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Archive for the ‘futurism’ category: Page 925

Oct 2, 2018

Said ITER would cost $45+ billion more and DOE agrees

Posted by in categories: energy, futurism

In 2017, Nextbigfuture said that the ITER tokamak fusion project would cost $45–60 billion more than the claimed $22 billion construction budget and US Department of Energy (DOE) agrees with a far higher cost estimate. On April 11, 2018, Paul Dabbar, DOE undersecretary for science, provided a $65 billion estimate to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development. The $65 billion covers construction alone and annual operating costs once experimental operations begin in 2025 aren’t included.

The day after Dabbar’s testimony, the European Union Council of Ministers endorsed ITER’s nearly two-year-old baseline estimate, which covers construction from 2007 to full completion in 2035. Including a 10% contingency to account for overruns, ITER’s cost to EU members is €11.7 billion ($14.5 billion). As host, the EU is paying 46% of ITER’s cost, five times the share of each of the other six partners: China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the US.

The budget they talk about is 20 billion euros. This does not include the cost of the hardware only the bureaucratic management costs and the costs of assembly. The donated hardware is not included. The budget is only to get ITER to 2035.

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Oct 1, 2018

Strange Blobs Beneath Earth Could Be Remnants of an Ancient Magma Ocean

Posted by in category: futurism

New research suggests that weird blobs in the deepest part of Earth’s mantle could be leftovers from an ancient magma ocean.

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Sep 30, 2018

360 Video: Inside Boeing’s Starliner space capsule

Posted by in categories: futurism, space travel

The gumdrop-shaped capsule is designed to function essentially as a space taxi, ferrying up to seven astronauts and their cargo to and from the International Space Station. Boeing is expected to conduct the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight to the ISS next year. (SpaceX is putting the finishing touches on its Crew Dragon capsule, which is also scheduled to carry its first crew in 2019.)

Recently, NBC News MACH visited a Starliner mock-up at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to get an insider’s look at the spacecraft — and a sense of what it would be like to fly aboard the futuristic capsule. [Editor’s note: Boeing is a sponsor of MACH’s Making of an Astronaut series.]

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Sep 30, 2018

The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Very Evenly Distributed

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

With apologies to author https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson” target=”_blank” rel=” nofollow noopener noreferrer” data-ga-track=” ExternalLink: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson”>William Gibson, who originally pointed out that “the future is already here, it’s just not very distributed,” we can say that the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is here, but that’s just not so very evenly distributed either. But that’s okay, for now. That’s because when it comes to AI, every industry has a different story to tell.

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Sep 30, 2018

Consciousness is not a thing, but a process of inference

Posted by in categories: futurism, neuroscience

The mathematics of mind-time

The special trick of consciousness is being able to project action and time into a range of possible futures.

Karl Friston

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Sep 28, 2018

Microsoft talks about Project Silica, a new way of storing data

Posted by in category: futurism

At the Storage Developer Conference, Microsoft presented a new paper that talks about how data can be stored in quartz glass cubes using laser light. The project is done in collaboration with University of Southampton Optoelectronics Research Centre. You can check out the full video of the Storage Developer Conference below.

The idea is to help companies store data easily and not compromise with the speed or the performance of the servers.

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Sep 28, 2018

Hvad det er som Balder holder?

Posted by in category: futurism

Det er da selvfølgelig et neurostimulations-pandebånd. Georg Gearløs’ tænkehat findes nu i virkeligheden. Det er noget med at bestemte områder i hjernen får tilført meget små impulser af strøm — man kan indstille den så den øger koncentrationsevnen — eller kreativiteten! Efter sigende. Skal jeg have den på næste gang jeg freestyler? Selvfølgelig skal jeg det. Glæder mig til at aflægge rapport PlatoScience 😬

See Translation

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Sep 27, 2018

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos will now sell rocket engines, too

Posted by in category: futurism

Tory Bruno, chief of United Launch Alliance, “a real visionary and risk taker.”

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Sep 27, 2018

Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for billions of years. In 2022, we hit back

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

Payback time.


DART is a test of the kinetic impactor technique, a potential method to deflect an asteroid on course to impact the Earth. Kinetic impactors are one of only a small number of approaches we think are mature enough to deploy in the near future if they are needed (though we hope they won’t be). The most powerful asteroid-deflection technique is the use of a nuclear device. While such a device makes for good (and bad) sci-fi movies, there is widespread desire to develop alternate techniques.

The kinetic impactor concept is rather straightforward: ram the threatening object with a spacecraft and change its orbit so that it misses our planet. In theory, we could heave ever-larger masses at ever-faster speeds to deflect ever-larger objects. However, we think there is a practical limit — we don’t want to break up an incoming object into several pieces, lest we replace one big impact with multiple, only-slightly-smaller impacts. Exactly where that tradeoff lies is still uncertain, but we believe we can keep an object intact if we change its speed by less than the object’s own escape speed. In other words, since we think a lot of these objects are loose aggregates of gravel held together by gravity, we don’t want to shove so hard that we accidentally overcome that weak gravity and disperse the gravel.

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Sep 26, 2018

The ‘game-changing’ technique to create babies from skin cells just stepped forward

Posted by in category: futurism

Scientists are trying to create human sperm and eggs in a dish. They’ve already done it in mice, and one scientist says it is only a matter of time before there’s “a game changer like no other” for human reproduction.

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