Think of bringing a pot of water to the boil: As the temperature reaches the boiling point, bubbles form in the water, burst and evaporate as the water boils. This continues until there is no more water changing phase from liquid to steam.
This is roughly the idea of what happened in the very early universe, right after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
The idea comes from particle physicists Martin S. Sloth from the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology at University of Southern Denmark and Florian Niedermann from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA) in Stockholm. Niedermann is a previous postdoc in Sloth’s research group. In this new scientific article, they present an even stronger basis for their idea.
Many bubbles crashing into each other
“One must imagine that bubbles arose in various places in the early universe. They got bigger and they started crashing into each other. In the end, there was a complicated state of colliding bubbles, which released energy and eventually evaporated,” said Martin S. Sloth.
The background for their theory of phase changes in a bubbling universe is a highly interesting problem with calculating the so-called Hubble constant; a value for how fast the universe is expanding. Sloth and Niedermann believe that the bubbling universe plays a role here.
The Hubble constant can be calculated very reliably by, for example, analyzing cosmic background radiation or by measuring how fast a galaxy or an exploding star is moving away from us. According to Sloth and Niedermann, both methods are not only reliable, but also scientifically recognized. The problem is that the two methods do not lead to the same Hubble constant. Physicists call this problem “the Hubble tension.”
Is there something wrong with our picture of the early universe?
“In science, you have to be able to reach the same result by using different methods, so here we have a problem. Why don’t we get the same result when we are so confident about both methods?” said Florian Niedermann.
Sloth and Niedermann believe they have found a way to get the same Hubble constant, regardless of which method is used. The path starts with a phase transition and a bubbling universe—and thus an early, bubbling universe is connected to “the Hubble tension.” “If we assume that these methods are reliable—and we think they are—then maybe the methods are not the problem. Maybe we need to look at the starting point, the basis, that we apply the methods to. Maybe this basis is wrong.”
AI generated illustration of colliding bubbles in the universe. Credit: Birgitte Svennevig, University of Southern Denmark
An unknown dark energy
The basis for the methods is the so-called Standard Model, which assumes that there was a lot of radiation and matter, both normal and dark, in the early universe, and that these were the dominant forms of energy. The radiation and the normal matter were compressed in a dark, hot and dense plasma; the state of the universe in the first 380.000 years after Big Bang.
When you base your calculations on the Standard Model, you arrive at different results for how fast the universe is expanding—and thus different Hubble constants.
But maybe a new form of dark energy was at play in the early universe? Sloth and Niedermann think so.
If you introduce the idea that a new form of dark energy in the early universe suddenly began to bubble and undergo a phase transition, the calculations agree. In their model, Sloth and Niedermann arrive at the same Hubble constant when using both measurement methods. They call this idea New Early Dark Energy—NEDE.
Change from one phase to another—like water to steam
Sloth and Niedermann believe that this new, dark energy underwent a phase transition when the universe expanded, shortly before it changed from the dense and hot plasma state to the universe we know today.
“This means that the dark energy in the early universe underwent a phase transition, just as water can change phase between frozen, liquid and steam. In the process, the energy bubbles eventually collided with other bubbles and along the way released energy,” said Niedermann.
“It could have lasted anything from an insanely short time—perhaps just the time it takes two particles to collide—to 300,000 years. We don’t know, but that is something we are working to find out,” added Sloth.
Do we need new physics?
So, the phase transition model is based on the fact that the universe does not behave as the Standard Model tells us. It may sound a little scientifically crazy to suggest that something is wrong with our fundamental understanding of the universe; that you can just propose the existence of hitherto unknown forces or particles to solve the Hubble tension.
“But if we trust the observations and calculations, we must accept that our current model of the universe cannot explain the data, and then we must improve the model. Not by discarding it and its success so far, but by elaborating on it and making it more detailed so that it can explain the new and better data,” said Martin S. Sloth, adding, “It appears that a phase transition in the dark energy is the missing element in the current Standard Model to explain the differing measurements of the universe’s expansion rate.”
The findings are published in the journal Physics Letters B.
More information: Florian Niedermann et al, Hot new early dark energy: Towards a unified dark sector of neutrinos, dark energy and dark matter, Physics Letters B (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137555
The Federal Trade Commission took historic action against the medication discount service GoodRx Wednesday, issuing a $1.5 million fine against the company for sharing data about users’ prescriptions with Facebook, Google, and others. It’s a move that could usher in a new era of health privacy in the United States.
“Digital health companies and mobile apps should not cash in on consumer’s extremely sensitive and personally identifiable health information,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement.
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In addition to a fine, GoodRx has agreed to a first-of-its-kind provision banning the company from sharing health data with third parties for advertising purposes. That may sound unsurprising, but many consumers don’t realize that health privacy laws generally don’t apply to companies that aren’t affiliated with doctors or insurance companies.
[…]
GoodRx is a health technology company that gives out free coupons for discounts on common medications. The company also connects users with healthcare providers for telehealth visits. GoodRx also shared data about the prescriptions you’re buying and looking up with third-party advertising companies, which incurred the ire of the FTC.
GoodRx’s privacy problems were first uncovered by this reporter in an investigation with Consumer Reports, followed by a similar report in Gizmodo. At the time, if you looked up Viagra, Prozac, PrEP, or any other medication, GoodRx would tell Facebook, Google, and a variety of companies in the ad business, such as Criteo, Branch, and Twilio. GoodRx wasn’t selling the data. Instead, it shared the information so those companies could help GoodRx target its own customers with ads for more drugs.
AMD’s client PC sales also dropped dramatically—a whopping 51 percent year-over-year—but the company managed to eke out a small profit despite the sky falling. So why aren’t CPU and GPU prices falling too? In a call with investors Tuesday night, CEO Lisa Su confirmed that AMD has been “undershipping” chips for a while now to balance supply and demand (read: keep prices up).
“We have been undershipping the sell-through or consumption for the last two quarters,” Su said, as spotted by PC Gamer. “We undershipped in Q3, we undershipped in Q4. We will undership, to a lesser extent, in Q1.”
With the pandemic winding down and inflation ramping up, far fewer people are buying CPUs, GPUs, and PCs. It’s a hard, sudden reverse from just months ago, when companies like Nvidia and AMD were churning out graphic cards as quickly as possible to keep up with booming demand from cryptocurrency miners and PC gamers alike. Now that GPU mining is dead, shelves are brimming with unsold chips.
Despite the painfully high price tags of new next-gen GPUs, last-gen GeForce RTX 30-series and Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards are still selling for very high prices considering their two-year-old status. Strategic under-shipping helps companies maintain higher prices for their wares.
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AMD isn’t the only one doing it, either.
“We’re continuing to watch each and every day in terms of the sell-through that we’re seeing,” Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said to investors in November. “So we have been undershipping. We have been undershipping gaming at this time so that we can correct that inventory that is out in the channel.”
Since then, Nvidia has released the $1,200 GeForce RTX 4080 and $800 RTX 4070 Ti, two wildly overpriced graphics cards, and tried positioning them as enthusiast-grade upsells over the RTX 30-series, rather than treating them like the usual cyclical upgrades. AMD’s $900 Radeon RX 7900 XT offers similarly disappointing value and the company recently released a blog post also positioning its new GPUs as enthusiast-grade upsells.
[…]
We expect—hope?—that as stocks dwindle down and competition ramps up, sanity will return to graphics card prices, mirroring AMD and Intel’s recent CPU price adjustments. Just this morning, Intel announced that its Arc A750 graphics card was getting a price cut to $250, instantly making it an all-too-rare tempting target for PC gamers on a budget.
The New York Times looks at the AbbVie’s anti-inflammatory drug Humira and their “savvy but legal exploitation of the U.S. patent system.” Though AbbVie’s patent was supposed to expire in 2016, since then it’s maintained a monopoly that generated $114 billion in revenue by using “a formidable wall of intellectual property protection and suing would-be competitors before settling with them to delay their product launches until this year.” AbbVie did not invent these patent-prolonging strategies; companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca have deployed similar tactics to maximize profits on drugs for the treatment of cancer, anxiety and heartburn. But AbbVie’s success with Humira stands out even in an industry adept at manipulating the U.S. intellectual-property regime…. AbbVie and its affiliates have applied for 311 patents, of which 165 have been granted, related to Humira, according to the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge, which tracks drug patents. A vast majority were filed after Humira was on the market.
Some of Humira’s patents covered innovations that benefited patients, like a formulation of the drug that reduced the pain from injections. But many of them simply elaborated on previous patents. For example, an early Humira patent, which expired in 2016, claimed that the drug could treat a condition known as ankylosing spondylitis, a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in the joints, among other diseases. In 2014, AbbVie applied for another patent for a method of treating ankylosing spondylitis with a specific dosing of 40 milligrams of Humira. The application was approved, adding 11 years of patent protection beyond 2016.
AbbVie has been aggressive about suing rivals that have tried to introduce biosimilar versions of Humira. In 2016, with Amgen’s copycat product on the verge of winning regulatory approval, AbbVie sued Amgen, alleging that it was violating 10 of its patents. Amgen argued that most of AbbVie’s patents were invalid, but the two sides reached a settlement in which Amgen agreed not to begin selling its drug until 2023.
Over the next five years, AbbVie reached similar settlements with nine other manufacturers seeking to launch their own versions of Humira. All of them agreed to delay their market entry until 2023.
A drug pricing expert at Washington University in St. Louis tells the New York Times that AbbVie and its strategy with Humira “showed other companies what it was possible to do.”
But the article concludes that last year such tactics “became a rallying cry” for U.S. lawmakers “as they successfully pushed for Medicare to have greater control over the price of widely used drugs that, like Humira, have been on the market for many years but still lack competition.”
HT Aero, a subsidiary of Chinese automaker XPeng, says the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has granted it a flight permit for its two-seater electric “flying car,” the XPeng X2.
The aircraft is the first manned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle to obtain the permit and HT Aero’s fifth-generation eVTOL.
Calling the vehicle a “car” seems like a bit of a stretch given that it has no wheels. The 4.97 x 4.78 x 1.36m (16.3 x 15.7 ft x 4.5 foot) carbon fiber body resembles a drone or quadcopter with retractable arms that reduce the width to 1.95m (6.4 ft).
On the corner of each arm sit two stacked rotors. The eight total rotors have a diameter of 1.83m (6ft) each and carry 560kg (1,235lb) – maximum 760kg (1675lb) – at expected cruising speeds of around 130kph (80mph).
The XPeng X2
The vehicle flies for up to 35 minutes at a max altitude of 1,000m (3,280ft) and is equipped with both manual and automatic flight modes. According to XPeng exec Jiaxi You, the vehicle “can be driven on normal roads and flown safely at low altitude.”
The X2 completed its first successful flight in June 2021 and since then has flown over 3,000 test flights.
“After obtaining the chartered flight certificate, we will continue to carry out a series of manned driving tests to accumulate data and experience in research and development, flight tests, and more in preparation for mass production,” said HT Aero in Mandarin.
While the X2 doesn’t exactly look much like a flying car, HT Aero’s sixth generation is essentially a sedan with wings. The company plans to use the X2 certification to support the development of the X3, which should be available in 2024.
“HT Aero’s sixth-generation road-capable flying car will build on the company’s years of experience in developing eVTOLs, delivering an innovative vehicle for both land and air travel,” said HT Aero, which claimed that the vehicle will not only “transition seamlessly from road to air” but also be “fully equipped with autonomous assistant pilot functions using XPeng’s signature intelligent OS.
The Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) braking sail was developed by High Performance Space Structure Systems as a way to deorbit satellites at the end of their mission. In a space-based test in December 2022 called “Show Me Your Wings,” ADEO was deployed from an ION Satellite Carrier built by private space company D-Orbit. ADEO successfully pushed the satellite carrier out of its orbit, sending it into the atmosphere to burn up.
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“We want to establish a zero debris policy, which means if you bring a spacecraft into orbit you have to remove it,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher in a press release.
ADEO – Deorbit Sailing on Angel Wings
ADEO is a 38-square-foot (3.5-square-meter) sail made up of an aluminum-coated polyamide membrane secured to four carbon-fibre reinforced arms that are positioned in an X-shape. The sail increases surface drag when deployed from a satellite, leading to a more rapidly decaying orbit. ADEO can also be scaled up or down depending on the size of the satellite it’s attached to. The largest version could reach 1,076-square-feet (100-square-meter) with the smallest sail being 37-square-foot (3.5-square-meter).
