In major international tests, the physics-defying EmDrive has failed to produce the amount of thrust proponents were expecting. In fact, in one test at Germany’s Dresden University, it didn’t produce any thrust at all.
When I first saw this video I thought the Mars parts were the usual ‘artist’s conception’ because they were in color and so clear.
But, no: “during landing, multiple cameras were recording the event, and this video is a combination of these. No audio was recorded, so you’re hearing a feed from JPL mission control.”
Scientists developing a compact version of a nuclear fusion reactor have shown in a series of research papers that it should work, renewing hopes that the long-elusive goal of mimicking the way the sun produces energy might be achieved and eventually contribute to the fight against climate change.
Construction of a reactor, called Sparc, which is being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is expected to begin next spring and take three or four years, the researchers and company officials said.
Although many significant challenges remain, the company said construction would be followed by testing and, if successful, building of a power plant that could use fusion energy to generate electricity, beginning in the next decade.
Barring something strange on or after Super Tuesday, I plan to vote for Warren in the upcoming Florida primary. In primaries you vote your heart, in the general election you vote you head. Warren is the candidate whose speeches — and whose policies — inspire. I think she’d be a terrific Chief Executive. Sanders has virtues, and I’m grateful that he moved the Overton Window. I’m sure he’d be infinitely better than Trump, but I have some pretty big doubts as to how effective he’d be as an executive.
That said, the only ‘Democrats’ running who would really seriously challenge my ability to fill in the oval are Gabbard and Bloomberg. I’m pretty practiced at holding my nose when I vote in a general election.
In a discussion of the (still totally theoretical) Alcubierre Warp Drive, the author notes that modern estimates of the energy needed to create a space-time bubble are down from the clearly infeasible “energy mass equivalent to the entire Universe.”
However, it goes on to note, the current estimate of the energy equivalent of “a Jupiter-mass amount of exotic matter is still prohibitively large.”
Don’t plan to book your ticket for Alpha Centauri any time soon.