Surface of Seabed Manganese Nodule from South Korea
There are trillions of potato-sized metal nodules on the floor of the ocean around the world.
Some of these nodules are being explored for economic potential. A major vote by a UN body on the commercial exploitation of these minerals is planned in October 2020 (postponed from July 2020).
However, the formation of these metallic nodules is radically different from the processes used to create such metals on land i.e., they are biological in origin rather the geological.
This has profound implications for what the true value of life around these metallic nodules could be.
Reusable spacecraft would make space exploration both more cost-effective and accessible, which is why space agencies have been actively pursuing their development. However, spaceplanes are subjected to extreme temperatures on exiting and re-entering the atmosphere. So, materials which can withstand the scorching temperatures are needed in their construction.
Scientists from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Moscow have now fabricated a ceramic material which is more heat resistant than any other.
The previous material to hold the title of “most heat resistant” was tested in 2016 by a team from the Imperial College London. Using a laser heating technique which allowed them to test the material at extreme temperatures, they calculated that a chemical compound of the elements hafnium, a transition metal, and carbon had the highest melting point ever recorded at the time. Their findings showed hafnium carbide melted at just under 4000 degrees Celsius.
This is the new Aquabreather Hydroid. Rebreather? No. Scuba diving? Yeah, but not the way you’ve ever seen it!
The Hydroid aquabreather was unveiled at the 2019 DEMA exhibition. This was without a doubt the one scuba diving product which generated the most buzz.
Part HALO, part NASA, part Darth Vader, the Hydroid Aquabreather uses proprietary canisters of a chemical mixture that gives off oxygen once popped. This is then cycled by your mask, and you will be able to dive to a depth of 42 metres. (138 feet) and stay underwater for 1 hour.
Linking multiple copies of these devices may lay the foundation for quantum computing.
Once unimaginable, transistors consisting only of several-atom clusters or even single atoms promise to become the building blocks of a new generation of computers with unparalleled memory and processing power. But to realize the full potential of these tiny transistors — miniature electrical on-off switches — researchers must find a way to make many copies of these notoriously difficult-to-fabricate components.
Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues at the University of Maryland have developed a step-by-step recipe to produce the atomic-scale devices. Using these instructions, the NIST-led team has become only the second in the world to construct a single-atom transistor and the first to fabricate a series of single electron transistors with atom-scale control over the devices’ geometry.
Every technology has its trade-offs. The key to success is making sure that the benefits are so great that the trade-offs seem like minor nitpicks by comparison.
Steve Sinclair, the senior vice president of product and marketing at a Silicon Valley startup called Mojo Vision, is excited about the technology his company is developing. And he’s betting you’ll be excited, too — so excited that you’ll forget all about the fact that using it requires you to press two tiny screens up against your eyeballs.
If what Mojo has planned works, sticking a piece of tech directly onto your eyes every day will be as minor a drawback as your smartphone making your pocket a few ounces heavier.
Danish MPs have given the green light to the construction of the Fehmarnbelt underwater tunnel which will reduce travel time between the country and Germany to just a few minutes.
Work on the Danish side is now expected to start on January 1, 2021, and the tunnel — known as the Fehmarnbelt link — is now forecast to open in mid-2029, the Ministry of Transport said in a statement on Friday.
Transport Minister Benny Engelbrecht hailed the MPs agreement as a “historic decision”, describing the tunnel as “a new gateway to Europe”.
For 24 years, Soviet scientists dug deeper into the Earth’s surface than anyone had ever done before. The result was the Kola Superdeep Borehole located on the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
The ambitious project began in the 1970s, and scientists in the former Soviet Union began to drill a hole that was just 9-inches (22.9 cm) in diameter. The hole eventually extended 7.5 miles (12.1 km) into the Earth’s crust, farther than the deepest point in the ocean, Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean at 6.8 miles (10.9 km).
Efficient quantum computing is expected to enable advancements that are impossible with classical computers. Scientists from Japan and Sydney have collaborated and proposed a novel two-dimensional design that can be constructed using existing integrated circuit technology. This design solves typical problems facing the current three-dimensional packaging for scaled-up quantum computers, bringing the future one step closer.
Quantum computing is increasingly becoming the focus of scientists in fields such as physics and chemistry, and industrialists in the pharmaceutical, airplane, and automobile industries. Globally, research labs at companies like Google and IBM are spending extensive resources on improving quantum computers, and with good reason. Quantum computers use the fundamentals of quantum mechanics to process significantly greater amounts of information much faster than classical computers. It is expected that when error-corrected and fault-tolerant quantum computation is achieved, scientific and technological advancement will occur at an unprecedented scale.
But building quantum computers for large-scale computation is proving to be a challenge in terms of their architecture. The basic units of a quantum computer are the “quantum bits” or “qubits.” These are typically atoms, ions, photons, subatomic particles such as electrons, or even larger elements that simultaneously exist in multiple states, making it possible to obtain several potential outcomes rapidly for large volumes of data. The theoretical requirement for quantum computers is that these are arranged in two-dimensional (2-D) arrays, where each qubit is both coupled with its nearest neighbor and connected to the necessary external control lines and devices. When the number of qubits in an array is increased, it becomes difficult to reach qubits in the interior of the array from the edge. The need to solve this problem has so far resulted in complex three-dimensional (3-D) wiring systems across multiple planes in which many wires intersect, making their construction a significant engineering challenge.
Three decades and $23.7 billion later, the 25,000-ton International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is close to becoming something like the sun.
UNTIL 1920, HUMANS had no real sense of how the sun and stars create their vast amounts of energy. Then, in October of that year, Arthur Stanley Eddington, an English astrophysicist, penned an essay elegantly titled “ The Internal Constitution of the Stars.” “A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown,” he wrote. “This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service.”
From that moment, scientists began the quest to harness unlimited, carbon-free power on earth. They’ve built more than 200 reactors that have tried to slam hydrogen atoms together and release fusion energy. It’s a dream perennially called delusional, impossible, and “always 20 years away.” In 1985, recognizing that no country had the will to solve the world’s most complicated puzzle alone, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev called for an international effort to give it a go.
In 1988, engineers began designing the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, now just ITER. Along the way, 35 nations have split the $23.7 billion price tag to construct its 10 million parts. Now, surrounded by vineyards in France’s Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, the 25,000-ton machine is set to be flipped on in 2025.
Most quantum computers being developed around the world will only work at fractions of a degree above absolute zero. That requires multi-million-dollar refrigeration and as soon as you plug them into conventional electronic circuits they’ll instantly overheat.
But now researchers led by Professor Andrew Dzurak at UNSW Sydney have addressed this problem.
“Our new results open a path from experimental devices to affordable quantum computers for real world business and government applications,” says Professor Dzurak.
The researchers’ proof-of-concept quantum processor unit cell, on a silicon chip, works at 1.5 Kelvin—15 times warmer than the main competing chip-based technology being developed by Google, IBM, and others, which uses superconducting qubits.
Flexible mechanical sensors that can be bonded or sewn into woven or knitted fabrics have been developed by German research lab Fraunhofer ISC.
Deformation, force and pressure can be measured, and strains up to 100% (doubling length) can be endured.
It is an elastomer film with flexible electrodes on both sides. Electrode patterning can be used to create an array of sensors. Silicone rubber is the preferred elastomer, with chemical cross-linking allowing hardness to be tuned.
“The textile-integrated sensors are washable, show a high wearing comfort and are reasonable in price,” said the lab. “They are applicable in medical devices, for preventing bed sores or for localising the pressure distribution in shoes, for example. They can also support personal training by measuring the posture via the clothes, or as an input device for game and fitness device controlling.”
Researchers have found a simple way to make graphene disperse in water, paving the way for graphene-based inks or paints
Graphene may be versatile, but there’s one thing it’s not all that good at – dispersing in water. Now, researchers at Umeå University have found a relatively simple way to do it. Graphene oxide is a different form of the material that can make for stable water dispersion, which can then be used as a kind of graphene paint.
Graphene is essentially a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, arranged in a hexagonal pattern. This deceptively simple material has a range of useful properties – it’s incredibly lightweight, thin and flexible, but still strong. It’s also an excellent conductor of electricity and heat, so it’s turning up in everything from electronics to water filters to clothing.
Ideally, one useful way to get graphene into the right configurations could involve dispersing it in water. This solution could then be painted or sprayed onto a surface to make, for example, supercapacitor electrodes or conductive coatings.
The problem is that graphene and similar forms of carbon, like graphite and carbon nanotubes, are hydrophobic, meaning they repel water. They can be made to disperse using harsh organic solvents or mechanical treatments, but the former is toxic and the latter can introduce defects.
