Regtech Group formed by Steering Committee of Australias National Blockchain Roadmap Wants to Know if DLT will Improve Business Processes – Crowdfund…

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The Regtech Working Group, formed by the Steering Committee of Australias National Blockchain Roadmap, is currently undertaking a consultation in order to gain a better understanding of the wide-ranging views and perspectives regarding the use and adoption of distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

The consultation is being carried out to determine whether blockchain and DLT may help with reducing the burden of legal, regulatory, and other compliance requirements for firms.

Its worth noting that while blockchain or DLT cant effectively streamline every business process, there are some legitimate use cases for the technology such as document authentication and digital ID verification.

The responses to the survey will reportedly be used to inform the Discovery Report to be presented by the Regtech Working Group to the Steering Committee overseeing the National Blockchain Roadmap in the first half of 2021.

This survey follows from the Issues Paper released on December 15, 2020, which provides relevant background regarding the National Blockchain Roadmap, the Regtech Working Group, and the overall scope of this consultation. The Regtech Working Group has suggested that its better to read the Issues Paper first, before responding to the survey questions.

Interested parties are welcome to respond to the survey by 11:59 pm February 14, 2021.

As noted in the announcement, this survey uses a combination of yes / no questions, questions where you will be asked to select from a series of options and free-text responses. The survey takes between 1 2 hours to complete.

(For more details on how to access and fill out the survey, check here.)

The information provided in response to this survey will be made available to the Regtech Working Group. Responses will not be made publicly available, the announcement confirmed.

Some of the free text responses may get included in the text of the Discovery Report. The announcement also mentioned that before any specific information is included in the Discovery Report, we will seek confirmation that you are happy for the information to be included and that it is accurate.

According to a recent survey, almost 20% of Australians now own blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, as attitudes toward Bitcoin (BTC) and other DLT-enabled digital assets have improved.

As the price of Bitcoin (BTC), the flagship cryptocurrency, surpassed its previous all-time high to reach nearly $42,000 (and recently corrected to around $32,000 at the time of writing), a fairly recent report reveals that attitudes toward the digital asset are improving with nearly one in five Australians now owning some virtual currency.

Conducted annually, the Independent Reserve Cryptocurrency Index (IRCI) is a nationwide survey offering a benchmark for the awareness, trust and confidence that Australians have in virtual currencies. Bitcoin or BTC remains the best known cryptocurrency, with 88.8% of the nations residents confirming that theyre (at least) aware of it.

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Regtech Group formed by Steering Committee of Australias National Blockchain Roadmap Wants to Know if DLT will Improve Business Processes - Crowdfund...

Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki believes users will create the metaverse – VentureBeat

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Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki wants to inhabit the metaverse an online place where we work and play and entertain ourselves. He has dreamed about it for a long time, and he has so many followers now that Roblox will likely be one of the most credible candidates for building the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such asSnow CrashandReady Player One.

Roblox has 36 million people who come back daily to play on the platform. That makes the company one of the lead horses to move on to the next generation of technology. And Baszucki is a big fan of getting his own users to do the work.

People do everything from playing traditional games, to social experiences that are more around hanging out and just being together whether its working together in a restaurant or running away from a tornado, Baszucki said. And in the midst of this very difficult time, weve seen a lot of people using Roblox as a way to stay connected, whether its trying to have a birthday party, or how do we graduate from high school.

Baszuckis company is planning to go public soon through a direct listing offering, and Baszucki isnt able to talk about the latest financial details now. But Roblox has built a big war chest, raising $520 million in private capital at a $29.5 billion valuation earlier this month. It can use that money to build the metaverse and populate it with things that the users created.

Since Roblox focuses on user-generated content, Baszucki doesnt think his team will create the metaverse. His users will.

Above: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki (right) speaks with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat at Into the Metaverse.

Image Credit: VentureBeat

We think of ourselves as shepherds of this idea. But its an idea thats been around for a long time, he said. Our founding story goes way back to a prior company, Knowledge Revolution, where my Roblox cofounder Eric [Cassel] and I were building educational software to help people figure out how to understand physics experiments. And in the process of watching lots and lots of students use interactive physics, we saw that in addition to doing their physics homework, they were building stuff and creating stuff and watching what would happen when a car ran into a building. This kind of germinated the idea.

That origin is not so different from what Nvidia is doing today with its Omniverse physics simulation world, which is a kind of metaverse for engineers. (Richard Kerris of Nvidia will speak about that on Day Three of our event). Nvidias focus, however, is hyper-realistic.

Our hope is the metaverse doesnt just look like reality, Baszucki said. It feels like reality so that the cars in the metaverse have engines and they have axles and they have wheels. When the wheel falls off the car, the car does what we would expect in real life. So part of this hope of a physically driven metaverse is actually easier to program and easier to create emergent behavior because it kind of works like we expect.

He added, Weve all lost ourselves in a Pixar movie that is very high-quality rendering but it is not photorealistic rendering.

Above: How to make a metaverse

Image Credit: Roblox

The true metaverse will have something like eight different characteristics, Baszucki said. You have to have an avatar with a virtual identity. You can be everything from a rock star to a fashion model, and thats one big draw of the metaverse.

You can make friends with real people and socialize in the metaverse. It has to be immersive, or make you feel like youre somewhere else and you lose your sense of reality. You should be able to log in from anywhere, regardless of the country or culture where you come from. You need a low-latency connection, whether youre at a school or a business.

The metaverse has to have low friction, meaning you can go anywhere instantly. If youre studying ancient Rome at school, you should be able to transport yourself there within a second and take a tour with your class. It has to have a variety of content to support the long tail of interests people have. You need a vibrant economy to ensure that people can make a living in the metaverse not just coders but artists and designers too. And finally, you need safety and stability, so that people can come together and improve digital civility.

Above: Roblox will hold events related to Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline.

Image Credit: Roblox

Baszucki has done a couple of events with Ernest Cline, the author of Ready Player One and Ready Player Two. I asked Baszucki if he identified with the characters in the book who created the Oasis, or the books version of the metaverse. The founders of the Oasis in the book are Ogden Morrow and James Halliday.

When Ready Player One came out, I sent it to all the executives in the company because it was capturing not just societal changes but what I thought were visionary technologies that we were going to see play out as these platforms got better, Baszucki said. We really try to fade into the background. So Im not sure either one of those characters applies to us. We dont make any content. We actually dont have control of the content. We try to make really good technology and tools and a platform. And then we get amazed by the content.

He added, We almost see ourselves more as the creators of a primitive part of the electrical grid, back there in the distance, and were trying to more and more highlight the creative geniusof our creator community, which is really the real engine that works with us to power our part of the metaverse.

Baszucki compares what Roblox is doing to the invention of the printing press. The tech was so new that some philosophers at the time felt that people started reading too much. Over time, the culture came to accept book reading. Video went through the same cycle, as are games now. I joked that parents will one day tell their kids to stop reading and go back into Roblox to learn something.

Above: Lil Nas X in a Roblox experience

Image Credit: Roblox

People will know they have a physical identity and a digital identity, he said. Just as people that are very facile with books and videos and balancing them, were optimistic they will be with the metaverse as well. Were not so dystopian in our vision relative to maybe some science fiction. We think people will be able to balance this and use it in a positive way. We think it will be an integral part of learningand working.Just another tool side by side with video and books and other forms of communication.

Amid the pandemic, Baszucki said he has enjoyed seeing experiments on Roblox like concerts and parties that enable people to enjoy each other while social distanced.

Were hopeful that there are many situations where immersive 3D communication can bring people together, where its very difficult when theyre forced to be at a distance, he said. An example would be our Roblox holiday party, which we did in Robloxwith hundreds and hundreds of people.And because they were all employees, we were able to do the things we might do at a holiday party. I wish we could have been together physically. But we did have a nightclub. We did have a stage, wedid havea bar.

Quality has its own way of rising to the top. But the company has to spend a lot more time making sure the place is civil. More than 1,700 trust and safety volunteers ensure that Roblox is a safe and stable world for players.

We dont in any way filter on quality, but we have incredibly polished experiences that tend to do better, he said. We try to build systems that bubble up interesting things.We dont really know what is high quality if its safe and civil our Roblox community will vote with their feed and with their engagement and say this is interesting.

User-generated content rules on Roblox, and many young developers are starting to become entrepreneurs, forming teams or even studios focused on Roblox games. Hundreds of thousands are making interesting content, and more than 1,000 are making $10,000 or more and 250 are making more than $100,000. Those people are working alongside big brands that are making their own games for the platform.

The advances that will lead us to the metaverse are inexorable, Baszucki aid, as bandwidth, mobile devices, and other technologies improve.

Roblox has 830 employees, but Baszucki said it will need a diverse group of people to fill out its team to build the metaverse, with experts ranging from 3D game engines to corporate civility.

Baszucki believes that, if done right, the metaverse will make the world a better place by increasing the civility of the world.

The way we moderate, the way we nudge, the way we encourage civil discourse on the platform Im optimistic well be able to measure the general civility of society by watching whats happening on this platform, he said. Im also excited that at various ages, there will be various levels of appropriate nudging. There will be the ability tohave people with very different viewpointspop a little outof maybe the bubble they have and safely meet people with very different viewpoints and have a civil discussion with them.

Above: Part of the JDRF world inside Roblox.

Image Credit: Roblox

I also asked Baszucki if the metaverse is the place where well achieve digital immortality, as happens in the Ready Player Two novel.

This is such an enormous thing to think about. I think it goes way beyond the medical. Its a whole separate industry right there, Baszucki said. I do thinkover time the metaverse will be this wonderful place where [non-player characters] NPCs improve.Well see theTuring test happen not just through text and voice, but well see the Turing test happen in themetaverse.Well start to see NPCs that are harder and harder to distinguish from people over time.And this may be the foreshadowing to ultimately immortality. There may be forms of immortality that are a rough approximationof you and me. So I could imagine if you and I wore a device for our whole life that recorded everything we saw and everything we said, machine learning might be able to create an approximationof us that could live. But Im not so sure. I think its gonna be a while before we can snapshot every neuron and build that out.

So if you had to think of one, one thing you want to do in the metaverse, so what would that be?

Asked what he wants to do in the metaverse, Baszucki said his first thought was boring: just hang out with people that he knows in a social setting.

I think I want to have that ability to come together with people Ive been missing for a really, really long time.

He also wants to play a game in a virtual junkyard with friends, or two teams of five. They would build a crazy contraption with welding torches and drills and other gear, and then they would compete with each other using their contraptions.

Its all about the complexity of the physics and the interaction and emergent behavior, Baszucki said. These kinds of things are exciting to me.

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Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki believes users will create the metaverse - VentureBeat

South African astronomy has a long, rich history of discovery and a promising future – Space.com

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This article was originally published atThe Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Space.com'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Ian Glass, Associate Research Astronomer, South African Astronomical Observatory

TheSouth African Astronomical Observatoryin Cape Town is the oldest permanent observatory in the southern hemisphere: it turned 200 in 2020.

This observatory is a fundamental part of South Africas long history of astronomical research, which began when French academicNicolas-Louis de La Caillevisited Cape Town from 1751 to 1753. He undertook a careful examination of every square degree of the southern sky. This resulted in the first comprehensive sky survey ever made, in either hemisphere.

The Royal Observatory, Cape Town of Good Hope (today the South African Astronomical Observatory) was established in 1820. It became and remained for 150 years the most important source of star positions in the southern hemisphere sky. This was in terms of both accuracy and the number of measurements made. In the years that followed its foundation, the observatorys laborious work led to important scientific discoveries.

Cape astronomers were responsible for, among other things, the first measurement of the distance to a star; the first photographic sky survey and the accurate measurement of the distance to the sun. They were at the forefront of developments in stellar spectroscopy. This is the detailed analysis of a stars light to find out its composition and movement towards or away from the sun. They also determined the shape of the earth in the southern hemisphere and conducted the first accurate country-wide survey measurements of southern Africa.

In 1543 the mathematician and astronomerNicolaus Copernicusasserted that the earth orbits the sun. This meant that people should be able to observe the apparent shift in the position of the nearest stars from different points in the earths orbit. But that had not been observed in the centuries that followed. The reason was, of course, that even the nearest stars are incredibly far away and the effect being looked for is very small.

When the Royal Observatory was founded in 1820, it was equipped with the most accurate star position measuring devices available. Eleven years later Thomas Henderson used those devices to make the first believable measurements of this effect, known as parallax. By observing the angular movement of Alpha Centauri still the second-closest star known to us and knowing also the size of the earths orbit, this gave the distance to the star by simple trigonometry.

A different technology, photography, would lead to more important astronomical discoveries at the Cape. All observatories in the 19th century made precise observations of star positions one by one and published catalogues of these. In 1882 the head of the Royal Observatory, David Gill, was surprised to receive a letter from a Mr Simpson, an amateur photographer in Aberdeen, a town elsewhere in the Cape.

Simpson had managed to photograph a bright comet that had just appeared. His photographic plates were sensitive enough to register stars in the background. This led to a lightbulb moment for Gill: he realised that the positions of stars could now be recorded in quantity on a permanent medium, more reliably than any visual observer could ever hope to do.

So he set up a special photographic telescope using the largest lens that he could find and set about making the first photographic star catalogue. This was called theCape Photographic Durchmusterungafter its much more laboriously compiled northern hemisphere equivalent, put together in Bonn, Germany.

But it wasnt just Cape Town that hosted an important astronomical site.

In 1903, theJohannesburg Observatorywas established. It achieved its greatest success in 1915 when its director, Robert Innes, discovered a very faint star near Alpha Centauri.

On various grounds he claimed it to be the nearest star to Earth; it took many years of investigation before this could be verified. The new discovery was named Proxima Centauri, meaning the nearest in the constellation Centaurus. Not only was it the nearest star but at that time of discovery it was the least luminous star ever discovered. Other dimmer stars have been found since, but Proxima still retains its nearest star status and its distance has been thoroughly verified from space satellites.

In 1948 the private Radcliffe Foundation in the United Kingdom set up in Pretoria what was for a time the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere and joint fourth largest in the world. This is a title currently held by theSouthern African Large Telescope.

Early on in the Radcliffes existence the then director, David Thackeray, and his colleague Adriaan Wesselink discovered in our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a number of RR Lyrae variable stars that astronomers using smaller telescopes could not detect. These are stars that change their brightness in a well-defined manner over a cycle of a few days and whose average wattage is completely predictable.

By measuring the Magellanic Cloud stars average apparent brightnesses and comparing them to other RR Lyrae stars at known distances they determined that the cosmic distance scale originally published two decades before by Edwin Hubble and others was underestimated by about a factor of two. In effect, they doubled the size of the Universe. This result was announced to great acclaim at the triennial meeting of theInternational Astronomical Union in 1952.

Today South African astronomy remains at the forefront of many initiatives and discoveries. It has become a leader in the field of radio astronomy with the MeerKAT telescope near Carnarvon and will within a decade be the host of an international project, theSquare Kilometre Array.

This article is adapted froma piecethat initially appeared in the South African National Research Foundations Science Matters Magazine.

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

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South African astronomy has a long, rich history of discovery and a promising future - Space.com

2021: What Astronomical and Space Events Await Us This Year? – EcoWatch

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By Dirk Lorenzen

2021 begins as a year of Mars. Although our red planetary neighbor isn't as prominent as it was last autumn, it is still noticeable with its characteristic reddish color in the evening sky until the end of April. In early March, Mars shines close to the star cluster Pleiades in the constellation Taurus.

But for space nerds, Mars is already the center of attention in February. Three space probes that were launched in the summer of 2020 will arrive on the red planet.

On February 9, "Hope," the first interplanetary mission of the United Arab Emirates, is set to enter orbit around Mars. Only one day later, the Chinese probe Tianwen-1 will join it. The name means "heavenly questions," referring to a famous piece of ancient poetry.

Both missions will take surface and atmospheric measurements of Mars. Probably in May, a small rover will detach from the Chinese spacecraft and make its way down to the surface to explore the surroundings of the landing site.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (shown in artist's illustration) is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. Ingenuity, a technology experiment, will be the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet. Perseverance will arrive at Mars' Jezero Crater with Ingenuity attached to its belly. NASA

The highlight of this year's Mars exploration is the landing of the NASA rover "Perseverance" on February 18. Once the spacecraft enters the atmosphere it will be slowed down by friction. The heat shield will surpass 1,000 degrees Celsius. Later, parachutes will deploy to slow it down even more. Roughly two kilometers above the planet's surface, a sky crane comes into play. Four thrusters keep the crane properly oriented.

The rover is connected to the crane by nylon tethers. Upon approach of Mars' surface, the sky crane will lower Perseverance down about 7 meters. Once the rover has touched down, the tethers are cut and the sky crane flies off to land somewhere else on the surface.

Entry, descent and landing takes just seven minutes the so-called seven minutes of terror. The flight team can't interact with the spacecraft on Mars. Experts have to sit and watch what's happening more than 200 million kilometers away. Radio signals from the spacecraft need about 11 minutes to travel in one direction. When the control center in Pasadena, California receives the message that entry has begun, Perseverance will already be on the ground. There is only one chance for a smooth landing. Any error could mean the mission is lost. The audacious sky crane maneuver would be a great feat in any action movie. But NASA knows how to do it the Curiosity rover landed with a sky crane in 2012.

Scientists want to use Perseverance to explore whether there is or ever has been life on Mars. Today the planet is a hostile environment dry and cold with no magnetic field shielding the harsh radiation from space. Life as we know it can't survive on the Martian surface right now. But billions of years ago, Mars was hotter and wetter and had a shield against radiation. So it is at least plausible that simple microbes developed there. Maybe they live in the soil now, one or two meters below the surface. Perseverance will collect samples to find out. A future mission by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will pick up the samples and return them to Earth. But this won't happen before 2030.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the Earth for more than 30 years. NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope's images of planets, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies are legendary. The cosmic eye, launched in 1990, is likely to fail towards the end of this decade. The James Webb Space Telescope will be its successor. It is scheduled to launch on October 31 with a European Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The launch date is about 14 years later than planned when the project began in 1997. At almost $10 billion (8.2 billion), the telescope is more than ten times as expensive as originally conceived. Its namesake James Webb was the NASA administrator during the height of the Apollo project in the 1960s.

Astronomers expect completely new insights from James Webb Telescope images, such as how the universe came into being, how it developed and how galaxies, stars and planets are formed. The instrument will observe the earliest childhood of the cosmos and photograph objects that already existed in the universe 200 to 300 million years after the Big Bang. James Webb, as the experts call the telescope for short, may even provide information about possibly inhabited exoplanets planets like ours orbiting stars other than the Sun.

The fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope with its sunshield and unitized pallet structures that will fold up around the telescope for launch. NASA

The mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope is 6.5 meters in diameter and consists of 18 hexagonal segments. The entire instrument unfolds in 178 steps over a period of several months. Only then probably in the spring of 2022 will we see its first images.

Many communication or reconnaissance satellites only unfold in space. However, not every micrometer is as important as with this telescope.

NIRSpec, one of the four cameras on board, was built at Airbus in Ottobrunn near Munich. It is made of an unusual material: ceramic. Both the basic structure and the mirrors are made of this very light, hard and extremely temperature-insensitive material. With good reason the large camera has to withstand a lot in space. It is cooled to around -250 degrees Celsius in order to register the weak infrared or thermal radiation from the depths of space. Plastic or metal bend and lead to blurred images. Ceramic, on the other hand, remains in perfect shape.

The NIRSpec instrument will examine, among other things, emerging stars and distant galaxies. The ceramic camera is incredibly sensitive it could register the heat radiation from a burning cigarette on the Moon. Thanks to this precision, astronomers will get completely new insights into the cosmos with the James Webb Telescope and NIRSpec.

It's not very likely that the Orion spacecraft from NASA and ESA will start its maiden voyage to the Moon before the end of 2021. As part of the Artemis-1 mission, it will remain in space for four weeks and will orbit the Moon for a few days. There will be no crew on board for the first flight, but two dummies from the German Aerospace Center, which use thousands of sensors to measure the conditions that human beings would be exposed to. The Orion capsule comes from NASA, while the ESA supplies the service module. The service module, which is being built by Airbus in Bremen, provides propulsion, navigation, altitude control and the supply of air, water and fuel. After problems with an engine test in mid-January, the new NASA large rocket Space Launch System (SLS), with which Orion is supposed to be launched, is unlikely to be operational until early 2022.

Matthias Maurer from Saarland is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in October. The flight will be in a Crew Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral. Maurer will live and work in the orbital outpost for six months. He is currently training to work on numerous scientific experiments. Maurer will be the twelfth German in space.

So far, Germany has only sent men into space. In mid-March, ESA will start the next application process for astronauts. A few years ago, the private initiative Die Astronautin ("She is an astronaut") showed that there are numerous excellent female applicants.

Even if there is no flight to the Moon, sky fans are looking forward to two eclipses this year. On May 26, there will be a lunar eclipse between 9:45 and 12:53 UTC. From 11:10 to 11:28 UTC, the Moon will be completely in the Earth's shadow. It can then only be seen in a copper-red light. This is sunlight that is directed into the Earth's shadow by the Earth's atmosphere reddish, like the sky at sunset. This eclipse can be observed throughout the Pacific, and will be best viewed in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Antarctica. In Europe, the Moon will be below the horizon and therefore the eclipse will not be visible.

This also the case for the partial lunar eclipse on November 19. From 07:18 to 10:47 UTC, the Moon will be partly in the shadow of the Earth. In the middle of the eclipse (around 9:03 UTC) 98% of the Moon will be eclipsed. The spectacle will be best seen in North America, Greenland, East Asia and much of the Pacific, such as Hawaii and New Zealand.

In 2021, the Moon will pass right in front of the sun, twice. On June 10, the moon will be nearly in the furthest point of its elliptical orbit around Earth. So it will be too small to cover the sun completely. In the middle of this eclipse, an annulus of the sun will remain visible. The sun's ring of fire appears between 9:55 and 11:28 UTC for a maximum of four minutes but it will only be visible in the very sparsely populated areas of northeast Canada, northwestern Greenland, the North Pole and the far east of Siberia.

In the North Atlantic, Europe and large parts of Russia, an eclipse will be seen at least partially. Between 8:12 and 13:11 UTC, the Sun will appear like a cookie that has been bitten into as the Moon covers parts of the bright disk. In some places, the eclipse will last about two hours. In Central Europe, a maximum of one-fifth of the sun will be covered.

The celestial event of the year will be a total solar eclipse on December 4. In a 400-kilometer-wide strip, the New Moon will cover the sun completely. For a maximum of one minute and 54 seconds, day will turn to night. For that short time, the brightest stars can be seen in the sky and the flaming solar corona can be seen around the dark disc of the Moon.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone will get to see this cosmic spectacle because the strip of totality only runs through the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic. From 7:03 to 8:04 UTC the umbra of the Moon moves across the Earth's surface and perhaps some ships' crews will enjoy the solar corona.

Only during the few minutes of totality is it possible to look safely at the Sun with the naked eye. During the partial phase or in the case of an annular eclipse, suitable protective goggles are necessary to watch the spectacle. Normal sunglasses are not safe. Looking unprotected into the sun can lead to severe eye damage or even blindness.

Venus, our other neighboring planet, will be behind the sun on March 26. It is not visible for the first few months of the year. From the end of April through Christmas, it will be visible as an evening star in the sky after sunset. The planet, shrouded in dense clouds, is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. The best visibility will be from September to December.

The giant planet Jupiter is in its best position of the year on August 20. It then shines in the constellation Capricorn, only disappearing from the evening sky at the beginning of next year. The ringed planet Saturn is also in the constellation Capricorn and can be observed particularly well on August 2.

Jupiter and Saturn are the stars of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and those of the long winter nights in the Southern Hemisphere. They are in the same area of the sky, almost forming a double star with Jupiter being the brighter of the two.

There are certain periods when the Earth crosses the orbital path of a comet and shooting stars are much more likely than on other nights. Many small stones and dust particles are scattered on comet orbits, which light up the Earth's atmosphere for a moment when they enter.

The Perseids are particularly promising: August 9-13, a few dozen meteors (the technical term for shooting stars) will scurry across the sky per hour. The traces of light will seem to come from the constellation Perseus, near the striking celestial W of Cassiopeia. The Geminids meteors coming from the constellation Gemini will be similarly exciting with up to 100 shooting stars per hour, December 10-15.

Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.

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2021: What Astronomical and Space Events Await Us This Year? - EcoWatch

Astronomers Have Discovered a Star That Survived Nearly Being Swallowed by a Black Hole – ScienceAlert

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When black holes swallow down massive amounts of matter from the space around them, they're not exactly subtle about it. They belch out tremendous flares of X-rays, generated by the material heating to intense temperatures as it's sucked towards the black hole, so bright we can detect them from Earth.

This is normal black hole behaviour. What isn't normal is for those X-ray flares to spew forth with clockwork regularity, a puzzling behaviour reported in 2019from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 250 million light-years away. Every nine hours, boom - X-ray flare.

After careful study, astronomer Andrew King of the University of Leicester in the UK identified a potential cause - a dead star that's endured its brush with a black hole, trapped on a nine-hour, elliptical orbit around it. Every close pass, or periastron, the black hole slurps up more of the star's material.

"This white dwarf is locked into an elliptical orbit close to the black hole, orbiting every nine hours," King explainedback in April 2020.

"At its closest approach, about 15 times the radius of the black hole's event horizon, gas is pulled off the star into an accretion disk around the black hole, releasing X-rays, which the two spacecraft are detecting."

The black hole is the nucleus of a galaxy called GSN 069, and it's pretty lightweight as far as supermassive black holes go - only 400,000 times the mass of the Sun. Even so, it's active, surrounded by a hot disc of accretion material, feeding into and growing the black hole.

According to King's model, this black hole was just hanging out, doing its active accretion thing, when a red giant star - the final evolutionary stages of a Sun-like star - happened to wander a little too close.

The black hole promptly divested the star of its outer layers, speeding its evolution into a white dwarf, the dead core that remains once the star has exhausted its nuclear fuel (white dwarfs shine with residual heat, not the fusion processes of living stars).

But rather than continuing on its journey, the white dwarf was captured in orbit around the black hole, and continued to feed into it.

Based on the magnitude of the X-ray flares, and our understanding of the flares that are produced by black hole mass transfer, and the star's orbit, King was able to constrain the mass of the star, too. He calculated that the white dwarf is around 0.21 times the mass of the Sun.

While on the lighter end of the scale, that's a pretty standard mass for a white dwarf. And if we assume the star is a white dwarf, we can also infer - based on our understanding of other white dwarfs and stellar evolution - that the star is rich in helium, having long ago run out of hydrogen.

"It's remarkable to think that the orbit, mass and composition of a tiny star 250 million light years away could be inferred," King said.

Based on these parameters, he also predicted that the star's orbit wobbles slightly, like a spinning top losing speed. This wobble should repeat every two days or so, and we may even be able to detect it, if we observe the system for long enough.

This could be one mechanism whereby black holes grow more and more massive over time. But we'll need to study more such systems to confirm it, and they may not be easy to detect.

For one, GSN 069's black hole is lower mass, which means that the star can travel on a closer orbit. To survive a more massive black hole, a star would have to be on a much larger orbit, which means any periodicity in the feeding would be easier to miss. And if the star were to stray too close, the black hole would destroy it.

But the fact that one has been identified offers hope that it's not the only such system out there.

"In astronomical terms, this event is only visible to our current telescopes for a short time - about 2,000 years, so unless we were extraordinarily lucky to have caught this one, there may be many more that we are missing elsewhere in the Universe," King said.

As for the star's future, well, if nothing else is to change, the star will stay right where it is, orbiting the black hole, and continuing to be slowly stripped for billions of years. This will cause it to grow in size and decrease in density - white dwarfs are only a little bigger than Earth - until it's down to a planetary mass, maybe even eventually turning into a gas giant.

"It will try hard to get away, but there is no escape," King said. "The black hole will eat it more and more slowly, but never stop."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A version of this article was first published in April 2020.

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Astronomers Have Discovered a Star That Survived Nearly Being Swallowed by a Black Hole - ScienceAlert

Students fascination with astronomy inspires first completed Immersion Vanderbilt project – Vanderbilt University News

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A love of stargazing and a desire to meet new people inspired undergraduate student Samantha Bianco to introduce herself to Vanderbilt astronomy professor Keivan Stassun, but she never imagined the educational opportunities that would follow. Stassun invited her to participate in his research, and now, thanks to her passion for astronomy and the mentoring she has received, Bianco is a named co-author on a graduate-level scientific research paper and the first Vanderbilt student officially to have completed an Immersion Vanderbilt project.

Im really excited about the work Ive been doing in Professor Stassuns lab, and the whole experience has been challenging and awesome, said Bianco, a junior from Wauconda, Illinois, who is double-majoring in computer science and communication of science and technology.

Sam is just a great example of the quality and diversity of Vanderbilts undergraduates, said Stassun, Stevenson Chair in Physics, professor of astronomy and computer science and director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation. I think one of the real pleasures and benefits of working with students on immersion projects is that they bring so much aspiration and energy and excitement to the work.

In addition to Stassun, Ph.D. graduate student Dax Feliz, who came to Vanderbilt through the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, has mentored Bianco.

Biancos Immersion Vanderbilt project looked for evidence of the presence of exoplanets around stars. Bianco and Feliz used data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which observes hundreds of thousands of star systems in hopes of detecting the presence of extrasolar planets.

She presented her research at a virtual Vanderbilt Research Fair in October and is now a co-author on a research paper submitted by Feliz.

Biancos immersion project is inspiring her plans for the future. When she graduates in 2022, shes interested in a career focused on the communication of science, specifically space science within an organization like NASA.

I really love the idea of taking something thats really complex with tons of scientific jargon and putting it into words that the general public can understand and be interested in, she said.

Stassun believes immersion projects are valuable because they focus students on design projects tied to their interests while giving them opportunities and skills needed for high-level research.

Making groundbreaking discoveries in science is a learned skill. The way we ensure the next generation of discoveries is to invest in training future researchers now, when they are at the beginning of their academic journey as undergraduates, he said. Its been just a great thrill and honor to be a part of Sams journey, of Daxs journey, of the labs journey together and to be representing Immersion Vanderbilt for the first time.

Immersion Vanderbilt provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to pursue their passions and cultivate intellectual interests through experiential learning. This intensive learning experience takes place in and beyond the classroom and culminates in the creation of a final project.

Immersion Vanderbilt became a degree requirement starting in fall 2018, but due to the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, undergraduate students in the Class of 2022 have a flexible option. Immersion Vanderbilt is now highly recommended but not required for undergraduate students who matriculated in the summer and fall of 2018 as well as those who joined the class later as transfer students.

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Students fascination with astronomy inspires first completed Immersion Vanderbilt project - Vanderbilt University News

Astronomers discover a bizarre string of five planets that "dance" in perfect resonance – Salon

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Nature is fond of patterns, on both the small scale and the large. Take the Fibonacci sequence, for instance the repeating pattern of numbers in which each subsequent number totals the sum of the previous two. The formula appears in nautilus' spiral shells, but also in the arrangement of the planets in the solar system, whose distances align roughly with Fibonacci numbers' ratios.

But the rough synchrony of our planets is nothing compared to the precise alignment of five newly-discovered exoplanets, which orbit their parent star with such a perfect harmony that it seems almost uncanny. According to a study published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, a solar system discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is host to at least six planets, five of which orbit around the star known as TOI-178 (or TESS Object of Interest 178) in a preciseratio. This is known as a "chain of resonances," or a series of occasions in which planets orbit a star while maintaining a beatwith one another.

"A resonance between two planets is what happens when one completes a certain integer number of orbits while the other also does so," Dr. Nathan Hara, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva and a co-author of the paper, wrote to Salon. "They therefore find themselves periodically in the same configuration and the strongest attraction between them is therefore always in the same direction."

There are a few details that make the new finding so striking. One is the fact that five planets are involved instead of two; as Hara explained, this makes it "one of the longest known chains" of resonant planets. In the case of the exoplanets surrounding TOI-178, they dance at a rhythm of 18:9:6:4:3. This means that every time the innermost planet in the chain makes 18 orbits around TOI-178, the next one in line makes nine orbits, and the one after that makes six orbits, and so on.

The finding is also significant because "in the known resonance chains, the farther the planet is from the star, the less dense it is, like in the Solar system: Mercury, Venus and Earth, Mars, have a higher density than Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune." The stars orbiting TOI-178 in synchrony, by contrast, have unusual comparative densities.

"The innermost planets are the densest ones, but then you have a planet with a very small, Saturn-like density, then it goes up again and falls off," Hara told Salon. "It is not shattering our understanding of planetary formation, but it is certainly puzzling."

He also told Salon that the discovery is helpful to scientists because TOI-178 is an unusually bright star indeed, the brightest star which is known to have transiting resonant chains.

"Here 'transiting'means that the planet passes between the star and the observer, so that the stellar light flux measured by the observer decreases periodically," Hara explained."This way you also get an estimate of the radius of the planet.The fact that the star is brighter means that we can gain information with other measurement techniques."

Hara told Salon that, in addition to TESS, the discovery was made possible by recent advances in astronomical technology including a European Space Agency telescope called CHEOPS, which was launched in 2019, and a state-of-the-art spectrograph known as ESPRESSO that has been operative since 2018.

"This one allows to measure the velocity of the star in the direction of the line of sight and has an unprecedented precision," Hara explained. "We would not have been able to make mass measurements of the planets of the system with the previous generation of spectrographs, or at the cost of extremely long campaigns."

As for how the resonant chain on planets exists, Hara told Salon that he has a partial hypothesis.

"The formation of resonant chains is believed to result from formations of planets at wider separations from the star which then migrate inwards together and are trappedin resonance with one another," Hara wrote. "As for the fact that the densities are not monotonically decreasing as you move away from the star, we don't really have a convincing explanation yet."

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Astronomers discover a bizarre string of five planets that "dance" in perfect resonance - Salon

Asteroid naming contest sparks discussion of women in astronomy – SpaceFlight Insider

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Laurel Kornfeld

January 26th, 2021

The late astronomer Ada Carrera, who now has a near-Earth asteroid named for her. Her name selected as the winner of an asteroid-naming contest sparked an online panel discussion by the contests sponsors about the role of women in astronomy Credit: Unistellar

The selection of the late astronomer Ada Amelia Carrera Rodriguez as the winner of an asteroid-naming contest sparked an online panel discussion by the contests sponsors about the role of women in astronomy.

In a joint project, the SETI Institute and the company Unistellar sponsored a Name the Asteroid contest in late 2020 for near-Earth asteroid 1999 AP10, also known as Asteroid 159402, which drew over 120 entries.

At Unistellars Winter Solstice Virtual Star Party on Dec. 21, 2020, the company announced Carrera, a Mexican astronomer, who died earlier that year at age 84, as the contest winner.

Her selection was celebrated in an online discussion on Jan. 13, 2021, titled Women in Astronomy, which promoted awareness of Carrera and her accomplishments and recognized the growing number of women in the field.

We hoped this asteroid would receive a name as inspiring as our accomplishment, but we never could have expected how truly fitting the winning name would be. Adas drive and astronomical accomplishments have found their match in near-Earth asteroid 1999 AP10, said Val Klavans, Unistellar Brand Ambassador at the SETI Institute.

Contest organizers plan to submit the name to the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature for formal approval.

Carrera was a motorcyclist who started her career in astronomy when she was in her 40s. She was a powerful advocate of astronomy education in Mexico and shared her love of astronomy and space throughout Latin America and beyond, acting as a powerful inspiration for women and girls.

The online presentation focused not just on the asteroid naming but also on the increasing number of women in and entering astronomy over just the last few years.

Panelists included Nancy Wolfson of the Taksha Center for Planetary Defense; Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, on whom the late Carl Sagan based the protagonist of his novel Contact, and Klavans.

Dr. Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute. Photo Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

They noted that in 2017, women earned 33% of bachelors degrees in astronomy and 40% of doctorates in the subject. While just 19% of astronomy faculty at universities were women in 2014, by 2016, 40% of new astronomy faculty members were women.

As of 2018, women made up just 18% of members in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), but that percent is steadily increasing among younger generations.

Nine of the 18 astronauts selected for NASAs Artemis project to return humans to the Moon are women.

Tarter, who is 77, recalled that in college, she initially studied engineering, where she was the only woman in a class of 300. As late as the 1970s and 1980s, women were not permitted to use some of the large mountaintop telescopes to conduct their research. This meant young women interested in the field had few female role models.

In contrast, today, there are more opportunities than ever before for women to pursue astronomy careers, Tarter said.

Wolfson, who has worked in several sectors of the burgeoning space industry, including planetary defense against near-Earth objects, said she always felt welcome in the field while acknowledging there is still a long way to go in terms of equal gender representation.

One obstacle faced by both genders is that in elementary schools, astronomy is taught as a set of known facts rather than as open questions.

The best piece is the questions we dont have answers to, Tarter said.

Her entry into the search for extra-terrestrial life started when she learned how to program an early computer. An astronomer who was given that program approached her questioning whether it could be used to find extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Two new, exciting subfields of astronomy are astrobiology and the study of exoplanets, she added.

Klavans noted she worked as an intern with the Cassini team at NASA analyzing propane spectra with the goal of finding new chemicals in Titans atmosphere. There, she met many women astronomers who worked on Cassini. For her own enjoyment, shetaught herself Photoshop, so she could combine Cassini images of Saturns large moon Titan to replicate the way Titan would appear to the human eye.

One entry path to astronomy is taking part in citizen science projects on a volunteer basis. The SETI Institute runs many research projects, as do other groups, such as Globe at Night and Zooniverse.

Find something eye-catching for you. Think about what you can bring to the table, Wolfson advised potential volunteers.

The panelists also encouraged those interested in astronomy to develop relationships with professional astronomers by reaching out to them and learning about the projects on which they are working.

Dont be afraid to drop an email to someone who inspires you, Tarter said.

Another way to meet specialists working on specific projects is to attend astronomical conferences. Because of COVID, most of these are now virtual. At least half are free to attend, and many need volunteers, Wolfson stated.

One such event is the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference in April 2021, which will be virtual and free to all.

Regardless of level of education, you always want to keep learning. We have so many digital tools where you can educate yourself. You might have one idea we didnt consider yet, Wolfson said.We need the general public, and were creating a community. Please continue educating yourselves in any way you can.

Tarter encouraged anyone interested in astronomy to look around where you live community colleges, research laboratories, and opportunities to intern and learn by doing. See if you can volunteer and become part of a group.

Video courtesy of Unistellar

Tagged: Asteroid SETI Institute STEM The Range Unistellar women

Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.

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Asteroid naming contest sparks discussion of women in astronomy - SpaceFlight Insider

Astronomers discover huge exoplanet has the density of cotton candy – CBC.ca

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Roughly 212 light years away in the Virgo constellation lies a super-large exoplanet that has astronomers revising their theory of how giant gas planets form.

The exoplanet, called WASP-107b, was discovered in 2017. At the time, it was difficult to accurately pinpoint its mass. But what astronomers did know is that it was already unusual.

It is a particularly large planet, roughly the size of Jupiter, but with an orbit that is just a mere ninemillion kilometres away from its host star, WASP-107, which is estimated to be about three billion years old.

To put that in perspective, Mercury, the closest planet to our sun, sits at 60 million kilometres. One year on WASP-107b takes roughly 5.7 days.

However, now, after years of observations using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, a team of international astronomers have uncovered something else: WASP-107b is oddly light. In fact, it's much lighter than what was thought was needed to build gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.

"What was really surprising about this planet is that people have known that it's about the size of Jupiter, so it's a gas giant," said Eve Lee, co-author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal and an assistant professor in the department of physics at McGill University and McGill Space Institute in Montreal. "So if it's a gas giant, then the usual expectation is that it would weigh just as [much] as gas giants. Except it didn't."

Jupiter is about 300 times the mass of Earth. But WASP-107b while roughly the same size as our solar system's biggest and most massive planet is only 30 times that of Earth. That's 1/10th the mass.

The international team of astronomers inferred from their observations that the core of the planet was just four times that of Earth. But in theory, it was believed that these giant planets with such a gaseous atmosphere would require a core that was at least 10 times that of Earth's.

After a star forms, the remaining gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk come together to build planets. When it comes to the gas giants, it's believed that a core that is 10 times more massive than Earth's is required to build or accrete and hold on to the gas envelopes.

So what's the deal with WASP-107b?

Lead author Caroline Piaulet of the Universit de Montral said there are two key elementsin the theory of how this might have happened.

First, it's believed that WASP-107b formed much farther out from its current location, likely around one astronomical unit, or the average distance between the sun and Earth, roughly 150 million kilometres. There, it began to accrete gas and dust relatively quickly.

Secondly, it began to cool rather quickly.

"When it cools down efficiently, it's able to accrete efficiently because if it cools down, it's going to shrink," said Piaulet. "So it's going to have more space to accrete more gas."

Eventually, the planet migrated inward to its current position.

WASP-107b isn't the only "super puff" planet, as they are often called. Lee said there are four others known, though WASP-107b is the puffiest.

So just how puffy is it?

"It's usually compared to cotton candy, because it's about the right density," Lee said. "But it's not the kind that you find at carnivals. It's more like the kind that you buy at stores."

And, as surprising as this super-puff planet was, there was yet another surprise in store: a second planet orbiting the star, WASP-107c.

The planet was detected because of the longer observation time and was found to be roughly one-third the mass of Jupiter. Its orbit around the star takes about three years, significantly longer than WASP-107b.

The discovery is just a reminder that, while we may think we have an understanding of how planets form, we still have a lot to learn about what lies beyond our own solar system. Even then, Piaulet said, we still don't even know much about the cores of our own giant gas planets, such as Jupiter.

"What I found really exciting is that it's kind of pushing our understanding of planet formation to its limits."

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Astronomers discover huge exoplanet has the density of cotton candy - CBC.ca

Astronomers Detect a Surprisingly Huge Galactic Birthplace in The Early Universe – ScienceAlert

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Back at the dawn of the Universe, astronomers have found a stacks on of cosmic proportions. At least 21 galaxies, forming stars at a tremendous rate, are merging together in the early stages of the formation of a galaxy cluster. And it's all happening 13 billion light-years away - just 770 million years after the Big Bang itself.

This is the earliest protocluster discovered yet, named LAGER-z7OD1, and today it has probably evolved into a group of galaxies 3.7 quadrillion times the mass of the Sun.

Such a large protocluster, so early in the Universe - barely a cosmic eyeblink since the curtain was raised on life, the Universe and everything - could contain some vital clues as to how the primordial smoke cleared and the lights switched on, sending light streaming freely through space.

Our Universe is a massively interconnected place. Galaxies may seem relatively self-contained, but more than half of all galaxies are gravitationally bound together in clusters or groups, huge structures of hundreds to thousands of galaxies.

The beginnings of such clusters are not unknown in the early Universe. Protoclusters have been found nearly as far as LAGER-z7OD1, some even much bigger, suggesting that clusters could begin assembling much faster than previously thought possible.

But LAGER-z7OD1, according to a team of researchers led by astronomer Weida Hu of the University of Science and Technology of China, is special. It can reveal clues about one of the most mysterious stages in the history of the Universe: the Epoch of Reionisation.

"The total volume of the ionised bubbles generated by its member galaxies is found to be comparable to the volume of the protocluster itself, indicating that we are witnessing the merging of the individual bubbles and that the intergalactic medium within the protocluster is almost fully ionised," they wrote in their paper.

"LAGER-z7OD1 thus provides a unique natural laboratory to investigate the reionization process."

Space, you see, wasn't always the lovely, see-through place it is today. For the first 370 million years or so, it was filled with a hot murky fog of ionised gas. Light was unable to travel freely through this fog; it scattered off free electrons and that was that.

Once the Universe cooled down enough, protons and electrons started to recombine into neutral hydrogen atoms. This meant that light - not that there was much, yet - could finally travel through space.

As the first stars and galaxies began to form, their ultraviolet light reionised the neutral hydrogen ubiquitous throughout the Universe: first in localised bubbles around the ultraviolet sources, and then larger and larger areas as the ionised bubbles connected and overlapped, allowing the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation to stream freely.

By about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was completely reionised. This means that it's more challenging to probe beyond this point (about 12.8 light-years away), but it also means that the reionisation process itself is tricky to understand.

Ideally, you need really bright objects whose ionising radiation could cut through the neutral hydrogen, and that's what Hu and his team were looking for with the Lyman Alpha Galaxies inthe Epoch of Reionization survey. These are small, early-Universe galaxies forming stars at an insane rate, which means they can be detected at quite large distances, well inside the Epoch of Reionisation. This makes them useful probes of the period.

In their search, the researchers found LAGER-z7OD1, an overdense region of galaxies in a three-dimensional volume of space measuring 215 million by 98 million by 85 million light-years. This volume contained two distinct sub-protoclusters merging together into one larger one, with at least 21 galaxies, 16 of which have been confirmed.

The total volume of ionised space around the galaxies was slightly larger than the volume of LAGER-z7OD1.

"This demonstrates substantial overlaps between individual bubbles, indicating that the individual bubbles are in the act of merging into one or two giant bubbles," the researchers wrote.

So not only does the protocluster represent an excellent example of its kind, providing a new datapoint for studying how these structures form and emerge, as well as star formation in the early Universe, it offers a one-of-a-kind window into the formation and combination of ionised bubbles in the middle of the Epoch of Reionisation.

What insights will emerge are yet to be discovered, though. As the researchers note, that will be the work of future, more powerful telescopes that will better be able to observe the finer details of the reionisation process.

The team's research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

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Astronomers Detect a Surprisingly Huge Galactic Birthplace in The Early Universe - ScienceAlert

Sextuply-eclipsing Astronomers discover a six-star system that eclipses one another – ThePrint

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Bengaluru: Astronomers using NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have observed a six-star system called TIC 168789840, also known as TYC 7037-89-1, that is around 2,000 light years away from the earth.

The astronomers have also called it the sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. This far away system was discovered using the NASA supercomputer called Discover by extracting useful information from years of existing TESS data.

While it was difficult to distinguish the individual stars, they showed a consistent pattern of dimming and brightening through which the astronomers were able to understand that starlight was being eclipsed by other stars (and not planets) with a line of sight from earth.

The discovery and analysis of the six-star system has been reported on a pre-print (not yet peer reviewed) server arXiv. It has been accepted for publication in the journal The Astronomical Journal.

Also read:For the first time ever, astronomers are witnessing a galaxys death as its happening

The star system is the fourth known sextuple star system where six stars are gravitationally bound to each other. The most famous of these is the Castor system discovered originally in the 18th century in the Gemini constellation but identified in 1920 to be a sextuple system, and is located about 51 light years away from the earth.

There are many configurations in which six stars circle a common centre or each other. In another sextuple system, known as the ADS 9731 system, four stars circle a common point, of which two stars are actually binaries.

However, the TIC 168789840 is aligned differently. Two pairs of inner stars orbit around a common barycentre (the systems centre of mass) every 3.7 years, while the outer binary pair go around the inner four every 2,000 years. Among these, the three binary star pairs are also made of two stars that whip around each others common centre of mass.

One of the inner pair of binaries revolves around each other in 31 hours, while the other does in 38 hours. The outer binary stars revolve around each other in about 197 hours.

The inner binaries orbit too close to each other, causing any potential planet to be ejected, explained the astronomers. However, the outer binaries may host planets that could have stellar views of multiple suns and sunsets.

This is the first star system where all stars in the same system eclipse each other from our line of sight, leading the astronomers to describe the system as sextuply-eclipsing.

Astronomy is increasingly becoming reliant on machine learning and large scale data processing due to the sheer volume of information being acquired on a daily basis.

Lead authors Brian Powell, a data scientist at NASAs High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, and Veselin Kostov, an astrophysicist at the US-based SETI Institute, designed a neural network that could identify eclipsing binary stars when combing through the TESS data.

TIC 168789840 is also the only sextuple star system in our line of sight where the stars transit or pass in front of one another. Such transits are typically observed in exoplanets, where planets move in front of a star, causing a dimming in starlight and with which scientists can deduce the size of the planet blocking the star.

The neural network studied nearly 80 million records that dealt with such dimming of starlight caused by other stars, and discovered many such multiple star super systems. TIC 168789840 was discovered in March 2020, after which amateur astronomers were made aware of the data and contributed to confirmed it through observations.

Astronomers are still not clear on how such large star systems with multiple stars were formed. One of the authors has speculated that in this system, three stars were formed first from a central cloud, after which each star was enveloped with material from the same cloud, giving them all an eventual secondary companion.

Discoveries of such star systems and observations of their behaviour can give more insight into how these systems were formed and evolve, thus improving our understanding of the universe.

Also read: Mars, Moon & a fresh pair of eyes in the sky the big space missions planned for 2021

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Sextuply-eclipsing Astronomers discover a six-star system that eclipses one another - ThePrint

International Astronomical Union’s OAD selects eight projects from Africa to receive funding – Space in Africa

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The International Astronomical Unions Office of Astronomy for Development(OAD) is pleased to announce the results of its 2020 call for proposals, with21 projects selected to receive funding in 2021. Out of the 21, eight projects are from Africa.

These projects, which will address global challenges using astronomy-related innovations, include online astronomy programmes in Indonesia and India; development of astronomy video content to be used in television lessons in Pakistan; training programmes for displaced populations in refugee camps in Algeria, Spain, Italy and Uganda; motivating and improving the welfare of prisoners in Nigeria; teaching coding using astronomical topics in Portugal, Mozambique and East Timor; mentoring and inspiring girls in primary schools in rural Kenya; and astronomy projects to celebrate indigenous culture and help students identify with their ancestral roots in Chile, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, So Tom and Prncipe, Angola, and Portugal.

Although the call was announced in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the OAD received an enthusiastic response from the community, with 110 applications submitted. An independent review panel selected 21 proposals, which were later approved by the OAD Steering Committee. In total, 109 944 will be granted to the funded projects.

This was the ninth annual call for proposals run by the OAD. In light of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the OAD also ran a separate call in 2020, inviting proposals to address the immediate challenges caused by the pandemic. As a result of this additional call, a further43 projects were fundedin June 2020.

The annual call for proposals is open to anyone from anywhere in the world. The next call is expected to open in April 2021.

The eight projects from Africa funded are:

1. Astrobus, NigeriaAstroBus-Nigeria is a mobile Astronomy outreach activity carried out by organizing a march and driving a motor vehicle probably 2-3 convoy to different locations in Nigeria. The Astronomy activities include sensitization, poster/billboard activities at popular location, simple astronomy experiments and others. The project aims to stimulate astronomy education and a culture of scientific thinking in Nigeria through the use of astronomy activities. We believe this idea is an effective approach to reach out to the general public in a creative and inspiring way.

2. Astrolab Distant Training, Southern, Eastern and West African countriesTo get students involved in science studies, lab activities are a necessity, but often scarce funding limits the capacity to implement it. In that context the enquiry-based lab Astrolab was developed. It is based on the analysis of astronomical images obtained with remote telescopes to introduce students to the scientific research method by working through project development and preparation, data acquisition and treatment, analysis and conclusions.

3. Astro-prison, NigeriaThe Astro-prison project aims to use Astro-prison as an astronomical tool in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Nigerian correctional facilities. The Astro-prison project targets the eighteen (18) correctional centres in South-Eastern Nigeria. South-East Nigeria is made up of five states which include Anambra State, Enugu State, Abia State, Imo State and Ebonyi State. The Astro-prison project will adopt a cross-sectional design. The project design will utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis. The project is designed to cope with the current COVID-19 pandemic by adopting preventive World Health Organization guidelines. This project will adopt the use of English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba languages as major communication languages because Nigeria is multi-ethnic. The Astro-prison project targets all inmates and prison warders in the South-East region of Nigeria and the sample size per prison (n) i.e. the number of participants per prison will be determined using standard Fischers et al. (1998) formula, n = (Z^2 pq)/d^2.

4. Elimisha Msichana. Elimisha Jamii na Astronomia (EMJA), (Swahili for educate a girl, educate the entire community with astronomy) KenyaIn Kenya, although 70.4% of girls aged 15-19 years manage to achieve some sort of primary education only 4.5% complete secondary education (World Bank, 2012). Only 3.5% of women (aged 15+) have completed tertiary education (World Bank, 2015). This is due to many socio-economic challenges such as teenage pregnancies, early marriages, FGM, poverty and lack of mentorship.

EMEJA will support schoolgirls and their families in rural areas of Kenya through astronomy outreach, mentorship & inspirational programmes. EMEJA aims to; 1) engage local communities in positively tackling the above socio-economic challenges; 2) increase number of girls completing secondary education in rural areas; 3) increase numbers of girls picking Physics & STEM; 4) develop resources for often underfunded local rural day secondary schools. Astronomy is the key tool & central theme around which activities will be built.

5. Knowledge access and sharing through Cultural Astronomy in Ugandas Refugee settlements and host communities, UgandaThis project is based on introducing Astronomy to refugee settlements through student activities, teacher training workshops, public engagements, webinars on Cultural Astronomy all of which will eventually be incorporated in a mobile Astronomy Lab for replication in other regions of Uganda. Project deliverables include; introduction of Astronomy in the general sciences education, a catalogue of videos, poems & other collected information for publication & display in an Astronomy museum. This project will be implemented in the 11 refugee settlements of Uganda, Africas leading refugee host.

6. Open Astronomy Clubs for Quality Education, Gender Equality and Distribution of Telescopes, CameroonOur project idea is to open Astronomy Clubs (one in a university, one in a secondary school and one in a primary school) for quality education and gender equality, and to distribute thirty telescopes in schools across the republic ( ten in ten state Universities, ten in ten secondary schools, seven in seven secondary schools and three in three primary, nursery and pre-nursery Schools) for partnership and good Ties between us, the Astronomy Club Of Cameroon and the IAU NOC Committee with the different institutions and ministry of higher education and that of the primary education.

Our only drawback was the budget. Since Astronomy Club Of Cameroon is the only existing Astronomy Club in Cameroon, we think these initiatives will help reduce our load and easily bring Astronomy knowledge to the community.

7. OruMbya Astronomy as fuel of life: the resilience of stars in Yoruba, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Cosmogony, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, So Tom and Principe, Angola and PortugalOruMbya (Orum, sky in Yorub, and Mbya, a Brazilian Guarani ethnicity) is a pilot project to celebrate Astronomy as the fuel of life, in which the stories of the stars are preserved in the resilience of people from three different continents and shared over months, through scientific-cultural activities focused on the dissemination of knowledge, promotion of social inclusion and sustainable development in the context of PLOAD.

We plan to organise five public events (once a month) at the Observatory of Valongo. Every event will comprise an organic combination of three experiences: dedicated to astronomy, African and indigenous knowledge, and art or music, which will be recorded and live broadcast. There will be webinars (roundtable discussions) where people from the different countries will share their experiences of Cultural Astronomy.

8. Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers 2021, AfricaThe Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers (PASEA) formally known as West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers (WAISSYA) has remained one of the flagship projects of the West African Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (WAROAD), since the first edition was initiated in the year 2013.

The school is primarily designed as an innovative short-course in astronomy for university students, an outreach program for high school students cum teachers at local universities. PASEA gives students the opportunity to develop their interest in astronomy, inspire their scientific curiosity cum enhance their practice of scientific thinking; while instructors have the opportunity of exchanging educational ideas between Africa and the rest of the world.

The other projects selected are:

The OAD has also compiled a list of recommended proposals that were approved by the reviewers but could not be funded. You can browse through them here.

The Authority on News, Data and Market Analysis for the African Space Industry.

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International Astronomical Union's OAD selects eight projects from Africa to receive funding - Space in Africa

A fridge thats colder than outer space could take quantum computing to new heights – TechRadar

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For most of us, the refrigerator is where we keep our dairy, meat and vegetables. For Ilana Wisby, CEO at Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), refrigeration means something else entirely.

Her company, operator of the UKs only commercially available quantum computer, has recently announced a new partnership with Oxford Instruments Nanoscience, a manufacturer of ultra-low temperature refrigerators.

As per the agreement, OQC will be the first to deploy the new Proteox cryo-refrigerator, which reaches temperatures as low as 5-8 millikelvin (circa -273 C/-460 F), significantly colder than outer space.

According to Wisby, the arrival of powerful new refrigerators will allow organizations like hers to take quantum computing to new heights, by improving the "quality" of superconducting quantum bits (qubits).

Quantum effects only happen in really low-energy environments, and energy is temperature. Ultimately, we need to be at incredibly low temperatures, because were working at single-digit electron levels, she explained

A qubit is an electronic circuit made from aluminum, built with a piece of silicon, which we cool down until it becomes superconducting and then further until single electron effects are happening.

The colder the system the less noise and mess there is, she told TechRadar Pro, because all the other junk is frozen out. With the Proteox, then, OQC hopes to be able to scale up the architecture of its quantum machine in a significant way.

The meaning of quantum computing, let alone its significance, can be difficult to grasp without a background in physics. At the end of our conversation, Wisby herself told us she had found it difficult to balance scientific integrity with the need to communicate the concepts.

But, in short, quantum computers approach problem solving in an entirely different way to classical machines, making use of certain symmetries to speed up processing and allow for far greater scale.

Quantum computers exploit a number of principles that define how the world works at an atomic level. Superposition, for example, is a principle whereby something can be in two positions at once, like a coin thats both a head and a tail, said Wisby.

Ultimately, that can happen with information as well. We are therefore no longer limited to just ones and zeros, but can have many versions of numbers in between, superimposed.

Instead of running calculation after calculation in a linear fashion, quantum machines can run them in parallel, optimizing for many more variables - and doing so extremely quickly.

Advances in the field, which is really still only in its nascent stages, are expected to have a major impact on areas such as drug discovery, logistics, finance, cybersecurity and almost any other market that needs to process massive volumes of information.

Quantum computers in operation today, however, can not yet consistently outperform classical supercomputers. There are also very few quantum computing resources available for businesses to utilize; OQC has only a small pool of rivals worldwide in this regard.

The most famous milestone held aloft as a marker of progress is that of quantum supremacy, the point at which quantum computers are able to solve problems that would take classical machines an infeasible amount of time.

In October 2019, Google announced it was the first company to reach this landmark, performing a task with its Sycamore prototype in 200 seconds that would take another machine 10,000 years.

But the claim was very publicly contested by IBM, which dialled up its Summit supercomputer (previously the worlds fastest) to prove it was capable of processing the same workload in roughly two and a half days.

Although the quantum supremacy landmark remains disputed, and quantum computers have not yet been responsible for any major scientific discoveries, Wisby is bullish about the industrys near-term prospects.

Were not there yet, but we will be very soon. Were at a tipping point after which we should start to see discoveries and applications that were fundamentally impossible before, realistically in the next three years.

In pharma, that might mean understanding specific molecules, even better understanding water. We hope to see customers working on new drugs that have been enabled by a quantum computer, at least partially, in the not too distant future.

The challenge facing organizations working to push quantum computing to the next level is balancing quality, scale and control. Currently, as quantum systems are scaled and an appropriate level of control asserted, the quality decreases and information is lost.

Achieving all these things in parallel is whats going to unlock a quantum-enabled future, says Wisby.

There is work to be done, in other words, before quantum fulfils its potential. But steps forward in the ability to fabricate superconducting devices at scale and developments in areas such as refrigeration are setting the stage.

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A fridge thats colder than outer space could take quantum computing to new heights - TechRadar

Tech 24 – Welcome to the quantum era – FRANCE 24

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Issued on: 25/01/2021 - 13:19Modified: 25/01/2021 - 14:18

The first quantum revolution gave way to lasers and transistors while the secondushered in MRIs and GPS. But the technology still holds much more promisefor the future. We tell you why quantum computing is becomingsuch a strategic sector.

Quantum physics constitutes a huge change in how one understands the world and conceives reality. There is a shift from the intuitive, straightforward classical paradigmto the quantum world that describesmuch more complex, counterintuitive and amazing phenomena. In this edition, we attempt to explain the fundamental mechanism of quantum physics, a demonstration of how little we actually know about our world.

We dig deeper into the prospect of quantum computers with Eleni Diamanti, a senior researcher at LIP6 Sorbonne. She tells us how much this technology is set to revolutionise certain sectors like communications, medtech and theInternet of Things, plus how nations and companies are now engaged in an arms race for quantum supremacy.

And in Test 24, wetake a look at the French startup Vaonis' latest deviceVespera, a perfect hybrid between a smart telescope and a camera that picked up the best innovation award at this year's CES trade show.

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Tech 24 - Welcome to the quantum era - FRANCE 24

University of Glasgow partners with Oxford Instruments NanoScience on quantum computing – SelectScience

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The University of Glasgow, one of thepioneering institutions at the leading edge of quantum technology development and home of the Quantum Circuits Group, has announced its using Oxford Instruments next-generation Cryofree refrigerator, Proteox, as part of its research to accelerate the commercialization of quantum computing in the UK.

Were excited to be using Proteox, the latest in cryogen-free refrigeration technology, and to have the system up and running in our lab, comments Professor Martin Weides, Head of the Quantum Circuits Group. Oxford Instruments is a long-term strategic partner and todays announcement highlights the importance of our close collaboration to the future of quantum computing development. Proteox is designed with quantum scale-up in mind, and through the use of its Secondary Insert technology, were able to easily characterize and develop integrated chips and components for quantum computing applications.

The University of Glasgow, its subsidiary and commercialization partner, Kelvin Nanotechnology, and Oxford Instruments NanoScience are part of a larger consortium supported by funding from Innovate UK, the UKs innovation agency, granted in April 2020. The consortium partners will boost quantum technology development by the design, manufacture, and test of superconducting quantum devices.

Today'sannouncement demonstrates the major contribution Oxford Instruments is making towards pioneering quantum technology work in the UK, states Stuart Woods, Managing Director of Oxford Instruments NanoScience. With our 60 years of experience of in-house component production and global service support, we are accelerating the commercialization of quantum to discover whats next supporting our customers across the world.

Proteox is a next-generation Cryofree system that provides a step change in modularity and adaptability for ultra-low temperature experiments in condensed-matter physics and quantum computing industrialization. The Proteox platform has been developed to provide a single, interchangeable modular solution that can support multiple users and a variety of set-ups or experiments. It also includes remote management software which is integral to the system design, enabling, for example, the system to be managed from anywhere in the world.

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Analysis: Opportunities and Restraint of the Quantum Computing Market KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper – KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper

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The globalquantum computing marketis valued at $667.3 million by 2027, surging from $88.2 million in 2019 at a noteworthy CAGR of 30.0%.

Impact Analysis of COVID-19 on the Quantum Computing Market

The global market for quantum computing services is projected to experience considerable impact due to the emergence of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In the fight against COVID-19, quantum computing platform has joined the force of disruptive technologies at the service to better control the global outbreak. The current coronavirus crisis provides a valuable stage for zooming in the real potential applications of quantum computing in highly-impacted and complex situations. The esteemed companies operating in global quantum computing market are trying their best to provide integrated platform amidst the shutdown. For instance, in September 2020, IBM, an American multinational technology and consulting company, announced to conduct IBM Quantum Summit 2020 to discover chemical compounds that could contribute to the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, quantum computing is very helpful in the discovery of lot of drugs which is a computationally-intensive task. Quantum computing can analyze the the interaction between biomolecules, and this can be helpful in tackling infectious agents such as coronavirus and others. There can be no other better way than to model the problem on a computer and conduct extensive research on the same. For instance in March, D-Wave announced that they are offering quantum computers free to anyone working on the coronavirus crisis for research and other work related to covid19. Therefore, there are many companies expirenced upsurge in growth, throughout the pandemic period. These type of factors may lead lucrative opportunities for the investors in the forecast period.

Quantum Computing Market Analysis:

The enormous growth of the global quantum computing market is mainly attributed to the increasing integration of quantum computing platforms in healthcare. Companies such as 1QB Information Technologies Inc., QxBranch, LLC, D-Wave Systems Inc. are working in the field of material simulation to enhance the accessibility, availability, and usability of quantum computers in material simulation applications. In addition, these players are following strategic collaborations, business expansion and technological innovations to acquire the largest share in the global industry. For instance, in October 2020, Cambridge Quantum Computing announced that they are opening Ph.D. internships with multinational pharmaceutical companies for drug designing through quantum algorithms. These key factors may lead to a surge in the demand for quantum computing services in the global market.

Lack of knowledge and skills may create a negative impact on global quantum computing services throughout the analysis timeframe. This type of factors may hamper the quantum computing market growth during the analysis period.

The global quantum computing industry is growing extensively across various fields, but fastest growing adoption of quantum computing is in agriculture. Quantum computing offers software solutions for agriculture in large businesses and startups all over the world to develop innovative solutions in agriculture. For instance Quantum, a software and data science company launched a software named AgriTech, ths software helps farmers to monitor crops, agricultural fields and it will respond quickly to all the issues related to agriculture. These factors may provide lucrative opportunities for the global quantum computing market, in the coming years.

The consulting solutions sub-segment of the quantum computing market will have the fastest growth and it is projected to surpass $354.0 million by 2027, with an increase from $37.1 million in 2019. This is mainly attributed to its application in blind quantum computing and quantum cryptography playing a major role to secure cloud computing services. Moreover, the consulting solutions segment for quantum computing technologies covers broad range of end-user industries including automotive, space & defense, chemicals, healthcare, and energy & power, and others.

Moreover systems offering sub-segment type will have a significant market share and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 26.7% by registering a revenue of $313.3 million by 2027. This growth is mainly attributed to many government authorities across the developed as well as developing economies that are heavily investing into quantum computing technologies. For instance, in February 2020, the Indian government announces that they are going to invest $1120 million in quantum computing research. This type of government support and scheme is expected to flourish the research for technology under the National Mission of Quantum Technology and Application project. Such government support may bolster the segmental growth, in the analysis period.

Machine learning sub-segment for the quantum computing industry shall have rapid growth and it is anticipated to generate a revenue of $236.9 million by 2027, during the forecast period. This growth is mainly attributed to higher applications of quantum computing in the broad range of areas such as drug discovery, multi-omics data integration, and many among others. These factors may offer lucrative opportunities for the segment, during the forecast timeframe.

The banking and finance sub-segment will be the fastest-growing segment and it is expected to register a revenue of $159.2 million by 2027, throughout the analysis timeframe. The enormously growing quantum computing in the finance sector across the globe has advanced with developments in smartphone technology and computer processing. In addition, the quantum computing platform helps speed up the transactional activities in cost-effective ways. Hence, the quantum computing platform is extensively attracting the interest of BFSI firms that are seeking to boost their data speed, trade, and transactions. Such factors are projected to upsurge the growth of the segment, during the projected timeframe.

The quantum computing market for the Asia-Pacific region will be a rapidly-growing market and it has generated a revenue of $18.1 million in 2019 and is further projected to reach up to $150.3 million by 2027. The demand for quantum computing services is surging in the Asia pacific region, specifically because of the strategic collaboration and development. For instance, in December 2019, D-Wave Systems came in a partnership with Japans NEC for building of quantum apps and hybrid HPC for exploring the capabilities NECs high-performance computers and D-Waves quantum systems. Such partnerships may further surge the growth of market, during the analysis timeframe.

The Europe quantum computing market shall have a dominating market share and is anticipated to reach up to $ 221.2 million by the end of 2027 due to its higher application in fields such as development and discovery of new drugs, cryptography, cyber security, defense sector, among others. In addition, the use of quantum computing will also have positive consequences in development of AI as well as in machine learning. For instance, in July 2019, Utimaco GmbH, software & hardware provider came in partnership with ISARA to utilize post quantum cryptography; this partnership will help their users to have secured and encrypted communication that cannot be decrypted by other computers. These initiatives may create a positive impact on the Asia-pacific quantum computing market, during the forecast period.

Key Market Players

Porters Five Forces Analysis for Quantum Computing Market:

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Analysis: Opportunities and Restraint of the Quantum Computing Market KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper

The Worldwide Quantum Computing Industry will Exceed $7.1 Billion by 2026 – GlobeNewswire

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Dublin, Jan. 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Quantum Computing Market by Technology, Infrastructure, Services, and Industry Verticals 2021 - 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report assesses the technology, companies/organizations, R&D efforts, and potential solutions facilitated by quantum computing. The report provides global and regional forecasts as well as the outlook for quantum computing impact on infrastructure including hardware, software, applications, and services from 2021 to 2026. This includes the quantum computing market across major industry verticals.

While classical (non-quantum) computers make the modern digital world possible, there are many tasks that cannot be solved using conventional computational methods. This is because of limitations in processing power. For example, fourth-generation computers cannot perform multiple computations at one time with one processor. Physical phenomena at the nanoscale indicate that a quantum computer is capable of computational feats that are orders of magnitude greater than conventional methods.

This is due to the use of something referred to as a quantum bit (qubit), which may exist as a zero or one (as in classical computing) or may exist in two-states simultaneously (0 and 1 at the same time) due to the superposition principle of quantum physics. This enables greater processing power than the normal binary (zero only or one only) representation of data.

Whereas parallel computing is achieved in classical computers via linking processors together, quantum computers may conduct multiple computations with a single processor. This is referred to as quantum parallelism and is a major difference between hyper-fast quantum computers and speed-limited classical computers.

Quantum computing is anticipated to support many new and enhanced capabilities including:

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Select Report Findings:

Report Benefits:

Key Topics Covered:

1.0 Executive Summary

2.0 Introduction

3.0 Technology and Market Analysis3.1 Quantum Computing State of the Industry3.2 Quantum Computing Technology Stack3.3 Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence3.4 Quantum Neurons3.5 Quantum Computing and Big Data3.6 Linear Optical Quantum Computing3.7 Quantum Computing Business Model3.8 Quantum Software Platform3.9 Application Areas3.10 Emerging Revenue Sectors3.11 Quantum Computing Investment Analysis3.12 Quantum Computing Initiatives by Country3.12.1 USA3.12.2 Canada3.12.3 Mexico3.12.4 Brazil3.12.5 UK3.12.6 France3.12.7 Russia3.12.8 Germany3.12.9 Netherlands3.12.10 Denmark3.12.11 Sweden3.12.12 Saudi Arabia3.12.13 UAE3.12.14 Qatar3.12.15 Kuwait3.12.16 Israel3.12.17 Australia3.12.18 China3.12.19 Japan3.12.20 India3.12.21 Singapore

4.0 Quantum Computing Drivers and Challenges4.1 Quantum Computing Market Dynamics4.2 Quantum Computing Market Drivers4.2.1 Growing Adoption in Aerospace and Defense Sectors4.2.2 Growing investment of Governments4.2.3 Emergence of Advance Applications4.3 Quantum Computing Market Challenges

5.0 Quantum Computing Use Cases5.1 Quantum Computing in Pharmaceuticals5.2 Applying Quantum Technology to Financial Problems5.3 Accelerate Autonomous Vehicles with Quantum AI5.4 Car Manufacturers using Quantum Computing5.5 Accelerating Advanced Computing for NASA Missions

6.0 Quantum Computing Value Chain Analysis6.1 Quantum Computing Value Chain Structure6.2 Quantum Computing Competitive Analysis6.2.1 Leading Vendor Efforts6.2.2 Start-up Companies6.2.3 Government Initiatives6.2.4 University Initiatives6.2.5 Venture Capital Investments6.3 Large Scale Computing Systems

7.0 Company Analysis7.1 D-Wave Systems Inc.7.1.1 Company Overview:7.1.2 Product Portfolio7.1.3 Recent Development7.2 Google Inc.7.2.1 Company Overview:7.2.2 Product Portfolio7.2.3 Recent Development7.3 Microsoft Corporation7.3.1 Company Overview:7.3.2 Product Portfolio7.3.3 Recent Development7.4 IBM Corporation7.4.1 Company Overview:7.4.2 Product Portfolio7.4.3 Recent Development7.5 Intel Corporation7.5.1 Company Overview7.5.2 Product Portfolio7.5.3 Recent Development7.6 Nokia Corporation7.6.1 Company Overview7.6.2 Product Portfolio7.6.3 Recent Developments7.7 Toshiba Corporation7.7.1 Company Overview7.7.2 Product Portfolio7.7.3 Recent Development7.8 Raytheon Company7.8.1 Company Overview7.8.2 Product Portfolio7.8.3 Recent Development7.9 Other Companies7.9.1 1QB Information Technologies Inc.7.9.1.1 Company Overview7.9.1.2 Recent Development7.9.2 Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd.7.9.2.1 Company Overview7.9.2.2 Recent Development7.9.3 QC Ware Corp.7.9.3.1 Company Overview7.9.3.2 Recent Development7.9.4 MagiQ Technologies Inc.7.9.4.1 Company Overview7.9.5 Rigetti Computing7.9.5.1 Company Overview7.9.5.2 Recent Development7.9.6 Anyon Systems Inc.7.9.6.1 Company Overview7.9.7 Quantum Circuits Inc.7.9.7.1 Company Overview7.9.7.2 Recent Development7.9.8 Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)7.9.8.1 Company Overview7.9.8.2 Recent Development7.9.9 Fujitsu Ltd.7.9.9.1 Company Overview7.9.9.2 Recent Development7.9.10 NEC Corporation7.9.10.1 Company Overview7.9.10.2 Recent Development7.9.11 SK Telecom7.9.11.1 Company Overview7.9.11.2 Recent Development7.9.12 Lockheed Martin Corporation7.9.12.1 Company Overview7.9.13 NTT Docomo Inc.7.9.13.1 Company Overview7.9.13.2 Recent Development7.9.14 Alibaba Group Holding Limited7.9.14.1 Company Overview7.9.14.2 Recent Development7.9.15 Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.7.9.15.1 Company Overview7.9.16 Airbus Group7.9.16.1 Company Overview7.9.16.2 Recent Development7.9.17 Amgen Inc.7.9.17.1 Company Overview7.9.17.2 Recent Development7.9.18 Biogen Inc.7.9.18.1 Company Overview7.9.18.2 Recent Development7.9.19 BT Group7.9.19.1 Company Overview7.9.19.2 Recent Development7.9.20 Mitsubishi Electric Corp.7.9.20.1 Company Overview7.9.21 Volkswagen AG7.9.21.1 Company Overview7.9.21.2 Recent Development7.9.22 KPN7.9.22.1 Recent Development7.10 Ecosystem Contributors7.10.1 Agilent Technologies7.10.2 Artiste-qb.net7.10.3 Avago Technologies7.10.4 Ciena Corporation7.10.5 Eagle Power Technologies Inc7.10.6 Emcore Corporation7.10.7 Enablence Technologies7.10.8 Entanglement Partners7.10.9 Fathom Computing7.10.10 Alpine Quantum Technologies GmbH7.10.11 Atom Computing7.10.12 Black Brane Systems7.10.13 Delft Circuits7.10.14 EeroQ7.10.15 Everettian Technologies7.10.16 EvolutionQ7.10.17 H-Bar Consultants7.10.18 Horizon Quantum Computing7.10.19 ID Quantique (IDQ)7.10.20 InfiniQuant7.10.21 IonQ7.10.22 ISARA7.10.23 KETS Quantum Security7.10.24 Magiq7.10.25 MDR Corporation7.10.26 Nordic Quantum Computing Group (NQCG)7.10.27 Oxford Quantum Circuits7.10.28 Post-Quantum (PQ Solutions)7.10.29 ProteinQure7.10.30 PsiQuantum7.10.31 Q&I7.10.32 Qasky7.10.33 QbitLogic7.10.34 Q-Ctrl7.10.35 Qilimanjaro Quantum Hub7.10.36 Qindom7.10.37 Qnami7.10.38 QSpice Labs7.10.39 Qu & Co7.10.40 Quandela7.10.41 Quantika7.10.42 Quantum Benchmark Inc.7.10.43 Quantum Circuits Inc. (QCI)7.10.44 Quantum Factory GmbH7.10.45 QuantumCTek7.10.46 Quantum Motion Technologies7.10.47 QuantumX7.10.48 Qubitekk7.10.49 Qubitera LLC7.10.50 Quintessence Labs7.10.51 Qulab7.10.52 Qunnect7.10.53 QuNu Labs7.10.54 River Lane Research (RLR)7.10.55 SeeQC7.10.56 Silicon Quantum Computing7.10.57 Sparrow Quantum7.10.58 Strangeworks7.10.59 Tokyo Quantum Computing (TQC)7.10.60 TundraSystems Global Ltd.7.10.61 Turing7.10.62 Xanadu7.10.63 Zapata Computing7.10.64 Accenture7.10.65 Atos Quantum7.10.66 Baidu7.10.67 Northrop Grumman7.10.68 Quantum Computing Inc.7.10.69 Keysight Technologies7.10.70 Nano-Meta Technologies7.10.71 Optalysys Ltd.

8.0 Quantum Computing Market Analysis and Forecasts 2021 - 20268.1.1 Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure8.1.1.1 Quantum Computing Market by Hardware Type8.1.1.2 Quantum Computing Market by Application Software Type8.1.1.3 Quantum Computing Market by Service Type8.1.1.3.1 Quantum Computing Market by Professional Service Type8.1.2 Quantum Computing Market by Technology Segment8.1.3 Quantum Computing Market by Industry Vertical8.1.4 Quantum Computing Market by Region8.1.4.1 North America Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure, Technology, Industry Vertical, and Country8.1.4.2 European Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure, Technology, and Industry Vertical8.1.4.3 Asia-Pacific Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure, Technology, and Industry Vertical8.1.4.4 Middle East & Africa Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure, Technology, and Industry Vertical8.1.4.5 Latin America Quantum Computing Market by Infrastructure, Technology, and Industry Vertical

9.0 Conclusions and Recommendations

10.0 Appendix: Quantum Computing and Classical HPC10.1 Next Generation Computing10.2 Quantum Computing vs. Classical High-Performance Computing10.3 Artificial Intelligence in High Performance Computing10.4 Quantum Technology Market in Exascale Computing

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/omefq7

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The Worldwide Quantum Computing Industry will Exceed $7.1 Billion by 2026 - GlobeNewswire

Quantum Computing Acceleration of AI in Pharma on the Rise – RTInsights

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More than four out of five (82 percent) surveyed pharma companies believe quantum computing will impact the industry within the next decade.

Quantum computing is being eyed to accelerate computations in a variety of applications. While many routine computational workloads are well-served by traditional high-performance computing (HPC) systems, quantum computing offers advantages for certain classes of applications. One category that it appears can greatly benefit is pharmaceutical research. Specifically, leading organizations in the field hope to use the technology to accelerate drug discovery and the development of new therapies.

One sign of the growing adoption in the life sciences was anannouncement last week of a collaborative agreement between BoehringerIngelheim and Google Quantum AI (Google). The two will focus on researching andimplementing cutting-edge use cases for quantum computing in pharmaceuticalresearch and development (R&D), specifically molecular dynamicssimulations.

See also: Quantum Computing: Coming to a Platform Near You

The new partnership combines Boehringer Ingelheimsexpertise in the field of computer-aided drug design and in silico modelingwith Googles efforts in quantum computers and algorithms. Boehringer Ingelheimis the first pharmaceutical company worldwide to join forces with Google inquantum computing. The partnership is designed for three years and is co-led bythe newly established Quantum Lab of Boehringer Ingelheim.

In making the announcement, the teams noted that while thetechnology is still new, there are opportunities to make significant advances.Quantum computing is still very much an emerging technology, saidMichaelSchmelmer, Member of the Board of Managing Directors of Boehringer Ingelheimwith responsibility for Finance and Group Functions. However, we are convincedthat this technology could help us to provide even more humans and animals withinnovative and groundbreaking medicines in the future.

The work here is yet another part of wide-ranging Boehringer Ingelheim technology investments in a broad range of digital technologies. Those investments encompass key areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science to better understand diseases, their drivers and biomarkers, and digital therapeutics.

With respect to potential advances using quantum computing,the technology has the potential to accurately simulate and compare much largermolecules than currently possible with traditional (HPC) systems. Extremelyaccurate modeling of molecular systems is widely anticipated as among the mostnatural and potentially transformative applications of quantum computing, saidRyan Babbush, Head of Quantum Algorithms at Google, when the news was announced.

Using the technology in pharmaceutical research will require new compute systems, software, and expertise. As such, adoption is still in its early stages. A survey conducted last year by the Pistoia Alliance, theQuantum Economic Development Consortium(QED-C), andQuPharm found almost one third (31 percent) of life science organizations were set to begin quantum computing evaluation in 2020. A further 39 percent are planning to evaluate this year or have the technology on their radar, while 30 percent have no current plans to evaluate.

The three organizations have established a cross-industry Community of Interest (CoI). The aim is to explore opportunities for the technology to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of biopharma R&D. The CoI aims to support companies that need help navigating the pathway to quantum computing.

While we are still in the early stages of this newtechnology becoming available, there are great expectations of its importance.That same survey found that more than four out of five respondents (82 percent)believe quantum computing will impact the industry within the next decade.

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Quantum Computing Acceleration of AI in Pharma on the Rise - RTInsights

Closing the quantum computing skills gap could make all the difference in tackling climate change – The Globe and Mail

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Two years ago, the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that global emissions must be slashed to net zero by 2050 if we are to avoid the full devastation of climate change. Nearly 120 countries (including Canada) representing 65 per cent of global emissions and more than 70 per cent of the world economy have committed to working on net-zero targets. However, while the goal of these countries is the same, the approach by which to achieve it varies.

Advanced technologies are poised to be game-changers in the battle to overcome climate change. Quantum computing is just one example, as researchers learn more about its potential, including discovering new ways to capture and transform CO2s harmful emissions into usable energy and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Scientists are also working on it to create molecules that replace the chemical catalysts needed for fertilizer production a process which now accounts for up to 3 per cent of the energy used on the planet.

While all computing systems depend on an ability to store and manage information, some of the solutions to challenges we face now such as CO2 reduction may not be achievable using todays computational power. Quantum computers, which leverage quantum mechanical phenomena to perform computations, could solve in mere seconds problems that once might have taken a million years to crack.

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The potential of quantum computing is not lost on government and industry leaders. Research firm Gartner projects that, by 2023, 20 per cent of organizations will have earmarked quantum computing in their budgets, compared with less than one per cent in 2018. This is good news for Canada, a country considered to be a pioneer in quantum science. According to a recent study by McKinsey and Company, our country has been ranked first in the world in quantum computing science, first in the G7 in per-capita spending on research in on the subject, and fifth in the world in total expenditure on quantum science in general. This translates into a $142.4-billion opportunity that could employ 229,000 Canadians by 2040, according to the National Research Council of Canada. This potential demand for a brand-new pool of talent to fill potentially more than a quarter of million jobs means that we need to prepare our workforce now.

While science and math are the foundation of a career in quantum computing, there is no single set of skills that will take you there. Physics, computer science and engineering are all solid competencies, but as quantum is so interdisciplinary, exploring other options is important too. For example, cybersecurity expertise will be in higher demand as the potential for cybercrime grows at the same rate as the technology.

As with many opportunities, a diverse background of knowledge is often helpful, especially as the pervasiveness of quantum technology grows across more industries, including finance, health care, telecommunications, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Education that prepares for careers as technical writers, project managers, analysts and other similar roles is beneficial. The ability to communicate, think critically, collaborate and be curious is also important. And, as we move to a greener economy both in Canada and worldwide, knowledge of climate issues is valuable.

To fill the skills gap that the growth of quantum computing will create, academic institutions, companies and governments across Canada should be developing and executing strategies now. Businesses can start identifying what current job roles could evolve into quantum-based ones with some reskilling. Cross-industry and cross-business collaboration would also serve to develop key employee skills for a capable workforce nationwide. Finally, governments should ensure that their training programs recognize the growth potential of quantum, especially as it develops to meet the needs of stronger environmental measures.

In the case of academics, quantum education ought to be integrated into curriculum starting in high school and be offered widely at the post-secondary level. On this front, is progress being made here in Canada as programs launch at universities across the country, including the Universit de Sherbrooke, where last June IBM announced the new IBM Quantum Hub the first in Canada. Producing a skilled quantum workforce is not a small endeavour, so creating the opportunities for skills growth should be a priority.

The theme of 2021 is most certainly recovery and progress. As the country moves forward, we must look for new occasions to innovate and opportunities for growth we may not have had before. It is important now more than ever to do everything we can to ensure our workforce is prepared for the jobs to come, as well as for a more advanced and sustainable future.

Claude Guay, president of IBM Canada.

Shan Qiao Photo, Shan Qiao/Handout

Claude Guay is the president of IBM Canada. He is the leadership lab columnist for January 2021.

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This column is part of Globe Careers Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.

Stay ahead in your career. We have a weekly Careers newsletter to give you guidance and tips on career management, leadership, business education and more. Sign up today or follow us at @Globe_Careers.

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Closing the quantum computing skills gap could make all the difference in tackling climate change - The Globe and Mail

Light-Induced Twisting of Weyl Nodes Switches on Giant Electron Current Useful for Spintronics and Quantum Computing – SciTechDaily

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Schematic of light-induced formation of Weyl points in a Dirac material of ZrTe5. Jigang Wang and collaborators report how coherently twisted lattice motion by laser pulses, i.e., a phononic switch, can control the crystal inversion symmetry and photogenerate giant low dissipation current with an exceptional ballistic transport protected by induced Weyl band topology. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy, Ames Laboratory

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energys Ames Laboratory and collaborators at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Alabama at Birmingham have discovered a new light-induced switch that twists the crystal lattice of the material, switching on a giant electron current that appears to be nearly dissipationless. The discovery was made in a category of topological materials that holds great promise for spintronics, topological effect transistors, and quantum computing.

Weyl and Dirac semimetals can host exotic, nearly dissipationless, electron conduction properties that take advantage of the unique state in the crystal lattice and electronic structure of the material that protects the electrons from doing so. These anomalous electron transport channels, protected by symmetry and topology, dont normally occur in conventional metals such as copper. After decades of being described only in the context of theoretical physics, there is growing interest in fabricating, exploring, refining, and controlling their topologically protected electronic properties for device applications. For example, wide-scale adoption of quantum computing requires building devices in which fragile quantum states are protected from impurities and noisy environments. One approach to achieve this is through the development of topological quantum computation, in which qubits are based on symmetry-protected dissipationless electric currents that are immune to noise.

Light-induced lattice twisting, or a phononic switch, can control the crystal inversion symmetry and photogenerate giant electric current with very small resistance, said Jigang Wang, senior scientist at Ames Laboratory and professor of physics at Iowa State University. This new control principle does not require static electric or magnetic fields, and has much faster speeds and lower energy cost.

This finding could be extended to a newquantum computing principle based on the chiral physics and dissipationlessenergy transport, which may run much faster speeds, lower energy cost and high operation temperature. said Liang Luo, a scientist at Ames Laboratory and first author of the paper.

Wang, Luo, and their colleagues accomplished just that, using terahertz (one trillion cycles per second) laser light spectroscopy to examine and nudge these materials into revealing the symmetry switching mechanisms of their properties.

In this experiment, the team altered the symmetry of the electronic structure of the material, using laser pulses to twist the lattice arrangement of the crystal. This light switch enables Weyl points in the material, causing electrons to behave as massless particles that can carry the protected, low dissipation current that is sought after.

We achieved this giant dissipationless current by driving periodic motions of atoms around their equilibrium position in order to break crystal inversion symmetry, says Ilias Perakis, professor of physics and chair at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This light-induced Weyl semimetal transport and topology control principle appears to be universal and will be very useful in the development of future quantum computing and electronics with high speed and low energy consumption.

What weve lacked until now is a low energy and fast switch to induce and control symmetry of these materials, said Qiang Li, Group leader of the Brookhaven National Laboratorys Advanced Energy Materials Group. Our discovery of a light symmetry switch opens a fascinating opportunity to carry dissipationless electron current, a topologically protected state that doesnt weaken or slow down when it bumps into imperfections and impurities in the material.

Reference: A light-induced phononic symmetry switch and giant dissipationless topological photocurrent in ZrTe5 by Liang Luo, Di Cheng, Boqun Song, Lin-Lin Wang, Chirag Vaswani, P. M. Lozano, G. Gu, Chuankun Huang, Richard H. J. Kim, Zhaoyu Liu, Joong-Mok Park, Yongxin Yao, Kaiming Ho, Ilias E. Perakis, Qiang Li and Jigang Wang, 18 January 2021, Nature Materials.DOI: 10.1038/s41563-020-00882-4

Terahertz photocurrent and laser spectroscopy experiments and model building were performed at Ames Laboratory. Sample development and magneto-transport measurements were conducted by Brookhaven National Laboratory. Data analysis was conducted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. First-principles calculations and topological analysis were conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Topological Semimetals, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the DOE Office of Science.

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Light-Induced Twisting of Weyl Nodes Switches on Giant Electron Current Useful for Spintronics and Quantum Computing - SciTechDaily