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Archive for the ‘military’ category: Page 28

Aug 21, 2023

Space Development Agency awards contracts to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman for 72 satellites

Posted by in categories: military, satellites

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency announced Aug. 21 it awarded contracts worth $1.5 billion to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to build and operate 72 satellites.

The Space Development Agency (SDA), an organization under the U.S. Space Force, is building a mesh network of military satellites in low Earth orbit.

The 72 satellites will make up a portion of SDA’s network known as Tranche 2 Transport Layer. SDA is building a large constellation called the proliferated warfighter space architecture that includes a Transport Layer of interconnected communications satellites and a Tracking Layer of missile-detection and warning sensor satellites.

Aug 20, 2023

How Jetoptera’s Bladeless Propulsion System Works

Posted by in categories: drones, military, space travel

A great video if you have 8 min to spare.

Continue reading “How Jetoptera’s Bladeless Propulsion System Works” »

Aug 20, 2023

Atomic rockets are back

Posted by in categories: chemistry, Elon Musk, military, nuclear energy, space travel

While the current Oppenheimer blockbuster film focused on the destructive power of nuclear weapons, more peaceful uses of atomic propulsion for space exploration are now gaining once again momentum. ROB COPPINGER reports.

Nuclear fission and fusion power propulsion are under investigation in Europe and the US with an in-space engine demonstration planned by 2027 — with the news last month that Lockheed Martin had been selected to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for DARPA’s DRACO programme (see below).

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Aug 18, 2023

Researchers develop arrays of tiny crystals that deliver efficient wireless energy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, drones, military, robotics/AI

Imagine a person on the ground guiding an airborne drone that harnesses its energy from a laser beam, eliminating the need for carrying a bulky onboard battery.

That is the vision of a group of University of Colorado at Boulder scientists from the Hayward Research Group.

In a new study, the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering researchers have developed a novel and resilient photomechanical material that can transform into without heat or electricity, offering innovative possibilities for energy-efficient, wireless and remotely controlled systems. Its wide-ranging potential spans across diverse industries, including robotics, aerospace and biomedical devices.

Aug 18, 2023

A new ‘spin’ on ergodicity breaking

Posted by in categories: military, particle physics

In a recent Science paper, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, along with collaborators JILA and NIST Fellow David Nesbitt, scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Harvard University, observed novel ergodicity-breaking in C60, a highly symmetric molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged on the vertices of a “soccer ball” pattern (with 20 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces).

Their results revealed ergodicity breaking in the rotations of C60. Remarkably, they found that this ergodicity breaking occurs without symmetry breaking and can even turn on and off as the molecule spins faster and faster. Understanding ergodicity breaking can help scientists design better-optimized materials for energy and heat transfer.

Many everyday systems exhibit “ergodicity” such as heat spreading across a frying pan and smoke filling a room. In other words, matter or energy spreads evenly over time to all system parts as energy conservation allows. On the other hand, understanding how systems can violate (or “break”) ergodicity, such as magnets or superconductors, helps scientists understand and engineer other exotic states of matter.

Aug 17, 2023

IonQ Says Reaching #AQ 64 will be a ChatGPT Moment for Quantum Computing

Posted by in categories: computing, finance, military, particle physics, quantum physics

Not many pure-play quantum computing start-ups have dared to go public. So far, the financial markets have tended to treat the newcomers unsparingly. One exception is IonQ, who along with D-Wave and Rigetti, reported quarterly earnings last week. Buoyed by hitting key technical and financial goals, IonQ’s stock is up ~400% (year-to-date) and CEO Peter Chapman is taking an aggressive stance in the frothy quantum computing landscape where error correction – not qubit count – has increasingly taken center stage as the key challenge.

This is all occurring at a time when a wide variety of different qubit types are vying for dominance. IBM, Google, and Rigetti are betting on superconducting-based qubits. IonQ and Quantinuuum use trapped ions. Atom Computing and QuEra use neutral atoms. PsiQuantum and Xanadu rely on photonics-based qubits. Microsoft is exploring topological qubits based on the rare Marjorana particle. And more are in the works.

It’s not that the race to scale up qubit-count has ended. IBM has a 433-plus qubit device (Osprey) now and is scheduled to introduce 1100-qubit device (Condor) late this year. Several other quantum computer companies have devices in the 50–100 qubit range. IonQ’s latest QPU, Forte, has 32 qubits. The challenge they all face is that current error rates remain so high that it’s impractical to reliably run most applications on the current crop of QPUs.

Aug 15, 2023

The Space Force Is Launching Its Own Swarm of Tiny Satellites

Posted by in categories: military, satellites

Defense satellites used to be big, costly, and “juicy” targets for attack. Now the Pentagon is aiming for a more resilient network of nearly 1,000 mini orbiters.

Aug 15, 2023

DART asteroid-smashing spacecraft broke off 37 boulders that now have atomic bomb energy

Posted by in categories: energy, military, space

Last year, NASA undertook its first planetary defense mission with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The goal was to divert the moonlet Dimorphos from its orbit, demonstrating that an asteroid could be redirected in the case of a catastrophic course toward Earth.

The spacecraft’s impact, while altering the moonlet’s orbit, also resulted in the dispersal of 37 boulders from its surface. Some of these space rocks are as wide as 22 feet off its surface.

The DART mission was watched intently across the globe on September 26, 2022. The spacecraft successfully shifted Dimorphos’s orbit from an original 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes post-impact.

Aug 14, 2023

How to Survive a Nuclear War: Study Reveals the Safest Places to Wait Out the Conflict

Posted by in categories: existential risks, food, military

New research indicates that Australia and New Zealand are the two best places on Earth to survive a nuclear war. The recently published set of calculations don’t focus on blast-related deaths or even deaths caused by radiation fall-out, which most estimates say would number in the hundreds of millions, but instead look at how a nuclear winter caused by nuclear bomb explosions would affect food supplies, potentially leading to the starvation of billions.

Nuclear War Simulations Performed For Decades

Since the first atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, effectively spelling the end of World War II, war game theorists have looked at a myriad of simulations to determine the potential effects of a full-blown nuclear battle. Many simulations look at the potentially hundreds of millions that would likely die in the initial blasts, while others have tried to model the slower but equally as deadly body count from radiation sickness.

Aug 12, 2023

China’s Military Laser Weapon Could Outperform US Technology

Posted by in category: military

According to Chinese military experts, they have created a novel cooling mechanism that enables high-energy lasers to run “infinitely” without producing any waste heat. South China Morning Post claims that researchers at the National University of Defence Technology in Changsha, Hunan province, claim that the novel cooling system fully avoids the dangerous heat produced by high-energy laser operation.

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