The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
06-03-2022
THIS “QUANTUM BATTERY” NEVER LOSES ITS CHARGE
THIS “QUANTUM BATTERY” NEVER LOSES ITS CHARGE
THE BATTERIES OF THE FUTURE COULD EXPLOIT QUANTUM PHYSICS.
BERNDTHALLER/VICTOR TANGERMANN
Quantum Battery
A team of scientists from the universities of Alberta and Toronto have laid out the blueprints for a “quantum battery” that never loses its charge.
To be clear, this battery doesn’t exist yet — but if they figure out how to build it, it could be a revolutionary breakthrough in energy storage.
“The batteries that we are more familiar with — like the lithium-ion battery that powers your smartphone — rely on classical electrochemical principles, whereas quantum batteries rely solely on quantum mechanics,” University of Alberta chemist Gabriel Hanna said in a statement.
Dark State
A paper describing the research was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. in July. The battery works by harnessing the power of “excitonic energy” — the state in which an electron absorbs sufficiently charged photons of light.
The researchers found that their resulting battery model should be “highly robust to energy losses,” thanks to the fact that their battery is prepared inside a “dark state” where it cannot exchange energy — by absorbing or releasing photons — with its surroundings.
Large Charge
By breaking down this “dark state” quantum network, the researchers claim the battery could be able to discharge and release energy in the process.
But the team has yet to come up with viable ways of doing so. They will also have to figure out a way to scale the technology for real-world applications as well.
Researchers and scientists spoke to The Daily Beast this week to express horror at Musk’s goal of connecting human brains to computers. Ultimately, at the heart of their trepidation is the infusion of Big Tech into the human mind.
“I don’t think there is sufficient public discourse on what the big picture implications of this kind of technology becoming available are,” Dr. Karola Kreitmair, assistant professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, told the website.
“I worry that there’s this uncomfortable marriage between a company that is for-profit,” she added.
Indeed, the ethics surrounding technology such as the Neuralink is uncharted territory. As such, many are concerned about how these products — ostensibly meant to help those with disabilities — can ultimately be exploited for profit.
“If the ultimate goal is to use the acquired brain data for other devices, or use these devices for other things — say, to drive cars, to drive Teslas — then there might be a much, much bigger market,” Dr. L. Syd Johnson, associate professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, told the Daily Beast.
“But then all those human research subjects — people with genuine needs — are being exploited and used in risky research for someone else’s commercial gain,” she continued.
Kreitmair echoed the sentiment. While she believes that the technology could be “life-changing” for paralyzed people, she told the Daily Beast that its potential for consumer uses “raises such a slew of ethical concerns.”
Some experts are also worried that Musk is nothing but a carnival barker who’ll say anything and stop at nothing to make a buck — which, well, fair. He’s been known to make lofty promises before only to grossly underdeliver before. Who’s to say Neuralink won’t be the same?
“With these companies and owners of companies, they’re kind of showmen,” Dr. Laura Cabrera, a neuroethics researcher at Penn State, told the Beast. “They’ll make these hyperbolic claims, and I think that’s dangerous, because I think people sometimes believe it blindly.”
She later added, “I’m always cautious about what [Elon Musk] says.”
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05-03-2022
MIT STARTUP DRILLING 12 MILES INTO THE EARTH TO SUCK OUT ENERGY
MIT STARTUP DRILLING 12 MILES INTO THE EARTH TO SUCK OUT ENERGY
OKAY, THAT'S KINDA AWESOME.
GETTY IMAGES/FUTURISM
Fusion Drilling
An MIT spinoff has locked down significant funding for a literally groundbreaking project: using fusion power tech to drill 12 miles into the Earth and harvest the immense energy down there.
The startup is called Quaise, and it picked up $40 million in series A funding last month, according to a press release. It says the money is going toward its efforts to leverage fusion technology to drill one of the deepest holes of all time. If it proves viable, it could give humans access to nearly limitless and clean geothermal energy.
That’s right. Fusion drilling.
“We need a massive amount of carbon-free energy in the coming decades,” Mark Cupta, managing director at Prelude Ventures and one of the investors in the company, said in the release.
“Quaise Energy offers one of the most resource-efficient and nearly infinitely scalable solutions to power our planet,” he added. “It is the perfect complement to our current renewable solutions, allowing us to reach baseload sustainable power in a not so distant future.”
Potential Gamechanger
Aside from being just kinda awesome in a sci-fi-sounding way, using fusion tech to dig these ultra-deep holes could offer a number of notable benefits. For one, traditional drill bits are limited with how far they can go before the hot temperatures, gasses, and liquids prevent them from going further.
However, Quaise would use a machine called a gyrotron, which is typically used to create millimeter electromagnetic waves to superheat plasma in fusion reactors. Instead of plasma, though, the startup would point at the ground — and drill into it using energy beams.
The tech has the potential to take drilling to a depth we’ve never seen before. In theory, this could also allow people to access geothermal power from the Earth no matter where they are in the world.
Of course, this tech still has a long way to go. Quaise is slated to launch its first full-scale demonstration machines in 2024, with its first commercial operation by 2026. Plus, there’s a good chance that hiccups like running out of funding or pesky supply chain issues could prevent this from ever actually launching.
Still, the idea of a fusion drill tapping into the Earth for bountiful, clean energy is pretty dope.
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03-03-2022
Quantum Gravity Sensor Breakthrough Paves Way for Groundbreaking Map of World Under Earth’s Surface
Quantum Gravity Sensor Breakthrough Paves Way for Groundbreaking Map of World Under Earth’s Surface
ByUNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
A perspective of future gravity cartography being used with 0.5 m spatial resolution over a region, at an uncertainty level of 20 E. Expected signal sizes for a range of applications are shown.
Credit: Stray et al. 2022 Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04315-3
An object hidden below ground has been located using quantum technology — a long-awaited milestone with profound implications for industry, human knowledge, and national security.
University of Birmingham researchers from the UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Timing have reported their achievement in Nature. It is the first in the world for a quantum gravity gradiometer outside of laboratory conditions.
The quantum gravity gradiometer, which was developed under a contract for the Ministry of Defence and in the UKRI-funded Gravity Pioneer project, was used to find a tunnel buried outdoors in real-world conditions one meter below the ground surface. It wins an international race to take the technology outside.
The sensor works by detecting variations in microgravity using the principles of quantum physics, which is based on manipulating nature at the sub-molecular level.
The success opens a commercial path to significantly improved mapping of what exists below ground level.
This will mean:
Reduced costs and delays to construction, rail, and road projects.
Improved prediction of natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions.
Discovery of hidden natural resources and built structures.
Understanding archaeological mysteries without damaging excavation.
Professor Kai Bongs, Head of Cold Atom Physics at the University of Birmingham and Principal Investigator of the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing, said: “This is an ‘Edison moment’ in sensing that will transform society, human understanding, and economies.
“With this breakthrough we have the potential to end reliance on poor records and luck as we explore, build and repair. In addition, an underground map of what is currently invisible is now a significant step closer, ending a situation where we know more about Antarctica than what lies a few feet below our streets.”
Current gravity sensors are limited by a range of environmental factors. A particular challenge is vibration, which limits the measurement time of all gravity sensors for survey applications. If these limitations can be addressed, surveys can become faster, more comprehensive, and lower cost.
How the quantum gravity sensor works
The quantum gravity sensor measures subtle changes in the pulling strength of gravitational fields when a cloud of atoms is dropped. The bigger the object and the greater the difference in density of the object from its surroundings, the stronger the measurable difference in pull. But vibration, instrument tilt and disruption from magnetic and thermal fields have made turning quantum theory into commercial reality challenging. The Birmingham quantum sensor breakthrough is the first to meet these real-world challenges and perform a high spatial resolution survey. The removal of noise due to vibration will unlock gravity mapping at high spatial resolution.
The sensor developed by Dr. Michael Holynski, Head of Atom Interferometry at Birmingham and lead author of the study, and his team at Birmingham is a gravity gradiometer. Their system overcomes vibration and a variety of other environmental challenges in order to successfully apply quantum technology in the field.
The successful detection, realized in collaboration with civil engineers led by Professor Nicole Metje of the School of Engineering, is the culmination of a long-term development program that has been closely linked to end-users from its outset.
This breakthrough will allow future gravity surveys to be cheaper, more reliable, and delivered 10 times faster, reducing the time needed for surveys from a month to a few days. It has the potential to open a range of new applications for gravity survey, providing a new lens into the underground.
Professor George Tuckwell, Director for Geoscience and Engineering at RSK, said: “Detection of ground conditions such as mine workings, tunnels, and unstable ground is fundamental to our ability to design, construct and maintain housing, industry, and infrastructure. The improved capability that this new technology represents could transform how we map the ground and deliver these projects”
Dr. Gareth Brown, joint Project Technical Authority for Quantum Sensing and Senior Principal Scientist at Dstl, said: “For national Defence and Security, accurate and rapid measurements of variations in microgravity open up new opportunities to detect the otherwise undetectable and navigate more safely in challenging environments. As gravity sensing technology matures, applications for underwater navigation and revealing the subterranean will become possible.”
Reference: “Quantum sensing for gravity cartography” by Ben Stray, Andrew Lamb, Aisha Kaushik, Jamie Vovrosh, Anthony Rodgers, Jonathan Winch, Farzad Hayati, Daniel Boddice, Artur Stabrawa, Alexander Niggebaum, Mehdi Langlois, Yu-Hung Lien, Samuel Lellouch, Sanaz Roshanmanesh, Kevin Ridley, Geoffrey de Villiers, Gareth Brown, Trevor Cross, George Tuckwell, Asaad Faramarzi, Nicole Metje, Kai Bongs and Michael Holynski, 23 February 2022, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04315-3
The breakthrough is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, environmental, engineering and sustainability solutions provider RSK, Dstl (the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, part of the UK Ministry of Defence), and technology company Teledyne e2v. The project is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the UK National Quantum Technologies Program and under contract from the Ministry of Defence.
Theoretical inventions known as the “UFO patents” have been inflaming worldwide curiosity. A product of the American engineer Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, the patents were filed during his work for the U.S. Navy and are so ambitious in their scope and imagination that they continue to draw interest despite any clear evidence that they are feasible. The patents include designs for a futuristic hybrid vehicle with a radical propulsion system that would work equally well in the air, underwater, and in space, as well as a compact fusion reactor, a gravitational wave generator, and even a “spacetime modification weapon”. The technology involved could impact reality itself, claims its inventor, whose maverick audacity rivals that of Nikola Tesla.
The patents
How real are these ideas? While you can read the patents for yourself, it's evident that the tech necessary to actually create the devices described is beyond our current capabilities. Yet research into many of these fields has gone on for years, which may explain why the Navy expressed an interest. Another likely influence is the fact that the Chinese government seems to be working to develop similar technology.
One of the most attention-grabbing designs by Dr. Pais is the2018 patent for a cone-shaped craft of unprecedented range and speed. The amazing vehicle would be able to zoom around with ease both high in the air and deep in the sea. It would travel through air, water, and space by generating a quantum vacuum with an energy field. This vacuum around its body would help it push away any molecules it encounters, regardless of the medium. The craft would also not leave any heat signature, making it virtually undetectable. Controlling the “quantum field fluctuations” in the vacuum would counteract inertia and resistance, resulting in “extreme speeds.” Reducing a craft’s inertial and gravitational mass in this way could be transformational for space travel. It sounds like an enticing design. However, as noted, it’s not something we could actually create with current technologies.
Another futuristic patent with far-reaching ramifications is Pais’ Plasma Compression Fusion Device. It would be relatively small, less than two meters in length, and house fusion reactions generating power in the gigawatt (one billion watts) to terawatt (one trillion watts) range. By comparison, a coal plant or a nuclear reactor generate energy in the one to two-gigawatt range.
Notes from researchers who worked on vetting Pais’ ideas indicate that a possible outcome of the plasma fusion device and the high energy levels it may generate is the "Spacetime Modification Weapon” (SMW). Research documents refer to it as “a weapon that can make the Hydrogen bomb seem more like a firecracker, in comparison."
Research notes from Navy’s experiments with Pais’s plasma fusion device. Source:FOIA / Department of Navy / The Drive
Among Pais’s other inventions with military applications is a patent for an electromagnetic field generator. It could create “an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets” which would be used against ballistic and cruise missiles that avoid radars and other defenses. The shield would also be a barrier against dangers from space like coronal mass ejections and wayward asteroids.
Pais’s electromagnetic field generator consists of a shell, an electrostatic generator, a power plant, a thermoelectric generator, and an electric motor.Source: Salvatore Pais / U.S Department of Navy
Another device that could deflect asteroids is the high-frequency gravitational wave generator conceived by Pais. It would work to intersect generated electromagnetic fields and create waves of gravity. These could be used to propel spaceships to the far reaches of the galaxy, among other uses.
The Pais Effect
The fantastical inventions devised by Dr. Pais largely build upon an idea that he calls “The Pais Effect.” In his patent write-ups and in an interview with The Drive, he described it as “the generation of extremely high electromagnetic energy fluxes (and hence high local energy densities) generated by controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma states) subjected to accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin, via rapid acceleration transients.”
This effect amounts to the ability to spin electromagnetic fields to contain a fusion reaction. The electromagnetic energy fields would be so powerful that they could “engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level,” writes Pais.
In practical terms, this invention could lead to a veritable revolution in propulsion, quantum communications, and create an abundance of cheaply-produced energy. Certainly, an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, as posits the Sagan standard.
The critics
The assertions by Dr. Pais have drawn a fair share of criticism and incredulity from fellow scientists. The nuclear engineer and researcher Carl Willis, who is also a reactor supervisor at the University of New Mexico, called Dr. Pais’s work, "a classic case of pathological science" that’s heavy on jargon and ”nonsensical statements” while providing little evidence that his ideas, which seem to contradict established physics, can bear fruit.
Physicist Stephen Webb of the University of Portsmouth in England was equally blunt, saying that, “I find it puzzling frankly that the patents were awarded.“ He called Pais’s ideas a, “wonderful wish list of things that we want,” which, “doesn’t make sense in terms of physics.”
Dr. Charles Collett, who teaches Physics at Muhlenberg College, did acknowledge that in theory, the Pais Effect may not be “outlandish” but in practice, there are "significant engineering challenges” in fashioning a device that would be able to produce the kind of electromagnetic forces Dr. Pais envisions in his patents.
The trials
Despite the well-founded unease at Dr. Pais’s inventions, the Navy took them seriously enough to run experiments for three years and even found some of them “operable”, although the extent of that alleged operability is under debate. In the patent documents, two Navy officials seemed to assert the operability of the inventions.
Furthermore, in correspondence with The Drive’s “War Zone,” Timothy Boulay of NAWCAD, stated that Pais’s High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator was, in fact, tested from 2016 until 2019, at a cost of $508,000. The team working on the project consisted of at least 10 technicians and engineers and put in some 1,600 hours of work. But upon the conclusion of the testing, the Pais Effect “could not be proven,” shared Boulay.
What happened subsequently with the tested device and further investigations is not known at this point. There are indications in documents obtained by The Drive’s WarZone through the Freedom of Information Act that the inventions could be moved to another research department in the Navy or the Air Force, or possibly even to NASA or DARPA, but whether that really happened is not clear.
Pais's Electromagnetic Field Generator tested by the Navy researchers. Source: FOIA / U.S. Navy / The Drive
Who is Dr. Pais?
As a creator of such potentially pioneering designs, Dr. Pais has understandably drawn scrutiny from internet denizens and skeptical scientists but as he rarely gives interviews (partially due to classified research for the military), he has remained largely enigmatic.
His author bio in a 2019 concept paper on the Plasma Compression Fusion Device, published by the peer-reviewed engineering journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Sciences, provides some clues. The paper proposes a compact plasma compression fusion device that seeks to generate tremendous energy through nuclear fusion and describes Dr. Pais as a mechanical and aerospace engineer who currently works for the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) in the Department of Defense in Washington, DC. According to its website, the SSP is “the Nation's premier provider of cost-effective, safe and secure sea-based strategic deterrent systems and related technologies.” It works to develop advanced submarines and weapons for the stated mission “to prevent nuclear war.”
Photo: Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais. Source: Pais / IEEE.
Dr. Pais’s education includes a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and his prior credentials include work as a NASA Research Fellow, working for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) in Maryland, and work as a general engineer as well as an advanced concept analyst for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, one of the world’s top companies for next-generation aerospace and defense technologies.
Dr. Pais, claims the bio, utilizes his “advanced knowledge” in aerodynamics, with particular expertise in designing hypersonic missiles and vehicles. His wide-ranging research interests also extend to electrical engineering, room temperature conductivity, and new quantum technologies with a concentration on laser power generation and high-energy electromagnetic field generation.
The inventor’s credentials are definitely impressive. Did he come up with devices that not only defy known physics and physicists but will radically change our life through limitless energy and high-speed all-medium vehicles? Time will tell, but in his exchanges with The Drive, Dr. Pais stands by his technological visions and asks the skeptics to “try to keep an open mind in regard to my work.”
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25-02-2022
STARTUP TURNS “UNRECYCLABLE” PLASTIC INTO GIANT, INDESTRUCTIBLE CONSTRUCTION BRICKS
STARTUP TURNS “UNRECYCLABLE” PLASTIC INTO GIANT, INDESTRUCTIBLE CONSTRUCTION BRICKS
THIS SOUNDS MILDLY INGENIOUS.
BYFUSION
Block Heads
What if we told you that you could construct entire buildings out of trashed plastic bags and water bottles?
That future may be closer than you think, thanks to new tech from ByFusion Global, an LA-based startup that’s developed a way for governments, companies, and communities to recycle previously “unrecyclable plastics” into huge, virtually indestructible bricks.
Known as “ByBlocks,” the cinderblockish bricks are made using a steam-based compacting method that, per ByFusion’s website, “does not require any chemicals, additives, adhesives, or fillers.” The lego-like bricks made by the ByFusion process are said to be construction-grade and indestructible.
Plastic Urgency
In an interview with Waste360, ByFusion CEO Heidi Kujawa said that the company received a Dow grant and has partnered with the Hefty trash bag company’s EnergyBag recycling program to run a pilot program in Boise, Idaho that will give the community access to the Blocker system.
Along with providing the tech, the pilot program is slated to help Boise residents divert up to 72 tons of otherwise unrecyclable plastics from the local landfill and has already used the blocks to build a bench in a city park, with more planned structures set to built in the coming years.
Though there’s certainly room for criticism of the startup’s partnership with a company that manufactures plastic bags and an organization integral to the not-so-green financial industry, there’s no harm in ByFusion taking their money.
And one thing’s for sure: whoever figures out a way to implement this kind of system on a mass scale deserves the Nobel Prize.
An object hidden below ground has been located using quantum technology—a long-awaited milestone with profound implications for industry, human knowledge and national security.
University of Birmingham researchers from the UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Timing have reported their achievement in Nature. It is the first in the world for a quantum gravity gradiometer outside of laboratory conditions.
The quantum gravity gradiometer, which was developed under a contract for the Ministry of Defense and in the UKRI-funded Gravity Pioneer project, was used to find a tunnel buried outdoors in real-world conditions one meter below the ground surface. It wins an international race to take the technology outside.
The sensor works by detecting variations in microgravity using the principles of quantum physics, which is based on manipulating nature at the sub-molecular level.
The success opens a commercial path to significantly improved mapping of what exists below ground level.
This will mean:
Reduced costs and delays to construction, rail and road projects.
Improved prediction of natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions.
Discovery of hidden natural resources and built structures.
Understanding archaeological mysteries without damaging excavation.
Professor Kai Bongs, head of cold atom physics at the University of Birmingham and principal investigator of the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing, said: "This is an 'Edison moment' in sensing that will transform society, human understanding and economies.
"With this breakthrough we have the potential to end reliance on poor records and luck as we explore, build and repair. In addition, an underground map of what is currently invisible is now a significant step closer, ending a situation where we know more about Antarctica than what lies a few feet below our streets."
Current gravity sensors are limited by a range of environmental factors. A particular challenge is vibration, which limits the measurement time of all gravity sensors for survey applications. If these limitations can be addressed, surveys can become faster, more comprehensive and lower cost.
The sensor developed by Dr. Michael Holynski, Head of Atom Interferometry at Birmingham and lead author of the study, and his team at Birmingham is a gravity gradiometer. Their system overcomes vibration and a variety of other environmental challenges in order to successfully apply quantum technology in the field.
The successful detection, realized in collaboration with civil engineers led by Professor Nicole Metje of the School of Engineering, is the culmination of a long-term development program that has been closely linked to end-users from its outset.
This breakthrough will allow future gravity surveys to be cheaper, more reliable and delivered 10 times faster, reducing the time needed for surveys from a month to a few days. It has the potential to open a range of new applications for gravity survey, providing a new lens into the underground.
Professor George Tuckwell, director for geoscience and engineering at RSK, said: "Detection of ground conditions such as mine workings, tunnels and unstable ground is fundamental to our ability to design, construct and maintain housing, industry and infrastructure. The improved capability that this new technology represents could transform how we map the ground and deliver these projects."
The breakthrough is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, environmental, engineering and sustainability solutions provider RSK, Dstl (the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, part of the UK Ministry of Defense), and technology company Teledyne e2v.
The quantum gravity sensor measures subtle changes in the pulling strength of gravitational fields when a cloud of atoms is dropped. The bigger the object and the greater the difference in density of the object from its surroundings, the stronger the measurable difference in pull. But vibration, instrument tilt and disruption from magnetic and thermal fields have made turning quantum theory into commercial reality challenging. The Birmingham quantum sensor breakthrough is the first to meet these real-world challenges and perform a high spatial resolution survey. The removal of noise due to vibration will unlock gravity mapping at high spatial resolution.
About the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing
The UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing (led by the University of Birmingham) brings together experts from Physics and Engineering from the Universities of Birmingham, Glasgow, Imperial, Liverpool John Moores, Nottingham, Southampton, Strathclyde and Sussex, NPL, the British Geological Survey and over 75 industry partners. The Hub has a total of over 120 past and present projects, valued at approximately £200 million, and has 17 patent applications.
The UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing is part of the National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP), which was established in 2014 and has EPSRC, IUK, STFC, MOD, NPL, BEIS, and GCHQ as partners. Four Quantum Technology Hubs were set up at the outset, each focussing on specific application areas with anticipated societal and economic impact. The Commercialising Quantum Technologies Challenge (funded by the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund) is part of the NQTP and was launched to accelerate the development of quantum enabled products and services, removing barriers to productivity and competitiveness. The NQTP is set to invest £1B of public and private sector funds over its ten-year lifetime.
For commercial enquiries relating to the University of Birmingham’s patents in Quantum Technologies, please email: info@enterprise.bham.ac.uk
About the University of BIrmingham
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries.
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22-02-2022
Scientists Reveal Device that Can Project Holograms Into Your Brain to Create New Experiences
Scientists Reveal Device that Can Project Holograms Into Your Brain to Create New Experiences
SCIENCE
R2-D2 being able to transmit a hologram of Princess Leia was the coolest thing ever back in the late 70s when “Star Wars: A New Hope” was first on the big screen. More recently, we have seen holograms in our cards or money.
In 2019, there are card game enthusiasts who are designing holographic images of the monsters in games such as Yu-Gi-Oh for use in tournaments. When we imagine our future, we might see holographic projections of cell phone apps in front of our faces as we walk down the street.
What if those same holographic images were able to create sensations such as touch, memory, or hearing things that weren’t actually real? What if certain sensations could be omitted, such as painful ones? Scientists recently revealed a device that can project holograms into your brain to create new experiences.
Neuron, Cell of the nervous system allowing information to be carried in the form of electrical and... [+]
How is a hologram created?
A hologram, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a three-dimensional image reproduced from a pattern of interference produced by a split coherent beam of radiation. A laser is a great example.” The scientific term for the process of making a hologram is holography.
Light travels in waves. A hologram records the light waves as they bounce off an object. When a light wave bounces off an object, its changed form is called an interference wave. Think of when you toss a pebble into a pond over your reflection; you see an image of yourself in the water but that image appears slightly distorted. In a light wave, due to the discovery of lasers, that distortion is minimal and can be projected onto an outside source.
Lasers help create 3D holographs due to how the light operates from a laser. Light from a laser has a constant flow of light that moves in consistent phases. Therefore, the entire area is getting consistent light waves, which then bounce off more equal to the original light source. Holography acts like photography. Original photograph images can be captured by allowing the light bouncing off an object to be reflected off a mercury-coated surface and then it is captured onto a different surface.
Real-world uses for holograms
Holograms have several uses, and their potential for changing how we interact in the world is impressive.
Use of holograms in the entertainment and marketing industry:
Various big-name brands are using holograms to invoke excitement for their products and to gain information about the users.
In Los Angeles, CA, September of 2017, an augmented reality company, VNTANA, partnered with an intelligent engagement company, Satisfi Labs, and created the first AI concierge. This concierge was designed to be interactive in its responses to the public. People could communicate with the hologram and ask questions related to the particular event it was hosting.
The Death Star hologram was made available to those who purchased a deluxe edition of the Star Wars soundtrack for the Star Wars’ 40th anniversary.
Coachella put on a holographic concert in 2017 of Tupac Shakur. The same company who put on that concert has also opened an all-holographic theatre in Hollywood.
In Chicago, Pepsi and Aquafina put on a hologram of a baseball player which allowed visitors to play baseball with it.
The benefits of these holograms for the industries:
Well, other than the coolness factor, here are some others:
The companies can request visitors’ names and email addresses either to gain access or to obtain a digital copy of the event after the fact.
With more involvement, the companies have better feedback on the crowd’s reaction.
Listening in on social sharing. In most instances, the public took pictures or video of themselves with the hologram and shared it on social media. Not only is that continued free advertising, but it also creates more comments and reactions.
It leaves an impression of the brand or company not easily forgotten.
Encourages longer engagement from the public at events.
On a more personal level, one company, 8i Studios in Culver City, Ca., is working on creating holographic images of people that can be recorded and then viewed through a VR headset or 8i’s app, Holo. The purpose of this is to create authentic, recorded memories; for example, recorded images of your parents while you were a child, or a favorite pet, or your newborn baby. Just imagine, re-experiencing people you have lost or who have grown up, all over again in the now. It would be like a photo album but with the sensation of the people truly being in the room.
How are holograms used in medicine?
The science of medicine began due to inquisitive individuals who wanted to know how our bodies worked and how we could heal people. In order to learn more about our bodies, scientists used cadavers. Now, medical students can peer at the holographic image of the human body. This also allows for a more intensive, in-depth study of how the neurological, vascular, and musculoskeletal systems are laid out and react with each other.
Other medical holographs are of the cell structure, organs, and our DNA. This then encourages further advancement in the biomedical field.
Holograms find their primary uses by scientists, biomedical professionals, and researchers. Through holographic imaging, these professionals can see what is going on in your body without having to undertake any risky procedure. It also allows for research and further understanding of the complexities of how our brain and neurological systems operate and react under various circumstances. They can trigger events without causing harm and see how it all reacts.
All of this increases the opportunity to make a more accurate diagnosis and treatment for patients in a far less obtrusive and risky manner.
The benefits of creating new experiences through holograms into the brain
Could you ever imagine that holographic images could project into our brains and target specific neurons in order to recreate a sensation? It could also potentially project a false memory for the betterment of an individual’s life.
Researchers at the University of Berkley are working on designing a way to create a hologram within the brain. They have found that this would allow them to read the activity of the neurons in the brain and then influence them.
The scientists had to match the speed of the pulsing neurons in our brain and then recreate the pattern with lasers. The goal was to mimic the brain’s activity in order to fool it into believing it was part of its own pattern. They then created a holographic image of a brain with a focus on the individual neurons to isolate the particular ones they wished to influence. The scientists then projected that image onto a thin slice of a brain.
They first did this to affect the touch, motor, and vision neurons of mice. While the mice did not demonstrate any change through behavior, a reading of the neurons did demonstrate that the stimuli were received by the brain. The next step in the process is to train the mice to alter their behavior depending upon the stimuli.
The hope of this experiment is to aid with many diseases or disorders.
The first they feel it would be most effective with is those who have lost a limb. It would help by allowing the body to respond the same with a prosthetic as one would with a limb. As technology and their knowledge advances, they hope to see areas where the brain misfires; examples include a seizure or schizophrenia. Then they may find a way to alter the brain’s neurons to fire correctly. They even believe it could offer a return of sight to those who lost their vision.
“But as basic neuroscientists, we are also primarily interested in using this system to ‘crack’ the neural codes of sensory perception.”
We want to understand how our brain builds perceptions of our external world all through the language of neurons …. We believe this new technology can address this fundamental question in neuroscience because we can attempt to generate artificial perceptions by writing specific patterns of activity into the brain and see what’ works.'”
Closing Thoughts
Can you believe it? Scientists have created a device that can project a hologram to create experiences in our brain! They have also found a way to isolate individual, tiny neurons. Amazing!
The capability of being able to communicate directly to the brain has many possibilities. Not only does this make feasible the ability to read what is happening in the brain, but it can also “write” changes onto your brain. The implied possibilities are awe-inspiring to even think about. They add more hope for those who would benefit.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Holograms just got a lot more exciting with the news that a team of researchers in Japan has developed a 3D hologram projector that responds to a person’s touch, allowing it to completely change shape.
Dubbed ‘Fairy Lights’, and developed by researchers from five Japanese universities, the project was started as a means of improving existing 3D hologram technology and ones that react to touch in mid-air.
According to Hacked, the technology behind touchable holograms has been in existence for a number of years now, but has been nowhere near capable of being introduced to the commercial market because the laser beams, which generate the hologram, actually burn human skin on contact with it.
To fix this, the Japanese researchers decided to develop a system whereby their device will fire laser pulses that are fired at high frequencies, ionising the air molecules that exist in one particular spot.
The lasers in question are known as femtosecond lasers, which create pulses of light that last a few tens of femtoseconds, which to you and me means one millionth of one billionth of just one second.
This leads to the formation of the pixels, which respond to touch when the pulses are interrupted.
Scientists Reveal Device that Can Project Holograms Into Your Brain to Create New Experiences
From the video they have published to show their results, the minute scale of the holograms shows great promise for bringing the technology on a larger scale in the near future during a time when augmented reality (AR) is seen as being a realistic alternative to interactive hologram technology.
Researchers have developed a hologram that allows you to reach out and “feel” it — not unlike the holodecks of “Star Trek.”
University of Glasgow scientists have created hologram system that uses jets of air known as “aerohaptics” to replicate the sensation of touch, according to Ravinder Daahiya, a researcher who worked on the project. He said that the air jets can allow you to feel “people’s fingers, hands and wrists.” The team published a paper of their findings in Advanced Intelligent Systems.
“In time, this could be developed to allow you to meet a virtual avatar of a colleague on the other side of the world and really feel their handshake,” he said in his piece for The Conversation. “It could even be the first steps towards building something like a holodeck.”
No Gloves, No Problems
Similar to previous touch sensory holograms, the aerohaptic system doesn’t require a handheld controller or smart gloves in order to produce the sense of touch. Instead, a nozzle, which is able to respond to the movements of your hand, blows air with an appropriate amount of force onto you.
Daahiya and his team tested this with an interactive projection of a basketball, which he said “can be convincingly touched, rolled and bounced.”
“The touch feedback from air jets from the system is also modulated based on the virtual surface of the basketball, allowing users to feel the rounded shape of the ball as it rolls from their fingertips when they bounce it and the slap in their palm when it returns,” he said.
Welcome to the Holodeck
While it would be pretty cool to see this system fleshed out until we get an honest-to-God holodeck to live out our Sherlock Holmes fantasies, the system will be pretty limited for now.
However, Daahiya has hopes that it could eventually be used to create some pretty amazing video game experiences — as well as help doctors better treat patients no matter where they are on Earth.
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21-02-2022
Scientists Designs A Laser Propulsion System That Can Take You To Mars In Just 45 Days
Scientists Designs A Laser Propulsion System That Can Take You To Mars In Just 45 Days
Scientists at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) present in a recent study the design of a “laser-thermal propulsion” system that would allow humans to reach Mars in just 45 days.
NASA, which plans to send a manned mission to the red planet in the mid-2030s, expects such a trip to take about 500 days .
However, McGill engineers believe it’s possible to cut the journey down to just over six weeks thanks to directed-energy propulsion , which uses large lasers fired from Earth to deliver power to a hydrogen heating chamber on the spacecraft. and, in this way, promote it.
The spacecraft speeds up rapidly while close to our planet, and in the following month it makes the long way to Mars. For landing, the main vehicle is released and the rest of the ship is returned to Earth so that it can be recycled for the next launch.
The idea of directed-energy propulsion had previously been proposed by other scientists in a project that involves using lasers to send small sail probes to the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri.
The system uses laser beams to propel a spacecraft into deep space at relativistic speeds, a fraction of the speed of light. The more powerful the laser, the faster the spacecraft can be accelerated.
“We were interested in how the same laser technology could be used for rapid transit in the solar system,” said Emmanuel Duplay, lead author of the recent study.
The conceptual spacecraft created by the team would require a 100-megawatt, 10-meter-diameter array of lasers .
“Our approach would use a much more intense laser flux on the spacecraft to directly heat the propellant, similar to a giant steam boiler,” Duplay said.
The engineer also points out that it would be necessary “to develop high-temperature materials that allow the spacecraft to break against the Martian atmosphere upon arrival.”
Diaper technology
The problem is that these technologies are still in their early stages and have only been developed at a theoretical level, so they may not be ready for the next decade.
“The laser heating chamber is probably the biggest challenge,” Duplay concludes.
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THESE MATHEMATICIANS THINK THE UNIVERSE MAY BE CONSCIOUS
THESE MATHEMATICIANS THINK THE UNIVERSE MAY BE CONSCIOUS
"THIS COULD BE THE BEGINNING OF A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION."
IMAGES VIA PIXABAY/VICTOR TANGERMANN
Theory of Everything
Scientists are doubling down on a peculiar model that attempts to quantify and measure consciousness.
The model, known as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), has long been controversial because it comes with an unusual quirk. When applied to non-living things like machines, subatomic particles, and even the universe, it claims that they too experience consciousness, New Scientist reports.
“This could be the beginning of a scientific revolution,” Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy mathematician Johannes Kleiner told the magazine.
Complex Math
IIT relies on a value called phi that represents the interconnectivity of a node, whether it’s a region of the brain, circuitry, or an atom. That value represents the node’s level of consciousness. The cerebral cortex, for instance, has a high value because it contains a dense cluster of widely-interconnected neurons.
But when IIT was first presented, calculating phi was impossibly convoluted. New Scientist reports that calculating the phi of a human brain would have previously taken longer than the universe has existed, but a February paper by IIT’s creators, currently awaiting peer review, attempts to simplify the process significantly.
Show Your Work
Many academics remain unconvinced by IIT, in part because of its complexity but mainly because of its far-reaching implications for a conscious universe.
“I think mathematics can help us understand the neural basis of consciousness in the brain, and perhaps even machine consciousness, but it will inevitably leave something out: the felt inner quality of experience,” University of Connecticut philosopher and cognitive scientist Susan Schneider told New Scientist.
It’s hard to conceptualize the bizarre quantum behavior of subatomic particles, which are often too tiny, fleeting, and counterintuitive to conceptualize on any tangible scale. But new research bucks that trend, suggesting that an unusual quantum phenomenon could have a serious impact to biological structures — even causing point mutations in molecules of DNA.
The upshot is that the hydrogen bonds that link together two spiraling strands of DNA are prime for an unusual quantum process called proton tunneling, according to research published by University of Surrey scientists last month in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
Proton tunneling happens when a proton seemingly vanishes and reappears elsewhere on the other side of a physical or energetic barrier. Protons are massive compared to other subatomic particles that exist on the quantum scale, so it’s not as common to see a proton tunnel as it is to see something like an electron tunnel. But it is possible, and when it happens within a DNA molecule, it can essentially move atoms to the wrong place, leading to a mutation in the genetic code.
“Many have long suspected that the quantum world — which is weird, counter-intuitive, and wonderful — plays a role in life as we know it,” lead author and Surrey chemist Marco Sacchi said in a press release. “While the idea that something can be present in two places at the same time might be absurd to many of us, this happens all the time in the quantum world, and our study confirms that quantum tunneling also happens in DNA at room temperature.”
The odds that one of these quantum mutations would lead to medical problems down the line is rare — the paper notes that the DNA molecules are capable of righting themselves in fairly short order. But just like with any other mutation, it is possible that these mutations take hold and propagate through the DNA replication process, potentially causing issues or even increasing the risk of cancer.
“There is still a long and exciting road ahead of us to understand how biological processes work on the subatomic level,” study coauthor and quantum biologist Louie Slocombe said in the release, “but our study — and countless others over the recent years — have confirmed quantum mechanics are at play.”
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14-02-2022
Making direct air capture more efficient
Making direct air capture more efficient
A new process for turning atmospheric carbon dioxide desorbed from an absorbent into dry ice reduces the energy input needed for carbon capture.
A new technology for capturing carbon dioxide from air, Cryo-DAC can use existing infrastructure at ports for ships that transport liquefied natural gas and infrastructure used to prepare city gas.
Carbon capture is playing an increasingly prominent role in plans to combat climate change. A new process for direct air capture, which involves capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, promises to greatly enhance the efficiency of the technology.
“Direct air capture has great potential for removing CO2 from the atmosphere on massive scales,” says Soichiro Masuda at the R&D/Digital Division of the Japanese energy-provider Toho Gas. “And it has evolved rapidly in the past several years.”
Direct air capture complements other technologies that capture carbon from industrial emissions, but the lower levels of CO2 in atmospheric air make it considerably more challenging. “Efficiency has continued to be a challenge for direct air capture, as the steps that isolate CO2 from atmospheric air require the input of energy,” says Masuda. “Burning fossil fuel to provide the energy input ends up creating more carbon emission for the sake of capturing carbon.”
“Direct air capture technology is a key part of our corporate strategy to reach carbon neutrality by 2050,” says Masuda. Now, Toho Gas and Nagoya University, have started research and development into realizing carbon neutrality and have devised a way to largely overcome the problem of capturing carbon with an improved direct air capture technology called Cryo-DAC.
Diagram depicting the carbon cycle (left) of Cryo-DAC (right), the direct air capture technology developed by researchers at Toho Gas and Nagoya University.
A key advantage of recycling carbon by Cryo-DAC is that it can use existing infrastructure such as ports for ships that transport liquefied natural gas, along with the associated infrastructure used to prepare city gas for industrial and household use. Natural gas is imported in liquefied form at about −162 degrees Celsius. Japan is one of the world’s major importers of liquefied natural gas, accounting for nearly 20% of global imports.
“Ever since Japan first imported natural gas in 1969, we’ve been exploring ways to exploit the cold energy of liquid natural gas,” explains Masuda. “We think we’ve finally found a solution.” Liquefied natural gas is vaporized by exchanging heat with seawater; the cold energy generated in this exchange is used for industrial purposes such as liquefying industrial gases. Large amounts of the cold energy, however, was wasted.
Cryo-DAC uses cold energy, thereby minimizing the thermal energy needed for the process. Of the various types of direct air capture being developed worldwide, Cryo-DAC employs a method that captures and isolates CO2 with chemical absorbents. “The scalability of the chemical absorption method is well suited for collecting massive amounts of CO2,” says Masuda. “This involves collecting atmospheric air, absorbing CO2 in a solvent, and then isolating the CO2 from the solvent. This last step, however, requires large amounts of heat, creating carbon emission.”
Using dry ice to create a vacuum
The research team designed a new process that has a chamber in which CO2is sublimated into dry ice by using the cold energy of liquid natural gas. The new chamber is connected to another in which CO2 is absorbed in solvent; the phase change from CO2 to dry ice lowers the pressure inside, which causes the solvent and CO2 to evaporate. “As a result, CO2 can be recovered from the solvent at near room temperature, minimizing the thermal energy needed,” explains Yoshito Umeda, a professor at Nagoya University.
Schematic diagram of the cryopump used in Cryo-DAC.
The output of Cryo-DAC is high-pressure CO2 gas. Toho Gas plans to use the captured CO2 as a raw material for city gases that the company provides to its customers. “High-pressure CO2 is needed to produce methane, the main component of city gas, that can be obtained by reacting CO2 and hydrogen. While CO2 for methanation is typically prepared with compressors, Cryo-DAC has the potential to separate CO2 from air and generate high-pressure CO2 at low cost. Although city gas leaves a carbon footprint when burned, direct air capture with Cryo-DAC could offset these emissions,” says Masuda. “The International Energy Agency predicts that the demand for natural gas will continue to increase until 2050, unlike other major fossil fuels like oil or coal. We thus see Cryo-DAC as a key part of future gas infrastructure with net-zero carbon emission.”
The research is now a part of Japan’s Moonshot Research and Development Program, the Cabinet Office’s initiative to fund high-risk, high-impact research projects. The team includes collaborators at Tokyo University of Science, Chukyo University and the University of Tokyo, who are enhancing the materials and processes used in Cryo-DAC. The group is currently developing a solvent with higher absorption capabilities, as well as trying to achieve a continuous flow from CO2 sublimation to the output of high-pressure CO2. The aim is to establish the core technology by 2022 so that the system can operate continuously with a capacity of 1 tonne of CO2 per year in 2024. The group also aspires to design equipment for commercial use, and create detailed plans for implementing the system in a real-world setting by 2029.
“By using existing infrastructure for gas-consuming appliances and pipelines, we expect to transition smoothly to carbon neutrality without imposing a significant burden on our customers or the wider society,” says Masuda.
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12-02-2022
Artificial Intelligence to watch over embryos outside the womb
Artificial Intelligence to watch over embryos outside the womb
TRUNEWS with RICK WILES Researchers in Suzhou have developed an AI system able to monitor and take care of embryos as they grow into babies in the lab. Technology won’t be a problem for its future application, but legal and ethical concerns might, warns Beijing-based researcher. Researchers in Suzhou, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, say they have developed an artificial intelligence system that can monitor and take care of embryos as they grow into fetuses in an artificial womb environment.
This AI nanny is looking after many animal embryos for now, they said in findings published in the domestic peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering last month. Previously, the development process of each embryo had to be observed, documented and adjusted manually – a labor-intensive task that became unsustainable as the scale of the research increased. The robotic system or “nanny” now created can monitor the embryos in unprecedented detail, as it moves up and down the line around the clock, the research paper says. AI technology helps the machine detect the smallest signs of change on the embryos and fine-tune the carbon dioxide, nutrition and environmental inputs.
The system can even rank the embryos by health and development potential. When an embryo develops a major defect or dies, the machine would alert a technician to remove it from the womblike receptacle. Current international laws prohibit experimental studies on human embryos beyond two weeks of development. However, research on the later stages is important because “there are still many unsolved mysteries about the physiology of typical human embryonic development”, Sun and his colleagues say in their paper.
The technology would “not only help further understand the origin of life and embryonic development of humans, but also provide a theoretical basis for solving birth defects and other major reproductive health problems”, they add. www.trunews.com
(Photo : Pixabay)
Artificial intelligence is a technology that helps a machine detect the tiniest indications of change on the embryos and modify the nutrition, carbon dioxide and environmental inputs.
The Joint European Torus tokamak near Oxford, UK, is a test bed for the world’s largest fusion experiment, ITER, in France.
Credit: Christopher Roux (CEA-IRFM)/EUROfusion (CC BY 4.0)
A 24-year-old nuclear-fusion record has crumbled. Scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, announced on 9 February that they had generated the highest-ever sustained energy from fusing together atoms, more than doubling their own record from experiments performed in 1997.
“These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, who leads the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), where JET is based, in a statement. JET is owned by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, but it’s scientific operations are run by a European collaboration called EUROfusion.
If researchers can harness nuclear fusion — the process that powers the Sun — it promises to provide a near-limitless source of clean energy. But so far no experiment has generated more energy out than it puts in. JET’s results do not change that, but they suggest that a follow-up fusion reactor project that uses the same technology and fuel mix — the ambitious US$22-billion ITER, scheduled to begin fusion experiments in 2025 — should eventually be able to achieve this goal.
“JET really achieved what was predicted. The same modelling now says ITER will work,” says fusion physicist Josefine Proll at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, who was not involved in JET’s research. “It’s a really, really good sign and I’m excited.”
Two decades’ work
The experiments — the culmination of almost two decades’ work — are important for helping scientists to predict how ITER will behave and will guide its operating settings, says Anne White, a plasma physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who works on tokamaks, reactors like JET that have a doughnut shape. “I am sure I am not alone in the fusion community in wanting to extend very hearty congratulations to the JET Team.”
JET and ITER use magnetic fields to confine plasma, a superheated gas of hydrogen isotopes, in the tokamak. Under heat and pressure, the hydrogen isotopes fuse into helium, releasing energy as neutrons.
To break the energy record, JET used a tritium fuel mix, the same one that will power ITER, which is being built in southern France. Tritium is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen that, when fusing with deuterium, produces many more neutrons than do deuterium reactions alone. That ramps up the energy output, but using this fuel required JET to undergo more than two years of renovation to prepare the machine for the onslaught. Tritium was last used by a tokamak fusion experiment when JET set the previous fusion energy record in 1997.
JET contained two types of heavy hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, in fusion experiments performed last year.
Credit: EUROfusion consortium
In an experiment on 21 December 2021, JET’s tokamak produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion ‘pulse’ of five seconds, more than double the 21.7 megajoules released in 1997 over around four seconds. Although the 1997 experiment still retains the record for ‘peak power’, it was over a fraction of a second and its average power then was less than half that of today, says Fernanda Rimini, a plasma scientist at the CCFE who oversaw the latest experimental campaign. The improvement took 20 years of experimental optimization, as well as hardware upgrades that included replacing the tokamak’s inner wall to waste less fuel, she says.
Power ratio
Producing the energy over a number of seconds is essential for understanding the heating, cooling and movement happening inside the plasma that will be crucial to run ITER, says Rimini.
Five seconds “is a big deal”, adds Proll, who works on an alternative fusion-reactor design called a stellarator. “It is really, really impressive.”
Last year, the US Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility set a different fusion record — it used laser technology to produce the highest fusion power output relative to power in, a value called Q. The facility produced a Q of 0.7, where 1 would be breakeven — a landmark for laser fusion that beat JET’s 1997 record. But the event was short lived, producing just 1.9 megajoules over less than 4 billionths of a second.
JET’s latest experiment sustained a Q value of 0.33 for five seconds, says Rimini. At one-tenth of the volume, JET is a scaled-down version of ITER — a bathtub compared to a swimming pool, says Proll, and because it loses heat more easily it was never expected to hit breakeven. If engineers applied the same conditions and physics approach to ITER, she says, it would probably reach its goal of a Q of 10, producing ten times the energy put in.
Fusion researchers are far from having all the answers. A remaining challenge, for example, is dealing with the heat created in the exhaust region of the ITER reactor, which will increase in area compared with JET, but not proportionally with the surge in power it will have to deal with. Research is under way to work out which design would best withstand the heat, but they’re not there yet, says Proll.
The record-breaking run happened on the last day of a five-month campaign from which Rimini says scientists gleaned a wealth of information that they will analyse over the coming years. The final experiment pushed the device to its “absolute maximum”, adds Rimini, who witnessed the record-breaking test in real-time. “We didn’t jump up and down and hug each other — we were at 2 metres distance — but it was very exciting.”
The UK-based Joint European Torus (JET) lab smashed its own 25-year-old record, producing 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds, roughly the equivalent of 30 pounds of TNT.
And thanks to a camera mounted inside the reactor, now we get to watch an incredible display of glowing plasma whipping around the interior of the donut-shaped chamber.
Hot in Herre
Conditions inside the reactor are extreme to say the least, with temperatures reaching in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius, ten times the core of the Sun. The plasma glow is created by isotopes of deuterium and tritium fusing together to form helium, essentially the same process that powers stars like our Sun.
The goal of achieving fusion — a virtually limitless supply of truly green and safe energy — is likely still many years out. The reaction may have lasted for a record five seconds, but the amount of energy needed to get the reaction going still far exceeds the amount that was gained.
But that doesn’t mean this week’s breakthrough wasn’t a major step towards that goal.
“It is really, really impressive,” fusion physicist Josefine Proll at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the latest demo, told Nature, adding that five seconds is a “big deal.”
“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.” ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley
The opening paragraph of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ introduces the Central London Hatchery where fetuses are engineered and nurtured in artificial wombs. Published in 1932, the fictional dystopian world has crept slowly towards reality. This week, it took a big leap with the announcement that scientists in China have developed an artificial womb to contain a fetus and an AI robotic nanny to monitor and care for it. How did that novel end?
Is this the new nursery?
“The in vitro embryo culture online monitoring system developed in this paper can track and record the morphological characteristics of the development process without affecting the embryo development, and provide a basis for the evaluation of embryo development and the optimization of the in vitro culture system.”
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports on the release of a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering by from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology touting the development of an artificial womb-and-nanny combo they claim is already caring for mouse fetuses in their lab. The “long-term embryo culture device” sounds like something out of an old horror movie – a system of clear fluid containers with controllers and oxygen tanks underneath a magnifier which allows the AI nanny and the researchers to watch the embryo grow. (See a drawing here.)
Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
The technology could eliminate the need for a woman to carry her baby, allowing the fetus to grow more safely and efficiently outside her body, say researchers behind project.
Photo: Shutterstock
The AI nanny collects data and, according to India Times, can even rank the embryos on overall health and potential. Yes, that sounds like it’s right out of ‘Brave New World’.
“(This technology will) not only help further understand the origin of life and embryonic development of humans, but also provide a theoretical basis for solving birth defects and other major reproductive health problems.”
All of this comes from a country with a drastically declining birth rate that hasn’t responded to the end to limits on the number of children a couple can have. this is also a country which has banned surrogate mothers of the human kind. It’s also a country which ignores the laws and ethical agreements of other countries which limit research on human embryos to 14 days before they are destroyed.
Do you need some Soma (the happiness-producing drug of ‘Brave New World’)? Is this the beginning of a real brave new world of artificially ‘hatched’ babies? Are there plans for childhood indoctrination programs, well-defined castes based on intelligence and physical abilities, and training programs specifically designed for each? Does it sound dystopian anymore?
Is this the new day care center?
Think about the trauma being wrought upon many people who send their DNA to be tested and find they were not raised by their real parents/sperm-and-egg-donors, or that their father was a serial sperm donor or their birth mother was a surrogate. Now imagine that person being the product of a “long-term embryo culture device.” If it works, will these children become the norm and the rest become the “savages”?
How did ‘Brave New World’ end?
“The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; the suddenly remembered – everything. “Oh, my God, my God!” He covered his eyes with his hands.”
In a major scientific step forward, scientists were able to regrow the amputated leg of a frog. With a mixture of different drugs, scientists in the United States triggered the regrowth of a leg in a species of African clawed frog named Xenopus laevis. This was a very important step forward as they said that it is a “step closer to the goal of regenerative medicine.”
The team of experts, which were based at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and Tufts University, added a mixture of five drugs to the amputated area of the frog’s leg and left it there for 24 hours. Amazingly, after 18 months, the newly regrown leg was nearly completely functional. In fact, the frog was able to swim in the water and even reacted to being touched. Additionally, several of its toes regrew, but they weren’t webbed.
(Not the frog mentioned in this article.)
Since the limb grew back in months, it may indicate that frogs and possibly other animals have regenerative capabilities that lie dormant but can be awakened with treatments. “I think the way to really achieve regenerative medicine is to exploit the collective intelligence of the body’s cells. They already know how to build all of these organs. They did it during embryonic development. All that information is still there,” explained Mike Levin who is a Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. “For me, the goal is to identify triggers, very simple kinds of stimuli, that will kick-start the cells and convince them to build whatever it is that you want them to build.”
James Monaghan, who is an associate professor in the department of biology at Northeastern University, described the results as being “impressive” and “exciting”. “Xenopus frogs are somewhere in between a salamander that regrows a limb nearly perfectly and a mammal that generates a scar after amputation. Adult Xenopus frogs regenerate a spike after amputation, but the spike lacks any pattern like a limb,” he explained, adding, “This study is significant because it shows that patterning, albeit not perfect, can be induced in a limb that typically regenerates only a spike.” (Pictures of the frog’s regrowth process of its leg can be seen here.)
As for what this means for humans regrowing their limbs, Monaghan stated, “An immediate translation of this strategy to humans is unlikely because a regenerative spike does not occur in humans as it does in Xenopus frogs. Yet, this work is exciting because it shows that endogenous regenerative processes can be enhanced by a short application of a drug cocktail.”
(Not the frog mentioned in this article.)
It is, however, an important step forward in scientists hopefully eventually being able to regrow human limbs. “Will we one day be able to regenerate a human digit or even a limb? Probably, but how long we need to wait is impossible to predict,” noted Ashley Seifert who is an associate professor of biology at the University of Kentucky who studies animal regeneration but wasn’t involved with the study.
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Will humans be able to grow lost limbs back? Scientists regrow a frog's lost leg using a five-drug cocktail - and want to test the technique on mammals next
Will humans be able to grow lost limbs back? Scientists regrow a frog's lost leg using a five-drug cocktail - and want to test the technique on mammals next
Scientists performed growth experiments on African clawed frogs missing limbs
They used a five-drug cocktail applied in a silicone wearable attached to wounds
Over the course of 18 months, frogs had 'almost fully functional' limbs restored
Method marks a milestone in the ultimate goal of limb regeneration for humans
Scientists have regrown missing frog legs using a five-drug cocktail – and they aim to test their technique on mammals next.
On adult frogs, which are naturally unable to regenerate limbs, the team triggered leg regrowth using the drugs, applied in a silicone wearable attached to wounds.
Over the course of 18 months, the frogs had 'almost fully functional' limbs restored, including boneless toes, which they used to help them swim.
The US academics hope their method could bring the field a step closer to the goal of limb regeneration for humans.
Currently, regaining function through natural regeneration is out of reach for millions of patients who have lost limbs, either due to trauma, diabetes or other reasons.
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Scientists have regrown missing frog legs using a five-drug cocktail – and they aim to test their technique on mammals next. Pictured: an African clawed frog in the process of regenerating its lost right rear leg
On adult frogs, which are naturally unable to regenerate limbs, the US team were able to trigger leg regrowth usingthe five-drug cocktail applied in a silicone wearable called a BioDome (pictured)
Over the course of 18 months, the frogs had 'almost fully functional' limbs restored, including boneless toes, which they used to help them swim
The work has been conducted by experts at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and Harvard University's Wyss Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.
'It's exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb,' said study author Nirosha Murugan, research affiliate at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University.
'The fact that it required only a brief exposure to the drugs to set in motion a months-long regeneration process suggests that frogs and perhaps other animals may have dormant regenerative capabilities that can be triggered into action.'
The team performed their 'regenerative process' on African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) that were missing limbs.
Frog wounds were enclosed in a silicone cap, called a BioDome, containing a silk protein gel loaded with the five-drug cocktail.
The dome sealed in the solution over the stump for just 24 hours, setting in motion an 18-month period of regrowth to restore a functional leg.
Researchers performed their experiments on the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) . On adult frogs, which are naturally unable to regenerate limbs, the team were able to trigger regrowth of a lost leg using a five-drug cocktail applied in a silicone wearable bioreactor dome that seals in the elixir over the stump for just 24 hours. That brief treatment sets in motion an 18-month period of regrowth that restores a functional leg
HOW THE BIODOME WORKS
Animals naturally capable of regeneration live mostly in an aquatic environment.
The first stage of growth after loss of a limb is the formation of a mass of stem cells at the end of the stump called a blastema, which is used to gradually reconstruct the lost body part.
The wound is rapidly covered by skin cells within the first 24 hours after the injury, protecting the reconstructing tissue underneath.
'Mammals and other regenerating animals will usually have their injuries exposed to air or making contact with the ground, and they can take days to weeks to close up with scar tissue,' said David Kaplan at Tufts University.
'Using the BioDome cap in the first 24 hours helps mimic an amniotic-like environment which, along with the right drugs, allows the rebuilding process to proceed without the interference of scar tissue.'
Animals naturally capable of regeneration live mostly in water, so the BioDome helps mimic this amniotic-like environment for limb rebuilding to happen without the interference of scar tissue.
Each drug in the 'cocktail' fulfilled a different purpose, including tamping down inflammation, inhibiting the production of collagen which would lead to scarring, and encouraging the new growth of nerve fibres, blood vessels and muscle.
The new limbs had a natural limb's bone structure, a richer complement of internal tissues (including neurons) and several 'toes' that grew from the end of the limb, although these were without the support of underlying bone.
The regrown limb moved and responded to stimuli such as a touch, and the frogs were able to make use of it for swimming through water, moving much like a normal frog would.
Many creatures have the capability of full regeneration of at least some limbs, including salamanders, starfish, crabs and lizards.
Flatworms can even be cut up into pieces, with each piece reconstructing an entire organism.
Humans are capable of closing wounds with new tissue growth, and our livers have a remarkable, almost flatworm-like capability of regenerating to full size after a 50 per cent loss.
But loss of a large and structurally complex limb – an arm or leg – cannot be restored by any natural process of regeneration in humans or mammals.
The new limbs had a natural limb's bone structure, a richer complement of internal tissues (including neurons) and several 'toes' that grew from the end of the limb, although these were without the support of underlying bone. Pictured: one of the frogs begins to regenerate
Using the BioDome cap (pictured) in the first 24 hours helps mimic an amniotic-like environment
Instead, our bodies cover major injuries with an featureless mass of scar tissue, protecting it from further blood loss and infection and preventing further growth.
Previous work by the Tufts team showed a significant degree of limb growth triggered by a single drug, progesterone, with the BioDome.
However, the resulting limb grew as a spike and was far from the more normally shaped, functional limb achieved in the current study.
The team want to now regrow frog limbs that are even more functionally complete – with normal digits, webbing and more detailed skeletal and muscular features – before moving to mammals.
'It's exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb,' said study author Nirosha Murugan, research affiliate at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. Pictured: touch tests were used to assess the feeling in the frogs' new legs
HUMANS HAVE THE 'UNTAPPED' ABILITY TO REGENERATE BODY PARTS JUST LIKE SALAMANDERS, SCIENTISTS CLAIM
Like salamanders, humans have an 'untapped' ability to regenerate parts of their body such as a lost limb, according to researchers.
The axolotl, a Mexican salamander all but extinct in the wild, is a 'champion of regeneration' able to recreate almost any body part, including the brain.
Studying this unusual amphibian helped experts from MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, to conclude humans have an 'untapped' ability to regenerate.
They focused on understanding why the axolotl doesn't form a scar - or, why it doesn't respond to injury in the same way that the mouse and other mammals do.
They found that immune cells called macrophages promoted the growth of tissue cells in the salamander, but produced scarring in the mouse.
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