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The weak gravitational pull on a particle just half the mass of a grain of sand has been measured for the first time. This most precise measurement of its kind is a breakthrough towards the quantum realm and a potential Theory of Everything.

Of the universe's four fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces - gravity is the one we're most familiar with in everyday life, but it's actually the only one that we can't currently explain using the Standard Model of particle physics, our best system for describing the universe. Finding a way to jam it in there would achieve a Holy Grail of science - a Theory of Everything.

If a quantum theory of gravity exists, clues will be hiding on the tiniest scales, in gravitational interactions between atoms and particles. The problem is, those tiny interactions are washed out by the immense gravitational influence of the Earth. It would be like trying to record the sound of a bug's footsteps under an idling jet engine.

If you were trying to measure electromagnetism between particles, you can set up a box that blocks all outside interference, but you can't do that with gravity.

But now scientists have developed a new type of experiment that can cancel out the Earth's pull to reveal gravitational interactions between small objects. The trick is to levitate a magnetic particle in a superconducting trap, isolate it all from external electromagnetism, heat and vibration, and swing a 2.4-kg (5.3-lb) weight on a wheel past to see if the particle moves.

And sure enough, the team measured a weak gravitational pull of just 30 attonewtons (aN) acting on this particle at points that corresponded to when the larger weight was closest to it. Weighing just 0.43 milligrams, that makes it easily the smallest mass for which gravity has been measured so far. The previous record was 90 milligrams - about the mass of a ladybug.

Another recent study measured the difference in the passage of time, due to differences in gravity, across the small distance of just 1 mm.

This minuscule measurement, inches the world closer to the quantum realm. If gravity can be measured on objects that tiny, scientists might finally be able to start incorporating this strange force into our models of the universe and build a proper Theory of Everything.

"For a century, scientists have tried and failed to understand how gravity and quantum mechanics work together," said Tim Fuchs, lead author of the study. "Now we have successfully measured gravitational signals at a smallest mass ever recorded, it means we are one step closer to finally realizing how it works in tandem. From here we will start scaling the source down using this technique until we reach the quantum world on both sides.

By understanding quantum gravity, we could solve some of the mysteries of our universe - like how it began, what happens inside black holes, or uniting all forces into one big theory."

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Source: University of Southampton

There's a rift in reality - an invisible border that separates two utterly different realms. On one side lies our everyday world, where things obey commonsense rules: objects never occupy more than one place at a time, and they exist even when we're not looking at them. The other side is the dreamscape of quantum mechanics, where nothing is fixed, uncertainty reigns and a single atom or molecule can be in multiple places simultaneously, at least while no one is watching.

Does that mean reality has one set of laws for the macrocosm and another for the micro? Most physicists instinctively dislike the idea of a bifurcated universe. Sougato Bose, a theorist at University College London (UCL), certainly does.

"My view is that quantum mechanics hasn't been seen [at large scales] because we have not yet been able to isolate things well enough," he says, meaning that researchers haven't found a way to shield big objects from their environment, so their quantum properties are apparent. Like most physicists, Bose believes that quantum mechanics applies to all things great and small. He and three colleagues - two in the U.K.

and one in India - hope to put that view to a stringent test within the next year or two with an intriguing experiment that ultimately aims to determine whether or not large objects obey the strange rules of quantum theory.

The experiment, described in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, harks back to a conundrum vividly framed nearly a century ago by Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. What would happen, Schrödinger asked, to a cat trapped in a closed box with a vial of poison that has a 50-50 chance of shattering and killing the cat? According to quantum mechanics the cat is at once alive and dead, existing in both states until someone opens the box and looks inside.

That's because it's only when an observer makes a measurement of the system - opens the box and checks - that the two possibilities have to collapse into one, according to quantum theory. The story is meant to illustrate how applying these quantum rules to big things - basically, anything visible to the naked eye - leads to absurdities.

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So if quantum mechanics is true - and it has been a phenomenally successful theory for predicting the behavior of particles - why do we never see cats that are both dead and alive? Do the laws of quantum mechanics break down at a certain level? Some physicists see that as a possibility.

But most would argue that the apparent absence of quantum effects in our own experience of the world arises because the countless interactions of atoms with the surrounding environment blur the true nature of things. As a result we perceive a kind of dumbed-down, nonquantum version of reality.

If that's the case, then a carefully designed experiment that isolates an object from nearly everything in its environment should allow physicists to glimpse the actual quantum behavior of that object, even if it's relatively large. That's the goal of the experiment proposed by Bose, Debarshi Das, also of UCL, Hendrik Ulbricht of the University of Southampton in England and Dipankar Home of the Bose Institute in India. "There are two possible outcomes," Home says.

"One is that quantum mechanics is valid [at all scales. The other is that] there is a region where quantum mechanics does not hold."

Most of the hardware needed for the experiment is already in place and fits on a tabletop in Ulbricht's lab. (He's the lone experimentalist of the group; Home, Das and Bose are theorists.) The experiment will use lasers to suspend a single nanocrystal of silica - a microscopic glass bead - as it oscillates around the focal point of a small parabolic mirr...

Imagine something as tall as New York's Chrysler building, but spinning. China's Mingyang Smart Energy has announced plans for a colossal 22-megawatt .

Imagine something as tall as New York's Chrysler building, but spinning. China's Mingyang Smart Energy has announced plans for a colossal 22-megawatt offshore wind turbine, and standing in its presence will be an unprecedented human experience.

The feats of engineering in offshore wind are becoming almost comical in scale, for a simple reason: the amount of energy you can extract from a turbine depends mostly on its swept area. The bigger that swept circle gets, the more energy you can harvest - but also, the greater the bonus becomes for adding more length.

Put it this way: if your turbine has a 20-meter (85.6-ft) diameter, and you add one further meter (3.3 ft) to that diameter, you gain somewhere around 34 square meters (366 sq ft) of additional swept area. But if your turbine starts with a 50-m (164 ft) diameter, adding one extra meter of diameter brings in about 79 extra square meters (850 sq ft) of swept area, since that extra blade length is sweeping a bigger circle.

What's more, these huge offshore turbines are extremely expensive to install, and the economics of deployment and grid connection tend to work in favor of fewer, larger turbines than more, smaller ones.

Thus, the sheer size of these things is getting absolutely nutty. The H260-18MW turbine currently under construction by CSSC uses 128-m-long (420-ft) long blades for a ridiculous 260-m (853-ft) diameter and a 53,000-sq-m (570,490-sq-ft) swept area. That's 9.9 NFL football fields or 42.4 Olympic swimming pools when converted to standard journalistic units - ignoring the small area left unswept by its hub.

Wind turbines just keep getting bigger - the MingYang MySE 18.X-28X will rise out of the ocean higher than a 70-story buildingMingYang

MingYang's own typhoon-proof MYSE 18.X-28X, pictured above, will use 140-m (459-ft) blades for a swept area of 66,052 sq m (711,000 sq ft, 12.3 NFL fields, 52.8 Olympic swimming pools) - again, minus the hub area.

The new turbine proposed for 2025 by MingYang, according to Bloomberg, will have a peak output of 22 MW, and a rotor diameter over 310 m (1,017 ft), corresponding to a swept area of at least 75,477 sq m (812,425 sq ft, 14.1 NFL football fields, 60 olympic swimming pools), minus hub.

Add on a little clearance to make sure the blade tips stay out of the water, and you'll probably be looking at something taller than New York's 319-m (1,047-ft), 77-story Chrysler Tower, or the 324-m (1,063-ft) Eiffel Tower in Paris - but spinning. I don't have an imagination capable of picturing just how awe-inspiring a machine like this would be at close range.

Indeed, these will be some of the largest moving parts ever built. Can you think of anything else with visible moving parts this big? Nothing in the mining mega-machine category comes close, and while the 27-km (16.6-mile) circumference of the Large Hadron Collider holds the title of the world's largest machine overall, it's hidden underground, and particle acceleration isn't exactly a spectator sport.

So taking a boat ride past these mammoth offshore wind turbines will be pretty much an unprecedented human experience. It'll be breathtaking. Sign me up!

Source: Bloomberg

When British prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared in front of the hastily assembled press on September 20, the letter-crammed slogan on his lectern caused the country to squint: "Long-term decisions for a brighter future," it read. We now know, of course, there was little in the speech that followed .

Eliza Eddison

Contributor

Eliza Eddison is COO at FabricNano, a biocatalyst engineering company that enables the sustainable manufacture of products - including but not limited to industrial chemicals - at scale.

When British prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared in front of the hastily assembled press on September 20, the letter-crammed slogan on his lectern caused the country to squint: "Long-term decisions for a brighter future," it read.

We now know, of course, there was little in the speech that followed that brought hope. Certainly not concerning the technological fight for our future climate.

Not that long ago, the UK seemed a rather brighter beacon in the industrial transition toward reversing the global climate breakdown. The countrywide goals were laid out. COP26 at least offered a forum and a spotlight. London has made strides in establishing itself as a hub for green tech startups. On the narrow but viable path toward net zero, leaders were at least taking the right steps.

Then came the nadir of the last few weeks.

Last week, with the government's already infamous U-turn on its green pledges, the nation joined in a consternated chorus with global leaders to lament the prime minister's short-sighted choice. Sunak has pushed back the British net-zero transition timeline by at least five years.

The first and most galling concern is, obviously, the consequences for the future of our species on this planet. The next biggest issue, currently being voiced by leaders across industries and especially within the climate tech and climate finance sectors, is the message it sends out to those of us in the trenches actually trying to build technology to change the world and enable a sustainable future.

That message is loud and clear: The U.K. government isn't willing to be consistent when it comes to climate crisis response policy, which, aside from capital and the support of nascent tech markets, is one of the most critical things anyone in our sector can hope for.

For entrepreneurs, innovators and businesses to thrive and unlock the economic potential that comes from creating new industries, we need a consistent approach from the government.

I care about this because, as Americans who chose to build a biocatalyst engineering company here in the U.K., we're acutely aware of the impact such a reversal of policy has on every stage of our sector's existence. All major technological innovation ultimately comes from government support at the very beginning. We wouldn't have affordable solar panels, microchips, mobile phones or the internet without government funding, government subsidies, government encouragement and government infrastructure. You can't scale technology that is going to make a considerable impact without upfront capital to match.

In January of this year, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled a long-term vision to grow the economy, saying, "I want the world's tech entrepreneurs, life science innovators and clean energy companies to come to the U.K. because it offers the best possible place to make their vision happen." Unless his long-term vision was only meant to last until the end of the summer, for entrepreneurs, innovators and businesses to thrive and unlock the economic potential that comes from creating new industries, we need a consistent approach from the government.

We have enormous fiscal potential. Within the U.K. climate tech community, we are working to create high-paying jobs and value for investors across just about every asset class. And collectively - hell, individually - our solutions could genuinely change the world.

Of course, this is the common cause we should be united around. Our company is trying to mo...

On poiny https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/13/consistent-policy-is-key-to-unlocking-the-climate-tech-boom-but-the-uks-u-turn-isnt-helping/

Humans are facing an existential crisis in climate change. We are also facing a crisis of collective action. As a species, we have every reason to .

Humans are facing an existential crisis in climate change. We are also facing a crisis of collective action. As a species, we have every reason to slow the rise of global temperatures, but taking steps to cut carbon emissions is generally not in the short-term interest of individuals, companies, or countries. Where does that leave IT organizations?

IT systems all around the world consume ever-increasing amounts of electric power, making them a critical factor in increasing carbon emissions. Many people in the industry are acutely aware of IT's climate impact and want to see it reduced, but minimizing IT's carbon footprint will entail a cost that many small businesses and multinational corporations are reluctant to bear.

Curious about what might incentivize a shift to greener tech, I spoke to IT leaders who are pushing back on climate change. I found people working at every level of organizational leadership—from the top down to the bottom up—and pursuing a variety of strategies to reduce carbon consumption in company products and business models.

Data drives climate change—and solutions

When asked what drives IT's carbon emissions, most respondents pointed to data. In particular, the rising popularity of data lakes and the data centers that store them are a huge contributor to the problem. Given the primacy of data for modern businesses, companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint will have to make hard choices.

"Companies would have to stop collecting a lot of (poor) data and storing it," says Chrissy Kidd, SEO manager at Splunk, which helps users sort through massive machine-generated data sets. "They won't do this because they're married to the idea that they are 'data driven' organizations, when most of them are not. We're also living in a data ecosystem, where everything is based on collecting and storing data, even when only an estimated 10% of that data gets 'used' beyond simple storage. Until we have less data to store, seemingly forever, IT companies will continue to emit more carbon than not," she said.

The explosion of storage and its emissions in recent years was driven not only by data's usefulness (real or perceived), but by a fundamental shift in underlying economic factors. "In older models, storage was one of the most expensive components of a system, so we were very selective in what data was stored and how," says George Burns III. A senior consultant for cloud operations at SPR, a technology modernization firm, Burns notes that today, "the opposite is true, in that storage is often the least expensive component of a system, which has led many organizations to adopt a 'store everything forever' mentality."

The most straightforward way to reduce data center emissions is to power those data centers with clean energy. This can turn out to be a quick win for companies looking to burnish their green credentials. As the cost of renewables continues to drop, it is also becoming a relatively inexpensive fix. "Customers of corporate colocation data centers are increasingly seeking more sustainable energy supplies, which thanks to recent progress they will be able to access more and more," says Chris Pennington, director of energy and sustainability at Iron Mountain. "Operators in our industry, Iron Mountain amongst them, have proven that renewables are a reliable and cost-effective energy source by activating innovative procurement solutions, and it is making clean energy more accessible to all."

Solving IT's data problem with data

A slew of companies are now trying to solve the data problem with data—that is, by using data analytics and other IT techniques to reduce the amount of stored data. For instance, Moogsoft, the developer of an AIOps incident management platform, uses machine learning algorithms to try to reduce the amount of data at rest and in motio...

Curious. I think we in streaming call this "load concentration" https://www.fastcompany.com/90875493/biomimicry-algorithms-cloud-computing-seagull-behavior?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Flocks of seagulls have one of the most ruthlessly efficient hunting methods in nature. Network designers could learn a lot from them. In the fabric of life, Mother Nature is a starkly efficient seamstress, able to weave together seemingly random strands of human, animal, and plant behavior into .

In the fabric of life, Mother Nature is a starkly efficient seamstress, able to weave together seemingly random strands of human, animal, and plant behavior into orderly patterns, loose threads forming a tight-knit tapestry that can withstand the eternal test of time. And as humankind has evolved into Renaissance beings seeking perfection in the disciplines of art and science, we’ve returned to our roots, extracting inspiration from nature’s designs.

We have engineered materials that are sturdier than ever, modeled after the oozing networks of the humble slime mold. And locomotive robots, propelled by the squishing trudge motions of an earthworm. And symmetric algorithms, which mimic the way shapes like snowflakes and sunflowers bloom spontaneously.

Now, a team of researchers from the United Kingdom, China, and Austria are looking to use the habits of seagulls to build better cloud computing systems.

In a paper published in Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems, a journal from KeAi, which was founded in a partnership between Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media, the researchers argue that using a “seagull optimization algorithm”—a so-called meta-heuristic algorithm that mimics the hunting and migration behavior of seagulls—can make cloud computing more energy efficient, cutting its power consumption by 5.5% and lightening its network traffic by 70%.

Their study attacks the problem of connecting cloud computing’s virtual machines to physical ones, as near-infinite streams of data must all flow through physical supercomputers that process each workload. They often converge in sprawling edge-cloud data centers run by industry giants, which are strategically scattered across the globe, because being geographically close to internet consumers who are using the cloud lets the digital signals buzz back and forth at a faster rate. These data centers are huge energy gobblers. In 2017, they ate up 416 billion kilowatt-hours of power, or about 2% of the world’s total electricity cost.

However, the researchers say that the way seagulls behave when they’re on the hunt for food or prey is one of the most ruthlessly efficient examples of an entity zeroing in on its target, with minimal excess energy expenditure. They suggest using an algorithm that imitates the habits of food-hunting seagulls to determine where to place virtual machines—which, in cloud computing, are like nodes that route multiple data workflows to the same physical supercomputers—within a network of server communications.

The idea is to make the network’s traffic as efficient (and thus as light) as possible. So, if the supercomputers are like seagull food—hapless freshwater fish or shrimp that exist in limited numbers, and swim only in certain parts of the ocean—then the virtual machines are like the stalking birds of prey, eyeing their precious objective (which is a connection to a nearby physical machine), and mapping a path to it with the blistering urgency of a hungry carnivore.

Seagulls do this while avoiding collisions with other seagulls, and their migration flight path over time naturally gravitates toward that of the fittest bird among them. When they lock onto a target and dive in for the kill, they vary their angle and speed deftly, resulting in a sort of downward spiral—calculated by study authors as a formula of cosines—that can predictably describe a striking seagull at any given time, relative to other seagulls in the area.

It’s not the first time that the biological genius of seagulls has been noted. In 2019, a paper in Knowledge-Based Systems outlined how the seagull-optimization algorithm could mathematically model solutions for stronger const...

Flocks of seagulls have one of the most ruthlessly efficient hunting methods in nature. Network designers could learn a lot from them. In the fabric of life, Mother Nature is a starkly efficient seamstress, able to weave together seemingly random strands of human, animal, and plant behavior into .

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Heat reuse is touted as a way to make data centres sustainable and drivers of decarbonization. But it’s harder than it looks. Mark Bjornsgaard is .

Mark Bjornsgaard is getting used to the attention. “Ten days ago, I wasn’t,” says the founder of Deep Green, referring to the unprecedented publicity his firm achieved by installing one of its digital boilers to heat a swimming pool in Exmouth, Devon. Something about using the waste heat generated from servers – a resource that apparently few people knew existed – seemed to capture the imagination of the British public. Since then, Bjornsgaard has been inundated by requests from other swimming pools for more information about its digital boilers, as well as local government leaders eager to learn how these pint-sized data centres might be used in their own public heating projects.

“From a business point of view, it’s been absolutely amazing, because we are now walking into conversations which we didn’t think we’d have for a couple of years,” says Bjornsgaard. It’s also a sign of the times. Amid unprecedented fluctuations in energy insecurity thanks, in large part, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, anxiety about rising electricity prices is at an all-time high across Europe. As well as sparking a conversation about national reliance on natural gas, attention has drifted toward how energy might be saved or put to better use – not least in a cloud computing infrastructure that generates more carbon emissions than the aviation industry, thanks in part to its elaborate and power-hungry cooling systems.

All that electricity and heat energy could, critics argue, be put to much better use outside the data centre and for the benefit of society at large. Going by the law of physics that energy is never lost but merely changes form, it is conceivable that the many gigawatts of electricity used to power data centres could, if left uncooled, be converted into heat to warm thousands of homes and businesses. That potential has seen Norway and Germany pass laws mandating data centre operators have a plan – any plan – for heat reuse on their premises, while similar projects have seen the cloud warm greenhouses, fish farms, homes and offices. “And that’s good,” says Bjornsgaard, who professes a great belief in practical green energy solutions. When push comes to shove, he argues, “we can’t muck about for the next ten years with space lasers and cracking hydrogen and trying all these elaborate [projects] that we love to engineer.”

The mechanics of heat reuse

Servers get very hot, very quickly – so much so that your common variety rack would probably catch fire were it not artificially cooled. This inevitably compromises the overall electrical efficiency of the data centre, calculated using a ratio called Power Usage Effectiveness. The more power that can be used for computation over cooling, the better. Even with the most efficient cooling systems, however, the average PUE score for most data centres remained at an uncomfortably high 1.57 throughout 2021 – meaning as much as 40% of power running through these facilities was used for cooling.

Reusing waste heat would, in theory, drag those numbers down, make those data centres sustainable and contribute heat and warmth to local communities in the bargain. Such has been the case in Dublin, where AWS is participating in a community heating scheme, and in Stockholm, where one data centre operator has set the goal of using its waste heat energy to heat 10% of the city by 2035. The scale of these schemes, however, is also a reminder that many of these projects usually only come about through massive capital investment – not least because most of them reuse heat from air-cooled data centres using expensive heat pumps. An alternative lies in immersion cooling for edge high-performance compute units, wherein the server is surrounded by a liquid – usually water, or oil – and then wrapped in copper piping to build a heat exchanger.

This also describes Deep Gr...