Lifeboat Foundation

The growth of space businesses makes this “the most exciting time” to be involved in the industry, but one CEO says private and government organizations must do more to tap the next generation of U.S. workers.

“I do think there’s opportunities for everybody to participate in the excitement … [and] it’s a great opportunity for the government to really lean in on looking for those public-private partnerships,” Steve Isakowitz, CEO of The Aerospace Corporation and former president of Virgin Galactic, told attendees of the America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit. The event ran on April 6 and 7.

“We need to do more and expand the candidate pool — we’ve got to make sure that all of America has the benefit of being part of the STEM, K-12, opportunities that are out there,” he added, referring to the academic discipline that includes science, tech, engineering and math.

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) hiring Stephen Clark as head of AI last week could be a sign the company is boosting research into ways quantum computing could be used for natural language processing.

Quantum computing is still in its infancy but promises such significant results that dozens of companies are pursuing new quantum architectures. Researchers at technology giants such as IBM, Google, and Honeywell are making measured progress on demonstrating quantum supremacy for narrowly defined problems. Quantum computers with 50–100 qubits may be able to perform tasks that surpass the capabilities of today’s classical digital computers, “but noise in quantum gates will limit the size of quantum circuits that can be executed reliably,” California Institute of Technology theoretical physics professor John Preskill wrote in a recent paper. “We may feel confident that quantum technology will have a substantial impact on society in the decades ahead, but we cannot be nearly so confident about the commercial potential of quantum technology in the near term, say the next 5 to 10 years.”

Continue reading “Cambridge Quantum pushes into NLP and quantum computing with new head of AI” »

Summary: Computer-generated, or virtual humans, prove to be just as good as humans in helping people practice leadership skills.

Source: Frontiers.

A virtual human can be as good as a flesh-and-blood one when it comes to helping people practice new leadership skills. That’s the conclusion from new research published in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality that evaluated the effectiveness of computer-generated characters in a training scenario compared to real human role-players in a conventional setting.

Axisymmetric reconnecting plasmoids are secondary magnetic islands, which are formed due to plasmoid instability. At high Lundquist number, the elongated current sheet becomes MHD unstable due to the plasmoid instability (Biskamp Reference Biskamp 1986; Tajima & Shibata Reference Tajima and Shibata 1997; Loureiro, Schekochihin & Cowley Reference Loureiro, Schekochihin and Cowley 2007; Bhattacharjee et al. Reference Bhattacharjee, Huang, Yang and Rogers 2009; Daughton et al. Reference Daughton, Roytershteyn, Albright, Karimabadi, Yin and Bowers 2009; Ebrahimi & Raman Reference Ebrahimi and Raman 2015; Comisso et al. Reference Comisso, Lingam, Huang and Bhattacharjee 2016), an example of spontaneous reconnection. The transition to plasmoid instability was shown to occur when the local Lundquist number $S = L V_A/\eta$ ( $V_A$ is the Alfven velocity based on the poloidal reconnecting magnetic field, $L$ is the current sheet length and $\eta$ is the magnetic diffusivity) exceeds a critical value (typically a few thousand). Our thruster concept is based on the formation of this elongated current sheet for triggering fast reconnection and plasmoid formation. Effects beyond MHD may also contribute to fast reconnection as the current sheet width ( $\delta _{\mathrm {sp}}$) becomes smaller than the two-fluid or kinetic scales (Cassak, Shay & Drake Reference Cassak, Shay and Drake 2005; Ji & Daughton Reference Ji and Daughton 2011). However, for thruster application we desire system-size MHD plasmoid formation (with radius ranging from a few to tens of centimetres), where kinetic effects become subdominant for low-temperature plasma (in the range of a few eV to a couple of tens of eV). Here, the MHD plasmoid-mediated reconnection occurs at high Lundquist number (about $10⁴$ and above), which is achieved at high magnetic field rather than low magnetic diffusivity (or high temperature). To form a single or multiple X-point reconnection site, oppositely directed biased magnetic field (in the range of 20–1000 G) is injected through a narrow gap in an annular device. We find that the plasmoid structures demonstrated in resistive (or extended) MHD simulations produce high exhaust velocity and thrust that scale favourably with applied magnetic field. It will be shown that the fluid-like magnetic plasmoid loops continuously depart the magnetic configuration about every $10 \ \mathrm {\mu } \textrm {s}$ with Alfvenic velocities in the range of 20 to $500\ \textrm {km}\ \textrm {s}^{-1}$, and the thrust does not ideally depend on the mass of the ion species of the plasma.

Figure 1 shows the main parts of the reconnecting plasmoid thruster in an annular configuration. Magnetic helicity injection starts with an initial injector poloidal field ( $B^{\mathrm {inj}}_P$, in blue, with radial, $R$, and vertical, $Z$, components), connecting the inner and outer biased plates in the injector region. Gas is injected and partially ionized by applying an injector voltage $V_{\mathrm {inj}}$ of a few hundred volts between the inner and outer plates (indicated by numbers 1 and 2), which also drives a current $I_{\mathrm {inj}}$ along the open magnetic field lines. Plasma and open field lines expand into the vessel when the Lorentz force $J_{\mathrm {pol}} \times B_{\phi }$ exceeds the field line tension of the injector poloidal field. The azimuthal ( $\phi$) field shown here, $B_{\phi }$, is generated through injector current ( $I_{\mathrm {inj}}$) alone (by applying $V_{\mathrm {inj}}$), or can be provided externally.

Prototype has proven 99% effective.

Conducting atom-optical experiments in space is interesting for fundamental physics and challenging due to different environment compared to ground. Here the authors report matter-wave interferometry in space using atomic BECs in a sounding rocket.

😃 From robotic people, dogs, it seems scientists are now pushing forward with robotic vines. 😃

This robot has applications to archaeology, space exploration, and search and rescue — with a simple elegant design inspired by a plant. Sign up to Morning Brew for free today: https://ve42.co/mb.

Continue reading “This Unstoppable Robot Could Save Your Life” »

NASA hopes to score a 21st-century Wright Brothers moment on Monday as it attempts to send a miniature helicopter buzzing over the surface of Mars in what would be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.

Landmark achievements in science and technology can seem humble by conventional measurements. The Wright Brothers’ first controlled flight in the world of a motor-driven airplane, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 covered just 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds.

A modest debut is likewise in store for NASA’s twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter Ingenuity.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to send civilians into low-Earth orbit this year. Virgin Galactic is training space travellers. Companies aim to open hotels in space, and offer space day trips, within a few years. We assess the state of play in the nascent space tourism industry.