Eric Betz

Science & tech storyteller. Co-founder: Lover of #darkskies and pale blue dots.

[WIRED @WIRED]

In late 2012, on the shores of Lake Tahoe, a newborn company with three employees went up for auction. Baidu, Google, Microsoft, and DeepMind joined the bidding.

No one realized it at the time, but the outcome would determine the future of computing https://t.co/yHn6Si4VEw

[Daniel Swain @Weather_West]

I've watched a lot of wildfire-associated pyroconvective events during the satellite era, and I think this might be the singularly most extreme I've ever seen. This is a literal firestorm, producing *thousands* of lightning strikes and almost certainly countless new fires. #BCwx

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Biologists recently discovered crystals in the shoulder feathers of leafbirds that form perfectly ordered bubbles reflecting only blue light. The discovery that crystals like these can self-assemble may help engineers craft similar materials. https://t.co/KuFXUlh1jZ

[NYT Science @NYTScience]

A couple of Vermeers owned by the National Gallery of Art are odd compared to other works by the 17th century Dutch painter. High-tech scanning techniques offer a view of what is beneath the surface of the paintings. https://t.co/b0aXcQIb02 by @kchangnyt

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

"We don't know what is going to be possible." https://t.co/atKUGdUkSF via @WiredUK

[WIRED @WIRED]

In 1999, a time capsule containing items contributed by the likes of Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee was locked using a cryptographic puzzle that supposed to take 35 years to answer.

A self-taught programmer solved it in just 20 https://t.co/5fRtbKEDrF

[Discover Magazine @DiscoverMag]

What happened to Anatoli Bugorski, the only person known to have been exposed to a particle accelerator beam? https://t.co/tXVJNz9qel

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

How to Work in Virtual Reality, and Why You'd Even Want To https://t.co/8lJsZLKVrG via @gizmodo

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

"Without the ability to recognize sameness, there would seem to be little hope of realizing the dream of creating truly intelligent visual reasoning machines." https://t.co/zUpUjzWzuW via @QuantaMagazine

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

"Physics provided a way to understand the world at a remove. 'If I could understand atoms, pretty soon I could figure out how my grandmother worked.'"

[NYT Science @NYTScience]

A venturesome millionaire, George Stranahan established the Aspen Center for Physics. He also founded a bar and a brewery — among many other things. He has died at 89. https://t.co/LjUir956mA

[New Scientist @newscientist]

The world's most powerful magnet, with a magnetic field strength about 280,000 times stronger than Earth’s own magnetic field, is being shipped to ITER fusion reactor https://t.co/EqZlTRVIrX

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

"The brain stores much of its learned data in the synapses themselves... This integrated memory system is distributed throughout the brain, allowing parallel processing in multiple locations at once."

[NLM Photonics @NLMPhotonics]

Next-generation computing: using optical hardware, neuromorphic computing can replicate the human brain’s singular visual processor from @SPIEtweets https://t.co/mIikl3vbtf

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

"By year’s end, drivers in the largest U.S. metro areas may unwittingly rumble over the tenuous strands of a new and potentially revolutionary network." https://t.co/DEObIVa61Z

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

The trend toward self-driving and electric vehicles will add hundreds of millions of lines of code to cars. Can the auto industry cope? https://t.co/uiXwJbkwzM

[WIRED @WIRED]

With very little prodding from their human engineers, these fish robots can form schools, carry out search missions, and arrange themselves in a swirling tornado, a common defensive maneuver among real-life fish called milling https://t.co/tajkTS7iVw

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Quantum computers are often said to be capable of testing all of a problem’s answers at once, but this oversimplification can lead to a grave misunderstanding of what quantum computers actually do. https://t.co/tiD3HF0m2a

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

China's drive to compete against Starlink for the future of orbital internet https://t.co/d49StWY69F by @bvcurcio

[Ars Technica @arstechnica]

Woman in Motion tells story of how Star Trek’s Uhura changed NASA forever https://t.co/yV5fsbkUjs by @JenLucPiquant

[Eric Betz @ericbetz]

@NightSkyPark @GrandCanyonNPS That's amazing, Tyler! The park guests at your programs will be stoked!

[Samuel K. Moore @SamuelKMoore]

@NASA is going back to #VENUS! What will they need? Silicon carbide circuits, that's what! Alan Mantooth, Carl-Mikael Zetterling, and Ana Rusu did a deep dive on why this semiconductor is essential for an extended stay on #Venus. https://t.co/6n3LHKIJuJ