NextBigFuture.com

Secretary of Defense James Mattis last week directed his deputy to conduct a review of the F-35 fighter program with an eye to reducing the cost of the Pentagon’s biggest weapon program.

Three massive battery storage plants—built by Tesla, AES Corp., and Altagas Ltd.—are all officially going live in southern California at about the same time. Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built. Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.

China's One Belt One Road has proved to be a boon for trans-Eurasian rail transport, as these new rail lines would become its vanguard, establishing physical links between many of the key countries and a platform of cooperation from which to drive closer diplomatic and economic ties. What started out as two regular routes emerging from booming high-tech zones in Chongqing and Chengdu rapidly grew into a 39 route network linking together dozens of cities in China and Europe.

1. Universe Today - Here’s the Highest Resolution Map of Pluto We’ll Get from New Horizons

Here is a 50 page 2017 terahertz science and technology roadmap from the Journal of Physics D- Applied Physics

An international consortium is working to implement a new approach to increase the accuracy of optical radar's function.

Thomas D. Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Isaac Silvera and postdoctoral fellow Ranga Dias have long sought the material, called atomic metallic hydrogen. In addition to helping scientists answer some fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the material is theorized to have a wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature superconductor.

Experimental and theoretical research has shown 'spherical' tokamaks to be a "fast route to fusion" compared with more "conventional" tokamak devices such as Joint European Torus (JET), according to David Kingham, chief executive of Tokamak Energy.

BP says that while the world economy will almost double between 2015 and 2035, energy demand will increase by only around 30%. Energy consumption, it says, is expected to grow less quickly than in the past: 1.3% per year in the 2015-2035 period, compared with annual growth of 2.2% in 1995-2015.

A research team led by Professor YongKeun Park of the Physics Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has come up with a solution and developed a 3D holographic display that performs more than 2,600 times better than existing 3D holographic displays. This study is expected to improve the limited size and viewing angle of 3D images, which were a major problem of the current holographic displays

Homes with solar panels do not require on-site storage to reap the biggest economic and environmental benefits of solar energy, according to research from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. In fact, storing solar energy for nighttime use actually increases both energy consumption and emissions compared with sending excess solar energy directly to the utility grid.

A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram.

The fourth Yasen-class submarine, the Krasnoyarsk, has passed critical tests of its structures and pressure hull, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. It’s supposed to be the most quiet nuclear-powered attack sub ever to enter the Russian fleet.

Defense Secretary James Mattis is ordering a Pentagon review to compare the capabilities and cost between the emerging carrier-based Lockheed Martin F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter and an upgraded version of the Boeing F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, according to a memo obtained by USNI News.

Five finalist teams in the Google Lunar XPRIZE have been set, and they all have rocket launch contracts to go to the Moon in 2017.

John Hurt, who died on Friday, was a brilliant and versatile actor who made memorable film appearances over five decades.

Organovo designs and create functional human tissues using our proprietary three-dimensional bioprinting technology. Their goal is to build living human tissues that are proven to function like native tissues. With reproducible 3D tissues that accurately represent human biology, they are enabling ground-breaking therapies by:

Every year about 120,000 organs, mostly kidneys, are transplanted from one human being to another. Sometimes the donor is a living volunteer. Usually, though, he or she is the victim of an accident, stroke, heart attack or similar sudden event that has terminated the life of an otherwise healthy individual. But a lack of suitable donors, particularly as cars get safer and first-aid becomes more effective, means the supply of such organs is limited. Many people therefore die waiting for a transplant. That has led researchers to study the question of how to build organs from scratch.

Devastating tsunamis could be halted before hitting the Earth’s shoreline by firing deep-ocean sound waves at the oncoming mass of water, new research has proposed.

Doctors in London say they have cured two babies of leukemia in the world’s first attempt to treat cancer with genetically engineered immune cells from a donor.

A simple chemistry method could vastly enhance how scientists search for signs of life on other planets.

An initiative launched two years ago by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco to use CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to develop new disease therapies is expanding into research on the planet’s major crops and poorly understood microbiomes, with plans to invest $125 million in these areas over the next five years.

most people, crystals mean diamond bling, semiprecious gems or perhaps the jagged amethyst or quartz crystals beloved by collectors.

The future development of Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, the northeast Alabama facility sold at auction in November, will generate an economic impact of $1 billion and provide more than 12,000 jobs.

Astronauts heading into orbit aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will wear lighter and more comfortable spacesuits than earlier versions. The suit capitalizes on historical designs, meets NASA requirements for safety and functionality, while introducing cutting-edge innovations. Boeing unveiled its spacesuit design Wednesday as the company continues to move toward flight tests of its Starliner spacecraft and launch systems that will fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

The U.S. Navy is moving at warp speed to develop lasers with more lethality, precision and power sources as a way to destroy attacking missiles, drones aircraft and other threats.

D-Wave is also working on a fifth model, which will provide even greater capacity and connectivity and a closer fit to scientists’ needs. It will likely to launch within two years, the machine will again double the number of qubits, to around 4,000. Crucially, it will also provide more-complex connections between qubits, allowing it to tackle more-complicated problems.

Ukraine has test fired for the first time newly designed engine AI-136T. It is intended for China's super heavy helicopter program. The helicopter itself is planned to be based on Soviet MI-26 airframe design, although scaled down somewhat to a smaller size. In combination with more powerful engine than previously used, new helicopter is expected to be a much more energetic machine, with higher combat ceiling, higher speed and better maneuverability. Expected payload capacity is 30 tons.

A construction robot has to be powerful enough to handle heavy material, small enough to enter standard buildings, and flexible enough to navigate the terrain.

Computer scientists at Stanford set out to create an artificially intelligent diagnosis algorithm for skin cancer. They made a database of nearly 130,000 skin disease images and trained their algorithm to visually diagnose potential cancer. From the very first test, it performed with inspiring accuracy.

The Navy is electing to use the controversial Advanced Arresting Gear on its next Gerald R. Ford-class carrier, John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), USNI News has learned.

Elon Musk thinks being stuck in traffic is “soul-destroying” — but, he has a solution: tunnels. Musk has been tweeting about tunnels for a month now, and even said he’s going to build a tunnel boring machine and start digging. In developed cities, we can’t widen roadways, and elevated highways are ugly. So, we dig.

The Tesla Gigafactory will significantly add to the world supple of lithium batteries.

A Kansas State University team of physicists has discovered a way to mass-produce graphene with three ingredients: hydrocarbon gas, oxygen and a spark plug.

There are adiabatic factoring algorithms and methods.

Terrestrial Energy USA announced today it had informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its plans to license a small modular reactor (SMR) in the USA. Terrestrial said it intends to start "pre-application interactions" with the regulator this year and to make its licensing application in late 2019.

In high frequency trading, the latency gold standard is 200 nanoseconds. If you’re an equity trader using a Bloomberg Terminal or Thomson Reuters Eikon, latency of more than 200 nanoseconds is considered to be shockingly pedestrian, putting you at risk of buying or selling a stock at a higher or lower price than the one you saw quoted. Now, with its announcement of TCPDirect, Solarflare said it has cut latency by 10X, to 20-30 nanoseconds.

The Carnival of Space 492 is up at Urban Astronomer

Survivalism, the practice of preparing for the collapse of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.

The robot on an oil drillship in the Gulf of Mexico made it easier for Mark Rodgers to do his job stringing together heavy, dirty pipes. It could also be a reason he’s not working there today.

D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems and software, today announced general commercial availability of the D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer. D-Wave also announced the first customer for the new system, Temporal Defense Systems Inc. (TDS), a cutting-edge cyber security firm. With 2000 qubits and new control features, the D-Wave 2000Q system can solve larger problems than was previously possible, with faster performance, providing a big step toward production applications in optimization, cybersecurity, machine learning, and sampling.

Solar energy prices have been dropping for decades. There is a lag in the price per watt of off grid solar for solar home systems behind the cost for solar per watt for the most efficient utility solar projects.

Achieving the transformation to sustainable agriculture is a major challenge. Changes will need to be made in a way that does not jeopardize the capacity of the agriculture sectors crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry – to meet the world’s food needs. Global food demand in 2050 is projected to increase by at least 60 percent above 2006 levels, driven by population and income growth, as well as rapid urbanization. In the coming decades, population increases will be concentrated in regions with the highest prevalence of undernourishment and high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

Eradicating world hunger sustainably by 2030 will require an estimated additional $267 billion per year on average for investments in rural and urban areas and in social protection, so poor people have access to food and can improve their livelihoods, a new UN report says. This would average $160 annually for each person living in extreme poverty over the 15 year period.

Roam Robotics wants to create light and affordable exoskeletons that will be usable by a lot of people for everyday use.

Researchers have demonstrated the high-performance potential of an experimental transistor made of a semiconductor called beta gallium oxide, which could bring new ultra-efficient switches for applications such as the power grid, military ships and aircraft.

SF State astronomer Stephen Kane is searching for signs of life in one of the extrasolar systems closest to Earth.