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Wednesday, 19 June 2013 14:32 |
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 Science fiction writer and astrophysicist Dr. David Brin is not happy with the Lone Signal announcement of METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) “beams” to the Gliese 526 solar system.
In his Brinstorming Science 2.0 blog, Brin updated his 2006 article on METI (aka active SETI), quoting Carl Sagan, who called it “deeply unwise and immature.”
He also cited Frank Drake, who famously sent the “Arecibo Message,” but nonetheless considered “Active SETI to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.”
“Sagan — along with early SETI pioneer Philip Morrison — recommended that the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.
“We hope soon to convince all parties to join together in calling for a more extensive discussion that would extend beyond astronomers and diplomats, to include experts in history, astrobiology, ethics, ethology and many other pertinent fields, in an open and extended conversation that should be fascinating and entertaining as well, for millions of citizens of Planet Earth.. To reiterate, that is all we have ever asked… for an issue that might weigh heavily upon our descendants to be examined from many angles and perspectives, and for zealots to expose their assumptions to collegial critique, which is — after all — the very soul of science.”
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013 14:18 |
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 D-Wave is pioneering a novel way of making quantum computers — but it is also courting controversy.
“I've been doing combative stuff since I was born,” says Geordie Rose, leaning back in a chair in his small, windowless office in Burnaby, Canada, as he describes how he has spent most of his life making things difficult for himself. Until his early 20s, that meant an obsession with wrestling — the sport that, he claims, provides the least reward for the most work. More recently, says Rose, now 41, “that's been D-Wave in a nutshell: an unbearable amount of pain and very little recognition”.
The problem of lack of recognition is fast disappearing for D-Wave, the world's first and so far only company making quantum computers. After initial disbelief and ridicule from the research community, Rose and his firm are now being taken more seriously — not least by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, which bought one of D-Wave's computers in 2011 for about US$10 million, and Internet behemoth Google, which acquired one in May.
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Tuesday, 18 June 2013 15:00 |
 Members of Nasa's newest astronaut class, a group that includes the highest number of women since the program began more than 50 years ago, have been speaking about their selection. The agency's 21st astronaut class, announced on Monday, includes four women and four men, who made it through a pool of 6,100 applicants, the largest ever. Those who make it through the program will have the opportunity to be on missions to the Earth's orbit, an asteroid and Mars.
"My parents are going to be excited. They know this has been a lifelong goal," said Tyler Hague, 37. "My brothers, as they always do, will give me a hard time."
Hague said it was his third time applying for the program. Since the program began in 1959, 330 people have made it through the selection process.
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Read more... [Nasa selects newest class of astronauts who could lead mission to Mars]
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Friday, 14 June 2013 13:52 |
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 By quantum-mechanically coupling laser-cooled atoms to glass fiber cables, Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed a way to store quantum information over a long enough period of time to allow for entangling atoms hundreds of kilometers apart via fiber cables.
This finding is a fundamental building block for a global fiber-based quantum communication network, the researchers suggest.
Atoms and light
“In our experiment, we connect two different quantum physical systems,” explains Arno Rauschenbeutel (Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology and Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics of the Vienna University of Technology). “We use fiber-guided light, which is perfect for sending quantum information from A to B, and atoms, which are ideal for storing this information.”
By trapping atoms at a distance of about 200 nanometers from a glass fiber (which itself only has a diameter of 500 nanometers), a very strong interaction between light and atoms can be implemented. This allows one to exchange quantum information between the two systems. This information exchange is the basis for technologies like quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation.
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Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:57 |
 A team of researchers from the Nanoengineering Research Centre (CRNE) and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPCn) has found a way to make the manufacture of crystalline silicon materials faster and more affordable. The results of their research have recently been published in the online version of the landmark journal Applied Physics Letters.
Thin crystalline silicon wafers measuring around 10 µm (micres) are costly but also very sought after in the field of microelectronics, especially in view of the growing demand for 3D circuit integration with microchips. Silicon wafers also have potential photovoltaic applications in the medium term in the conversion of sunlight to electricity and the production of more affordable, more flexible and lighter solar cells.
In recent years, techniques have been developed to obtain increasingly thinner crystalline silicon wafers from monocrystalline cylindrical ingots. Layers cut from the ingots using a multithreaded saw impregnated with abrasive material have a minimum thickness of around 150 µm. Obtaining wafers that are any thinner is more complicated, as existing methods only allow such wafers to be obtained one at a time. Furthermore, 50% of the silicon is lost in the process.
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Read more... [Producing cheaper and more flexible multiple thin crystalline silicon wafers]
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Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:46 |
Ten years ago, few people would have heard of a social network. Today, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn permeate our lives. They show us how we are linked to each other and how we are more broadly placed within society.
What fascinates scientists is that the general properties of social networks seem to be invariant regardless of where they crop up. For example, one of the remarkable properties of social networks is their small world character. This means it is possible to go from one part of a network to any other part in a small number of steps (this is where the phrase 6 degrees of separation comes from).
That was entirely unexpected and counterintuitive when it was discovered in the 1960s by the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. But it is as true today of Facebook and Twitter as it was of the society in which Milgram carried out his experiments.
Today, P J Miranda at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil and a couple of pals study the social network between characters in Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey. Their conclusion is that this social network bears remarkable similarities to Facebook, Twitter and the like and that this may offer an important clue about the origin of this ancient story.
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Read more... [The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks]
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