• Science

    The Most Powerful Computer on Earth

    By Posted on 6.12.2008 15 Comments

    IBM has broken its own record of computer processing speed by pushing its newest supercomputer past the petaflop barrier. The Roadrunner, a massive machine occupying 6,000 square feet of space, this week achieved a peak of 1.026 petaflops, or just over one million billion calculations per second. Just ten years ago, the fastest supercomputer in the world would have taken 20 years to finish a problem the Roadrunner is capable of finishing in a week.

    6.12.2008 at 01:30pm - Comment by catupult3

    Its not built to play games though it probably could run crysis

  • Technology

    New Entrant in a Long-Running Black Hole Debate

    By Posted on 5.20.2008 9 Comments

    For years, some scientists contended that black holes swallow everything, including the information associated with the particles they suck up, and that this information can never be recovered. The problem with this idea - the chief proponent of which was the legendary Stephen Hawking - is that it violated a law of quantum mechanics.

    5.20.2008 at 12:13pm - Comment by catupult3

    one of the old theories explaining the information paradox is that it explains a black hole as being a p brane, which, when hit with a partical (represented as a closed string) hits the p brane, waves form as the energy is transfered. When the waves collapse, the information of that partical is realeased.

  • Science

    Burning Our Way Toward Fusion

    By Posted on 5.20.2008 12 Comments

    Every few years, a new claim of successful cold fusion shows up in the news. It's the mythical holy grail of energy production. Nuclear fusion—the mashing together of two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom with an accompanying release of energy—is currently only the province of stars, requiring tremendous pressure and heat to succeed. Cold fusion, which is still very much a fantasy, aims to do the same without the pressure and heat. While we continue to see false progress toward viable cold fusion, our goals in the realm of real fusion may have just become a little more realized.

    5.20.2008 at 12:06pm - Comment by catupult3

    although the laser fusion is efficient for dueterium-duterium or tridium-duterium, i believe that the tordoil magnetic bottle design is better for the lithium-protium reactions, which are cheaper in raw materials and does not realease neutrons.



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