Chinese researchers are developing an airborne quantum communications network with drones as nodes.
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Machine learning, especially deep learning, is forcing a re-evaluation of how chips and systems are designed that will change the direction of the industry for decades to come.
Unifying all the forces and particles would require a particle accelerator far more powerful than humans have ever built.
Quantum supremacy sounds like something out of a Marvel movie. But for scientists working at the forefront of quantum computing, the hope—and hype—of this fundamentally different method of processing information is very real. Thanks to the quirky properties of quantum mechanics (here’s a nifty primer), quantum computers have the potential to massively speed up certain types of problems, particularly those that simulate nature.
Scientists are especially enthralled with the idea of marrying the quantum world with machine learning. Despite all their achievements, our silicon learning buddies remain handicapped: machine learning algorithms and traditional CPUs don’t play well, partly because the greedy algorithms tax classical computing hardware.
Add in a dose of quantum computing, however, and machine learning could potentially process complex problems beyond current abilities at a fraction of the time.
Where reality is still lagging considerably is in recreating the physical experience of VR. In the movie, the haptic gloves OASIS players wear make them virtual objects almost indistinguishable from real ones. Other characters have even more advanced set-ups, like full-body haptic suits that simulate both pleasure and pain, complicated harnesses and treadmills that allow users to run around and move their bodies just like they would in real life, and even “smell towers.”
But a report released by analysts IDTechX to coincide with the movie’s release suggests the first step towards most of these technologies has already been taken. VR handsets already feature the same kind of rumble packs found in computer game controllers that provide simple haptic feedback in the form of vibrations.
These same vibration motors have also been integrated into VR gloves like Gloveone and Manus, where they can recreate textures. Go Touch VR’s haptic rings use a small motor to vary the pressure of a piece of plastic against your fingertips to mimic the force felt when touching objects, while Ultrahaptics beams ultrasound onto your hands to give the sensation of pressure and texture.
Garbage collectors in the Turkish capital have opened a public library comprised entirely of books once destined for the landfills.
The library, located in the Çankaya district of Ankara, was founded after sanitation workers started collecting discarded books.
“claims to compress any input data by at least one bit”
“Now, suppose I compress 10 different files in this way — each of them compresses to a single ‘1’ or ‘0’ (a single bit).”
Why stop at a single bit? If it can compress any input by at least one bit, then it can compress an input of one bit into 0 bits. Infinite compression!
The cold fusion dream lives on: NASA is developing cheap, clean, low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology that could eventually see cars, planes, and homes powered by small, safe nuclear reactors.
When we think of nuclear power, there are usually just two options: fission and fusion. Fission, which creates huge amounts of heat by splitting larger atoms into smaller atoms, is what currently powers every nuclear reactor on Earth. Fusion is the opposite, creating vast amounts of energy by fusing atoms of hydrogen together, but we’re still many years away from large-scale, commercial fusion reactors. (See: 500MW from half a gram of hydrogen: The hunt for fusion power heats up.)
LENR is absolutely nothing like either fission or fusion. Where fission and fusion are underpinned by strong nuclear force, LENR harnesses power from weak nuclear force — but capturing this energy is difficult. So far, NASA’s best effort involves a nickel lattice and hydrogen ions. The hydrogen ions are sucked into the nickel lattice, and then the lattice is oscillated at a very high frequency (between 5 and 30 terahertz). This oscillation excites the nickel’s electrons, which are forced into the hydrogen ions (protons), forming slow-moving neutrons. The nickel immediately absorbs these neutrons, making it unstable. To regain its stability, the nickel strips a neutron of its electron so that it becomes a proton — a reaction that turns the nickel into copper and creates a lot of energy in the process.