacht was unveiled at the Monaco Yacht Show. Here’s a look inside the game-changing 367-foot vessel concept

Posted by in category: futurism

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fCoU617GJG8

The potentially monumental 367-foot superyacht with state-of-the-art technology and design was presented as a 6.5-foot model at the Monaco Yacht Show.

Oct 2, 2019

Quantum vacuum: Less than zero energy

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Energy is a quantity that must always be positive—at least that’s what our intuition tells us. If every single particle is removed from a certain volume until there is nothing left that could possibly carry energy, then a limit has been reached. Or has it? Is it still possible to extract energy even from empty space?

Quantum physics has shown time and again that it contradicts our intuition, which is also true in this case. Under certain conditions, negative energies are allowed, at least in a certain range of space and time. An international research team at the TU Vienna, the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and the IIT Kanpur (India) have now investigated the extent to which negative is possible. It turns out that no matter which quantum theories are considered, no matter what symmetries are assumed to hold in the universe, there are always certain limits to “borrowing” energy. Locally, the energy can be less than zero, but like money borrowed from a bank, this energy must be “paid back” in the end.

Oct 2, 2019

Quantum destabilization of a water sandwich

Posted by in categories: food, quantum physics, sustainability

From raindrops rolling off the waxy surface of a waterlily leaf to the efficiency of desalination membranes, interactions between water molecules and water-repellent “hydrophobic” surfaces are all around us. The interplay becomes even more intriguing when a thin water layer becomes sandwiched between two hydrophobic surfaces, KAUST researchers have shown.

In the early 1980s, researchers first noted an unexpected effect when two hydrophobic surfaces were slowly brought together in . “At some point, the two surfaces would suddenly jump into contact—like two magnets being brought together,” says Himanshu Mishra from KAUST’s Water Desalination and Reuse Center. Mishra’s lab investigates water at all length scales, from reducing in agriculture, to the properties of individual water molecules.

Researchers were unable to explain the phenomenon at the , so in 2016, Mishra organized a KAUST conference on the subject. “We brought together leaders in the field—experimentalists and theorists—leading to intense debates on the understanding of hydrophobic surface forces,” he says.

Oct 2, 2019

Humans Produce 100x More CO2 Than All Earth’s Volcanoes Combined

Posted by in category: sustainability

According to a decade-long study by an international team of researchers, human CO2 emissions total 100 times more than the planet-warming effects of all volcanoes combined.

The total amount emitted by volcanoes is only about 0.3 gigatons a year — a tiny fraction of the 37 gigatons humankind produced in 2018 alone.

That means they’re not nearly as big of a contributor to global emissions as some prevailing theories hold.

Oct 2, 2019

F.A.A. Allows U.P.S. to Deliver Medical Packages Using Drones

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones

After a year of working with the Federal Aviation Administration, United Parcel Service was awarded a certification that allows it to use drones on medical campuses.

Oct 2, 2019

Blue Origin’s passengers will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a ticket on New Shepard

Posted by in category: space travel

After committing to having a first crewed launch of its rocket ship in 2019, Blue Origin, the rocket manufacturer and launch services company backed by Jeff Bezos, is likely going to have to push that timeline back to 2020.

Speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, Blue Origin chief executive Bob Smith said that the window for getting the crewed flight done within the 2019 time frame was narrowing. “We’re not going to be date-driven,” Smith said.

But as commercial launches come to market, customers can expect to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for a ticket on the New Shepard suborbital flight.

Oct 2, 2019

The Mathematics of Cooperation

Posted by in categories: evolution, mathematics

Cooperation means that one individual pays a cost for another to receive a benefit. Cooperation can be at variance with natural selection: Why should you help a competitor? Yet cooperation is abundant in nature and is an important component of evolutionary innovation. Cooperation can be seen as the master architect of evolution and as the third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and selection. I will present mathematical principles of cooperation.

Oct 2, 2019

An ultra-fast optical way to extract critical information from quantum materials

Posted by in categories: energy, quantum physics

Topological insulators are quantum materials, which, due to their exotic electronic structure, on surfaces and edges conduct electric current like metal, while acting as an insulator in bulk. Scientists from the Max-Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) have demonstrated for the first time how to tell apart topological materials from their regular—trivial—counterparts within a millionth of a billionth of a second by probing it with ultra-fast laser light. Their method could open the way for such materials to be used as logic elements in light-controlled electronics able to process information tens of thousands times faster as currently possible. Their study appeared in Nature Photonics.

The most common illustration of the concept involves an elastic pretzel, which can be stretched, bent, or twisted in any way; no matter the deformation, it is impossible to make a bagel out of a pretzel or add holes to it, without tearing it apart. The number of holes in a pretzel is thus invariant and provides topological information about the pretzel shape.

In a , quantum-mechanical laws restrict which energies electrons can have, leading to the formation of bands with either allowed or forbidden energies. Using the concept of topology, physicists can describe complex shapes of allowed energy bands and assign them a specific topological number. A special topology of the band structure in a material system manifests itself in exotic properties that can be observed—such as the surface conductivity in .

Oct 2, 2019

Russian company creates human-like robots that can be made to look like anyone

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The robot can move its eyes, eyebrows, lips and “other muscles,” the company said.

Oct 2, 2019

MitoMouse – Curing Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Mammals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Today, we have launched the MitoMouse project on our fundraising platform Lifespan.io. This project aims to reverse the damage that aging does to the mitochondrial DNA and to restore energy production in our cells with the goal of preventing age-related ill health.

The power stations of the cell

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