Israel-based, NT-Tao wants to develop an innovative, “small”/ 10-20 MW (capable of powering an industrial site, shopping center, logistics warehouse or even a small town), high-density/ compact fusion reactor. <Quick primer: nuclear fusion by magnetic confinement is a process that consists of super-heating (within a Tokamak) small quantities of deuterium & tritium (two isotopes of hydrogen) so that they collide, merge & thus generate energy. The main limitation lies in the huge amount of energy needed to heat the reaction, while the probability of the isotopes colliding remains low>. NT-Tao seeks to “ultra-densify” the reaction process by housing within its Tokamak 1,000x more isotopes, which would multiply by a million the chances of collision (between...

Germany-based, planqc is building an innovative quantum computer - nothing less! Its basic principle is as follows: an element e.g. metal strontium is heated up in a furnace so that an atomic beam is created. The neutral atoms (in the element) (used as qubits) are then slowed down with electromagnetic fields & lasers, so that a certain number of them can be held in place by other lasers in a vacuum chamber. There, the neutral atoms can be observed with quantum gas microscopes & in turn manipulated individually (with laser beams that are sent through the microscopes & by putting them into an “excited” state using the energy of the laser/ high-speed Rydberg gates). This...