Lifeboat Foundation

A NEW material capable of propelling spacecraft to 20% of the speed of light has been engineered, fuelling hopes of imminent interstellar travel.

Cystic fibrosis is the most common genetic disease among Caucasians. Now scientists believe they have discovered the origin of this often lethal genetic mutation and how it spread throughout Europe.

Quantum computing has moved out of the realm of theoretical physics and into the real world, but its potential and promise are still years away.

Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, a powerhouse in the world of quantum research and a young upstart in the field presented visions for the future of the industry that illustrated both how far the industry has come and how far the technology has to go.

For both Dario Gil, the chief operating officer of IBM Research and the company’s vice president of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and Chad Rigetti, a former IBM researcher who founded Rigetti Computing and serves as its chief executive, the moment that a quantum computer will be able to perform operations better than a classical computer is only three years away.

Continue reading “The reality of quantum computing could be just three years away” »

Rio Tinto and other large mining companies are using machine learning, autonomous vehicles and intelligent operations to pave the way for the 4th industrial revolution. Mining impacts nearly every industry because they provide raw materials that are used for other products.

Think of the Sahara, with its windswept dunes shining in the sunlight. Some people might see barren land, with minimal water or life and scorching temperatures. Others see a potential solution to a looming energy crisis, and one that could potentially make it rain in one of the largest deserts in the world.

In a paper published this week in Science researchers found that by building out huge wind and solar farms across the desert, they could not only provide a stunning amount of power to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, but they could simultaneously change the climate—increasing heat, but also increasing precipitation and vegetation in areas that could sorely use the added greenery. They estimate that such a venture could double the rainfall in the region, and increase vegetation cover by about 20 percent.

How much green are we talking? The Sahara covers 3.55 million square miles (9.2 million square kilometers). In the study, the researchers ran computer models that placed wind turbines across the desert close to a mile apart, and covered 20 percent of the desert with solar panels in different configurations (sometimes the panels were spread across the desert in a checkerboard pattern, and in other cases were concentrated in quadrants). Smaller coverage produced smaller climate impacts—in this case, less precipitation—but much of it depended on the location of the turbines and panels as well. For example, installing panels in the northwest corner had a larger impact than the other three desert options.

After centuries of silent designs, the architects of two major 9/11 memorial sites have settled on sound.

A Chinese remote sensing satellite has captured stunning footage of a suborbital rocket launch taking place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert.

The Jilin-1 satellite was orbiting at around 535 kilometres above the Earth as the OS-X1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan at 12:10 local time (04:10 UTC) on Friday.

Continue reading “Amazing footage of Chinese rocket launch captured” »

Five experts speaking at a conference on Human-Level Artificial Intelligence weigh in on whether scientists should create AI they know will be evil.

Elon Musk smoked pot and drank whiskey on the Joe Rogan podcast and said he’s going to soon announce a new “Neuralink” product that can make anyone superhuman.