Lifeboat Foundation

Following a monthslong battle over CEO Anne Wojcicki’s plans to https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000134100424000072/sc13da1.htm” rel=“noopener”>take 23andMe private, all seven independent members of its board https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...oard?_gl=1*1eip6nf*_ga*MTI2OTU3NjA4NC4xNzI2NjYwNzU5*_ga_G330GF3ZFF*MTcyNjY2MDc1OS4xLjEuMTcyNjY2MDgyNy4wLjAuMA…" rel="noopener">resigned en masse Tuesday.

The move is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin for the embattled company known for its mail-order DNA-testing kit. Since https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-04/2…on-merger” rel=“noopener”>going public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, 23andMe has never turned a profit. Its price on IPO day was $10; so far in 2024, it has yet to reach a $1 valuation. Following the resignation of all its independent directors Tuesday, the stock fell to its rock bottom: $0.30. (As of midday Wednesday, it’s back to $0.36.)

The board includes Sequoia Capital’s https://fortune.com/2024/07/25/seqouia-capital-roelof-botha-…e-nvidia/”>Roelof Botha as well as https://fortune.com/2023/02/28/why-youtube-betting-neal-moha…time-ceo/”>Neal Mohan, who took the helm as CEO of https://fortune.com/company/youtube/”>YouTube last year after Susan Wojcicki, Anne’s late sister, https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/a-personal-update-from-susan/” rel=“noopener”>stepped down.

Even those of us who aren’t physicists have an intuitive understanding of classical physics — we can predict what will happen when we throw a ball, use a salad spinner, or ease up on the gas pedal.

But atomic and subatomic particles don’t follow these ordinary rules of reality. “It turns out that at really small scales there are a different set of rules called quantum physics,” said Travis Nicholson. “These rules are bizarre and interesting.” (Think Schrodinger’s cat and Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”)

Nicholson is an assistant professor with joint appointments in Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The physicist in him likes doing experiments to advance our knowledge of quantum mechanics; the engineer in him likes figuring out how to harness that knowledge to build quantum computers that will be vastly more powerful than today’s computers.

The Dark Matter is built with incredibly complex technology. “Raxial Thrust” is a new term coined to describe the way the Dark Matter engine works. “Raxial” is a portmanteau of “radial” and “axial”. Typically, electric motors use one or the other. Radial motors have the magnetic coils of the electric motor perpendicular to the axis of its rotation. Axial motors are built with flux parallel to the rotation. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Radial are typically easier to build and maintain, but axial are smaller and can create more power by weight and volume. Koenigsegg has figured out a way to do both in one motor. Since they do not have to show us the inside of their Dark Matter, we don’t exactly understand how they’ve done this, but clearly, it is effective in generating power and torque. Despite this, the motor does not actually revolve at a very high rate. The website shows a max RPM of 8,500.

Koenigsegg makes use of its own battery packs. It doesn’t build the cells from the ground up, but it creates the system that actually delivers the power to the car. For the Gemera, it has created batteries that have dielectric oil (an insulator that will prevent unwanted electrical reactions) funneled directly into them as a cooling system. Most batteries on EVs now use airflow systems directly attached to the battery to cool them, but Koenigsegg has gone for a liquid approach instead. If it’s effective, it may become a more widespread approach to battery cooling technology.

MIT physicists and colleagues have created a new material with unusual superconducting and metallic properties, thanks to wavy layers of atoms only billionths of a meter thick that repeat themselves over and over to create a macroscopic sample that can be manipulated by hand. The large size of the sample makes it much easier to explore its quantum behavior, or interactions at the atomic scale that give rise to its properties.

A study led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory details how artificial intelligence researchers have created an AI model to help identify new alloys used as shielding for housing fusion applications components in a nuclear fusion reactor. The findings mark a major step towards improving nuclear fusion facilities.

The topological quantum computer still exists only in theory but, if possible, would be the most stable and powerful computing machine in the world. However, it requires a special type of qubit (quantum bit) that has yet to be realized and manipulated.

Analysis suggests that the two pioneers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr and John von Neumann, may have had more similar views than previously thought regarding the nature of quantum systems, and the classical apparatus used to measure them.

A new technique may make it easier for researchers to create real-time images of microscopic samples by considering the waves that propagate through sample surfaces as light interacts with them.

Quantum entanglement is a fascinating feature of quantum physics—the theory of the very small. If two particles are quantum-entangled, the state of one particle is tied to that of the other, no matter how far apart the particles are. This mind-bending phenomenon, which has no analog in classical physics, has been observed in a wide variety of systems and has found several important applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing.