Free Republic

... In the next one to two years, Needham analysts estimate that large publicly traded bitcoin miners are expected to more than double power capacity, including both their mining and HPC business expansion plans. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers could take up to 9% of the country’s total electricity consumption by 2030, up from around 4% in 2023. Tapping into nuclear energy is seen by many as the answer to meeting that demand. ...

So I set my flux capacitor to the year 2030. I was hoping to get a glimpse of the S&P 500's value at that date.

The DeLorean returns back from the future as a monster truck If Marty McFly and Doc Brown were ever to reunite for a sequel to Back to the Future III, the old time traveling DeLorean would need an upgrade of some sort to justify the ticket. How about adding 44-inch tires to a DeLorean and converting it into a monster truck? That'll do! While the DeLorean Motor Company is busy producing electric DeLoreans for a 2013 release, one DeLorean easily bested all others at the 2012 DeLorean Car Show & Convention in Orlando, Florida. What you have here is a...

PORTLAND, Ore. — The long-sought after memristor--the "missing link" in electronic circuit theory--has been invented by Hewlett Packard Senior Fellow R. Stanley Williams at HP Labs (Palo Alto, Calif.) Memristors--the fourth passive component type after resistors, capacitors and inductors--were postulated in a seminal 1971 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory by professor Leon Chua at the University of California (Berkeley), but their first realization was just announced today by HP. According to Williams and Chua, now virtually every electronics textbook will have to be revised to include the memristor and the new paradigm it represents for electronic...

Ultracapacitors: the future of electric cars or the 'cold fusion' of autovation? ZENN Motors says its electric car will cruise for 250 miles on a single five-minute charge. Skeptics cry shenanigans. By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the prospect of a new type of electric vehicle from Toronto-based firm ZENN Motors. Ian Clifford wants to start a global revolution by building a practical, everyday car with no gasoline engine, no batteries, and no emissions. While big Detroit automakers ponder a future plug-in car that goes 40 miles on a battery charge...

An Israeli pilot, who is also an aeronautics engineer, has developed an aircraft called the X-Hawk that is able to land in places currently impossible for both helicopters and airplanes. The Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot reported that Dr. Raffi Yoeli established his Urban Aerodynamics company with the express purpose of creating his conceived aircraft. His invention, the X-Hawk, can take off and land vertically, but, unlike a helicopter, the X-Hawk does not have external propellers – which constitute the chief obstacle to close-proximity landing and hovering. The X-Hawk incorporates the propellers into the body of the aircraft. Another feature of...

Z Produces Fusion Neutrons, Sandia Scientists Confirm; Huge Pulsed Power Machine Enters Fusion Arena PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (April 7, 2003) -- Throwing its hat into the ring of machines that offer the possibility of achieving controlled nuclear fusion, Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine has created a hot dense plasma that produces thermonuclear neutrons, Sandia researchers announced today at a news conference at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Philadelphia. The neutrons emanate from fusion reactions within a BB-sized deuterium capsule placed within the target of the huge machine. Compressing hot dense plasmas that produce neutrons is an important...