Lifeboat Foundation

I told folks this; I see another one from Google has joined the QC less than 10 year club. My guess is more likely less than 7 years.

A seminal moment in the quantum technology field just happened: Google’s team of scientists have simulated a hydrogen molecule from its quantum computers, a breakthrough that suggests it could “simulate even larger chemical systems,” writes one of Google Quantum’s engineers, Ryan Rabbush. The search engine’s achievement underscores the technology’s potential as Rabbush posits it can “revolutionize the design of solar cells, industrial catalysts, batteries, flexible electronics, medicines, materials and more.”

As advances in such supercomputers continue, investment and research in this field gathers greater momentum as Google, Alibaba, Baidu, Amazon and other tech giants and governments too are racing to develop this technology. Recently, the European Commission allocated €1 billion to research, incubate and invest in quantum technologies. Meanwhile Google last month made headlines about testing its quantum security to shield its Chrome browser.

Continue reading “A Quantum Computing-Dominated World Is Coming In Less Than 10 Years, Says CEO Of Acronis” »

If you think the idea of powering the whole world with solar power is still many years away, prepare to be amazed. The inspired minds at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has succeeded in transmitting solar energy right through the air. Using wireless power transmission may be the best way to gather solar energy from space in order to use it here on Earth.

A major Japanese machinery company said Friday that it has succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, marking a step toward making solar power generation in space a reality.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said it used microwave technology to send 10 kilowatts of power—enough to run a set of conventional kitchen appliances—through the air to a receiver 500 metres (1,640 feet) away.

Wireless power transmission is currently under development as the core technology to tap the vast amount of solar energy available in space and use it on Earth.

Continue reading “Japan firm marks one small step for solar energy in space” »

Scientist looks to tap the sun to power adjustable contact lenses, other medical devices.

The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose — they turned green light blue. The result, which is now being published in Advanced Materials (“Photon Upconversion at Crystalline Organic–Organic Heterojunctions”), opens up new opportunities for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or LEDs.

Photon upconversion: energy transfer between the molecules is based on electron exchange (Dexter electron transfer). (Image: Michael Oldenburg)

Continue reading “How to turn green light blue” »

In the blackland prairie of Texas, an ocean is thousands of miles away. But Benjamin Blumenthal, co-founder and chief executive officer of SunToWater Technologies, says we’re all standing under the sixth ocean — the one that’s above our heads.

The Carrollton startup makes an appliance that unlocks that water supply. The company’s water generators — each about the size of a central air conditioning unit — use air, salt and solar power to produce gallons of drinkable water. They could bring water to rural communities without a municipal water supply, regions stricken by drought or developing countries with water contamination.

But the company will target a higher-end market first: Homeowners with large lawns to water and swimming pools to fill. Blumenthal said SunToWater is focusing on customers in California and Texas, two states that have coped with an unpredictable, and often limited, water supply and the water restrictions and high utility bills that come with it.

Continue reading “With new water generators, Carrollton startup can unlock the ocean above your head” »

“It’s not a thing on the roof, it’s the roof,” says Musk.

Magine a future in which hyper-efficient solar panels provide renewable sources of energy, improved water filters quickly remove toxins from drinking water, and the air is scrubbed clean of pollution and greenhouse gases. That could become a reality with the right molecules and materials.

Scientists from Harvard and Google have taken a major step toward making the search for those molecules easier, demonstrating for the first time that a quantum computer could be used to model the electron interactions in a complex molecule. The work is described in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review X by Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and several co-authors.

“There are a number of applications that a quantum computer would be useful for: cryptography, machine learning, and certain number-theory problems,” Aspuru-Guzik said. “But one that has always been mentioned, even from the first conceptions of a quantum computer, was to use it to simulate matter. In this case, we use it to simulate chemistry.”

Continue reading “New way to model molecules” »

Nice and Kudos to ORNL.

A team led by Jonathan Poplawsky of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences used advanced microscopy techniques to discover efficiency differences of crystalline structures of various mixtures of cadmium, tellurium and selenium. In fact, selenium is an integral part of the formulation that resulted in a world record for solar cell efficiency. The team’s paper is published in Nature Communications.

While some of today’s solar cells use a blend of cadmium and tellurium to convert light into electricity, adding the optimum amount of selenium in the right places could help increase efficiency from the current mark of about 22 percent to levels approaching the theoretical limit of 30–33 percent. The trick is to determine the best ratio of selenium.

Continue reading “ORNL optimizes formula for cadmium-tellurium solar cells” »