Lifeboat Foundation

The AI “arms race” commences. Silicon Valley is looking to capitalize on AI’s big moment, and every tech Goliath worth its salt is feverishly looking to churn out a new product to keep pace with ChatGPT’s 100 million users. Microsoft kicked things off nicely earlier this month with its integration of ChatGPT into Bing, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proclaiming, “The race starts today.” The OG tech giant says it wants to use the chatbot to “empower people to unlock the joy of discovery,” whatever that means. Not to be outdone, Google announced that it would be launching its own AI search integration, dubbed “Bard” (Google’s tool already made a mistake upon launch, costing the company a stock slump). In China, meanwhile, the tech giants Alibaba (basically the Chinese version of Amazon) and Baidu (Chinese Google) recently announced that they would also be pursuing their own respective AI tools.

Do the people actually want an AI “revolution”? It’s not totally clear but whether they want it or not, it’s pretty clear that the tech industry is going to give it to them. The robots are coming. Prep accordingly!

This device is a pulse magneto-fusion power system whose successors could produce electricity from the first commercial fusion reactor as early as 2028.

Creating a continuously controlled fusion reaction and not a thermonuclear bomb requires a confined environment where high densities and high temperatures can turn hydrogen gas into plasma. The luxury the Sun enjoys as a big ball of hydrogen comes from its enormous size and immense gravitational forces which serve to confine the ongoing nuclear fusion within it. But here on Earth, we need powerful magnets to replace the gravity confinement that the Sun provides. And it was thought until recently that our confinement efforts to create dense plasma faced a speed limit barrier that caused the field to break. We now know that what was called the Greenwald Limit no longer exists after experiments done at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. So now the conditions to generate positive energy yields from controlled fusion means we are getting close to the first fusion reactors.

Enter Helion Energy and Pulse Fusion

Continue reading “The First-to-Fusion Power Wars Are On” »

Creating the nuke bomb scene in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. In this video essay, I discuss how Christopher Nolan will film the atomic bomb scene in Oppenheimer, a biopic film on the real-life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer movie will change the movie landscape through its source material and also its filmmaking potential.

Oppenheimer is an upcoming American biographical film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It is based on American Prometheus, a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The film is a co-production between Syncopy Inc. and Atlas Entertainment; Nolan produced the film alongside Emma Thomas and Charles Roven. Cillian Murphy leads an ensemble cast as Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who is among those credited with being the “father of the atomic bomb” for his role in the Manhattan Project—the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. The film stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, David Dastmalchian, Olli Haaskivi, Jason Clarke, James D’Arcy, Michael Angarano, Guy Burnet, Danny Deferrari, Matthias Schweighöfer, Gary Oldman, Harrison Gilbertson, Emma Dumont, Devon Bostick, Trond Fausa, Christopher Denham, Josh Zuckerman, Josh Peck and Olivia Thirlby.

Continue reading “OPPENHEIMER — Creating The Nuke Scene” »

Polynesians exposed to fallout from France’s nuclear tests in the South Pacific have a slightly increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, a study suggested on Monday that used declassified military data for the first time.

France carried out 41 atmospheric nuclear weapon tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1975, exposing residents to fallout which has been a source of lasting friction between Paris and residents of the Pacific archipelago.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, used risk modeling to estimate that the nuclear tests were associated with between 0.6 percent and 7.7 percent of thyroid cancers in French Polynesia.

An aqueous lithium-ion battery would be safer than the ones being used in EVs today. So why aren’t car companies switching to it?

In the meantime, aqueous Li-ion technology is finding niche uses where limited resilience and longevity are less of an issue such as for the military.

Aqueous Li-ion Recyclability

Continue reading “Aqueos Lithium-Ion Batteries Won’t Catch on Fire — So Why Aren’t They the EV Gold Standard?” »

The following statement is utterly ludicrous. It is also true. The world’s most important advanced technology is nearly all produced in a single facility. What’s more, that facility is located in one of the most geopolitically fraught areas on earth—an area in which many analysts believe that war is inevitable within the decade.

The future of artificial intelligence hangs in the balance.

TSMC’s chip fabrication facilities, or “fabs”—the buildings where chips are physically built—sit on the western coast of Taiwan, a mere 110 miles from mainland China.

Continue reading “The Geopolitics Of AI Chips Will Define The Future Of AI” »

Helmeted and harnessed directly behind my pilot, I prepare for takeoff as the cockpit canopy shuts over us. It could be a scene from Top Gun: Maverick save for the fact that we’re not launching from an aircraft carrier but pulling out of pit lane at the Thermal Club’s track in a final prototype of the Czinger 21C hypercar.

The $2 million, carbon-fiber-bodied, tandem-seat Czinger 21C astounds with specs—1,250 hp, zero to 62 mph in 1.9 seconds, a claimed top speed of 253 mph—and recently blew away the McLaren P1’s production-car track record at Circuit of the Americas by six seconds. But more impressive—seriously—is the hybrid’s build process: The main structural components are designed by Czinger’s proprietary AI software and then 3D-printed. “These structures cannot be made more perfect for the requirements inputted,” says Kevin Czinger, who, along with his son Lukas, cofounded Los Angeles–based Czinger Vehicles. “You could have 1,000 engineers and they would never get to this solution.”

Welcome to Edition 5.36 of the Rocket Report! A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the space media were given a May 4 launch date for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. Alas, May the 4th, in 2023, wasn’t meant to be. In this week’s report, I explain why.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Electron to serve as a hypersonics test bed. Rocket Lab’s small booster will use essentially the same first and second stages for hypersonic test flights, but it will have a modified kick stage that will allow Electron to deploy payloads with a mass of up to 600 kg into trajectories five times greater than the speed of sound, Ars reports. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all developing hypersonic missiles to provide a fast-moving, maneuverable capability for striking targets quickly from thousands of kilometers away. Among the research problems the military likely wants to test is managing the extreme heat that hypersonic missiles are exposed to by traveling at high speeds in the atmosphere for most of their flight.

“First of all, the environment has changed, and the need for more resilient energy transport methods for military operations is at a premium,” explained Col. Paul “Promo” Calhoun to Popular Mechanics in an exclusive interview. American forces operate globally like the special operations units he resupplied as a C-17 cargo pilot, from outposts in the South China Sea to the Iraqi desert. Since there is no simple way to power them, many forces use their radars, anti-drone microwave weapons, lasers, or other energy-intensive equipment. And with each passing year, the severity of the issue increases.