Lifeboat Foundation

Haptics is a growing field that aims to allow our bodies to control and ultimately ‘feel’ our virtual identity. Instead of using the theorized mechanism of a neural computer link, haptic tech attaches sensors and stimuli to our body. A report by research firm Markets and Markets thinks haptic technology, which could soon include something like a glove that let’s you move a hand in cyberspace, will be worth 30 billion by 2020.

Haptic technology, also known as kinesthetic communication, sounds like something out of science fiction. But products, like the vibrating cell phone, have been out for decades. And there’s more advanced systems on the way. That’s partly because of another hyped field: virtual reality. With pioneering virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift poised for release next year, the question becomes: How to make this experience even more immersive.

Continue reading “Haptics Technology: Soon, We Might Be Able To ‘Feel’ Cyberspace” »

Australian scientists created a computer simulation in which quantum particles can move back in time. This might confirm the possibility of time travel on a quantum level, suggested in 1991. At the same time, the study revealed a number of effects which are considered impossible according to the standard quantum mechanics.

Using photons, physicists from the University of Queensland in Australia simulated time-traveling quantum particles. In particular, they studied the behavior of a single photon traveling back in time through a wormhole in space-time and interacting with itself. This time-traveling loop is called a closed timelike curve, i.e. a path followed by a particle which returns to its initial space-time point.

The physicists studied two possible scenarios for a time-traveling photon. In the first, the particle passes through a wormhole, moving back in time, and interacts with its older self. In the second scenario, the photon passes through normal space-time and interacts with another photon which is stuck in a closed timelike curve.

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Electrons are so 20th century. In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there’s a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers: researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have done just that, designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.

This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics at SEAS, and is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

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Qualcomm is prepping a massive, 24-core server chip to take on Intel — and says this is just the prototype.

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Exponential Investing posted this photo on 2015/05/12.

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“Vicarious, the mysterious company that’s been funded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and actor Ashton Kutcher, wants to do something completely radical — build the world’s first human-level artificial intelligence (AI).”

Smarter than Siri and Cortana.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/science/rat-brain-digital-…oject.html

The research was partly supported by a more than $1 billion program that aims to eventually reconstruct the human brain in a computer.

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A team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the Pennsylvania State University have accidentally discovered a new way of using light to draw and erase quantum-mechanical circuits in a unique class of materials called topological insulators.

In contrast to using advanced nanofabrication facilities based on chemical processing of materials, this flexible technique allows for rewritable ‘optical fabrication’ of devices. This finding is likely to spawn new developments in emerging technologies such as low-power electronics based on the spin of electrons or ultrafast quantum computers.

The research is published today in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s new online journal Science Advances, where it is featured on the journal’s front page.

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What can skyrmions do for you? These ghostly quantum rings, heretofore glimpsed only under extreme laboratory conditions, just might be the basis for a new type of computer memory that never loses its grip on the data it stores.

Now, thanks to a research team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the exotic ring-shaped magnetic effects have been coaxed out of the physicist’s deepfreeze with a straightforward method that creates magnetic skyrmions under ambient room conditions. The achievement brings skyrmions a step closer for use in real-world data storage as well as other novel magnetic and electronic technologies.

If you have a passing familiarity with particle physics, you might expect skyrmions to be particles; after all, they sound a lot like fermions, a class of particles that includes protons and neutrons. But skyrmions are not fundamental pieces of matter (not even of yogurt); they are effects named after the physicist who proposed them. Until just recently, magnetic skyrmions had only been seen at very low temperatures and under powerful magnetic fields.

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