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Nuclear fusion

 Two of the key barriers to producing power from nuclear fusion have been overcome, in what scientists say is a major advance towards producing near-limitless clean energy.

Can one of you scientists unpack this for us?

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-fusion-plasma-clean-energy-b2534500.html

LLNL in the news

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/18/pentagon-speeding-work-first-new-nuclear-warhead-4/

Pentagon speeding up work on first new nuclear warhead in 40 years
Nuclear threats from China, Russia drive work on W93 for submarine-launched missiles by 2030s

The world’s largest digital astronomy camera ever

After two decades of work, engineers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are celebrating the completion of the world’s largest digital astronomy camera ever.

 https://thedebrief.org/does-slac-national-accelerator-laboratory-completes-worlds-largest-digital-astronomy-camera-ever/

Iran attack

 Iran launches “mass drone and missile attack” on Israel | BBC News

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CPyk69APB28

AI predictions

 This is an interesting article, Elon is saying AI will surpass the intelligence of the smartest individual humans, such as von Neumann I would imagine, by the end of next year. He also predicts that within 5 years the aggregate intelligence of machines considered as a whole, will surpass that of the human species. Furthermore, he predicts the expansion of AI will be limited by the electricity grid.

https://financialpost.com/financial-times/elon-musk-ai-overtake-human-intelligence-2025

Changing of the World Order.

2025 could be a big year for the US. It seems like many things are coming together to shake up the United States position in the world.
We have the election, war in Israel and the middle east,. There is no sign of the end of the war in Ukraine. Also the rise of AI is staring to really kick off. There are lots of signs of economics upticks however the reality is younger people simply will not be able live anything like the lifestyle that boomers, Gen Xs lived. The mass immigration is also going to change quality of life for young people. At some point something is simply going to break. Like it or not this will have implications for the labs.

Better quantum computer

 This is an interesting paper. A scientist performs a thought experiment claiming that Einstein's General Relativity (which describes gravity and spacetime curvature effects) in principle allows one to obtain a better quantum computer, exponentially faster than the ones which exist, and capable of efficient solution for new classes of problems:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02937

Obviously the scheme given here in the thought experiment may not be a practical one, but perhaps there are other means to achieve this, such as sending signals within the field of a large rotating mass such as the earth. Also, some related effects could even show up within classical physics to the extent it is the semiclassical limit of quantum behavior and these claims are true.