TLDR 2021-09-17

Google's laser internet ⚡, Tesla Glass 🚗 , martian volcanoes 🌋

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Big Tech & Startups

Alphabet’s Project Taara laser tech beamed 700TB of data across nearly 5km (3 minute read)

While Google shut down Project Loon earlier this year, some of the technology remained in development. Free Space Optical Communication (FSOC) links can create a 20Gbps broadband link from two points that have a clear line of sight. Project Taara is setting up FSOC links in several places around the world to test the technology. It recently set up a link to connect a service across the Congo river and transmitted nearly 700TB of data in 20 days. The link had a 99.9 percent availability, even with haze, light rain, birds, and other obstacles. Project Taara aims to provide an indistinguishable experience between FSOC and fixed fiber connections.

Tesla unveils its 'secret to a quiet cabin': Proprietary 'Tesla Glass' (2 minute read)

Tesla has released a video about its proprietary Tesla Glass. The automaker launched Tesla Glass as a secret project in 2016. Tesla uses its glass in its vehicles and Solarglass roof tiles. Every vehicle uses double-paned glass with a dampening acoustic layer in between. The glass is safe in case of accidents and it protects occupants from UV rays and noise. Glass used in the front windshield has to act as a lens for the vehicle's front-facing Autopilot camera. The video is available in the article.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scientists Debut Magnet Powerful Enough to Lift an Aircraft Carrier (2 minute read)

Scientists at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) are building a giant magnet as part of their effort to create nuclear fusion. The magnet will stand at 60 feet tall and 14 feet in diameter when fully assembled. It will have a magnetic field roughly 280,000 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. The magnet will be used as a superconductor to attain the incredible amounts of heat and pressure needed to produce nuclear fusion. A photo of the first part of the magnet being delivered to ITER is available in the article.

Japan's New Rocket Engine Uses Shock Waves As Propellant (5 minute read)

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully tested a rotating detonation engine (RDE), lifting a 30-foot single-stage rocket 146 miles within four minutes. The flight lasted eight minutes in total. RDEs use detonation waves to combust a fuel and oxidizer mixture. They release significantly more energy using significantly less fuel mass compared to combustion engines. JAXA calculates that RDE-based rockets could be in use by 2026. The article discusses other types of engines currently being developed for space travel.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Rocket (GitHub Repo)

Rocket is an async web framework for Rust with a focus on usability, security, extensibility, and speed. It provides routing, pre-processing of requests, and post-processing of responses. Documentation and guides are available.

Embeddinghub (GitHub Repo)

Embeddinghub is a database built for machine learning embeddings. Embeddings are dense numerical representations of real-world objects and relationships. They are used to quantify how similar vectors are to each other and to share learnings across similar items rather than treating them as completely unique categories.
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Miscellaneous

Watch the Awe-Inspiring Video of Southern Lights From the ISS (2 minute read)

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet recently released a time-lapse video of the Southern Lights captured during a routine mission aboard the ISS. The Southern Lights are less popular compared to their northern counterpart as Antarctica is largely uninhabited and limited in spotting sites. They are caused by the same phenomenon. Pesquet has been lucky in spotting auroras on his current stint on the ISS. The article contains the video and pictures of auroras from space captured by Pesquet.

NASA Confirms Thousands of Massive, Ancient Volcanic Eruptions on Mars (5 minute read)

NASA scientists have confirmed that a region of northern Mars called Arabia Terra experienced thousands of super-eruptions over a 500-million-year period about 4 billion years ago. Each eruption would have had a significant climate impact on the planet. While Mars has many types of volcanoes, the area has only one type of volcano. The discovery may lead to more knowledge about the geological processes that help shape planets and moons.
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