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The Star
23-06-2025
- Science
- The Star
Stone carving discovered in Qinghai stirs debate
BEIJING: A stone carving that some scholars believe dates back more than 2,200 years and could carry major cultural significance has ignited a heated debate among history enthusiasts, as several university professors have raised concerns that the inscriptions may be modern forgeries. The controversy began with a June 8 report in Guangming Daily, in which Tong Tao, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Archaeology, claimed archaeologists had recently discovered a stone carving linked to Emperor Qinshihuang — the first Chinese ruler to hold the title huangdi, or "emperor" — who founded the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). According to the report, the inscriptions were found near Gyaring Lake in present-day Madoi county, Qinghai province, at an altitude of about 4,300 metres. Photos published alongside the story showed that the characters were clear and in relatively good condition. Carved in xiaozhuan, a signature script of the Qin era, the inscription was interpreted as describing a team of fangshi (alchemists) led by a wudafu (a minister-level official), who were traveling by wagon to Kunlun Mountain in search of elixirs for immortality. The text claims the group reached the lake in the third month of the 26th year of Qinshihuang's reign, and would travel another 150 li (about 62 kilometres) to reach their final destination. In ancient Chinese texts, Kunlun Mountain is imbued with mythological importance, akin to Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. It is also believed to be the birthplace of the Yellow River, often referred to as the "mother river" of China. Today, Kunlun refers to a long mountain range in western China, but its precise location in pre-Qin times is still debated among scholars. "The carving was found by Gyaring Lake, with the Bayan Har Mountains to the south. So the search for elixirs in Kunlun should refer to Bayan Har, which undoubtedly corresponds to the 'Sacred Kunlun Mountain' in pre-Qin classics," Tong wrote. He added that the identification of Kunlun "matches perfectly with pre-Qin geographical texts that pointed to Kunlun as the source of the Yellow River", noting that modern hydrological studies confirm the Gyaring Lake and Bayan Har Mountains as headwaters of the river. Historical texts state that seven stone monuments were carved to commemorate Emperor Qinshihuang's achievements following his inspection tours across the unified empire between 219 and 211 BC. Only two fragmentary examples have survived, both badly damaged and nearly illegible. Tong called the new find "the only existing Qin Dynasty carving at its original site and the most complete one". Some online commenters hailed the find as monumental. "Historical maps will be redrawn and the debate over Kunlun's location will be resolved. Salute to archaeologists who braved the elements," one person wrote. However, the carving has also drawn skepticism — including from academics — over its authenticity. "If the inscriptions' meaning was interpreted correctly, then I highly suspect this is a modern forgery. That would mark a new level of falsification," said Xin Deyong, a history professor at Peking University, without elaborating. He repeated his doubts in later social media posts and said he plans to write a book analysing what he called an "unbelievably fake" inscription. Liu Zongdi, a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University, pointed out logistical inconsistencies in the story. For the team to arrive at the location by the stated time, he said, they would have had to set out the previous autumn or winter — an implausible scenario given the high altitude and harsh climate. He also questioned how the travelers could have anticipated the formal use of the title "emperor", which was proclaimed during the same year as their supposed journey. Additional doubts have been raised regarding the inscribed date, grammar and terminology, with both supporters and skeptics presenting arguments. For instance, Liu Zhao, a professor of ancient texts at Fudan University, said the engraving technique — particularly the direction of certain character strokes — aligns with the known calligraphic style of the Qin period. He also noted that a rare way of writing "Kunlun" seen in the inscription matches that on Qin-era bamboo slips unearthed in Hunan province. Because that writing style has only been documented in the past 20 years and is otherwise unknown, Liu argued that it would require "a forger with deep and niche academic knowledge" to replicate it. Nanjing-based Ziniu News reported that Hou Guangliang, a professor at Qinghai Normal University, first identified the inscription in July 2020 during a field survey. At the time, he said only a few characters — including huang — could be clearly made out. Hou initially suggested the inscription may have been created after the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), using Qin-style characters for visual effect. He also said the harsh conditions around Gyaring Lake make long-term preservation of carvings difficult, and that only from the Yuan period onward did the region come under stable government control, allowing large expeditions to be logistically feasible. However, Hou has since reconsidered. In a recent interview with Southern Metropolis Daily, he described his earlier comments as "a bit shallow" and said further research is needed. In a commentary, The Beijing News encouraged the public to see the controversy as a process of "academic refinement" and an opportunity to popularise archaeology. "The truth will gradually emerge through rigorous research and evidence-based discussion," the editorial said. - China Daily/ANN
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Business Standard
19-05-2025
- Science
- Business Standard
China launches 12 satellites to build world's 1st space-based supercomputer
China has launched the first 12 satellites of its space-based supercomputing network, aiming to outpace Earth's most powerful systems with real-time, in-orbit data processing. Twelve advanced satellites, equipped with AI-powered computing systems and high-speed inter-satellite links, were launched into orbit last week aboard a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, according to state-run Guangming Daily. The satellites mark the first phase of China's groundbreaking Three-Body Computing Constellation – an ambitious space-based supercomputing network led by Zhejiang Lab. Once fully deployed, the constellation will deliver real-time data processing in orbit with a staggering capacity of 1,000 peta operations per second (POPS). The satellites in the planned 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer, created by ADA Space, Zhijiang Laboratory and Neijang High-Tech Zone, will be able to autonomously collect and process data without the need for terrestrial stations, the company said in a statement. Each of the 12 satellites can handle a staggering 744 trillion operations per second and are interlinked via ultra-fast laser connections capable of transferring data at up to 100 gigabits per second, according to Guangming Daily. Together, the initial cluster delivers 5 peta operations per second (POPS) of computing power and 30 terabytes of onboard storage. Equipped with an advanced space-based AI model featuring 8 billion parameters, these satellites can process raw data directly in orbit. They will also serve as testbeds for cutting-edge technologies, including cross-orbit laser communication and deep-space astronomical observations. According to the Chinese government, the mission, which marks a major step in China's space-based computing efforts, aims to build a network of thousands of satellites with a total computing power of 1,000 POPS. The constellation will enable real-time, in-orbit data processing to accelerate AI development in space. AI data centres in space: Power saving The idea of building AI-powered data centres in space could also offer a promising solution to Earth's growing climate concerns. The advantages of a space-based supercomputer extend far beyond faster communication, according to the South China Morning Post. Traditional satellites face significant bottlenecks—limited bandwidth and scarce ground stations mean that under 10 per cent of the data they collect ever reaches Earth. But orbiting data centres could revolutionise this process. As Harvard astronomer and space historian Jonathan McDowell told the outlet, these systems can harness solar power and release excess heat into space, dramatically cutting down on energy consumption and carbon emissions. He added that similar initiatives could soon emerge from the US and Europe. Global data centres are on track to consume over 1,000 terawatt hours of electricity annually by 2026 – a figure comparable to Japan's entire power usage – according to estimates from the International Energy Agency.
South China Morning Post
15-05-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
China launches satellites to start building the world's first supercomputer in orbit
China has launched the first batch of satellites for its space computing constellation, a system that could rival the most powerful ground-based supercomputers once fully deployed. Twelve satellites, each equipped with intelligent computing systems and inter-satellite communication links, were sent into orbit aboard a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre around noon on Wednesday, according to state-owned Guangming Daily. Twelve satellites, each equipped with intelligent computing systems and inter-satellite communication links, were sent into orbit on Wednesday, according to state-owned Guangming Daily. Photo: Handout They are part of the Three-Body Computing Constellation, space-based infrastructure being developed by Zhejiang Lab. Once complete, the constellation would support real-time, in-orbit data processing with a total computing capacity of 1,000 peta operations per second (POPS) – or one quintillion operations per second – the report said. Jonathan McDowell, a space historian and astronomer at Harvard University, said the idea of cloud computing in space was 'very fashionable' right now. 'Orbital data centres can use solar power and radiate their heat to space, reducing the energy needs and carbon footprint,' he said. China, the United States and Europe could be expected to deploy such orbital data centres in the future, McDowell said. 'Today's Chinese launch is the first substantial flight test of the networking part of this concept.'
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China is laughing at the West's lack of ‘stamina'. It has a point
China has turned up the trolling. When Donald Trump announced his April 2 'liberation day' tariffs singling out China, Communist Party propagandists responded with AI-generated movie clips of the US president and JD Vance, his vice-president, wearily stitching hats and putting together electronics in sweatshops. China was goading the United States, saying: 'This is the dirty work we do for you – are you sure you want to do it instead?' But the latest provocation, which has gone largely unnoticed, cuts deeper. China is questioning whether the West has what it takes to sustain an advanced technological society in the long-term. It has 'strategic stamina' and claims we do not. The occasion of this dig was a relatively minor nuclear announcement. China has created a small, experimental thorium molten salt reactor (MSR), and claimed a world first in being able to refuel it without shutting it down. Thorium reactors are a road not taken, an alternative to designs based on the uranium fuel cycle that the West adopted. For once, Chinese engineers and scientists didn't steal intellectual property but used declassified US documents on projects that the West had abandoned and developed them. China's new reactor builds on work abandoned by the United States as recently as 2018. Thorium, a radioactive metal named after the Norse god Thor, has some merits. It's much more abundant than uranium and can act as a fuel as well as a coolant. It destroys waste as it goes along, so has long been touted as a safer option for smaller countries that want to adopt nuclear energy. However, thorium fuel cycle designs were less efficient than ones using uranium and plutonium and thorium projects were mothballed. The decision was not uncontroversial. As Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, wrote in his final published paper in 2003 at the age of 94, this was a 'mistake': molten salt reactor development should have 'kept going as a backup option'. After that, interest in thorium molten salt designs briefly flickered into life once again – there was even an all-party parliamentary group on thorium energy at Westminster. However, the movement waned once again. The group last met a decade ago. Now for the trolling. Xu Hongjie, of the CAS Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics and a 70-year-old veteran of nuclear engineering, is the man behind China's new thorium breakthrough. Announcing the achievement, he couldn't resist contrasting the persistence of his engineers to his counterparts, and the policy elites, in the fickle West. 'The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor. We were that successor,' he told China's state-owned Guangming Daily. Taking a very long-term view is something China prides itself on. We like to attribute this trait to them, too. For example, the comment by late premier Zhou Enlai that it was 'too early to tell' if the French Revolution had been a success has long been trotted out as an example of the Middle Kingdom's far-reaching view. But it turns out not to be true. The comment, made in the 1970s, was actually about the 1968 unrest in Paris, not the French Revolution. But the misattribution belies a deeper truth. In case there was any ambiguity, Mr Xu made it clear. In nuclear energy, he says, 'rabbits sometimes make mistakes or grow lazy. That's when the tortoise seizes its chance ... You need to have strategic stamina, focusing on doing just one thing for 20, 30 years'. Ouch. This hurts, because we know it's true: we have no 'strategic stamina'. 'China likes to rattle us about its technological advances, but it's right about strategic stamina,' says one nuclear industry source. A little caution is needed before declaring that we're falling behind in a nuclear race, and a 'race' is not always the best metaphor in any case (it certainly isn't with artificial intelligence). Molten salt reactors still represent a formidable technical challenge: their Achilles' heel is the presence of salt, which as any boat owner knows, brings big trouble. Problems are only magnified in a radioactive high-temperature environment, where the fluorine created in the process 'unleashes a persistent chemical assault' that 'renders typical alloys like stainless steels defenceless,' as one chemical engineer vividly explains. China's tiny 2 megawatt demonstration unit is very far away from a commercial product, much smaller even than the reactor used in a nuclear submarine. The real nuclear story is one it learnt from France: build a lot of reactors quickly. China has 58 operational reactors, 30 more gigawatt-scale reactors are under construction, and it approved another 10 last week. Meanwhile, we agonise over building half a dozen small ones, and bury our plutonium stockpile to appease the climate gods. 'Keep ordering new units and the costs come down,' says the insider. France has proved that works. But Xu is articulating something much bigger: a civilisational challenge. 'We should worry. Contrary to the fashionable view, humans are defined not so much by their communications or psychology, but by what they produce. No pyramids, no Egyptian civilisation,' says James Woudhuysen, visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University. Civilisations fail for all kinds of reasons but one is that they stop taking the important things seriously. Our own policy elites fixate on speculative issues rather than resilience and energy security. Policy experts obsess over small supply-side tweaks and hacks that bring marginal gains, rather than the big picture. The people who have scientific and technical backgrounds are almost completely absent in Whitehall or the policy think tanks of SW1. The engineering-led innovation in the kind of deep technology that can sustain a prosperous society is being neglected. China's latest trolling is just adding insult to injury – the injury that we know we've inflicted on ourselves. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
05-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
China is laughing at the West's lack of ‘stamina'. It has a point
China has turned up the trolling. When Donald Trump announced his April 2 'liberation day' tariffs singling out China, Communist Party propagandists responded with AI-generated movie clips of the US president and JD Vance, his vice-president, wearily stitching hats and putting together electronics in sweatshops. China was goading the United States, saying: 'This is the dirty work we do for you – are you sure you want to do it instead?' But the latest provocation, which has gone largely unnoticed, cuts deeper. China is questioning whether the West has what it takes to sustain an advanced technological society in the long-term. It has 'strategic stamina' and claims we do not. The occasion of this dig was a relatively minor nuclear announcement. China has created a small, experimental thorium molten salt reactor (MSR), and claimed a world first in being able to refuel it without shutting it down. Thorium reactors are a road not taken, an alternative to designs based on the uranium fuel cycle that the West adopted. For once, Chinese engineers and scientists didn't steal intellectual property but used declassified US documents on projects that the West had abandoned and developed them. China's new reactor builds on work abandoned by the United States as recently as 2018. Thorium, a radioactive metal named after the Norse god Thor, has some merits. It's much more abundant than uranium and can act as a fuel as well as a coolant. It destroys waste as it goes along, so has long been touted as a safer option for smaller countries that want to adopt nuclear energy. However, thorium fuel cycle designs were less efficient than ones using uranium and plutonium and thorium projects were mothballed. The decision was not uncontroversial. As Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, wrote in his final published paper in 2003 at the age of 94, this was a 'mistake': molten salt reactor development should have 'kept going as a backup option'. After that, interest in thorium molten salt designs briefly flickered into life once again – there was even an all-party parliamentary group on thorium energy at Westminster. However, the movement waned once again. The group last met a decade ago. Now for the trolling. Xu Hongjie, of the CAS Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics and a 70-year-old veteran of nuclear engineering, is the man behind China's new thorium breakthrough. Announcing the achievement, he couldn't resist contrasting the persistence of his engineers to his counterparts, and the policy elites, in the fickle West. 'The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor. We were that successor,' he told China's state-owned Guangming Daily. Taking a very long-term view is something China prides itself on. We like to attribute this trait to them, too. For example, the comment by late premier Zhou Enlai that it was 'too early to tell' if the French Revolution had been a success has long been trotted out as an example of the Middle Kingdom's far-reaching view. But it turns out not to be true. The comment, made in the 1970s, was actually about the 1968 unrest in Paris, not the French Revolution. But the misattribution belies a deeper truth. In case there was any ambiguity, Mr Xu made it clear. In nuclear energy, he says, 'rabbits sometimes make mistakes or grow lazy. That's when the tortoise seizes its chance ... You need to have strategic stamina, focusing on doing just one thing for 20, 30 years'. Ouch. This hurts, because we know it's true: we have no 'strategic stamina'. 'China likes to rattle us about its technological advances, but it's right about strategic stamina,' says one nuclear industry source. A little caution is needed before declaring that we're falling behind in a nuclear race, and a 'race' is not always the best metaphor in any case (it certainly isn't with artificial intelligence). Molten salt reactors still represent a formidable technical challenge: their Achilles' heel is the presence of salt, which as any boat owner knows, brings big trouble. Problems are only magnified in a radioactive high-temperature environment, where the fluorine created in the process 'unleashes a persistent chemical assault' that 'renders typical alloys like stainless steels defenceless,' as one chemical engineer vividly explains. China's tiny 2 megawatt demonstration unit is very far away from a commercial product, much smaller even than the reactor used in a nuclear submarine. The real nuclear story is one it learnt from France: build a lot of reactors quickly. China has 58 operational reactors, 30 more gigawatt-scale reactors are under construction, and it approved another 10 last week. Meanwhile, we agonise over building half a dozen small ones, and bury our plutonium stockpile to appease the climate gods. 'Keep ordering new units and the costs come down,' says the insider. France has proved that works. But Xu is articulating something much bigger: a civilisational challenge. 'We should worry. Contrary to the fashionable view, humans are defined not so much by their communications or psychology, but by what they produce. No pyramids, no Egyptian civilisation,' says James Woudhuysen, visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University. Civilisations fail for all kinds of reasons but one is that they stop taking the important things seriously. Our own policy elites fixate on speculative issues rather than resilience and energy security. Policy experts obsess over small supply-side tweaks and hacks that bring marginal gains, rather than the big picture. The people who have scientific and technical backgrounds are almost completely absent in Whitehall or the policy think tanks of SW1. The engineering-led innovation in the kind of deep technology that can sustain a prosperous society is being neglected. China's latest trolling is just adding insult to injury – the injury that we know we've inflicted on ourselves.
