Individual telescope of the Square Kilometre Array can also be used to study cosmic background radiation

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is set to become the largest radio telescope on Earth. Scientists of Bielefeld University and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) with international partners have now examined the SKA-MPG telescope—a prototype for the part of the SKA that receives signals in the mid-frequency range. The study, published today (24 July) in the journal Monthly…

Elon Musk Promises Longer, Curved Tunnel For Future Hyperloop Contests

Shortly after the 2019 Hyperloop Pod competition ended, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that next year’s Hyperloop competition will be held in a six mile curved vacuum tunnel. Previously, the competition was held in a straight three-quarters of a mile test tunnel which is located at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Engadget reports: The Hyperloop competition is a student engineering challenge…

Celo Launches Decentralized Open Source Financial Services Prototype

Forbes notes that other financial transaction platforms hope to benefit from Facebook’s struggles in launching its Libra cryptocurrency — including Celo. The key value proposition of the assets running on top of the [Celo] platform is that they are immune to the wide swings in volatility that have plagued leading crypto assets in recent years. Many are designed to mirror the…

To Foil Hackers, ‘Morpheus’ Chip Can Change Its Code In the Blink of An Eye

Todd Austin, a professor at the University of Michigan, is working on an approach known as Morpheus that aims to frustrate hackers trying to gain control of microchips by presenting them with a rapidly changing target. At a conference in Detroit this week organized by the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Austin described how the prototype Morpheus…

Miniature gravitational-wave detector to be built at Northwestern

A team of physicists and astronomers from Northwestern University is poised to lead gravitational-wave astronomy into its next evolution. The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded $1 million, which will be used to develop a prototype for a new kind of gravitational-wave detector that is small enough to fit on a tabletop and powerful enough to detect cosmic events that existing…

Toyota Testing Improved Solar Roof For Electric Cars That Can Charge While Driving

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Toyota is testing a new and improved version of the solar power cells it previously launched on the Japan-exclusive Prius PHV, in a pilot along with partners Sharp and Japanese national research organization NEDO. This demo car’s prototype cells can convert solar energy at 34% and up, which is much better than the…

Lightyear One Debuts As the First Long-Range Solar-Powered Electric Car

The new Lightyear One is a prototype electric car from a Netherlands startup that gets all it needs to run from the sun. It features a sleek, driver-friendly design and also boasts a range of 450 miles on a single charge. TechCrunch reports: The startup says that it has already sold “over a hundred vehicles” even though this isn’t yet ready…

edX, ASU and MIT Announce Innovative Stackable Online Master of Science in Supply Chain Management

Collaboration creates world’s first stacked Master’s degree on edX.org from two top-ranked universities in the field Today, edX.org, the trusted platform for learning, Arizona State University (ASU), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced the launch of an online Master’s degree program in Supply Chain Management. This unique credit pathway between MIT and ASU takes a MicroMasters® program from one…

Secretive Magic Leap Says Ex-Engineer Copied Headset For China

Magic Leap, a secretive U.S. startup that makes a $2,295 augmented-reality headset, filed a lawsuit Monday accusing one of its former engineers of stealing its technology to create his own AR device for China. Bloomberg reports: In a lawsuit filed Monday, Magic Leap alleges that Chi Xu, who left in 2016, exploited its confidential information to “quickly develop a prototype of…

Scientists Use Sound To See Around Corners

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Spies may soon have another tool to carry out their shadowy missions: a new device that uses sound to “see” around corners. Previously, researchers developed gadgets that bounced light waves around corners to catch reflections and see things out of the line of sight. To see whether they could do something similar with sound,…