GE Aviation engineers have unveiled Affinity, a new family of supersonic jet engines for civilian aircraft.
GE Aviation has given impetus to the revival of civilian supersonic flight by revealing a new family of engines designed to fly faster than the speed of sound. Called the Affinity, the new engine will be incorporated into the Aerion AS2 supersonic business jet, which is being developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin, GE Aviation and Honeywell, and could cut the time of a transatlantic flight by three hours.
Snakes and ladders used to be a board game, now it’s an integral part of our shared robot dystopian future. Can’t wait!
We tend to oversell the “scariness” of robots, right? The Boston Dynamics robot does a backflip or parkour and we’re cracking jokes about the revolution and our potential robot overlords. But honestly, how bad could it be?
With a STEM microscope, ORNL’s Ondrej Dyck brought two, three and four silicon atoms together to build clusters and make them rotate within a layer of graphene, a two-dimensional layer of carbon atoms that exhibits unprecedented strength and high electrical conductivity. Credit: Ondrej Dyck/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
A novel technique that nudges single atoms to switch places within an atomically thin material could bring scientists another step closer to realizing theoretical physicist Richard Feynman’s vision of building tiny machines from the atom up.
A significant push to develop materials that harness the quantum nature of atoms is driving the need for methods to build atomically precise electronics and sensors. Fabricating nanoscale devices atom by atom requires delicacy and precision, which has been demonstrated by a microscopy team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
How do firefighters put out a blaze when they can’t reach the flames?
That’s the challenge firefighters confronted in 2008, when a B-2 Stealth Bomber crashed on the runway at an American airbase in Guam.
The crew successfully ejected, but the hugely expensive aircraft was completely destroyed by a fire that burned deep within its wreckage.
“The firefighters had difficulty getting through the composite layers of the aircraft skin to fight the fire,” U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Scott Knupp told CNNMoney.
The loss of the aircraft prompted the Air Force to search for a solution.
“We were looking for some type of technology out there that would help us penetrate through [to] hard-to-reach spaces to get water onto the fire,” said Knupp.
Air Force firefighters now use a system called PyroLance — a firefighting “gun” that can blast through steel, brick or concrete walls, and even bullet-resistant glass.
Everybody knows the world’s got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2 could provide the means of tomorrow’s battery technology.
For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new system might offer a powerful advantage over these efforts.
Inanimate objects coming to life — the stuff of nightmares? Not so when you can control the objects thanks to “robotic skin.” Then it’s just really, really cool.
You don’t have to take our word for it, either. Yale researchers have actually created this robotic skin, and they posted a video of it in action on Wednesday— the same day they published their research on the tech in the journal Science Robotics.
‘It was like watching fireworks, but from the inside’
After Kelly Thomas’ truck flipped with her inside of it in 2014, she was told that she probably would never walk again. Now, with help from a spinal cord implant that she’s nicknamed “Junior,” Thomas is able to walk on her own.
Thomas and Jeff Marquis, who was paralyzed after a mountain biking accident, can now independently walk again after participating in a study at the University of Louisville that was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thomas’ balance is still off and she needs a walker, but she can walk a hundred yards across grass. She also gained muscle and lost the nerve pain in her foot that has persisted since her accident. Another unnamed person with a spinal cord injury can now independently step across the ground with help from a trainer, according to a similar study at the Mayo Clinic that was also published today in the journal Nature Medicine.
Experts from chip designer Arm on how chip design will evolve to ensure performance keeps advancing.
“Moore’s Law is dead. Moore’s Law is over.”
So says Mike Muller, chief technology officer at chip designer Arm, the Japanese-owned company whose processor cores are found inside nearly all mobile phones.
Given Moore’s Law has been the engine driving the breakneck pace at which computers have advanced over the past 50 years this statement might seem worrying.
But Muller is more sanguine.
“On one level it’s true, but I’d say, certainly from my perspective and Arm’s perspective, we don’t care,” he said, speaking at the Arm Research Summit 2018.
Muller and his colleagues have good reasons for their indifference to the end of Moore’s Law, the prediction that the number of transistors on computer processors will double every two years.
For one, the bulk of Arm-based processors are sold into the embedded computing market, where there is still plenty of scope for transistors to get smaller and chips to get faster.
But more importantly, Arm believes the regular boosts to computing performance that used to come from Moore’s Law will continue, and will instead stem from changes to how chips are designed.
Here are three ways that Arm expects processor design will evolve and advance.
Elon Musk plans to blast a tourist around the moon in a ship made by his rocket company, SpaceX.
The private lunar mission is meant to demonstrate a new two-part launch system called Big Falcon Rocket, which is designed to eventually bring humans to Mars.
Engineers are said to be building a prototype of the BFR’s spaceship primarily out of carbon-fiber composites.
Exactly how SpaceX is building that spaceship isn’t publicly known, but industry experts have some guesses.
The Pythagoras Sling uses a lengthy graphene string pulled via two hoops suspended from simple parachutes to rapidly accelerate a projectile into orbit. Graphene string will likely become widely available over the next two decades. If it works as expected, the Pythagoras Sling launch system could greatly reduce the cost of getting into space compared to any current rocket-based system and could help accelerate space development. Total cost of the fully reusable launch system could be as low as $1M for small and medium sized satellites so cost per kg could be two orders of magnitude cheaper than today. Apart for human spacecraft or more delicate satellites that need low g-forces, the system needs little or no fuel to achieve orbit, only ground electricity, so would be safer and more environmentally friendly as well as cheaper than current rocket-based approaches.
TRULY SUPER. There’s a reason researchers call graphene a “super material.” Even though it’s just a single layer of carbon atoms thick, it’s super strong, super flexible, and super light. It also conducts electricity, and is biodegradable. Now an international team of researchers has found a way to use the super material: to create artificial retinas.
In 2017, the world’s first prestressed 3D printed concrete bicycle bridge officially opened to cyclists. It was created by the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in collaboration with construction company BAM Infra, and was installed in the Dutch village of Gemert. The bridge was part of a research project that involved the development of a giant concrete 3D printer, and now the researchers involved have published a paper on the project, entitled “3D Printed Concrete Bridge.”
The bridge was designed to replace an existing structure over a small local canal. The structure is 3.5 meters wide and spans 6.5 meters. It consists of 3D printed elements that are rotated 90 degrees after printing, then pressed together by post-tensioned prestressing tendons.
