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Latest simulation shows that the magnetic nozzles required for antimatter propulsion could be vastly more efficient than previously thought--and built with today's technologies

New experiments and supercomputer computations discovered that iron oxide undergoes a new kind of transition under deep Earth conditions. Iron oxide, FeO, is a component of the second most abundant mineral at Earth's lower mantle, ferropericlase. The finding, published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, could alter our understanding of deep Earth dynamics and the behavior of the protective magnetic field, which shields our planet from harmful cosmic rays.

In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers has demonstrated the viability of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans.

Was just about to post it... :) It seems after transferring the EEG signals of one person, converting it to bits and stimulating some brain activity using magnetic stimulation (TMS) the receiving person actually sees 'flashes of light' in their peripheral vision. So its using your vision sense to get the information across. Would it not be better to try to see if you can generate some kind of signal in the part of your brain that is connected to 'hearing'? Or would this be me thinking too naive?

"transferring the EEG signals of one person, converting it to bits and stimulating some brain activity using magnetic stimulation (TMS)" How is this "direct"?

Luckily I'm far away from Geneva, but this has to be said today, when the LHC starts! No, not tiny black holes will eat us (what a nonsense!), but the supernovae energy will let LHC explode!!! Pacome, I expect you to debunk this with gratest care!

Unfortunately, most information I have about the guy (Hans Lehner, a Swiss) is in German, his official homepage is http://www.rqm.ch/ According to EsoWatch he is the Swiss analogue to Dr. Mills and his Blacklight power. Lehner apparently founded a company, which should have produced a "Raum-Quanten-Motor" that -- of course -- produces energy out of nothing. The theory is based on spookey forces mediated by Lehneronen. 11 Million Swiss Franks (about 8 Million Euro) were lost when the company bankrupt. And the guy is selling new stocks on his homepage again... Lehner calls another crackpot named Oliver Crane Zweistein (from Einstein being "Onestone") and himself "Dreistein". Now he is looking for Mister or Misses Vierstein. Perhaps you should apply, good luck!!

i like the first line of their supernovae energy technology document "Dear potential investor:"...

Sante, this thing is made of a superconductor-metamaterial hybrid. Should be non-linear enough for you :)

The device consists of a layer of superconducter, complemented by several layers of metamaterial. And the authors are afraid of potential abuse of this cloak to smuggle forbidden objets on airplanes etc. Hillarious! Another example how good research makes itself completely ridiculous by means of absurd claims about their potential usage.

A good occasion to get the idea out of the idea pool...?

An exhaustive overview of all possible advanced rocket concepts, eg.. "As an example, consider a photon rocket with its launching mass, say, 1000 ton moving with a constant acceleration a =0.1 g=0.98 m/s2. The flux of photons with E γ=0.5 MeV needed to produce this acceleration is ~1027/s, which corresponds to the efflux power of 1014 W and the rate of annihilation events N'a~5×1026 s−1 [47]. This annihilation rate in ambiplasma l -l ann corresponds to the value of current ~108 A and linear density N ~2×1018 m−1 thus any hope for non-relativistic relative velocity of electrons and positrons in ambiplasma is groundless." And also, even if it would work, then one of the major issues is going to be heat dispersal: "For example, if the temperature of radiator is chosen T=1500 K, the emitting area should be not less than 1000 m2 for Pb=1 GW, not less than 1 km2 for Pb=1 TW, and ~100 km2 for Pb=100 TW, assuming ε=0.5 and δ=0.2. Lower temperature would require even larger radiator area to maintain the outer temperature of the engine section stable for a given thermal power of the reactor."

The problem is not achieving a high energy density, that we can already do with nuclear fission, the question however is how to confine or harness this power with relatively high efficiency, low waste heat and at not too crazy specific mass. I see magnetic confinement as a possibility, yet still decades away and also an all-or-nothing method as we cannot easily scale this up from a test experiment to a full-scale system. It might be possible to extract power from such a plasma, but definitely well below breakeven so an additional power supply is needed. The fission fragments circumvent these issues by a more brute force approach, thereby wasting a lot of energy for sure but at the end probably providing more ISP and thrust.

Sure. However, the annihilation based photon rocket concept unifies almost all relevant drawbacks if we speak about solar system scales, making itself obsolete...it is just an academic testcase.

The mantles of Earth and other rocky planets are rich in magnesium and oxygen. Due to its simplicity, the mineral magnesium oxide is a good model for studying the nature of planetary interiors. New work studied how magnesium oxide behaves under the extreme conditions deep within planets and found evidence that alters our understanding of planetary evolution.

for Sante to review - or believe in dark matter :-)

"Cast your name into deep space in style!"

Interesting approach, but with 99.9% probability they will miserably fail (at least in terms of their time schedule) simply because the technology is untested. I haven't read the refs (which miss by the way important works of E. Ahedo et al. on magnetic nozzle acceleration by ambipolar effects), but 1. using water means that you produce oxygen radicals which will erode chamber walls (ionisation efficiency is not 100% and experimental tests haven't been performed yet). 2. Electronic excitation (and radiation), rotational excitation, vibrational excitation, and dissociation are all processes which consume energy and reduce ionisation efficiency drastically. 3. It is a miniaturised Helicon thruster. Theoretical analysis probably does not consider near field effects. Far field models are probably not applicable due to the size of the thruster. I expect some surprises during thruster testing. In any case - good luck!

Apparently, there is only one qualification constraint regarding CubeSat propulsion which is related to volatile propellant. Since they use water as propellant and are also the owner of the CubeSat it is actually up to them how they qualify their thruster. Given that it is also possible to qualify the thruster within 18 months - since they define what "qualification" means.

Abstract: The "Magnificent Seven" (M7) are a group of radio-quiet Isolated Neutron Stars (INSs) discovered in the soft X-rays through their purely thermal surface emission. Owing to the large inferred magnetic fields ($B\approx 10^{13}$ G), radiation from these sources is expected to be substantially polarised, independently on the mechanism actually responsible for the thermal emission.

"Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the eyes and brains of 27 astronauts who have spent prolonged periods of time in space revealed optical abnormalities similar to those that can occur in intracranial hypertension of unknown cause, a potentially serious condition in which pressure builds within the skull."

See 1:13 in the video: could be useful for GTOC!

hyper cool!!!! but I am not convinced it will ever be able to overcome the intrinsic instabilities created by manipulating a magnetic field ..... you can actually see in the video the undamped vibrations in the motion ....

Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

:-)

Well, it's not yet confirmed... That error would be worse than the magnetic moment of the muon about 10 years ago. There, it was "at least" a conflict of conventions used in the computer codes!

In a statement based on an earlier press release from the OPERA collaboration, CERN said two possible "effects" may have influenced the anomalous measurements. One of them, due to a possible faulty connection between the fiber-optic cable bringing the GPS signals to OPERA and the detector's master clock, would have caused the experiment to underestimate the neutrinos' flight time, as described in the original story. The other effect concerns an oscillator, part of OPERA's particle detector that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show. CERN's statement says OPERA scientists are studying the "potential extent of these two effects" but doesn't indicate which source of error (if either) is likely to outweigh the other. However, Lucia Votano, director of the Gran Sasso laboratory, says the "main suspicion" focuses on the optical-fiber connection. She adds that OPERA researchers deserve credit for "having tenaciously followed this particular evidence via checks completed in the last few days." The two effects will get a new round of tests in May, when the two labs are scheduled to make velocity measurements with short-pulsed beams designed to give readings much more precise than scientists have achieved so far.

The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. The ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140121/ncomms4089/full/ncomms4089.html