What new materials are there?

Today's phys.org selections are to die for: a camera the size of a salt grain..a mobius strip microlaser for non-Euclidian photonics, nanofabrication by nanomolding..liquids molded by light..breaking the symmetry of sound waves allowing sound to be directed to a certain place-and more!
 
 
There was also a phys.org article on printing solid colors-and a microprinting breakthrough a week ago..Scott of up ship had a cosmic gear reduction...but with recent optics advances-that might get pantographed down into a tiny da Vinci robot waldo of some kind.
 
 
Hydrogen is absolutely useless as a fuel. You're better off using LNG fuel cells if you want to use them.
 
Follow-up on a previous post. BMW have revealed a colour-changing wrap. Advantages: obvious. Disadvantages: expensive, fragile, temperature-sensitive... and in most countries you have to give notice to authorities when you change the colour of your car.


 
and in most countries you have to give notice to authorities when you change the colour of your car.
?!?
OK, I'll admit I read that without verifying. If it is the case, imagine the police radio: 'In pursuit of a white BMW... wait, a black BMW, no, Red... Heliotrope... it's teal with orange spots... (sigh) in pursuit of a currently fuchsia... F*ck! PLAID! MacGregor tartan I think...'
 
That might have more us as toy or model paint. Federation vs Earth Empire. There was light up paint...and paint that changed color when hit with a laser...to replicate ST:TWOK hits IIRC. Phys.org has a bit on holograms for smart phone screens.
 
Hydrogen is absolutely useless as a fuel. You're better off using LNG fuel cells if you want to use them.
Is it? It may depend upon how you use it. The real advantage of hydrogen is that it's easily acquirable and very plentiful. From what I understand at the moment is the method of converting it to electricity can be somewhat cumbersome and the supply infrastructure is non existent in many countries. However the in-vehicle technology will improve as will the infrastructure. It just takes time. Of course the ultimate power pack is the fusion reactor and once the science and engineering is sorted with that, there will be a complete revolution in human energy applications. There's still some significant problems to solve.
 
NOT T-1000 and most likely limited to small scale or small components, but very elegant:

Well big machines are usually just a collection of small machines, so in the stores for 2024...
View attachment 670464
That's quite interesting and if it is combined with nano computing the options could be mind blowing. Add AI to the equation and then we probably have a dilemma in the making.
 
NOT T-1000 and most likely limited to small scale or small components, but very elegant:

Well big machines are usually just a collection of small machines, so in the stores for 2024...
View attachment 670464
That's quite interesting and if it is combined with nano computing the options could be mind blowing. Add AI to the equation and then we probably have a dilemma in the making.

I'm actually with Elon Musk on that one in that all but the most rudimentary AIs should be avoided if not banned.

It's just not sensible to create something that is more intelligent than you and whose motivations you don't understand.
 
Many of this new discoveries will write a new chapter for mankind or our last.
 
NOT T-1000 and most likely limited to small scale or small components, but very elegant:

Well big machines are usually just a collection of small machines, so in the stores for 2024...
View attachment 670464
That's quite interesting and if it is combined with nano computing the options could be mind blowing. Add AI to the equation and then we probably have a dilemma in the making.

I'm actually with Elon Musk on that one in that all but the most rudimentary AIs should be avoided if not banned.

It's just not sensible to create something that is more intelligent than you and whose motivations you don't understand.
I have considerable misgivings about AI too. IMHO there are significant ethical, moral, and legal issues that have to be discussed and finalised before it should be used, especially WRT military applications.
 

I'm actually with Elon Musk on that one in that all but the most rudimentary AIs should be avoided if not banned.

It's just not sensible to create something that is more intelligent than you and whose motivations you don't understand.
I have considerable misgivings about AI too. IMHO there are significant ethical, moral, and legal issues that have to be discussed and finalised before it should be used, especially WRT military applications.
Currently, if it's possible, someone somewhere will eventually try to do it. The institutions that exist today are simply not capable of dealing with it - consider nuclear proliferation or agreements on dealing with global warming. There has been some commentary calling for a cyber version of the Treaty of Wesphalia, which is credited with establishing the concept of national sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty). Could there be an agreement on human sovereignty? It's going to be one hell of a challenge to establish universal limits on AI and enforce them. Whether it should be done or not may well be the great ideological conflict of the remainder of the century.
 
Currently, if it's possible, someone somewhere will eventually try to do it.

Yep. It isn't sensible but some group will think they've thought of all the angles and do it anyway, probably with some elaborate system of constraints.
 
Hydrogen is absolutely useless as a fuel. You're better off using LNG fuel cells if you want to use them.
Is it? It may depend upon how you use it. The real advantage of hydrogen is that it's easily acquirable and very plentiful. From what I understand at the moment is the method of converting it to electricity can be somewhat cumbersome and the supply infrastructure is non existent in many countries. However the in-vehicle technology will improve as will the infrastructure. It just takes time. Of course the ultimate power pack is the fusion reactor and once the science and engineering is sorted with that, there will be a complete revolution in human energy applications. There's still some significant problems to solve.
It's absolutely horrid because it is stupid-hard to contain. If you mess up one tinny bit of the liquefication process, the entire batch is turned to its gaseous state with all the fun that it entails. Also, you have to utilize specialized pipes to move hydrogen, as it also makes metals brittle (and not because liquid hydrogen is stupid-cold). It is also impossible to store for extended periods, partially because it makes its own escape routes. Then there is the required volume. 1 ton of liquid hydrogen is roughly 14 cubic meters (to the point that the tabletop RPG Traveller uses it as a base measurement for the various ships), and if you're looking to have anything resembling protection (even if it's just micrometeor and radiation protection), this makes it impossible.

If you're using it as a propellant, then prepare to have the most horrid power-to-weight ratio even with NTRs or even hypothetical fusion rockets. The moment you have anything more than a scaffold, your fuel tanks, and your engines, the acceleration profile tanks to such levels that it's basically the equivalent of farting. That's why in the hyper-realistic space combat game Children of a Dead Earth, anything that has any amount of armor or weaponry uses either methane or decane propellant using high-end NTRs.

When you actually look at it all, you're better off using something like LNG than hydrogen.
 
Beamed power experiments using metamaterials as lenses/relays.



 
Good for starship toys. Phys.org had a blurb about a produce that can release enormous amounts of energy
 

I’m afraid I turn off when I see “stronger than steel” claims;- Steels have a wide strength range from 350Mpa largely useless (weaker than some aluminium alloys, which is preferred in most applications due to its lower cost) up to 3000+ Mpa, similar to glass hence almost useless due to brittleness. The vast majority of steel manufactured is in the range of 650-2500Mpa and has properties appropriately matched to specific applications.

“Stronger than steel” in polymers normally they’ve just squeaked the lower band of useless steel at a cost several (maybe many) times of that of aluminium alloys. Of course they don’t mention this.
 
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A lot of industries still rely on soft steel per simple coutume and habits. HSS are still out of the scope for many engineers that simply don't feel comfortable using it in their applications for the reasons mentioned above.
SO, IMOHO, "Steel" in that context should be understood as something b/w 300-400MPa.
 

I'm actually with Elon Musk on that one in that all but the most rudimentary AIs should be avoided if not banned.

It's just not sensible to create something that is more intelligent than you and whose motivations you don't understand.
I have considerable misgivings about AI too. IMHO there are significant ethical, moral, and legal issues that have to be discussed and finalised before it should be used, especially WRT military applications.
Currently, if it's possible, someone somewhere will eventually try to do it. The institutions that exist today are simply not capable of dealing with it - consider nuclear proliferation or agreements on dealing with global warming. There has been some commentary calling for a cyber version of the Treaty of Wesphalia, which is credited with establishing the concept of national sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty). Could there be an agreement on human sovereignty? It's going to be one hell of a challenge to establish universal limits on AI and enforce them. Whether it should be done or not may well be the great ideological conflict of the remainder of the century.
That wouldn't be the case, as AI development is a case of the infamous 'prisoner dilemma'. So it's full steam ahead on AI development and damn the consequences or your geopolitical enemies will get to it first.

Like how we're slowly developing into a sort of genetic arms race as biotech matures...
 
 

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