Category: caltech

$100M donation powers decade-long moonshot to create solar satellites that beam power to Earth

It sounds like a plan concocted by a supervillain, if that villain’s dastardly end was to provide cheap, clean power all over the world: launch a set of three-kilometer-wide solar arrays that beam the sun’s energy to the surface. Even the price tag seems gleaned from pop fiction: one hundred…

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Nanofabricated ‘tetrakaidecahedrons’ could out-bulletproof kevlar

Researchers at MIT and Caltech have created a nanoengineered material that could be tougher than the likes of kevlar or steel. Made of interconnected carbon “tetrakaidecahedrons,” the material absorbed the impact of microscopic bullets in spectacular fashion. The study, led by MIT’s Carlos Portela, aimed to find out whether nanoarchitected…

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From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship

15 institutions partnered to create a centralized pool of licensable IP Brian Heater @bheater / 19 hours Earlier this year, 15 top U.S. universities joined forces to launch a one-stop shop where corporations and startups can discover and license patents. Working in concert, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, the University…

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AI helps drone swarms navigate through crowded, unfamiliar spaces

Drone swarms frequently fly outside for a reason: it’s difficult for the robotic fliers to navigate in tight spaces without hitting each other. Caltech researchers may have a way for those drones to fly indoors, however. They’ve developed a machine l… Source

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Astronomers may have spotted light from colliding black holes

Black hole collisions tend not to produce light by their very nature — you may catch gravitational waves, but that’s about it. However, scientists might have just found one of those rare instances where a collision was visible. A team using May 2019… Source

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Eight US companies will manufacture NASA’s COVID-19 ventilator

Last month, the FDA rushed a NASA-designed ventilator through its fast-track Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) program in hopes that it might be used to treat COVID-19 patients. Caltech, which manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), offered t… Source

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