“Lawfare”: Musk Says He Will Sue FAA

The American Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) has proposed $630,000 in fines against Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. They are claiming that SpaceX did not comply with safety requirements, among other things, by using an unapproved launch room and failing to conduct a pre-launch poll intended to prevent errors. Musk announced on X/Twitter he will be suing for “regulatory overreach” and referred to the FAA fines as “lawfare”.

This episode of Science News covers Loop Quantum Gravity. I was recently alerted to a video by my friend and colleague Brian Keating that claims Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), string theory’s biggest competitor, has been disproven. I was somewhat surprised by this because I was pretty convinced it is for all practical purposes untestable -- much like string theory. I had a look at what he is talking about. You can take the quiz here.

You can now create and share your own quizzes on QuizWithIt – for free! Just set up an account and creator profile and you are good to go. Create quizzes to go with websites, videos, blogposts, podcasts, or as standalone. Your audience can support you by subscribing to your content, which allows them to collect points by taking your quizzes. Each quiz has a unique URL, can be embedded into websites or newsletter, and be shared on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Happy quizzing!

Japan to Build World’s First ZetaFLOP Supercomputer

The Japanese Government has approved plans to start construction on the world’s first ZetaFLOP computer. A FLOP is a floating point operation and basically a unit of computation. The currently biggest supercomputers – like the American Frontier supercomputer – perform in the range of exaFLOPs, that are 10^18 FLOPs. The prefix “zeta” stands for 10^21, so it’s an improvement by almost a factor 1000. The project will be an upgrade of the Fugaku Supercomputer and has been dubbed “Fugaku Next”. According to the news site Nikkei, the Japanese government will finance it with 110 billion Japanese Yen (ca US$ 780 million). Construction will start next year. Operation could start by 2030.

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U.K. is Financing Climate Cooling Studies

The British funding agency ARIA (modelled after the American DARPA) has issued a call for proposals on climate engineering. The program objectives include outdoor experiments as well as computer simulations. It’s a noteworthy development because it’s the first time a governmental agency is openly endorsing research on the topic. Climate engineering experiments in the USA have faced strong opposition by environmentalists. In March this year an experiment from Harvard University on stratospheric aerosol injection shut down after years of controversy. Just a month later, officials in California shut down an experiment on marine cloud brightening.

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