Wonders of Science 2024, May

Now it seems strange, but just a decade after the bombing of Hiroshima, which showed all the "charms" of radiation, the world literally fell in love with atomic energy. The designers of the USSR and the United States enthusiastically came up with what other transport to put the nuclear reactor on

Literally just now I learned about an absolutely amazing device - a water computer. Lukyanov's hydraulic integrator - the world's first computing machine for solving partial differential equations - for half a century was the only means of computing related to a wide range of problems in mathematical physics

In the post-war years, people loved to dream about the future, and these fantasies were very daring. Moreover, they often tried to implement ambitious and unique projects that were supposed to be the first step towards a bright technological future

In fact, there are several similar structures in the world. Let's start with Solar Furnace in France, i.e. France.The Solar Furnace in France is designed to generate and concentrate the high temperatures required for various processes.- Salik

Can a sports car be a firefighter? A luxury convertible with a modified engine? This may seem incredible if it were not for accurate information to the contrary. Meet the Horch 853 Sport Cabriolet Brno-Komin by T. Lepil.The luxury Horch 853 was produced in 1937-40

The world's largest solar power plant Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station has been operating in the California Mojave Desert since 2014. Its design capacity is about 400 megawatts: this amount of energy will be enough for 140 thousand homes in California

When we hear the word "progress", we immediately imagine advanced technologies and production development.We chuckle condescendingly at the past, in which people poked like blind kittens, trying to achieve at least some success in their development

The unique truck in question was born back in 1949. Back then, there were still sharp memories of the harsh wartime, when transport workers had to carry out their tasks in the rear and at the front when there was a shortage of liquid fuel - gasoline

The Swiss company E-Mining from Heimberg, working with Empa, the University of Bern and NTB Interstaatlicke Hochschule fur Technik Buchs, took an old mining truck and equipped it with an all-electric transmission, making it the world's largest electric vehicle

When talking about great automobile inventors, one remarkable event is often forgotten. Namely, how in 1901 the world's first hybrid car appeared. Moreover, not from “anyone”, but from Ferdinand Porsche himself. There were still 30 years left before the Porsche design office appeared.Fer

Due to the threat of the coronavirus, the number of "masked people" has grown. Sberbank and VisionLabs (part of the bank's ecosystem) found out in their research whether medical masks can affect safety and facial recognition, especially in large cities

Judging by the expositions of car dealerships in recent years and the construction of more and more new battery factories, we can no longer get away from electric vehicles. However, this is not their first attempt to conquer the world. Why did the previous ones fail?

Anyone who is fond of cars can tell a lot about them: about "ordinary", simple machines, and about "more complicated" - with horizontally arranged cylinders, or air cooling, or about "exotic", for example, about rotary engines … But not many know about the strange "duplex" two-stroke engine of the Trojan Utility Car

The face recognition system is an innovative development that predicts a great future. For the correct operation of this system, several important components are required. Thus, one cannot do without a server that hosts the entire database and comparison technique developed by specialists

Private company SpaceX has begun deploying a network of a dozen thousand satellites - the largest orbital constellation in the history of mankind. Esquire explains why this internet is better than the current one and why today's event is historical

In the process of working on the next generation of Pixel smartphones, Google is collecting data to improve facial recognition. Employees of the corporation go to public places in large American cities and offer some people to take selfies on their phone

In Izhevsk buses it will be possible to pay without tickets and cash. The rolling stock will be equipped with special devices that will recognize you by your face and issue tickets in a matter of seconds in mid-2020.- Salik.bizWhat is it for?

Here is a picture I saw on the net. It's good that I decided to ask what kind of unit it was, I learned a lot of new things. And the photo is a child of the paranoia of the American military department of the 1950s, invented in case Soviet atomic bombs destroyed the US railroad network

Researchers from Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (LKB) in Paris have achieved significant results in the field of quantum memory: they were able to store and retrieve information in quantum bits (qubits)

Scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed the world's first quantum heat engine. This was announced in a press release on Phys.org.To create the device, the researchers used a spin 1/2 system based on a chloroform molecule and applied nuclear magnetic resonance techniques

In the scientific community, dissatisfaction with the fashion for quantum computing is slowly growing. Many scholars doubt that the prospects of the direction correspond to the hype that has arisen around it, and condemn the widespread desire for achievement without regard to the opinion of the people

It is believed that every sixth death in the world occurs from cancer - it is the second most deadly disease after cardiovascular disease

Bacteria - constant companions of man, but not all of them are friendly. Under normal conditions, immunity is able to cope with most harmful microbes, but in some cases we need outside help

In the quantum theory of gravity, the very geometry of space-time must fluctuate continuously, so that even the distinction between the past and the future can be erased. Apparently, among the fundamental forces of nature, gravity has a special status

Every year around the world, about 700 thousand people die from infections caused by various kinds of bacteria that are resistant to currently existing antibiotics

With the help of quantum technologies, scientists have managed to increase the effectiveness of antibiotics many times over, which will help physicians cope with the most important problem of the 21st century - - resistance of bacteria to drugs

The antiparasitic drug ivermectin has an antiviral effect and is able to suppress the multiplication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures for up to 48 hours, scientists from Australia's Monash University and Royal Melbourne Hospital found. The findings are published in Antiviral Research

The Swiss company Climeworks has launched the world's first and largest commercial plant to suck carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere. Reported by Science News. The plant is located near Zurich

The drugs that have protected us from the ubiquitous bacteria for over seventy years are slowly losing their grip, and we need a new weapon to fight infections

Martin Rees, renowned British cosmologist, boldly claims that particle accelerators can lead to disaster

And these drugs are already on the market!Remember the movie "The Curious Story of Benjamin Button"? Well, he's not such a fiction. New research shows that people can change their epigenetic clock, which measures biological age, with three drugs already on the market, according to Inverse

In one of the episodes of the series "Black Mirror", a story was told about how a young girl, worried about a deceased young man, ordered his "copy" based on artificial intelligence technologies

In Japan, trial sales of humanoid Pepper robots that can sense the emotions of others and react to them have started. 200 copies from the test batch will be distributed according to the principle of a lottery between designers and programmers

Scientists have combined the principle of operation of portable batteries and devices for obtaining energy from the environment and, eliminating the disadvantages of both methods, made the robotic electric car move without assistance and many times more efficiently

Thirty years ago, the United States was trying to push the boundaries of computing, artificial intelligence and robotics. They wanted to create something new, very reminiscent of the dystopian future from the Terminator films, or Skynet.From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent more than $ 1 billion on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative (Strategic Computer Initiative, or SCI)

The contraction of artificially grown muscles was controlled by the rat spinal cord.The variety and flawless design of living organisms have always inspired artists and engineers. Now robotics copy the structure, modes of movement and even the behavior of living beings, so ideally designed by nature in the course of evolution

The robot child was equipped with a so-called painful nervous system - and he was able not only to distinguish gentle touches from rough ones, but also to demonstrate the appropriate reaction.Engineers from Osaka University in Japan have developed new tactile sensors and built them into the child-like robot Affetto

Agility Robotics has started selling the humanoid robot Digit. The first two production robots were bought by Ford, which plans to use them in research projects for automated delivery of goods, according to a press release from Ford. Digit is based on the first Agility Robotics called Cassie, which consisted of two legs joined together

When we say that robots will not replace people, because there is nothing human in them, we do not mean at all the exceptional ability of a person to create or act illogically. Robots will be able to do that someday. But to be afraid of them is simply pointless

Mechanical people and beasts - automatons - entertained kings, shahs and kings, frightened sinners and advertised watchmaker workshops. About the most outstanding examples of old robots, including those in Russia - and a little more about fake ones - in our text