Lifeboat Foundation

Closing the infrastructure gap before the year 2050 by strengthening existing infrastructure with ET3 is entirely feasible and it can be achieved in three coordinated phases:

1) bringing ET3 to maturity, including full-scale commercial deployment (2−5 years); 2) expanding ET3 networks around the globe at national levels (30 years); 3) connecting national ET3 networks into the international network (15 years) and creating one city called Earth.

MIT spin off company Ayar Labs is combining light and electronics to create faster, more efficient computers. The new optoelectronic chips are designed to speed up data transmission to and from conventional processor chips in a way that will also reduce energy consumption in chip-to-chip communications by 95 percent and could cut overall energy usages by large data firms by up to 50 percent.

Since the invention of the silicon chip 60 years ago, the power of computers has doubled every two years, but the speed at which computer systems work hasn’t shown quite such dramatic progress. The problem is one of data transmission and the bottlenecks that any technology runs into, slowing down the whole to the speed of its most sluggish part.

Think of a computer as like an air passenger system. If you concentrate on the aircraft, airport runway architecture, supply logistics, and air traffic control, it’s easy to speed up travel between, for example, New York and Washington DC to under one hour. That sounds fantastic, but if it takes you two hours to get through security at one hand and another two hours to collect your baggage at the other, then it’s faster to drive.

Imagine driving and being warned when you’re too close to the edge of the road.

That’s exactly what space technology developed by German researchers can do, and it could be in Northland trucks in the next year.

Researchers from the German Aerospace Agency have been in Whangarei with the Intelligent Positioning System, which has been designed to navigate the rover on Mars.

A passenger pod would try to reach half the speed of sound, roughly 381 miles an hour, and then brake in less than a mile, Musk tweeted in the tech billionaire’s latest update. The announcement came as competitors, including British tycoon Richard Branson, pursue rival hyperloop plans.

Many great ideas in this article!

For the last few years, Goodyear has rolled into the Geneva Motor Show with new tire designs that could be described as intriguing concepts at best and crazy, outlandish ideas at worst. Either way, they do provoke thought around the future of transport and this year’s rendition is no different, hiding living moss inside the sidewall to cleanse the surrounding air as the car rolls down the road.

Continue reading “Goodyear goes green in Geneva with photosynthesizing concept tire” »

We are now a connected global community where many digital natives cannot remember a time before the iPhone. The rise of smart homes means that we are increasingly attaching our lighting, door locks, cameras, thermostats, and even toasters to our home networks. Managing our home automation through mobile apps or our voice illustrates how far we have evolved over the last few years.

However, in our quest for the cool and convenient, many have not stopped to consider their cybersecurity responsibilities. The device with the weakest security could allow hackers to exploit vulnerabilities on our network and access our home. But this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Businesses and even governments are starting to face up to the vulnerabilities of everything being online. Sophisticated and disruptive cyberattacks are continuing to increase in complexity and scale across multiple industries. Areas of our critical infrastructure such as energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing have vulnerabilities that make them a target for cybercriminals and even a state-sponsored attack.

Your car can’t transport you to other worlds, but it could help us understand them.

French researchers have discovered that the models used to simulate how car engines produce pollutants can also model the atmospheres of hot exoplanets.

Silence is Golden.

Lockheed Martin has won a nearly quarter-billion dollar NASA contract to develop a plane capable of supersonic speed without creating the deafening sonic boom that comes with breaking the sound barrier.

The cost-plus NASA contract, valued at $247.5 million, will allow the defense contractor’s secretive Skunk Works division to continue development of Lockheed Martin’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (or QueSST) aircraft.

Continue reading “Lockheed wins nearly $250 million NASA contract to build supersonic plane” »

NASA is making a plane that will go from NYC to LA in 2 hours.