Lifeboat Foundation

Post-Quantum is a slow-burning, brilliant oddity of a startup. We assess its prospects.

A Chinese satellite launching in August would be the first to bring a worldwide quantum-encrypted communication network to reality.

If biochemists had access to a quantum computer, they could perfectly simulate the properties of new molecules to develop drugs in ways that would take today’s fastest computers decades. A new device takes us closer to providing such a computer. The device successfully traps, detects, and manipulates an ensemble of electrons above the surface of superfluid helium. The system integrates a nanofluidic channel with a superconducting circuit.

Because they are so small, electrons normally interact weakly with electrical signals. The new device, however, gives the electron more time to interact, and it is this setup that makes it possible to build a qubit, the quantum computing equivalent of a bit. Quantum computers could provide the necessary computing power to model extremely large and complex situations in physics, biology, weather systems and many others.

While isolated electrons in a vacuum can store quantum information nearly perfectly, in real materials, the movements of surrounding atoms disturbs them, eventually leading to the loss of information. This work is a step towards realizing isolated, trapped single electrons by taking advantage of the unique relationship existing between electrons and superfluid helium. Electrons will levitate just above the surface of helium, about 10 nanometers away, insensitive to the atomic fluctuations below. While this effect has been known, holding them in a superconducting device structure has not been demonstrated before this work. At the heart of this new technology is a resonator based on circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture, which provides a path to trap electrons above helium and detect the spins of the electrons. Because they are so small, electrons normally interact only very weakly with electrical signals.

Very true POV.

Dry cell biologists, who bridge computer science and cell biology, should have a pivotal role in driving effective team science, says Assaf Zaritsky².

A US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded prosthetic arm will be released for commercial use beginning in late 2016.

The LUKE arm, one of the world’s most advanced prosthetics, was designed by Segway creator Dean Kamen and has been under development for close to a decade.

The LUKE arm is named after Luke Skywalker’s advanced prosthetic from the Star Wars films, and its banner feature is its control system.

Continue reading “Researchers have made a prosthetic arm based off Luke Skywalker’s” »

The ISS has just installed a new technology known as Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking, the first stage in a new mission that aims to allow the implementation of a Solar System-wide Internet in the near future.

As more investment and innovation is given to space exploration, the ISS is becoming a very busy place. And with Moon colonies and manned missions to Mars looking more and more like reality, the nearly-20 year old station is in dire need of an upgrade.

And its getting one. New technology has been installed in the ISS, and it is designed to form the basis of an internet-style network spanning the whole (or most of the whole) of our cosmic neighborhood. It’s called DTN, or Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking.

Continue reading “New Tech Installed on The ISS Set To Form Solar System-Wide ‘Internet’” »

The methane seems to bloom in the Martian summers when the atmosphere is viewed with spectrography lenses on powerful telescopes I read once. Which always made me wonder if there’s algae of some form in the subsoil.

Scientists are getting closer to solving one of the biggest Martian mysteries.

Could dissolvable metal be the future of medical implants?

Growing up in Jakarta’s polluted slums, Vera Mulyani loved building things. As a child, she dreamed of becoming an architect.

More than two decades later, Mulyani is a self-proclaimed “Marschitect,” and spends her time brainstorming how human life might be sustained on the red planet. After studying at École d’Architecture de Nantes in France and at New York Film Academy, in January 2015 she founded Mars City Design, a think tank of sorts aimed at developing blueprints for the first self-sustaining city on Mars.

Earlier this month, Mars City Design raised $30,382 on Kickstarter to realize the next phase of its mission: Within the next three years, the group wants to 3D-print three to-scale habitat prototypes of Martian cities at Reaction Research Society’s test area in the Mojave Desert.

Continue reading “Mars City Design wants to 3D-print prototypes of Martian habitats in the Mojave Desert” »