In an ambitious promotional video, Virgin Hyperloop explains how it envisions its high-speed transportation system working in the future. Pods that will hold up to 28 passengers will travel at speeds surpassing 670 miles per hour — three times faster than high-speed rail and 10 times faster than traditional rail — using proprietary magnetic levitation and propulsion that guides the vehicles on the track. The pods will travel in convoys down the tube so they can head to different destinations. The company has made some bold claims, betting its system will be more sustainable, cost-effective and convenient than presently available modes of transportation, leaving many skeptical about whether the plans will ever come to fruition as promised. 

Here are some insights from the interview with Virgin Hyperloop CEO and co-founder Josh Giegel, for Changing America:

Tell me about the technology. What makes it different from a maglev — magnetic levitation — train in terms of infrastructure and potential? 

What we started working on over the last few years is this idea of “smart pod, dumb tube.” Instead of having switches that move like a train, we just have things that act like an off-ramp so if the pod [the vehicle passengers ride in] wants to get off and take people to a certain city it just pulls off by turning on an electromagnet. So you can now have a really high-capacity system without all these safety risks associated with track-switching.  You put the pod inside of a tube, you take most of the air out, you have a very low energy consumption, you actually make it inherently safer, you make it weatherproof, and you can move as many people as a 30-lane highway in the space of a tube going each direction. It’s all from this foundational premise that we created: new propulsion, new levitation, new batteries, new ways of working all these things together to make a “smart pod, dumb tube,” so a pod one hundred years from now could ride in the same tube we build today. 

What’s the timeline like? When can I buy a ticket to ride? 

What we set out to do last year was show the technology could be made safe. That culminated in myself and one of my colleagues Sara riding on a prototype in November. I think that allayed a lot of concerns about whether we can make it safe.  The next level is getting approved by an independent body and commercializing the technology. We’re in the process of building our commercial technology now, which are these 25 to 30 passenger pods. 

We’ll begin to look at pilot projects that will move cargo first, so think of shorter projects starting around the 2024 through 2026 timeframe. At the same time we’ll be getting independent safety approval needed to get a product certified for passengers. And then ultimately from there go into building the projects out from 2026 through the rest of the decade. So you’ll be looking at the decade of hyperloop, starting with Sara and I riding on it and ending with, I’m hoping, billions of passengers riding, but I will settle for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of passengers in the U.S. and around the world. 

Source (The Hill, “Will the 2020s be the decade of hyperloop?”, 01.09.2021)

Astronomers have succeeded in quantifying the proton and electron components of cosmic rays in a supernova remnant. At least 70% of the very-high-energy gamma rays emitted from cosmic rays are due to relativistic protons, according to the novel imaging analysis of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation. The acceleration site of protons, the main components of cosmic rays, has been a 100-year mystery in modern astrophysics.

Astronomers have succeeded for the first time in quantifying the proton and electron components of cosmic rays in a supernova remnant. At least 70% of the very-high-energy gamma rays emitted from cosmic rays are due to relativistic protons, according to the novel imaging analysis of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation. The acceleration site of protons, the main components of cosmic rays, has been a 100-year mystery in modern astrophysics, this is the first time that the amount of cosmic rays being produced in a supernova remnant has been quantitatively shown and is an epoch-making step in the elucidation of the origin of cosmic rays.

The originality of this research is that gamma-ray radiation is represented by a linear combination of proton and electron components. Astronomers knew a relation that the intensity of gamma-ray from protons is proportional to the interstellar gas density obtained by radio-line imaging observations. On the other hand, gamma-rays from electrons are also expected to be proportional to X-ray intensity from electrons. Therefore, they expressed the total gamma-ray intensity as the sum of two gamma-ray components, one from the proton origin and the other from the electron origin. This led to a unified understanding of three independent observables. This method was first proposed in this study. As a result, it was shown that gamma rays from protons and electrons account for 70% and 30% of the total gamma-rays, respectively. This is the first time that the two origins have been quantified. The results also demonstrate that gamma rays from protons are dominated in interstellar gas-rich regions, whereas gamma rays from electrons are enhanced in the gas-poor region. This confirms that the two mechanisms work together and supporting the predictions of previous theoretical studies.

Source (Nagoya University. “Unveiling a century-old mystery: Where the Milky Way’s cosmic rays come from.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 August 2021.)

Original paper: Fukui, Y., Sano, H., Yamane, Y., Hayakawa, T., Inoue, T., Tachihara, K., Rowell, G. and Einecke, S., 2021. Pursuing the origin of the gamma rays in RX J1713. 7$-$3946 quantifying the hadronic and leptonic components. arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.02734.

Researchers have discovered a universal mathematical formula that can describe any bird’s egg existing in nature — a significant step in understanding not only the egg shape itself, but also how and why it evolved, thus making widespread biological and technological applications possible.

The egg, as one of the most traditional food products, has long attracted the attention of mathematicians, engineers, and biologists from an analytical point of view. As a main parameter in oomorphology, the shape of a bird’s egg has, to date, escaped a universally applicable mathematical formulation. Analysis of all egg shapes can be done using four geometric figures: sphere, ellipsoid, ovoid, and pyriform (conical or pear-shaped). The first three have a clear mathematical definition, each derived from the expression of the previous, but a formula for the pyriform profile has yet to be derived. To rectify this, the researchers have introduced an additional function into the ovoid formula.

The subsequent mathematical model fits a completely novel geometric shape that can be characterized as the last stage in the evolution of the sphere—ellipsoid—Hügelschäffer’s ovoid transformation, and it is applicable to any egg geometry. The required measurements are the egg length, maximum breadth, and diameter at the terminus from the pointed end. This mathematical analysis and description represents the sought-for universal formula and is a significant step in understanding not only the egg shape itself, but also how and why it evolved, thus making widespread biological and technological applications theoretically possible.

Source (University of Kent. “A universal equation for the shape of an egg.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 August 2021.)

Original paper: Narushin, V.G., Romanov, M.N. and Griffin, D.K., 2021. Egg and math: introducing a universal formula for egg shape. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.