Lifeboat Foundation

After a massive explosion puts everything at risk, workers at Kodiak Island’s spaceport prepare to launch a new rocket into orbit.

IS CHINA’S SPACE LASER FOR REAL? IT’S NOT A DEATH STAR SUPER LASER. IT’S A SPACE BROOM.

Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future.

“Within five years, I have no doubt there will be robots in every Army formation.”

From the spears hurled by Romans to the missiles launched by fighter pilots, the weapons humans use to kill each other have always been subject to improvement. Militaries seek to make each one ever-more lethal and, in doing so, better protect the soldier who wields it. But in the next evolution of combat, the U.S. Army is heading down a path that may lead humans off the battlefield entirely.

Over the next few years, the Pentagon is poised to spend almost $1 billion for a range of robots designed to complement combat troops. Beyond scouting and explosives disposal, these new machines will sniff out hazardous chemicals or other agents, perform complex reconnaissance and even carry a soldier’s gear.

Continue reading “The U.S. Army Is Turning to Robot Soldiers” »

A lava flow on Kilauea was moving at the speed of 300 yards per hour on Saturday.

Are short codes for locations, for places that don’t have their own street address.

Left: Conventional composite battery design, with 2D stacked anode and cathode (black and red materials). Right: New 3D nanohybrid lithium-ion battery design, with multiple anodes and cathodes nanometers apart for high-speed charging. (credit: Cornell University)

Cornell University engineers have designed a revolutionary 3D lithium-ion battery that could be charged in just seconds.

In a conventional battery, the battery’s anode and cathode (the two sides of a battery connection) are stacked in separate columns (the black and red columns in the left illustration above). For the new design, the engineers instead used thousands of nanoscale (ultra-tiny) anodes and cathodes (shown in the illustration on the right above).

Continue reading “Revolutionary 3D nanohybrid lithium-ion battery could allow for charging in just seconds” »

Google says it expects to reach an important milestone for quantum computing this year. Not so fast, says Alibaba.

Why do artificial intelligent algorithms sound like a human? Why do AI robots look human? This article looks at why AI algorithms and robots are created to look and sound like a human.