Lockheed's Fusion Promise

Researchers at Lockheed Martin made headlines this week with the announcement that they are on the fast track to building a nuclear fusion reactor. But experts responded with skepticism.

Fusion promises unlimited clean, renewable energy without the nasty byproducts of the uranium-splitting fission that drives today's nuclear plants. The problem is figuring out how to contain it. For hydrogen atoms to smash together with enough force to fuse, they must jitter and bounce with many times the heat of the sun's core. Tom McGuire, the Lockheed project lead, tells Popular Science their reactor will run at 200 million degrees. Matter that hot leaves the simple world of solids, liquids, and gasses to form a plasma. No solid vessel will contain that material, so fusion generators resort to suspending the roiling mass with powerful electromagnets. The best-funded fusion project in the world, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), takes the brute force approach. It's fusion chamber, or "tokamak," stands 100 feet tall and, at 23,000 tons, has about the same mass as a tank battalion. If it's ever finished, it's expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.

McGuire's claim that his team of less than 10 people will solve the containment problem in a machine about the size of a school bus flies in the face of a long history of failures in fusion engineering.

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NASA 'Firmly Commits' To Space Launch System For Taking Humans To Mars

NASA has 'firmly committed' to launching the new Space Launch System rocket by 2018 - and one day using it to take humans to Mars.

The new rocket launcher is the largest and most complex ever devised, and will finally give NASA a way to send its own astronauts into space - a task for which it currently relies on Russia.

The SLS will also take explorers to asteroids and possibly to the Moon, as it looks set to be NASA's main ticket to space for the next 30-40 years.

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Man Drives Tesla From NY To Miami Without Spending A Cent

Normally, road trips cost a pretty penny, but one man recently proved that it's possible to drive from New York to Miami and back without spending a dime.

Michael Fritts, from Herkimer, New York, drove nearly 2,600 miles in his Tesla Motors Model S, an electric car that uses no gas, and re-charged his vehicle for free at 10 charging stations along the way, WKTV reports. The former truck driver left his wallet at home and set off for his road trip with a cooler full of food, vowing not to spend a cent.

Fritts -- who slept in the car's trunk while his vehicle was charging -- told Time Warner Cable News that he hoped his trip would bring greater attention to the capabilities of electric vehicles. But there was also another, much more personal reason behind the journey: This week marks the 10-year anniversary of his mechanical heart valve surgery.

"I wanted to celebrate the success of that by doing something special and fun and I also wanted to celebrate this wonderful vehicle," Fritts told WKTV.

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Dream Chaser space plane slated to make for orbit by 2016

Last we heard of Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Dream Chaser, the chubby little space plane had taken a bit of a spill during its last test flight. What could have been a disaster for the program, however, turned out to be one of those landings you walk away from with your head (and the all-important flight data) held high. Having actually garnered all the information they needed from their imperfect test flight, SNC is back in the saddle and aiming for a 2016 launch that will take the Dream Chaser into orbit.

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Of Her and Humanoids: The Year in Robotics

Follow robotics closely enough, and every year seems like a big year. But these tipping points are often false, or at the very least over-reported, as dispatches from academic labs are confused with actual, historic deployments.

2013 was another matter. Robots became synonymous with Google. Robots stole the show on 60 Minutes. Robots were mocked, and were the subject of more mock-terror, arguably, than in any other year in recent memory. And even when they weren’t news, robots and their makers made surprising progress towards supplanting and supporting humans. Fictional bots contributed, too, as manufactured good guys (and one very charming girl) proved that even Hollywood can take a break, however brief, from vilifying machines.

From the highs to the lows, to the stories that simply did not compute, this is what robotics looked like in 2013. These trends are by no means comprehensive or ranked, but comments are enabled, so feel free to add your own picks for the year's biggest bot-related breakthroughs and setbacks.

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The year ahead: ten amazing science and technology innovations coming up in 2014

From the world's largest underground hotel to Star Wars-style holographic communication, the coming year is set to unveil an array of incredible advances in science and technology



Virgin Galactic launches. Yes, really

Despite delays in testing – the first flights were promised by 2011 – Sir Richard Branson’s dream of making money in space is nearing reality. A test flight was completed in April, and it was announced in November that television network NBC has agreed to televise the first ever public flight from New Mexico “sometime in 2014”.

Full piece is here

The 18 Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True in 2013

A lot can happen in a single year, especially in this era of accelerating technological and social change. Here are the most futuristic developments of 2013.

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Quantum Entanglement May Link Wormholes In Universe, Physicists Say

Wormholes — shortcuts that in theory can connect distant points in the universe — might be linked with the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where the behavior of particles can be connected regardless of distance, researchers say.

These findings could help scientists explain the universe from its very smallest to its biggest scales.

Scientists have long sought to develop a theory that can describe how the cosmos works in its entirety. Currently, researchers have two disparate theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, which can respectively mostly explain the universe on its tiniest scales and its largest scales. There are currently several competing theories seeking to reconcile the pair.

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How Arjun Raj Reveals The Inner Workings Of Cells

Arjun Raj

University of Pennsylvania

Achievement

Revealing the inner workings of cells

Each cell in your body has the same DNA. But how a cell's genes are expressed—and how frequently—determines whether the cell will become a neuron or a cardiac myocyte or whether it's healthy or sick. Arjun Raj and his collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania invented a technique to track that gene expression and its effects.

Just as grocery store receipts show which foods are most popular, RNA molecules, which carry genetic information from DNA, reveal which genes are turned on and how often they're active. To track a specific RNA strand, Raj bathes a cell with segments of fluorescent DNA. Those segments bind the RNA in different locations, lining up along it like Christmas lights along a roof, and are clearly visible through a microscope.

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Skylon Space Plane: The Spacecraft of Tomorrow

It’s difficult not to be impressed by the towering rockets used around the world to launch spacecraft into orbit. From the colossal Saturn V rockets developed in the 1960s to the SpaceX Falcon 9, one of last year’s highlights, rockets are practically synonymous with space travel in modern culture. However, rockets are also a huge financial drain on any spaceflight, being only partially reusable. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were cheaper and more economical to get to orbit? Cue the Skylon space plane, currently scheduled to commence test flights in 2019. Read more

IBM's Cognitive Computing Software May Serve As Architecture For Brain-Like Computer

A computer that works like the human brain? It may not be that far off.

IBM cognitive computing researchers are one step closer to making a brain-like computer a reality. The team on Thursday unveiled a "breakthrough software ecosystem" that has the ability to program microchips with architecture based on the human brain.

The framework, which includes new programming language and algorithms, is just part of the process that principal investigator Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha hopes will lead to IBM's long-term goal:

"Our end goal here is literally to build a brain in a box with 100 trillion synapses," Modha told The Huffington Post. (That's about the same number of synapses within the human brain.)

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NASA Physicists Working on Warp Drive Technology For Travel Faster Than the Speed of Light

If you possess the unique combination of characteristics that allow you be both incredibly precise and focused on specific physics problems yet daydreamy enough to stare up at the night sky and wonder “What if?”, you might work for NASA, and you might also be Harold G. White, a NASA physicist who’s researching the possibilities of warp drive travel. (That is, faster than the speed of light.)

White has been researching warp travel in a NASA lab, attempting to warp the trajectory of a photon and thus change the distance it travels within a defined area. White’s team is measuring any change with a highly sensitive interferometer in a “floating” lab built on pneumatic piers to prevent earthly vibrations from affecting the tests.

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Recharge your electric vehicle in 20 minutes starting later this year

The takes-forever-to-recharge-an-EV reason not to buy an electric vehicle may not be a problem much longer. Engineers from BMW and General Motors say an electric vehicle can be 80% recharged in about 20 minutes using a new specification developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers. It calls for a single standardized connector that accepts DC fast charging, the one that will get you back on the road quickly, as well as less speedy AC and DC charging. BMW and GM got there first with Fast Charge testing signoff, but Audi, Chrysler, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), Porsche, and Volkswagen are onboard with the same SAE DC fast charge specs. At the same time, multiple suppliers of charging equipment are signed on: ABB, Aker Wade, Eaton, and IES.

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Steven Spielberg's Movie Industry Prediction: 'Implosion' Of Film Business Model Imminent

The Oscar-winning director told students at USC's School of Cinematic Arts that the movie business is teetering on the edge, and a few high-profile box-office failures in quick succession could catalyze dramatic changes in the way studios do business, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Spielberg lamented that it's becoming harder and harder for even brand-name filmmakers to get their projects into movie theaters. To wit: "Lincoln," which was a critical and commercial success for the director, nearly ended up on HBO, he told the audience. Unestablished talent, meanwhile, has run into trouble getting their projects greenlit at all, because their ideas are "too fringe-y" for studios.

Spielberg continued:

That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm.

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The Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning

What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning of the universe, but only one stage in an endlessly repeated cycle of universal expansion and contraction?

So suggests mathematical physicist and string theorist Neil Turok. He thinks there may be many universes, at once interpolated but separate, like a mixture of gases. These universes are attracted to each other; every few trillions of trillions of years, they collide, explode, expand and contract, then repeat the sequence all over again.

I recently spoke with Turok, winner of the first TED Prize of 2008, for an upcoming Wired News Q&A. Here are some outtakes from our conversation:

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Multiverse-Universe Debate: Cosmologists Weigh One Reality Vs. Many At World Science Festival

NEW YORK — Whether you believe our universe is unique or one of many coexisting realities, there's a scientific model that backs up your views. Cosmologists on both sides debated the issue June 1 here at the "Multiverse: One Universe or Many?" panel at the World Science Festival.

"Is the multiverse idea something that's implied by deficiencies in existing cosmological theories, or is it something some scientists need to help them explain certain unresolvable problems in existing theory?" journalist John Hockenberry asked, acting as moderator to scientists Andreas Albrecht, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Neil Turok, who took the stage at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

The possibility of a multiverse is raised by the theory of cosmic inflation. This idea posits that the universe grew exponentially in the first fraction of a second following the Big Bang, expanding even faster than the speed of light. Some versions of this theory suggest that certain areas of the universe expanded faster than others, creating separate bubbles of space-time that might have developed into their own universes. [5 Reasons We May Live in a Multiverse]

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Google Buys Quantum Computer for Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA

To some of us, wicked fast quantum computers seem like the stuff of theory and some far off future. Not so if you work at Google or NASA. In a sign the technology is creeping closer to practical use, Google, NASA, and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association (USRA) recently announced formation of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and seeded it with a brand new 512-qubit D-Wave Two quantum computer.

Quantum computers promise to be orders of magnitude faster than classical computers and far better at the “optimization problems” associated with machine learning—improving not only Google search but perhaps ushering in the kind of “creative problem solving” humans associate with intelligence.

Each D-Wave quantum computer is housed in a 10’ featureless black cabinet. Inside the box, an apparatus hangs from the ceiling like a high-tech stalactite. A niobium chip resides in the tip and is cooled to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, at which point it becomes a superconductor. But apart from being colder than deep space, the way the computer itself functions differs from the classical model.

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Dream Chaser New Concept of Operations

Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems is pleased to announce that we have been awarded $212.5 million as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Program. "This award will allow our Program to continue to make great strides in the development of the Dream Chaser Space System. We want to express our appreciation to all of those that have provided great support in our efforts," said Mark Sirangelo, Corporate Vice President and head of SNC's Space Systems.

To celebrate this award, SNC is pleased to release our new Dream Chaser Space System Concept of Operations video which illustrates our primary mission of delivering crew and critical cargo to and from the International Space Station.

For information about SNC's Space Systems, including more information on SNC's plans forward, visit: http://www.SNCSpace.com. For more information on NASA's CCiCap Program, please visit: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

Chinese physicists create first single-photon quantum memory, leading to quantum internet

A lab in China is reporting that it has constructed the first memory device that uses single photons to store quantum data. This is a significant breakthrough that takes us further down the path towards a quantum internet, and potentially quantum computing as well.

As it currently stands, we already make extensive use of photons — the bulk of the internet and telecommunications backbone consists of photons traveling down fiber optic cables. Rather than single photons, though, these signals consist of carrier light waves of millions of photons, with the wave being modulated by binary data. These pulses are never stored, either; when they reach a router, they’re converted into electrical signals, and then stored in RAM before being converted back into light.

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Scientists create human stem cells through cloning

(Reuters) - After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed.

The result is a harvest of human embryonic stem cells, the seemingly magic cells capable of morphing into any of the 200-plus kinds that make up a person.

The feat, reported on Wednesday in the journal Cell, could re-ignite the field of stem-cell medicine, which has been hobbled by technical challenges as well as ethical issues.

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Warp Drive Feasible? Relativity Loophole Means 'Star Trek' Device Might Actually Work, Physicists Say

Decades after the original "Star Trek" show had gone off the air, pioneering physicist and avowed Trek fan Miguel Alcubierre argued that maybe a warp drive is possible after all. It just wouldn't work quite the way "Star Trek" thought it did.

Things with mass can't move faster than the speed of light. But what if, instead of the ship moving through space, the space was moving around the ship?

Space doesn't have mass. And we know that it's flexible: space has been expanding at a measurable rate ever since the Big Bang. We know this from observing the light of distant stars — over time, the wavelength of the stars' light as it reaches Earth is lengthened in a process called "redshifting." According to the Doppler effect, this means that the source of the wavelength is moving further away from the observer — i.e. Earth.

So we know from observing redshifted light that the fabric of space is movable. [See also: What to Wear on a 100-Year Starship Voyage]

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Does Google Glass Violate Community Standards?

Like any truly revolutionary technology, Google Glass is redrawing social boundaries. And society is so worried about its implications, that two communities have taken steps designed to keep Glass in its place – with a third trying to keep it off the roads.

Efforts to impede Glass — $1,500 frames that display recent smartphone and Google account communications, receive phone calls, send texts, take photos and video, show maps, and deliver search results — could cut into what promises to be a huge business for Google.

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Terrafugia unveils self-driving, self-landing hybrid flying car

A sleek new concept has popped up on the Terrafugia website. It's an artist's rendering of what Terrafugia is dubbing "the practical realization of the dream of countless visions of the future." And we're hard-pressed not to agree. The concept is of a new flying car, dubbed the TF-X, a hybrid gas-electric flying car.

With that said, the fact that this flying car concept is a hybrid hardly does the proposed vehicle justice. Also included in the vehicle's design is a vertical takeoff mechanism and a fully automated flight program. That's right: this car is not only the world's first flying hybrid, it's also self-driving and self-landing. While Terrafugia states that "you always have the final say if its safe to land," the TF-X is fully capable of handling the entire landing process without you.

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World on the verge of a new industrial revolution: Mass 3D printing

As potentially game-changing as the steam engine or telegraph were in their day, 3D printing could herald a new industrial revolution, experts say.

For the uninitiated, the prospect of printers turning out any object you want at the click of a button may seem like the stuff of science fiction.

But 3D printing is already here, is developing fast, and looks set to leap from the labs and niche industries onto the wider market.

“There are still limits imposed by the technology available today,” said Olivier Olmo, operational director of Switzerland’s EPFL research institution.

“But I’m certain that within 10 or 20 years, we’ll have a kind of revolution in terms of the technology being available to everyone,” he said.

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NASA-funded fusion rocket could shoot humans to Mars in 30 days

A research group at the University of Washington, funded by NASA, is about to build a fusion-powered rocket. This rocket, if it can be successfully built, could propel a manned spacecraft to Mars in just 30 days — compared to NASA’s estimate of four years for a Martian round trip using current technology.

The UW team, led by John Slough, have spent the last few years developing and testing each of the various stages of a fusion rocket. Now it is time to bring these isolated tests together to produce an actual fusion rocket. To succeed, Slough and co will need to create a fusion process that generates more power than it requires to get the fusion reaction started — a caveat that, despite billions of dollars of research, has eluded some of the world’s finest scientists for more than 60 years. Fusion is an ideal method of rocket propulsion, as fusion fuel has immense energy density — something on the scale of 7 million times more dense than conventional rocket fuel. The weight (and expense) of fuel is one of the biggest barriers to space travel.

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