Month: December 2009

Google is playing with quantum computers / conjuring demons

fiatluxemburg:

Um, foom?

Well, this certainly answers the question of whether or not Google is being secretly run by AI.

Besides progress in engineering synthetic intelligence we hope that improved mastery of quantum computing will also increase our appreciation for the structure of reality as described by the laws of quantum physics.

If you read this blog post, it sounds suspiciously like Wintermute is trying to invent its Neuromancer.

Luckily, it slogan is something about “good.”

Google is playing with quantum computers / conjuring demons

msmandrake:

The believe-it-or-not superlatives are so extreme and Tom Swiftian they make you smile. The L.H.C. is not merely the world’s largest particle accelerator but the largest machine ever built. At the center of just one of the four main experimental stations installed around its circumference, and not even the biggest of the four, is a magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. And because the super-conducting, super-colliding guts of the collider must be cooled by 120 tons of liquid helium, inside the machine it’s one degree colder than outer space, thus making the L.H.C. the coldest place in the universe.

– K. Andersen for VF [via MR]

Quake Threat Leads Swiss to Close Geothermal Project | NYT

But let us be clear: the fact that “hot rocks” geothermal energy causes earthquakes as a side-effect only makes it cooler.

I mean, the original ideas is, essentially, to get energy by digging a really deep hole and then putting a water hose into it. And, some earthquakes on the side.

Quake Threat Leads Swiss to Close Geothermal Project | NYT