Science news

Friday Fun: 2020′s Ig Nobel Awards

Drunk Earthworms, Frozen Poop Knives, And Alligators On Helium Win 2020′s Ig Nobel Awards https://www.iflscience.com/physics/drunk-earthworms-frozen-poop-knives-and-alligators-on-helium-win-2020s-ig-nobel-awards/ A project of the Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel awards initially mocked work that “Cannot or should not be replicated,” but has since expanded to cover any science that “First makes you laugh, then makes you think.” Like

Earth’s magnetic field is changing

It seems that Earth’s magnetic field is weakening and changing at the moment. The magnetic North is moving towards Siberia and South Atlantic Anomaly weakening the Earth’s magnetic field. There is some fear that the weakening is causing technical problems for satellites and could have other effects. Here are some links to news on this

Bidirectional optical device

Traditionally, an optical communication system would require two components at each end: transmitter and receiver. It has been known that LEDs can act as photo sensors, but they have not been very practical for optical communications applications. Researchers have now shown switching between LED and photodetector modes on new type component quickly enough for real-time

Quantum Supremacy Achieved ?

Quantum computers has been on news a lot lately. Scientists claim to have achieved “quantum supremacy”, a breakthrough that could change computing history. But has that breakthrough really happened or not? Google Confirms Achieving Quantum Supremacy https://gizmodo.com/google-confirms-achieving-quantum-supremacy-1839288099 Google scientists confirmed in a blog post that their quantum computer had needed just 200 seconds to solve

A Carbon Nanotube Microprocessor Mature Enough To Say Hello IEEE Spectrum – IEEE Spectrum

There has been for several years talking that nanotube transistors are coming to use and they can be better than traditional transistors made of silicon. I see this news as a major milestone. IEEE Spectrum writes: https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/processors/modern-microprocessor-built-using-carbon-nanotubes Engineers at MIT and Analog Devices have created the first fully-programmable 16-bit carbon nanotube microprocessor RV16X-NANO. It’s the