NextBigFuture.com

Jeddah Tower (previously known as Kingdom Tower, is being built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at a cost of SR4.6 billion (US$1.23 billion). It is on track for completion in 2020 as planned and will be...

In 1961, radio astronomer Frank Drake developed a pedagogy for analyzing the question of the frequency of extraterrestrial civilizations. Robert Zubrin shows a couple of significant mistaken...

Black Panther had North American box office of $202 million over the three-day and $242 million for the four-day weekend. Black Panther is the fifth movie to debut with over $200 million over its...

Russia has development of 100 megaton and megaton class tsunami generating nuclear drone weapons. The weapon could explode in shallow waters off of a coastline and generate a tsunami hundreds of feet...

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will have pre-licensing vendor design reviews (VDRs) the NuScale 50 MWe SMR and Westinghouse’s eVinci microreactor. The CNSC is now involved with...

Toyota has developed the world’s first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet. Neodymium magnets are used in various types of motors such as the high-output motors found in electrified...

China has shown a flying wing stealth drone called the Star Shadow which appears to copy the Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator. The Star Shadow UAV will a radar...

China has a new lighter and stronger military exoskeleton. Refinements in weight, ergonomics, and power supply could boost the second-generation exoskeleton’s coefficiency ratio. Norinco claims...

One-third of the US Navy’s destroyers, cruisers, and amphibious ships are under significant repair. Maintenance issues have grounded two-thirds of the US Navy’s strike fighters. The military...

The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has a request for $9.9 billion in 2019. Part of the request is $120 million to develop hypersonic missile defenses, a big increase from the $75 million in fiscal...

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has been given an early, and vague, building permit to begin some extremely preliminary work on a section of an underground Hyperloop tunnel in DC. DC officials have...

Intraspexion uses deep learning and predictive analytics to predict and prevent potential litigation. Intraspexion has several patents. Intraspexion is as an early warning system that operates...

Martin Elvis at Harvard University describes how the SpaceX Heavy allows us to reach over 40% of the asteroids where before we could reach 3%. This is because the SpaceX Heavy allows higher speeds...

Popular Mechanics has discussed how humanity can make large objects in the low gravity of space. Nextbigfuture has tracked the near term technology that would let us build Death Star size objects....

Bitcoin was Blockchain 1.0 and the decentralized Ethereum is Blockchain 2.0 and Blockchain 3.0 could be Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG). In mathematics and computer science, a directed acyclic graph, is a...

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc says it will take 12 years to build its prototype small nuclear reactor in the U.K. Rolls-Royce needs as many as five years for the licensing and design assessment process,...

China has a war against its big air pollution problem. Air pollution in China causes about 1 million deaths each year. These are deaths and health impacts comparable to what China faced in WW2. China...

China is developing a lead with railgun technology and affordable electromagnetic launchers because it appears to be mastering medium voltage DC power for ships and land bases. By 2022, China should...

The US has enjoyed complete military dominance since about 1985. The Soviet Union and now Russia is competitive with the number of nuclear weapons. Th Soviet Union also had a total volume of tanks...

Black Panther brought in $25.2 million from Thursday night previews, just shy of doubling the $12.7 million brought in by Deadpool. Black Panther outperformed the $25 million brought in by Captain...

Waymo has a massive lead in terms of self-driving cars. Waymo has been operating cars for free rides without drivers since November, 2017 in Phoenix, AZ. Waymo has been given legal permission for a...

Waymo, the self-driving Google spinoff, has been given legal permission to operate as a Transportation Network Company in the state of Arizona. Waymo has been running a pilot program that lets people...

Alibaba has a deal worth tens of millions of dollar with pig farming corporation Dekon Group and pig feed manufacturer Tequ Group to develop and deploy AI-powered pig-tracking systems. They will use...

Last year, NASA partnered with BWXT Nuclear Energy Inc. for an $18.8 million contract to design a reactor and develop fuel for use in a nuclear-thermal propulsion engine for deep-space travel....

India has approved the construction of 12 new nuclear power reactors. 10 will be indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) with a capacity of 700 MW each and two will be Russian Light Water...

The first three ten minute episodes of Star Gate Origins are up at Stargate Command. The first three episodes are available for free. All Access costs $20.

North Korea is only months away from obtaining the capability to hit U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon and must be disarmed, a U.S. envoy said on Tuesday, dismissing Pyonyang’s diplomatic thaw...

China General Nuclear (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) are both looking to develop small nuclear reactors for district heating. They are China’s top two nuclear energy...

USA Today indicates that it is time for the USA to start hating Canada in the Winter Olympics. Canadian women’s hockey team that hasn’t lost an Olympic game since 1998, that has won the last four...

SpaceX is making a third drone-ship for rocket landings. This will help ensure a landing vessel is always available to SpaceX for Florida missions. It can take up to a week to deploy the drone-ship,...

The US is losing its naval military technology lead because of inadequate electrical engineering and problems with large project management and political and industrial corruption. The political and...

The US is moving ahead with deployment of combat lasers up to 300 kilowatts in power over the next 3-5 years versus 32 megajoule railguns. Only one megawatt of power is needed for combat lasers...

Like China, South Korea has used and plans to use high-speed rail for economic development. South Korea and China both have plans to create high-speed rail and cargo links to Europe. The South Korea...

The standard russian Su-35 jet is able to match performance characteristics of a fifth-generation fighter — with the sole exception of its lack of stealth capabilities. A fifth-generation variant of...

President Trump has delegated more authority to the US military. The US has pushed the Taliban back from several district centers and two provincial capitals. Col. Stephen “Joker” Jones is commander...

The US has funded several combat laser deployments over the next three years. Lockheed Martin is being awarded a $150 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for Surface Navy Laser Weapon System...

Singularity University (SU), a California Benefit Corporation that educates individuals and organizations on navigating accelerating technological change, today announced that it has closed $32...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX won an endorsement on Wednesday from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai to build a broadband network using satellites. SpaceX told the FCC in a Feb. 1 letter...

Aerial photographs obtained by Inquirer.net (Philippine Daily Inquirer) from a source (likely pictures from a military plane) show that China is almost finished transforming seven reefs claimed by...

A large number of US army recruits arrive and do not know how to throw. The US Army is removing the requirement that soldiers need to throw grenades 20 to 30 meters from the requirements. They will...

How Star Wars The Last Jedi Should Have Ended.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools will create “superhuman workers” who will be able to do more with new technology, Google X co-founder Sebastian Thrun said. Sebastian Thrun left the...

Engineers at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Oregon State University are developing a new method of processing nanomaterials that could lead to faster and cheaper manufacturing of flexible thin...

Nextbigfuture wrote about Nautilus Minerals several times since 2010. Nautilus Mineral is scaling up ocean floor mining. In January 2016, Nautilus Minerals took delivery of the three Seafloor...

Nextbigfuture described how 200 large space stations could be built by 2040 to hold 2 million people. There are videos that provide more details on the SpaceX BFR and the Kalpana space station. Below...

In the 1970s, Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill led two Stanford/NASA Ames Research Center summer studies that supported the feasibility of kilometer-scale orbital cities. These studies...

The National Space Society has a 33-page analysis of heat and energy transport and management for an outline but realistic habitat design. This allows a more detailed analysis than was possible in...

The US Army’s 2019 budget will upgrade 261 M1 tanks, enough for three brigades, to carry Israeli-made Trophy Active Protection Systems (APS) to counter anti-tank missiles. There is also an increase...

The Bitcoin bubble seems to be bursting. The bottom has fallen out, just as it did in the DotCom bubble in 2000. But investors shouldn’t give up on cryptocurrencies: this is just the beginning. Take...