PpigScience: news

Falcon Heavy powering into space(Credit: SpaceX)

A day after SpaceX's Falcon Heavy blasted into space, the private spacefaring company has posted some spectacular images of the launch as well as updating the status of the Tesla Roadster that acted as ballast payload. In a Twitter post, CEO and Founder Elon Musk confirmed that the second stage of what is now the world's most powerful rocket fired successfully, sending the car and its dummy driver into an orbit that will take it well into the Asteroid Belt.

On February 6 at 3:45 pm EST, the first Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida on a demonstration mission. Due to the tremendous complexity of the new booster and the 50/50 chance that the mission might end in failure, no active satellite was carried in the nose cone of the vehicle. Instead, Mr Musk's own Tesla Roadster was used as ballast in a gesture that he characterized at a post-launch press conference as a ridiculous bit of fun.
At the conference, Musk confirmed that the core rocket that made up the center of the three-part first stage of the Heavy did not have enough propellant aboard to make a soft landing, and hit the water at about 300 mph (480 km/h). He went on to say that, if the onboard cameras survived, "There could be some pretty fun footage."

Musk went on to say that neither of the recovered side boosters that successfully landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida will be reused because they were not built for commercial missions. They are Block Four versions of the Falcon 9, and SpaceX will be using only Block Five versions from now on.
Also, during yesterday's conference, Musk expressed concern about the second stage of the rocket, which spent five hours parked in the Van Allen Belt before it restarted its Merlin engine for the third time to escape Earth's gravity. The Van Allen Belts are regions of intense radiation created by cosmic ray particles captured by the Earth's magnetic field. They act as a protective shield for the planet, but they can be a hazard for spacecraft that do not make a quick transition of the belts.
In this case, the second stage was not adversely affected, and fired as scheduled. It expended its propellant entirely, causing it to not only reach escape velocity, but also to reach an orbit that will circle the Sun at a distance between 91 million mi (150 million km) and 240 million mi (390 million km) – well into the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and almost as far out as the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres.

The Tesla Roadster atop the stage was the focus of media attention, especially after SapceX livestreamed video from the cameras mounted around it. The car has a spacesuited mannequin called Starman at the wheel and even includes a tiny Roadster with a tiny Starman.
"That will really confuse them" said Musk, referring to any future space travelers that might come across the Roadster.
Musk said that the spacesuit worn by Starman is a fully functional production model that took three years to design. He went on to say that the problem was to make a suit that works and looks good.
According to Musk, the battery aboard the Roadster was good for only 12 hours after launch, which is confirmed by the YouTube video that has switched from live feed to a four hour, 40 minute recording.
When asked about the price of the Falcon Heavy project, Musk said that it had estimated development costs of over US$500 million. The company is now transitioning from the Falcon 9 and Heavy as it concentrates more on developing the BFR, which he estimates will fly in three or four years.

Source: SpaceX, NewAtlas

Intel has unveiled its latest quantum computing test chip, named "Tangle Lake," at CES this week(Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

It turns out that combining a CPU and a GPU into one package isn't the most unconventional processor Intel had up its sleeve for CES 2018. Now the company has revealed a new quantum computer test chip containing 49 quantum bits (qubits), as well as a "neuromorphic" chip based on the function of the human brain.
Quantum computers could be the next big frontier in computing, with companies like Intel, IBM and Google racing to develop the technology. They have the potential to be far more powerful than traditional computers: where a normal bit of information is stored as either a 1 or a 0, a qubit takes advantage of the quirks of quantum physics to store data as 1, 0 or both at the same time. The exponential growth with each added qubit means that a system with 5 qubits is about the equivalent of 32 regular bits.

The progression of Intel's quantum computing chips, from left: 7 qubits, 17 qubits, and the latest with 49 qubits(Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

Intel's newest quantum computer test chip, named "Tangle Lake," boasts 49 qubits, which could theoretically make for a computer system that rivals our current best supercomputers – if it was ready for commercial use. That, it seems, is still a long way off, but milestones like these show just how fast the technology is advancing – a 17 qubit device was a big deal when IBM revealed it back in May last year.
IBM also still holds the record of most powerful quantum chip, with a 50 qubit model unveiled in November.
"In the quest to deliver a commercially viable quantum computing system, it's anyone's game," says Mike Mayberry, managing director of Intel Labs. "We expect it will be five to seven years before the industry gets to tackling engineering-scale problems, and it will likely require 1 million or more qubits to achieve commercial relevance."

Intel's Neuromorphic chip, codenamed Loihi, is modeled on the way the human brain processes and stores information(Credit: Intel Corporation)

The other Intel reveal was a Neuromorphic chip codenamed Loihi. Similar to a neural network, this system is modeled on the way the human brain processes and stores information. Instead of processing data in one component before sending it to another for storage, the chip performs both functions in the same spot. As the chip learns, it rewires its own connections to speed up the process and make for a more efficient system.
Loihi is due to be tested in research institutions in the first half of 2018, where it can tackle complex data sets. Intel engineers describe how Loihi works in the video below.

Source: Intel, NewAtlas