Nerd News

Arrival of the Wrong Building

Arrival， starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner， looks to make big bucks with its all-star cast and sci-fi plot that， bravely， involves no superheroes or Will Smith， the first movie of its kind in roughly a billion years. Fans of the novella in Hong Kong may have been more than slightly miffed to see that the movie poster， released mid-August， featured the beautiful Hong Kong skyline—with a bit of the Shanghai skyline. Yes， the movie poster prominently shows a gigantic spaceship hovering over Hong Kong with， for no reason whatsoever， Pudongs famous Oriental Pearl Tower right up front. Unless the films plot revolves around moving a Shanghai monument more than 1，000 kilometers to Hong Kong—which would be taking extreme liberties with the original story—then the poster designers and marketing department have some explaining to do. LegCo candidate Horace Chin Wan-kan said， “Everything is ruined by this improper poster.” The plot will center around a linguist trying to make meaningful first contact with an alien visitor， but for a movie about language and communication， so far， the films been falling behind. The trailer featured the same monolithic spaceship above an unspecified country with gibberish Arabic. – TYLER RONEY

Great Quantum Leap Forward

On August 16， China boldly went where no quantum experiments have gone before by launching the QUESS （Quantum Experiments at Space Scale） satellite. China has had quantum experiments before—notably when they shot laser beams across 107 kilometers of Qinghai Lake—but this will be a massive step in the field of quantum communication. The satellite will basically give China the potential for hack-proof messages. The thing about quantum communications and “spooky action at a distance” is that the message gets scrambled if someone else peeks at it， records it， or does anything with it. Its like every message is piggybacking on Schrodingers cat and absolutely everybody will know if its alive or dead if somebody actually peeked at it. So in terms of cryptography， its great—the message only makes sense if absolutely nobody else looked at it. We dont really have a firm idea of how well these things are going to work on this scale， but there really is only one way to find out for sure and Chinas just started that process. In any case， buckle up. Things are about to get spooky. – david dawson

Alibaba Beat

On August 18， Tencent officially became Chinas most valuable tech company， knocking Alibaba from its prized pedestal. The UK-based IG， a spread betting company， showed that Tencents market had hit around 246.35 billion USD， with Alibaba topping out at 242 billion USD. This comes as no surprise to those who have been watching Tencents rapid growth over the past few months; the Hong Kong-listed company saw a growth of 34 percent over the past year on its popular WeChat platform， which now hosts in excess of 806 million active users. However， most of Tencents extremely diversified revenue comes from the online gaming sector， which accounts for 17 billion RMB of its earnings. All of this amounts to Tencent becoming the best performing stock on the Hang Seng index on a year-to-date basis， up more than 25 percent. No one is certain how long this will last， as Tencents model means that market saturation is on the horizon while Alibaba has the strength and infrastructure to spread beyond Chinas borders. WeChat might be great， but it also arose in a social media vacuum， whereas Alibaba has been fighting for foreign expansion for quite some time. – T.R.

Hypersonic Spaceplane？ Yes， please.

China could take a colossal step in its own space race with the proposed hypersonic spaceplane from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Heres how it works： the proposed craft takes off horizontally from the ground， increases speed as it changes from ramjet to scramjet， enters hypersonic speed in near space （20 –100 kilometers above sea level）， and then the spaceplane will kick in its rocket motors to hit orbit. The key to this method is the “combined cycle engine”—because， as one might imagine， getting a ramjet， scramjet， and rocket motors to work in tandem is an engineering nightmare. China isnt the only player in the hypersonic spaceplane game; the British Skylon turned a few heads earlier this year， but the Skylon relies on pre-cooled jet engines rather than scramjets. In this respect， China seems to have a competitive edge， but only time will tell. Both of these machines are expected to take off around 2020. – T.R.