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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