Innovation

500TB Disc Lasts Billions Of Years

A new 5D optical storage technique developed at the University of Southampton would allow 500TB of data to be stored on an optical storage disc for 13.8 billion years. The new writing method uses lasers to write at 230 kbps, taking 2 months to fill the disc with 500TB.

Innovation

Tech

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Solar Powered Hydrocarbon Production

#288

Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated a proof of concept solar power hydro-carbon production system which uses mirrors to heat reaction chambers that harvests CO2 and H2O from the air and converts them into liquid fuels like kerosene or methanol. If the technology was scaled up, 3.8 square kilometers of desert filled with these mirror converters could fuel a daily return flight from New York to London.

Environment

Innovation

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Supervolcano Generator

#286

NASA have a backup plan to cool Yellowstone's supervolcano in case it gets close to erupting, by drilling holes in the sides and pumping super-cooled water through the volcano chamber. The exiting water would be heated to around 350°C on the way out from cooling the volcano and on the way into a geo-thermal plant to generate electricity. A win-win, at the cost of $3.46B.

Environment

Innovation

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Desktop Quantum Accelerator

#283

Australian quantum computing company Quantum Brilliance released a rack size quantum accelerator that operates at room temperature. The device uses synthetic diamonds as a stable environment for atom based qubits that can maintain coherence for milliseconds at a time. The company plans on miniaturising the accelerator to the size of a graphics card with ~50 qubits.

Innovation

Quantum Computing

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Flying Microchip

#282

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a flying microchip sensor device. The microfliers are modelled on how maple trees spread their seed and fly in a slow stable rotation when moving through the air. The tiny devices include sensors, a power source, data storage and antennae for wireless communication. The goal is to be able to use the microfliers to sense the environment for contamination monitoring, population surveillance, or disease tracking.

Innovation

Tech

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Glow In The Dark Plants

#282

Scientists at MIT have successfully injected nanoparticles into plants to give them glow in the dark properties, for the second time. The strontium aluminate nanoparticles are coated in silica so as not to damage the plant. Just 10 seconds of exposure to LED or sunlight cause the plants to glow green for up to an hour, at a brightness ten times more than the previous experiment. The plan is to be able to use these glowing plants as passive lighting in outdoor areas, thus reducing the need for street lighting.

Environment

Innovation

Science

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Higher Order Interactions & Hypergraphs

#279

Quanta Magazine published an interesting article on the new frontiers of graph theory within computer science where big data is starting the stretch the capabilities of regular graphs in favour of, in some circumstances, hyper-graphs and higher order interactions to better model and analyse relationships within the highly connected data.

Data Vis

Innovation

Tech

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Green Steel

#277

SSAB in Sweden has become the world's first producer of fossil-free green steel created with green hydrogen instead of coal. The green steel was produced for Volvo who will use it to manufacture electric trucks.

Environment

Innovation

Science

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Solar Energy From Orbit

#277

Caltech are working on a solar energy project that will put solar panels in geo-stationery orbit to generate energy and beam that power using microwaves to the surface.

Innovation

Science

Space