NextBigFuture.com

Russia’s Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA fifth-generation stealth fighter may enter service in 2018, but the Kremlin is not in a particular hurry to buy the expensive new jet in large numbers. Meanwhile, Russia is continuing to develop new engines for the T-50, which is currently powered by interim Saturn AL-41F1 afterburning turbofans.

A U of T Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. Dr. Hairen Tan and his team have cleared a critical manufacturing hurdle in the development of a relatively new class of solar devices called perovskite solar cells. This alternative solar technology could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.

China Daily describes the case for how high speed rail is boosting economic growth in China.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has warned a deadly pathogen could easily wipe out 30 million people in a year, and that the example of Ebola was one to heed.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell confirmed today that SpaceX is now targeting the year 2020 for the Mars trip, a move that will allow the company to better focus on its other ambitious projects. Spacex will focus more heavily on their crew program and their Falcon Heavy program.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) present a new method that should enable controlled drug delivery into the bloodstream using DNA computers. In the journal Nature Communications the team, led by biomedical engineer Maarten Merkx, describes how it has developed the first DNA computer capable of detecting several antibodies in the blood and performing subsequent calculations based on this input. This is an important step towards the development of smart, ‘intelligent’ drugs that may allow better control of the medication for rheumatism and Crohn’s disease, for example, with fewer side-effects and at lower cost.

President Donald Trump suggested that a larger purchase of Boeing Co.’s F/A-18 Super Hornet may be in the offing. “We are looking seriously at a big order,” Trump said Friday of the fighter jet, with another Boeing plane, the newest 787 Dreamliner, looming in the background. “I think we may get there.”

Elon Musk indicated at a recent conference that to some degree, we are already cyborgs. You think of the digital tools that you have, the applications that you have. You can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google. You already have a digital tertiary layer. I say ‘tertiary’ because you think of the animal brain or the primal brain, and then the cortex, the thinking brain, and then your digital self as the third layer.

While discussing creating a hybrid elephant - wooly mammoth using CRISPR genome editing, Harvard's George Church predicted that reversal of aging will be a reality within ten years.

There is a 261 page report that reviews the ethics of genome editing

A new design reduces converter’s resting power consumption by 50 percent.

When people suffer spinal cord injuries and lose mobility in their limbs, it's a neural signal processing problem. The brain can still send clear electrical impulses and the limbs can still receive them, but the signal gets lost in the damaged spinal cord.

Tunnel technology is older than rockets, and boring speeds are pretty much what they were 50 years ago. As with space launches, tunnels are often funded through cost-plus government contracts, in which the contractor assumes no risk for cost overruns, which tend to be enormous as a result. Famously, Boston’s Big Dig, which moved a section of Interstate 93 underground, was delayed by roughly eight years and cost $12 billion more than originally planned, but all tunnels tend to be wildly expensive. In L.A., plans to extend the subway’s Purple Line by 2.6 miles will cost more than $2.4 billion and take almost 10 years. “It’s basically a billion dollars a mile,” Musk says. “That’s crazy.”

Scientist leading ‘de-extinction’ effort says Harvard team could create hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo in two years

Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google from Aug 2001 to April 2011. Eric has recently admitted that he underestimated machine learning and artificial intelligence

Wireless power delivery has the potential to seamlessly power our electrical devices as easily as data is transmitted through the air. However, existing solutions are limited to near contact distances and do not provide the geometric freedom to enable automatic and un-aided charging. We introduce quasistatic cavity resonance (QSCR), which can enable purpose-built structures, such as cabinets, rooms, and warehouses, to generate quasistatic magnetic fields that safely deliver kilowatts of power to mobile receivers contained nearly anywhere within. A theoretical model of a quasistatic cavity resonator is derived, and field distributions along with power transfer efficiency are validated against measured results. An experimental demonstration shows that a 54 m3 QSCR room can deliver power to small coil receivers in nearly any position with 40% to 95% efficiency. Finally, a detailed safety analysis shows that up to 1900 watts can be transmitted to a coil receiver enabling safe and ubiquitous wireless power.

Presenting the results from the first phase of the collaboration between Transatomic Power Corporation (TAP) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to provide neutronic and fuel cycle analysis of the TAP core design through the Department of Energy Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear, Nuclear Energy Voucher program. The TAP design is a molten salt reactor using movable moderator rods to shift the neutron spectrum in the core from mostly epithermal at beginning of life to thermal at end of life. Additional developments in the ChemTriton modeling and simulation tool provide the critical moderator-to-fuel ratio searches and time-dependent parameters necessary to simulate the continuously changing physics in this complex system. Results from simulations with these tools show agreement with TAP-calculated performance metrics for core lifetime, discharge burnup, and salt volume fraction, verifying the viability of reducing actinide waste production with this design. Additional analyses of time step sizes, mass feed rates and enrichments, and isotopic removals provide additional information to make informed design decisions. This work further demonstrates capabilities of ORNL modeling and simulation tools for analysis of molten salt reactor designs and strongly positions this effort for the upcoming three-dimensional core analysis

India has reiterated its goal of scaling up its solar power capacity to 100 GW by 2022. It is targeting 60 GW from wind energy and plans to bring in hydro power, from which it generates 40 GW, into the category of renewable energy. By 2022, the country plans to generate around 175 GW from clean and renewable sources.

Today, Planet will launch the largest sat fleet ever, on a rocket carrying the most satellites in history, when it sends 88 new craft from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.

There are a few competing studies with recommendations for a larger US Navy. There is one from MITRE and another by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).

China plans to launch its first cargo spacecraft in April, state media reported on Tuesday, taking a step toward its goal of establishing a permanently manned space station by 2022.

The Trump administration is considering a bold and controversial vision for the U.S. space program that calls for a "rapid and affordable" return to the moon by 2020, the construction of privately operated space stations and the redirection of NASA's mission to "the large-scale economic development of space," according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO.

For the past year, Google's car project has been a talent sieve, thanks to leadership changes, strategy doubts, new startup dreams and rivals luring self-driving technology experts. Also, key talent had enough accumulated compensation so that they were no longer dependent on continuing salaries.

Dubai has tested a Chinese prototype of a self-driving hover-taxi, its transport authority said on Monday, with the aim of introducing the aerial vehicle in the emirate by July.

Elon Musk says humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg. "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Apple is nearing a $700 billion valuation.

About 188,000 residents near Oroville, Calif., were ordered to evacuate Sunday after a hole in an emergency spillway in the Oroville Dam threatened to flood the surrounding area. Thousands clogged highways leading out of the area headed south, north and west, and arteries major and minor remained jammed as midnight approached on the West Coast — though by early Monday, Lake Oroville’s water level had dropped to a point at which water was no longer spilling over, and the crisis appeared to be stabilizing.

While a new naval future fleet architecture study from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) suggests that the U.S. Navy should maintain a fleet of 12 full-sized supercarriers, the paper also suggests that the service should develop a new class of light carriers. In the interim, while the new aircraft carriers are being developed, large deck amphibious assault ships could fill the role of the smaller flattops.

The Philippine defense secretary predicted China would start building an artificial island on the bones of Scarborough Shoal. Scarborough Shoal is less than 200 miles from Manila while the current islands that China built are 500 miles away.

In 2017, a michigen Micromote computers is one cubic millimeter which is about the size of a large grain of sand. There are several types and are a line of the world’s smallest computers. They have one megabyte of flash memory. Their broader goal is to make smarter, smaller sensors for medical devices and the internet of things—sensors that can do more with less energy

In 2015, the Michigan Micro Mote constituted the first complete, operational computer system measuring as small as two millimeters across. “To be "complete," a computer system must have an input of data, the ability to process that data - meaning process and store it, make decisions about what to do next – and ultimately, the ability to output the data.” Prof. Blaauw explained. “The sensors are the input and the radios are the output. The other key to being a complete computer is the ability to supply its own power.”

Avengers: Infinity War is scheduled to be released on May 4, 2018. An untitled sequel is scheduled to be released on May 3, 2019. Filming has started on Avengers infinity war.

According to the US Navy, 53 percent of all Navy aircraft can’t fly — about 1,700 combat aircraft, patrol, and transport planes and helicopters. Not all are due to budget problems — at any given time, about one-fourth to one-third of aircraft are out of service for regular maintenance. But the 53 percent figure represents about twice the historic norm.

Young Bae of Advanced Space and Energy Technologies in Tustin, California, has improved his photonic laser thruster. was developed with NASA funding. His thruster works because light exerts pressure when it hits something. In theory, it is possible to move an object like a CubeSat by nudging it with a laser beam. In practice, however, the pressure which light exerts is so small that a device able to do a useful amount of nudging would require a laser of unfeasibly large power.

Lady Gaga opened the halftime show at Super Bowl LI in front of Intel’s drone swarm. Lady Gaga Halftime Drone Swarm show was pretaped to shield the crowd (no drones or planes were allowed near the stadium on the day of the game)

In 2000, the U.S. cash equities trading desk at Goldman Sachs’s New York headquarters employed 600 traders, but today there are only two equity traders left. Automated trading programs have taken over the rest of the work, supported by 200 computer engineers.

Experiments that let a paralyzed person swig coffee using a robotic arm, or that let blind people “see” spots of light, have proven the huge potential of computers that interface with the brain. But the implanted electrodes used in such trials eventually become useless, as scar tissue forms that degrades their electrical connection to brain cells

The People's Liberation Army's Navy is growing fast but we should expect it to grow even faster. The UK Royal United Services Institute expects China to reach a 500 ship navy.

When costs are levelized across the lifecycle, nuclear is one of the most cost-effective methods of power generation. Indeed, OECD research shows that nuclear is the lowest levelized cost option for power generation for all OECD countries under certain capital cost projections. Regional differences in the cost of capital for nuclear projects mean that while cost can be a challenge for greenfield nuclear projects in Europe and North America, it is seen as less of an issue in Asia, where economies of scale, lower labour costs and more recent experience in building reactors all have an impact. In economies where financing traditional greenfield projects is seen as challenging, SMRs are often cited as the future because their size and the fact that they are ready to install keep investment costs low.

Early indicators suggest that a post-ISIS Sunni insurgency may be forming in Iraq and al Qaeda (AQ) is trying to gain traction within it.

In the spring of 2017, Russia may test a rocket mounted Zircon Hypersonic missile for the first time. The launch is said to be conducted within the scope of the global non-nuclear deterrence strategy.

George Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm and author of two books about the global future: "The Next Decade" and "The Next 100 Years," New York Times bestsellers. Prior to joining the private sector, Friedman regularly briefed senior commanders in the armed services as well as the Office of Net Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University and the RAND Corporation, on security and national defense matters.

Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), however, were inspired by medieval mail armor when producing a new metamaterial with novel properties. They succeeded in reversing the Hall coefficient of a material.

Princeton engineering researchers have illuminated another path forward for LED technologies by refining the manufacturing of light sources made with crystalline substances known as perovskites, a more efficient and potentially lower-cost alternative to materials used in LEDs found on store shelves.

Researchers at Princeton University have drastically shrunk much of the equipment for terahertz wave generation: moving from a tabletop setup with lasers and mirrors to a pair of microchips small enough to fit on a fingertip.

The leading projects for developing a hypersonic spaceplane are Reaction Engines of the UK and Hypermach.

Facebook is closing around 200 of 500 demo stations for its virtual reality headset Oculus at Best Buy stores across the country Workers from multiple Best Buy pop-ups said that it was common for them to go days without giving a single demonstration. A Best Buy worker in California reportedly said that frequent software issues with the Oculus often made the headset unusable.

Can helium bond with other elements to form a stable compound? Students attentive to Utah State University professor Alex Boldyrev’s introductory chemistry lectures would immediately respond “no.” And they’d be correct – if the scholars are standing on the Earth’s surface.