upyoars

upyoars OP t1_j7s62kc wrote

It’s also a full-flow staged combustion engine, the most complex but most efficient type of combustion engine possible. Meant for maximizing and optimizing efficiency to a ridiculous degree, squeezing every drop of juice possible. If it’s successful it would also be the first full flow stage combustion engine to ever be successfully operated and used in history.

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upyoars OP t1_j5b8pmj wrote

> Winds on Mars have around 99 percent less force compared to the winds of the same speed on Earth since Mars has a thinner atmosphere. Studies conducted on Martian winds were usually for landing or single assessments of mountainous ridges and they didn’t offer the full picture of the planet’s potential for wind energy, which can be different in different times of the day.

> Researchers made use of a global climate model originally designed for Earth, to look at wind movement on the red planet. They used detailed info about Mars such as precise landscape, heat, energy, dust levels, solar radiation levels etc. which were taken from maps generated by Mars Global Surveyor and Viking missions.

> Based on this info, they created a simulation to show the kind of wind speeds seen across the planet during the day, night and its seasons.

> Researchers saw that the wind energy was not just capable of complementing solar energy, especially during night and dust storms that block out sunlight, but even capable of completely replacing it in some areas. It showed the most potential around the Martian crater rims and the volcanic highlands.

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upyoars OP t1_j22c5z8 wrote

> Scientists have proposed another use for the world's largest gravitational wave observatory: scanning for the ripples in space-time left in the wake of gargantuan alien spaceships.

> Now, new calculations published Dec. 5 to the preprint database arXiv(opens in new tab) suggest that the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) can look beyond conventional sources for these space-time ripples. Colossal alien spacecraft traveling at high speeds, or pushed along by warp drives, would also produce the telltale vibrations.

> The LIGO detector spots gravitational waves from the tiny distortions they make in space-time as they pass through it. Made up of two intersecting L-shaped detectors — each with two 2.48-mile-long (4 kilometers) arms and two identical laser beams inside — the experiment is designed such that if a gravitational wave passes through Earth, the laser light in one arm of the detector will get compressed while the other expands, creating a tiny change in relative path lengths of the beams arriving at the detector.

> To be detectable by LIGO, an alien mothership would need to weigh roughly the same as Jupiter, travel at one-tenth the speed of light, and be within 326,000 light-years of Earth.

> The physicists have noted that advanced alien warp drives would create gravitational wave patterns that would be distinguishable from natural sources and that, if detected, these alien waves could even provide humans with clues about how to reverse engineer the technology.

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upyoars OP t1_j21z3sn wrote

> Quantum researchers at Ford have just published a new preprint study that modeled crucial electric vehicle (EV) battery materials using a quantum computer. While the results don’t reveal anything new about lithium-ion batteries, they demonstrate how more powerful quantum computers could be used to accurately simulate complex chemical reactions in the future.

> Developing materials using computers has a huge advantage: the researchers don’t have to perform every possible experiment physically which can be incredibly time consuming. Tools like AI and machine learning have been able to speed up the research process for developing novel materials, but quantum computing offers the potential to make it even faster. For EVs, finding better materials could lead to longer lasting, faster charging, more powerful batteries.

> Traditional computers use binary bits—which can be a zero or a one—to perform all their calculations. While they are capable of incredible things, there are some problems like highly accurate molecular modeling that they just don’t have the power to handle—and because of the kinds of calculations involved, possibly never will.

> Instead of regular bits, quantum computers use qubits that can be a zero, a one, or both at the same time. Qubits can also be entangled, rotated, and manipulated in other wild quantum ways to carry more information. This gives them the power to solve problems that are intractable with traditional computers—including accurately modeling molecular reactions. Plus, molecules are quantum by nature, and therefore map more accurately onto qubits, which are represented as waveforms.

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