Unbound: No 101
How Community Solar Can Benefit Low & Moderate-Income Customers
by World Resources Institute | CleanTechnica
Residential clean energy projects are typically associated with affluent customers. Community solar, however, offers a pathway for low- and moderate-income customers to benefit from clean energy projects too.
Residential rooftop solar projects often only benefit the households who live under the array — but community solar projects can reach beyond the property where a project is located, impacting many more customers who otherwise might have a hard time accessing renewable power.
Here, we explain how community solar works and how it can deliver benefits for low- and moderate-income customers where projects are sited and beyond.
Quantum computing: D-Wave shows off prototype of its next quantum annealing computer
by Liam Tung, Contributor | ZDnet
Quantum-computing outfit D-Wave has announced commercial access to an "experimental prototype" of its Advantage2 quantum annealing computer.
D-Wave is beating its own path to qubit processors with its quantum annealing approach. According to D-Wave, the Advantage2 prototype available today features over 500 qubits. It's a preview of a much larger Advantage2 it hopes to be available by 2024 with 7,000 qubits.
Access to the Advantage2 prototype is restricted to customers who have a D-Wave's Leap cloud service subscription, but developers interested in trying D-Wave's quantum cloud can sign up to get "one minute of free use of the actual quantum processing units (QPUs) and quantum hybrid solvers" that run on its earlier Advantage QPU.
Can humanity be recreated in the metaverse?
by Tom Graham, Metaphysic | Venturebeat
Today, the internet is a mostly 2D platform that we consume through a screen. It is a command-line prompt for the reality we live in. Instagram posts, Tiktoks, text messages, emails and voice memos are all digital artifacts things people create and receive in the physical world. But this will change when the metaverse becomes so immersive and photo-realistic that physical reality extends into virtual spaces. Does this new hyperreality simply add features to the real world or does the real world become something more? It’s a question that is frequently explored in pop culture, from Star Trek’s holodeck to The Matrix. However, new technologies are rapidly turning science fiction into science fact and forcing us to question the limits of our reality.
Hyperreality is a concept that describes a simulation of reality that is indistinguishable from the real world — to the point where the distinction fades away. The idea emerged in the 90s as live TV coverage of the first Gulf War and other real-world events filtered into people’s homes. 24/7, live-streamed news footage of the war transported the reality of the battlefield into people’s homes for the first time in history. On the one hand, there were the physical events taking place in the Middle East, and on the other, the hyperreal televised version was playing out in living rooms across the globe.
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🌙 NASA - Best Photo from Last Week
The Sparkle of Distant Galaxies
The brilliant cascade of stars through the middle of this image is the galaxy ESO 318-13 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in this image from 2012. Despite being located millions of light-years from Earth, the stars captured in this image are so bright and clear one could almost attempt to count them.
ESO 318-13 is sandwiched between a vast collection of bright celestial objects. Several stars near and far dazzle in comparison to the neat dusting contained within the galaxy. One that particularly stands out is located near the center of the image, and looks like an extremely bright star located within the galaxy. This is, however, a trick of perspective. The star is located in the Milky Way, our own galaxy, and it shines so brightly because it is so much closer to us than ESO 318-13.
There are also a number of tiny glowing disks scattered throughout the frame that are more distant galaxies. In the top right corner, an elliptical galaxy can be clearly seen, a galaxy which is much larger but more distant than ESO 318-13. Peeking through ESO 318-13, near the right-hand edge of the image, is a distant spiral galaxy.
Galaxies are largely made up of empty space; the stars within them only take up a small volume, and providing a galaxy is not too dusty, it can be largely transparent to light coming from the background. This makes overlapping galaxies like these quite common.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble
Last Updated: Jun 15, 2022
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