Lifeboat Foundation

Viasat shares plunged sharply Thursday in the wake of the announcement.

The first ViaSat-3, launched last April, was expected to provide space-based internet access to customers in the western hemisphere starting this summer. Two more satellites covering Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific are expected to launch over the next two years.

Capable of handling up to 1 terabyte of data per second, the satellites are equipped with the largest dish antennas ever launched on a commercial spacecraft. Each satellite’s reflector is designed to deploy atop a long boom.

The machines are coming much sooner than we thought.

Ah, Doom. Who knows where we’d be today if it weren’t for the innovation that made you the granddaddy of first-person shooters? Probably one of the things that’s helping to keep id Software’s iconic game alive after all these years is the fact that it can be ported to just about anything. It’s even possible to play Doom inside Doom itself.

As you can imagine, many people have attempted to see what crazy methods they can to play this legendary FPS. Now, some scientists are doing something a little different. Namely, they want to see if it’s possible to grow their own neurons that can be taught to play games. And yes, they want to see if they will be able to control Doom.

A video from the YouTube channel The Thought Emporium goes into detail about the hypothesis. The basic idea is to be able to hook up some lab-grown rat neurons to a computer that will be able to play Doom, at least in a rudimentary fashion.

The minuscule fluctuations of seemingly empty space can be controlled just enough to make the building blocks of a new type of computer.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

The future of electronics will be based on novel kinds of materials. Sometimes, however, the naturally occurring topology of atoms makes it difficult for new physical effects to be created. To tackle this problem, researchers at the University of Zurich have now successfully designed superconductors one atom at a time, creating new states of matter.

What will the computer of the future look like? How will it work? The search for answers to these questions is a major driver of basic physical research. There are several possible scenarios, ranging from the further development of classical electronics to neuromorphic computing and quantum computers.

The common element in all these approaches is that they are based on novel physical effects, some of which have so far only been predicted in theory. Researchers go to great lengths and use state-of-the-art equipment in their quest for new quantum materials that will enable them to create such effects. But what if there are no suitable materials that occur naturally?

An unusual superconducting state observed in the material uranium ditelluride (UTe2) could help overcome well-known challenges in the advancement of quantum computing.

Researchers from the Macroscopic Quantum Matter Group laboratory at University College Cork (UCC) discovered the unique properties, which allow electrons to flow freely without resistance along a kind of quantum waterslide.

What good is a powerful computer if you can’t read its output? Or readily reprogram it to do different jobs? People who design quantum computers face these challenges, and a new device may make them easier to solve.

The device, introduced by a team of scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), includes two superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, which are a quantum computer’s analog to the logic bits in a classical computer’s processing chip. The heart of this new strategy relies on a “toggle switch” device that connects the qubits to a circuit called a “readout resonator” that can read the output of the qubits’ calculations.

This toggle switch can be flipped into different states to adjust the strength of the connections between the qubits and the readout resonator. When toggled off, all three elements are isolated from each other. When the switch is toggled on to connect the two qubits, they can interact and perform calculations. Once the calculations are complete, the toggle switch can connect either of the qubits and the readout resonator to retrieve the results.

Organic electronic devices enhance biocompatibility, but have to rely on silicon-based technologies to improve limited speed and integration. This problem is overcome by creating a stand-alone, wireless, conformable, fully organic bioelectronic device with high electronic performance, scalability, stability and conformability in physiologic media.

The images shed light on how electrons form superconducting pairs that glide through materials without friction.

When your laptop or smartphone heats up, it’s due to energy that’s lost in translation. The same goes for power lines that transmit electricity between cities. In fact, around 10 percent of the generated energy is lost in the transmission of electricity. That’s because the electrons that carry electric charge do so as free agents, bumping and grazing against other electrons as they move collectively through power cords and transmission lines. All this jostling generates friction, and, ultimately, heat.

But when electrons pair up, they can rise above the fray and glide through a material without friction. This “superconducting” behavior occurs in a range of materials, though at ultracold temperatures. If these materials can be made to superconduct closer to room temperature, they could pave the way for zero-loss devices, such as heat-free laptops and phones, and ultra-efficient power lines. But first, scientists will have to understand how electrons pair up in the first place.