Sequoia Topples K

IBM's Sequoia has replaced Japan's K as the fastest computer in the world.

The Sequoia uses 1.5 million processors to establish a benchmark speed of 16.32 petaflop/s which bested K Computer's 10.51 petaflop/s.

For those of you that would like to know what a mind blowing speed 16+ petaflops a second is - a petaflop is a quadrillion floating-point operations per second, or, to over simplify it a bit a quadrillion is 10 with 15 zeros after it or 10 million billion and Sequoia is doing 16+ basic mathematical operations of these. Can't hardly say the number let alone comprehend it.

In the BBC New article, IBM said that to put a bit more understanding to the number:

• Sequoia was capable of calculating in one hour what otherwise would have taken 6.7 billion people using hand calculators 320 years to complete if they had worked non-stop.

Also according to the article:

• Sequoia will be used to carry out simulations to help extend the life of aging nuclear weapons, avoiding the need for real-world underground tests.

Also not only is Sequoia faster than K but is also 150% more energy efficient using  7.9 megawatts to K's  12.6. 

WIKI article here

Mysteries of Moon Dust...Finally Solved?

Kallamis sent in an interesting note that I found facinating reading, so appologies K. I think others might enjoy the article as well.



From 69 - 72 our astronauts were bringing home cool things from the moon for study. But even before this, they noticed after landing how strange the dust acted on the moon. It seemed to hang too long above the surface after being disturbed, it got into everything and stuck there like it was sticking to tape, and was filled with super fine green and orange glass beads formed from the super heating and cooling following impacts.

Houston discovered that the dust was unusually chemically reactive for what is essentially a hunk of rock. They also found that it was lousy at conducting heat. So bad that the surface on the sun side could be at the boiling water level, and only a few feet below be far below freezing.

Thanks to new technology Geologist Marek Zbik of Queensland university may have figured out what gives the moon dust it's so called pixie dust like qualities. And now it gets good again. He wanted to look closely at the glass beads. These should have been filled with gas or vapor as any other bubble is.

"Instead of gas or vapor," says Zbik, "the lunar bubbles were filled with a highly porous network of alien-looking glassy particles that span the bubbles' interior."
Since nano particles can become statically charged, that would also explain the clinging effect of the dust.

Really interesting reading article.

Now I say we need to go back, and do some drilling. Lets just see what else we don't know yet.

Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2117143,00.html#ixzz1yGpGgNpc

Also check out the WIKI article on Luna regolith and collection here  (editor)

Space Ships, New, Old, New Retired, side by side comparison

Every now and then you run across a piece of info , a short, story graphic whatever, that just has you totally enthralled.  I don't know for sure if this graphic is quite there, but I did find it strange and wonderful.   I was going through the Boing Boing blog when I came across the article from Supernova Condensate comparing craft in service to retired or proposed spacecraft.

There are other information but just seeing them as a unit is pretty amazing.    I think what is cool just to look at the "under development" units.  Tell me that doesnt worry ya?!

Kallamis sent in this note about the Skylon I thought I would share.

• Skylon is actually a British concept for a single stage re-usable pilot-less space plane. Hydrogen powered and designed to take off from a regular runway. Here's the link to the wiki article.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

Thanks Kall, very interesting!

Portal: Terminal Velocity a short film by Jason Craft

Holy S... you got to check out this really clever short based on the "Portal Gun" as in the game Portal 2. The short is called Portal: Terminal Velocity, and is from the very active imagination of Jason Craft.

Here is what he had to say about his creation:

• My interpretation of what a real Portal gun would be like if one existed. Based on the video game, Portal. I tried to match the game as close as possible. This was the most challenging project I have ever undertaken, consisting of 3D tracking, seamless camera cuts and 3D camera projection. ENJOY! 

New York to London in an Hour?!

Xnewman sends in the really great article from a blog I had never heard of before but they have great articles.  This one in question revisits the bullet train or high speed tube trains.  However this one seems to take it an extra mile.  This tube train would be of the vacuum type, meaning that with no air to push around, speeds can be attained that are unheard of in today's various modes of transport.  

According to the article:    

• "vactrain technology" could have us traveling from New York City to London hitting speeds up to 4,000 mph, making the journey from NYC to London in just one hour.

The article also seems to state that the core technologies may be available in just a decade.  The overall makeup of the trains and transport are pretty standard to those of us that have been reading of this mode for the better part of a century,  Very little sounds really unique, but exciting none the less.  The tubes would be about five feet across, the "tracks" would be frictionless magnetic style.  Each passenger capsule would be about the size of a small car.  Each capsule would be accelerated up to speed and for the balance of the trip  no additional power would be applied.  At the end of the trip, the energy is recaptured regenerative breaking manner.  The writers of the article state that using this system provided 50 times more transportation per kilowatt/hour than electric cars or trains.    

You can read the complete article HERE