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Many seemingly mundane materials, such as the stainless steel on refrigerators or the quartz in a countertop, harbor fascinating physics inside them. These materials are crystals, which in physics means they are made of highly ordered repeating patterns of regularly spaced atoms called atomic lattices. How electrons move through a lattice, hopping from atom to atom, determines many of a solid's properties, such as its color, transparency, and ability to conduct heat and electricity. For example, metals are shiny because they contain lots of free electrons that can absorb light and then reemit most of it, making their surfaces gleam.

In certain crystals the behavior of electrons can create properties that are much more exotic. The way electrons move inside graphenea crystal made of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal latticeproduces an extreme version of a quantum effect called tunneling, whereby particles can plow through energy barriers that classical physics says should block them. Graphene also exhibits a phenomenon called the quantum Hall effect: the amount of electricity it conducts increases in specific steps whose size depends on two fundamental constants of the universe. These kinds of properties make graphene intrinsically interesting as well as potentially useful in applications ranging from better electronics and energy storage to improved biomedical devices.

I and other physicists would like to understand what's going on inside graphene on an atomic level, but it's difficult to observe action at this scale with current technology. Electrons move too fast for us to capture the details we want to see. We've found a clever way to get around this limitation, however, by making matter out of light. In place of the atomic lattice, we use light waves to create what we call an optical lattice. Our optical lattice has the exact same geometry as the atomic lattice. In a recent experiment, for instance, my team and I made an optical version of graphene with the same honeycomb lattice structure as the standard carbon one. In our system, we make cold atoms hop around a lattice of bright and dim light just as electrons hop around the carbon atoms in graphene.

With cold atoms in an optical lattice, we can magnify the system and slow down the hopping process enough to actually see the particles jumping around and make measurements of the process. Our system is not a perfect emulation of graphene, but for understanding the phenomena we're interested in, it's just as good. We can even study lattice physics in ways that are impossible in solid-state crystals. Our experiments revealed special properties of our synthetic material that are directly related to the bizarre physics manifesting in graphene.

The crystal phenomena we investigate result from the way quantum mechanics limits the motion of wavelike particles. After all, although electrons in a crystal have mass, they are both particles and waves (the same is true for our ultracold atoms). In a solid crystal these limits restrict a single electron on a single atom to only one value of energy for each possible movement pattern (called a quantum state). All other amounts of energy are forbidden. Different states have separate and distinctdiscreteenergy values. But a chunk of solid crystal the size of a grape typically contains more atoms (around 1023) than there are grains of sand on Earth. The interactions between these atoms and electrons cause the allowed discrete energy values to spread out and smear into allowed ranges of energy called bands. Visualizing a material's energy band structure can immediately reveal something about that material's properties.

For instance, a plot of the band structure of silicon crystal, a common material used to make rooftop solar cells, shows a forbidden energy rangealso known as a band gapthat is 1.1 electron volts wide. If electrons can jump from states with energies below this gap to states with energies above the gap, they can flow through the crystal. Fortunately for humanity, the band gap of this abundant material overlaps well with the wavelengths present in sunlight. As silicon crystal absorbs sunlight, electrons begin to flow through itallowing solar panels to convert light into usable electricity.

The band structure of certain crystals defines a class of materials known as topological. In mathematics, topology describes how shapes can be transformed without being fundamentally altered. Transformation in this context means to deform a shapeto bend or stretch itwithout creating or destroying any kind of hole. Topology thus distinguishes baseballs, sesame bagels and shirt buttons based purely on the number of holes in each object.

Topological materials have topological properties hidden in their band structure that similarly allow some kind of transformation while preserving something essential. These topological properties can lead to measurable effects. For instance, some topological materials allow electrons to flow only around their edges and not through their interior. No matter how you deform the material, the current will still flow only along its surface.

I have become particularly interested in certain kinds of topological material: those that are two-dimensional. It may sound odd that 2-D materials exist in our 3-D world. Even a single sheet of standard printer paper, roughly 0.004 inch thick, isn't truly 2-Dits thinnest dimension is still nearly one million atoms thick. Now imagine shaving off most of those atoms until only a single layer of them remains; this layer is a 2-D material. In a 2-D crystal, the atoms and electrons are confined to this plane because moving off it would mean exiting the material entirely.

Graphene is an example of a 2-D topological material. To me, the most intriguing thing about graphene is that its band structure contains special spots known as Dirac points. These are positions where two energy bands take on the same value, meaning that at these points electrons can easily jump from one energy band to another. One way to understand Dirac points is to study a plot of the energy of different bands versus an electron's momentum a property associated with the particle's kinetic energy. Such plots show how an electron's energy changes with its movement, giving us a direct probe into the physics we're interested in. In these plots, a Dirac point looks like a place where two energy bands touch; at this point they're equal, but away from this point the gap between the bands grows linearly. Graphene's Dirac points and the associated topology are connected to this material's ability to display a form of the quantum Hall effect that's unique even among 2-D materialsthe half-integer quantum Hall effectand the special kind of tunneling possible within it.

To understand what's happening to electrons at Dirac points, we need to observe them up close. Our optical lattice experiments are the perfect way to do this. They offer a highly controllable replica of the material that we can uniquely manipulate in a laboratory. As substitutes for the electrons, we use ultracold rubidium atoms chilled to temperatures roughly 10 million times colder than outer space. And to simulate the graphene lattice, we turn to light.

Light is both a particle and a wave, which means light waves can interfere with one another, either amplifying or canceling other waves depending on how they are aligned. We use the interference of laser light to make patterns of bright and dark spots, which become the lattice. Just as electrons in real graphene are attracted to certain positively charged areas of a carbon hexagon, we can arrange our optical lattices so ultracold atoms are attracted to or repelled from analogous spots in them, depending on the wavelength of the laser light that we use. Light with just the right energy (resonant light) landing on an atom can change the state and energy of an electron within it, imparting forces on the atom. We typically use red-detuned optical lattices, which means the laser light in the lattice has a wavelength that's longer than the wavelength of the resonant light. The result is that the rubidium atoms feel an attraction to the bright spots arranged in a hexagonal pattern.

We now have the basic ingredients for an artificial crystal. Scientists first imagined these ultracold atoms in optical lattices in the late 1990s and constructed them in the early 2000s. The spacing between the lattice points of these artificial crystals is hundreds of nanometers rather than the fractions of a nanometer that separate atoms in a solid crystal. This larger distance means that artificial crystals are effectively magnified versions of real ones, and the hopping process of atoms within them is much slower, allowing us to directly image the movements of the ultracold atoms. In addition, we can manipulate these atoms in ways that aren't possible with electrons.

I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Ultracold Atomic Physics group at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2019 to 2022. The lab there has two special tables (roughly one meter wide by two and a half meters long by 0.3 meter high), each weighing roughly one metric ton and floating on pneumatic legs that dampen vibrations. Atop each table lie hundreds of optical components: mirrors, lenses, light detectors, and more. One table is responsible for producing laser light for trapping, cooling and imaging rubidium atoms. The other table holds an ultrahigh vacuum chamber made of steel with a vacuum pressure less than that of low-Earth orbit, along with hundreds more optical components.

The vacuum chamber has multiple, sequential compartments with different jobs. In the first compartment, we heat a five-gram chunk of rubidium metal to more than 100 degrees Celsius, which causes it to emit a vapor of rubidium atoms. The vapor gets blasted into the next compartment like water spraying from a hose. In the second compartment, we use magnetic fields and laser light to slow the vapor down. The sluggish vapor then flows into another compartment: a magneto-optical trap, where it is captured by an arrangement of magnetic fields and laser light. Infrared cameras monitor the trapped atoms, which appear on our viewing screen as a bright glowing ball. At this point the atoms are colder than liquid helium.

We then move the cold cloud of rubidium atoms into the final chamber, made entirely of quartz. There we shine both laser light and microwaves on the cloud, which makes the warmest atoms evaporate away. This step causes the rubidium to transition from a normal gas to an exotic phase of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In a BEC, quantum mechanics allows atoms to delocalizeto spread out and overlap with one another so that all the atoms in the condensate act in unison. The temperature of the atoms in the BEC is less than 100 nanokelvins, one billion times colder than liquid nitrogen.

At this point we shine three laser beams separated by 120 degrees into the quartz cell (their shape roughly forms the letter Y). At the intersection of the three beams, the lasers interfere with one another and produce a 2-D optical lattice that looks like a honeycomb pattern of bright and dark spots. We then move the optical lattice so it overlaps with the BEC. The lattice has plenty of space for atoms to hop around, even though it extends over a region only as wide as a human hair. Finally, we collect and analyze pictures of the atoms after the BEC has spent some time in the optical lattice. As complex as it is, we go through this entire process once every 40 seconds or so. Even after years of working on this experiment, when I see it play out, I think to myself, Wow, this is incredible!

Like real graphene, our artificial crystal has Dirac points in its band structure. To understand why these points are significant topologically, let's go back to our graph of energy versus momentum, but this time let's view it from above so we see momentum plotted in two directionsright and left, and up and down. Imagine that the quantum state of the BEC in the optical lattice is represented by an upward arrow at position one (P1) and that a short, straight path separates P1 from a Dirac point at position two (P2).

To move our BEC on this graph toward the Dirac point, we need to change its momentumin other words, we must actually move it in physical space. To put the BEC at the Dirac point, we need to give it the precise momentum values corresponding to that point on the plot. It turns out that it's easier, experimentally, to shift the optical latticeto change its momentumand leave the BEC as is; this movement gives us the same end result. From an atom's point of view, a stationary BEC in a moving lattice is the same as a moving BEC in a stationary lattice. So we adjust the position of the lattice, effectively giving our BEC a new momentum and moving it over on our plot.

If we adjust the BEC's momentum so that the arrow representing it moves slowly on a straight path from P1 toward P2 but just misses P2 (meaning the BEC has slightly different momentum than it needs to reach P2), nothing happensits quantum state is unchanged. If we start over and move the arrow even more slowly from P1 toward P2 on a path whose end is even closer tobut still does not touchP2, the state again is unchanged.

Now imagine that we move the arrow from P1 directly through P2that is, we change the BEC's momentum so that it's exactly equal to the value at the Dirac point: we will see the arrow flip completely upside down. This change means the BEC's quantum state has jumped from its ground state to its first excited state.

What if instead we move the arrow from P1 to P2, but when it reaches P2, we force it to make a sharp left or right turnmeaning that when the BEC reaches the Dirac point, we stop giving it momentum in its initial direction and start giving it momentum in a direction perpendicular to the first one? In this case, something special happens. Instead of jumping to an excited state as if it had passed straight through the Dirac point and instead of going back down to the ground state as it would if we had turned it fully around, the BEC ends up in a superposition when it exits the Dirac point at a right angle. This is a purely quantum phenomenon in which the BEC enters a state that is both excited and not. To show the superposition, our arrow in the plot rotates 90 degrees.

Our experiment was the first to move a BEC through a Dirac point and then turn it at different angles. These fascinating outcomes show that these points, which had already seemed special based on graphene's band structure, are truly exceptional. And the fact that the outcome for the BEC depends not just on whether it passes through a Dirac point but on the direction of that movement shows that at the point itself, the BEC's quantum state can't be defined. This shows that the Dirac point is a singularitya place where physics is uncertain.

We also measured another interesting pattern. If we moved the BEC faster as it traveled near, but not through, the Dirac point, the point would cause a rotation of the BEC's quantum state that made the point seem larger. In other words, it encompassed a broader range of possible momentum values than just the one precise value at the point. The more slowly we moved the BEC, the smaller the Dirac point seemed. This behavior is uniquely quantum mechanical in nature. Quantum physics is a trip!

Although I just described our experiment in a few paragraphs, it took six months of work to get results. We spent lots of time developing new experimental capabilities that had never been used before. We were often unsure whether our experiment would work. We faced broken lasers, an accidental 10-degree-C temperature spike in the lab that misaligned all the optical components (there went three weeks), and disaster when the air in our building caused the lab's temperature to fluctuate, preventing us from creating a BEC. A great deal of persistent effort carried us through and eventually led to our measuring a phenomenon even more exciting than a Dirac point: another kind of singularity.

Before we embarked on our experiment, a related project with artificial crystals in Germany showed what happens when a BEC moves in a circular path around a Dirac point. This team manipulated the BEC's momentum so that it took on values that would plot a circle in the chart of left-momentum versus up-down momentum. While going through these transformations, the BEC never touched the Dirac point. Nevertheless, moving around the point in this pattern caused the BEC to acquire something called a geometric phasea term in the mathematical description of its quantum phase that determines how it evolves. Although there is no physical interpretation of a geometric phase, it's a very unusual property that appears in quantum mechanics. Not every quantum state has a geometric phase, so the fact that the BEC had one here is special. What's even more special is that the phase was exactly .

My team decided to try a different technique to confirm the German group's measurement. By measuring the rotation of the BEC's quantum state as we turned it away from the Dirac point at different angles, we reproduced the earlier findings. We discovered that the BEC's quantum state wraps around the Dirac point exactly once. Another way to say this is that as you move a BEC through momentum space all the way around a Dirac point, it goes from having all its particles in the ground state to having all its particles in the first excited state, and then they all return to the ground state. This measurement agreed with the German study's results.

This wrapping, independent of a particular path or the speed the path is traveled, is a topological property associated with a Dirac point and shows us directly that this point is a singularity with a so-called topological winding number of 1. In other words, the winding number tells us that after a BEC's momentum makes a full circle, it comes back to the state it started in. This winding number also reveals that every time it goes around the Dirac point, its geometric phase increases by .

Furthermore, we discovered that our artificial crystal has another kind of singularity called a quadratic band touching point (QBTP). This is another point where two energy bands touch, making it easy for electrons to jump from one to another, but in this case it's a connection between the second excited state and the third (rather than the ground state and the first excited state as in a Dirac point). And whereas the gap between energy bands near a Dirac point grows linearly, in a QBTP it grows quadratically.

In real graphene, the interactions between electrons make QBTPs difficult to study. In our system, however, QBTPs became accessible with just one weird trick.

Well, it's not really so weird, nor is it technically a trick, but we did figure out a specific technique to investigate a QBTP. It turns out that if we give the BEC a kick and get it moving before we load it into the optical lattice, we can access a QBTP and study it with the same method we used to investigate the Dirac point. Here, in the plot of momentum space, we can imagine new points P3 and P4, where P3 is an arbitrary starting point in the second excited band and a QBTP lies at P4. Our measurements showed that if we move the BEC from P3 directly through P4 and turn it at various angles, just as we did with the Dirac point, the BEC's quantum state wraps exactly twice around the QBTP. This result means the BEC's quantum state picked up a geometric phase of exactly 2. Correspondingly, instead of a topological winding number of 1, like a Dirac point has, we found that a QBTP has a topological winding number of 2, meaning that the state must rotate in momentum space around the point exactly twice before it returns to the quantum state it started in.

This measurement was hard-won. We tried nearly daily for an entire month before it eventually workedwe kept finding fluctuations in our experiment whose sources were hard to pinpoint. After much effort and clever thinking, we finally saw the first measurement in which a BEC's quantum state exhibited wrapping around a QBTP. At that moment I thought, Oh, my goodness, I might actually land a job as a professor. More seriously, I was excited that our measurement technique showed itself to be uniquely suited to reveal this property of a QBTP singularity.

These singularities, with their strange geometric phases and winding numbers, may sound esoteric. But they are directly related to the tangible properties of the materials we studyin this case the special abilities of graphene and its promising future applications. All these changes that occur in the material's quantum state when it moves through or around these points manifest in cool and unusual phenomena in the real world.

Scientists have predicted, for instance, that QBTPs in solid materials are associated with a type of exotic high-temperature superconductivity, as well as anomalous properties that alter the quantum Hall effect and even electric currents in materials whose flow is typically protected, via topology, from disruption. Before attempting to further investigate this exciting physics, we want to learn more about how interactions between atoms in our artificial crystal change what we observe in our lab measurements.

In real crystals, the electrons interact with one another, and this interaction is usually quite important for the most striking physical effects. Because our experiment was the first of its kind, we took care to ensure that our atoms interacted only minimally to keep things simple. An exciting question we can now pose is: Could interactions cause a QBTP singularity to break apart into multiple Dirac points? Theory suggests this outcome may be possible. We look forward to cranking up the interatomic interaction strength in the lab and seeing what happens.

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Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities - Scientific American

Warning: Contains spoilers for "Down With Kings" from Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1!The Flashs powers have gotten deadly as a dangerous new weapon has corrupted the Speed Force. The Flash, as well as DCs other speedsters, all draw their power from the Speed Force, but as seen in the story Down with Kings, appearing in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1, evil forces have discovered a way to weaponize the Speed Force, creating one of Earths deadliest weapons in the process.

The story is written by Ed Brisson, drawn and colored by Jeff Spokes and lettered by Saida Temofonte. The newly reorganized Stormwatch has been sent to Iron Heights Penitentiary to retrieve the villain Huskk. Winter, Stormwatchs new Weatherman, briefs the team ahead of time, telling them a terrorist group called the Singularity has been working on Speed Force-centric technology. The Singularity has weaponized not only the Speed Force but its opposite, the Negative Speed Force. Upon arriving at Iron Heights, Stormwatch discovers that the Singularity has already struckand learns that one of the weapons the terrorists are using can speed time up around a victim, aging them in a matter of seconds. Stormwatchs scientific advisor Doctor Zema tells the team the Singularity has created a Time Sphere that rapidly ages anyone near it. Stormwatch is successful in destroying the Sphere before it can overload.

The Speed Force is an integral part of the Flashs mythos, as it is the foundation for every speed-based heros power. Introduced during Mark Waids epic mid-1990s run on The Flash, the Speed Force is one of the fundamental forces of the DC Universeit keeps the flow of time moving forward. In recent years, it has been speculated that the Speed Force is somehow linked to the time stream itself, explaining how its users can travel through time with relative ease. On the other side is the Negative Speed Force. Created by the Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne, the Negative Speed Force gives the user many of the same powers the regular Speed Force does, along with a few additional ones. Most importantly, the Negative Speed Force can negate the powers of a Speed Force user. If someone were to find a way to make the two work hand in hand, they could create some truly fantastic technologyand the Singularity has done just that.

Related: Flash's Speed Force Exposes the Justice League's Corruption

The new Speed Force weapons are some of DCs most horrifying, aging people to the point of death in a matter of seconds. While the story remains mum on how exactly the weapons work, their effects are on display for all to see. The Time Sphere is equally horrifying, able to duplicate the effects of the smaller weapons on a grander scale. Stormwatch is able to retrieve Huskk and keep him from falling into the wrong handswho would use him to create even more terrifying weapons. Huskk is not killed in this issue, meaning his research into Speed Force-based weapons could continueand this time create one that could wreak havoc on the world.

What is truly horrible about the Singularity and Huskks actions are how they have perverted the Speed Force. As mentioned earlier, it is one of the fundamental forces of the DC Universe and is integral to the flow of time. By creating weapons that exploit this, Huskk and the Singularity are corrupting the Speed Force, using it for a purpose it was not intended for. Furthermore, the Flash is nowhere in this story, meaning he more than likely does not know about these new weapons created from the corrupted Speed Force.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1 is on sale now from DC Comics!

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Flash's Powers Get Deadly as New DC Weapon Corrupts the Speed ... - Screen Rant

The next chapter coming to Dead by Daylight has a unique theme compared to the previous entries created by the horror-centric development team at Behaviour Interactive. The team finds horror in the stars and looks to the future as they bring a killer AI that takes its programming too far and begins to go after the crew it was designed to help build a home, known as the Singularity.

The lone survivor of the crew is Gabriel Soma, and theyre both being pulled into the fog, with the Singularity eager to hunt after Survivors to appease the entity, and Gabriel, only wanting to survive, make it back home. These two join Dead by Daylight in Chapter 29, End Transmission.

The information comes directly from Behavior Interactive from their 7th Anniversary stream, celebrating seven years of Dead by Daylight and sharing it with the community. We caught a brief trailer of The Singularitys egg-like power in effect, attaching itself to Gabriel as he desperately attempts to fix a generator.

The team has also confirmed that End Transmission will arrive on June 13, 2023, and will go on sale for every player. The pack will contain The Singularity and Gabriel, and players can use them on the first day.

Unfortunately, following the conclusion of the 7th Anniversary stream, these two will not be making an appearance on Dead by Daylights Public Test Servers as initially planned. Due to the massive leaks that happened surrounding Behaviour Interactives 7th Anniversary stream, which also caused the team to formally announce the arrival of future Survivor Nicolas Cage, the team decided to host their Anniversary today rather than on May 23, 2023, as it was originally unintended, which is when The Singularity and Gabriel will become playable for all players on the Public Test Servers.

On top of the End Transmission, we can expect to see Slipknot and Iron Maiden-themed collections making their way to the game. So far, these have only been confirmed, and we cannot go into too many details about this, but we do know its happening, and were keen to see what Survivors and Killers are chosen as highlights for this collection.

Were looking forward to trying out Gabriel and Singularity and seeing how they mix things up as they propel into the fog of Dead by Daylight.

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Dead by Daylight Embraces Sci-Fi Horror with Chapter Update, End ... - msnNOW

By James Garner 2023-05-19T06:00:00

Artificial intelligence is advancing fast and this is our Blockbuster video moment. Our industry has the resources to create a brighter future for our clients, our businesses and the world at large, says James Garner

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The futurist Ray Kurzweil made an important prediction in his ground-breaking book The Singularity is Near. According to his forecasts, artificial intelligence (AI) would overtake human intelligence by 2045 and create rapid technological advancement.

Although this bold prediction was met with disbelief by many, recent advances in AI and technology have made reaching the singularity even sooner a very real possibility.

Reflecting on my career journey at Gleeds, where I started as a quantity surveyor and am now the head of data and intelligence,I have witnessed the accelerated pace of change in recent years first-hand.Thistransformation has not been a mere tweak; it has been an eye-opening experience that has fundamentally shifted the way I perceive our profession.

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We must collaborate to safeguard construction from 'big tech ... - Building

Sci-fi horror is all the rage these days, with Scorn, SIGNALIS, The Callisto Protocol and the upcoming Greyhill Incident all capitalizing on the voguish trend. Even Dead Space (a franchise that was driven into the ground by its own publisher and forced into complete dormancy for almost a decade) has managed to make itself relevant again.

Always with its finger on the pulse, Dead by Daylight is looking to get in on the action next with its Chapter 28 DLC. This imminent expansion which is scheduled for release on DbDs copper anniversary will see the multiplayer game take to the stars and promises to really shake things up with fresh content thats unlike anything theyve ever done before.

And what better way is there to celebrate 7 years of asymmetrical bloodshed than to go intergalactic? After all, crossing that final frontier is pretty much the crowing achievement of any slasher franchise that has legs.

If you can keep the money rolling in for long enough, then you eventually get to go to space. Those are just the rules. It was only a matter of time then, before Dead by Daylight followed in the footsteps of Hellraiser, Friday the 13th and Leprechaun before it and ditched the confines of Planet Earth.

Bringing a lot to the table, Chapter 28 will introduce an original map, an additional survivor and a totally unique killer. To learn more about whats waiting for us in the farthest reaches of the cosmos, we attended a recent press conference hosted by developer Behaviour Interactive.

Here, we gained a deeper insight into the DLCs alien environments and discovered what makes the new Singularity character such a distinctly menacing opponent.

The Year Ahead

Before we got stuck into Chapter 28 (titled End Transmission), we were walked through the content roadmap for the next twelve months.

Fans will be pleased to hear that they are going to be treated to a whopping six major updates this year, the first of which is obviously End Transmission.

After this, there will then be three more fully-fledged chapters (adding both licenced and original characters to the roster), as well as two smaller updates that are billed as survivor-only DLCs.

In terms of chronology, the breakdown for 2023/24 is as follows:

Alongside all of this, various quality- of-life improvements will also be rolled out throughout the year.

An anti-camping system will be implemented to promote good sportsmanship and to discourage cheap tactics, while a new search-bar function will enable players to navigate their sprawling inventories with greater ease.

Most exciting of all, however, is the introduction of survivor disconnect bots. Swooping in whenever a sore loser rage quits or somebody encounters crippling network issues, these A.I.-controlled teammates will fill the vacancy left behind. They might not be flawless substitutes for your fellow human players, but they will at least ensure that matches can continue in some form if the lobby starts to dwindle for whatever reason.

The Perfect Lifeform

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence and the implications of it one day replacing us it turns out that this will actually be the main theme of the latest DLC.

While many in the DbD community were understandably hoping for an Alien chapter (with a playable Xenomorph), the games first foray into sci-fi horror is a wholly original affair instead. That being said, the ideas that it will be tapping into ought to be instantly familiar to anyone whose seen movies like The Terminator, Westworld or Richard Stanleys Hardware.

Set in the distant future, the basic premise of End Transmission is that a group of human settlers have arrived on a strange, exotic world. Hoping to colonise it for the sake of mankind, they dispatch a state-of-the-art A.I. to scout out this foreign terrain and identify any potential hazards.

Unfortunately, the servile android ends up learning a little too much on its reconnaissance mission and starts to wonder why it should be taking orders from these fragile meatbags in the first place. No prizes for guessing what happens next.

As A.I. is wont to do, the machine inevitably comes to the conclusion that humans are just a waste of oxygen and decides to overthrow its masters, picking them off one by one. By the time the DLC opens, this purge is nearing completion and only a single member of the crew is still breathing.

The ensuing confrontation between Gabriel Soma (the chapters new survivor) and The Singularity (the chapters new killer) forms the central crux of End Transmission. A teaser trailer sets the adversarial dynamic up nicely, pairing cinematic footage with some Kyle Reese-esque narration from Gabriel.

As he dashes through an alien rainforest, the terrified astro-engineer lays out everything that you need to know about his cybernetic tormenter: It became self-aware. It has no empathy. It doesnt feel pain. It learns at an impossible rate and it wont stop until we are dead. Or worse.

If you are wondering what fate he could possibly be alluding to here thats worse than being hacked to pieces by a homicidal robot, Dead by Daylights Creative Director, Dave Richard, was able to clear things up. Speaking about The Singularitys ghoulish M.O., he said: While it was scouting for potential dangers on this uncharted world, [The Singularity] made contact with old alien technology and was subsequently enlightened.

Having had a profound revelation of some kind, it now single-mindedly strives to grow and amass even more power. It does this by assimilating other pieces of machinery as well as organic material, in the hope that it will eventually become the perfect lifeform.

Richard continued: This killer is an interesting take on the idea of a cyborg. Were used to seeing human characters [augment] themselves with technology in science fiction, but The Singularity is doing everything in reverse. Its a piece of software thats decided to fuse with human flesh in order to increase its strength and mobility. Its on a quest to assimilate every living being in the universe.

The end result is a grotesque amalgamation of synthetic components and viscera. On the subject of its appearance, youre never going to have an iteration of The Singularity thats entirely pure (one way or the other), but you will be able to modify its look through various cosmetic options.

According to Richard, there will be different skins to choose from here, with some emphasising the more robotic qualities of the killer, while others suggest that it is being slowly mutated by the planets eerie flora and fauna.

As for how it plays, The Singularity has the ability to deploy gelatinous sacs around the environment. Known as bio-pods, these can stick to almost any surface and are used as a kind of body-horror version of CCTV.

Richard explained: They allow the killer to project its consciousness elsewhere. By strategically placing these pods, [Singularity players] can spy on survivors and even spew projectiles at them. We call that last part The Slipstream Effect. When a survivor is hit with a Slipstream, The Singularity can then teleport to their location and immediately attack.

To [counterbalance] this, survivors will have access to a brand-new special item; the EMP. This will be peppered in chests around the map whenever you face off against The Singularity and can temporarily disable its bio-pods and even [negate] the Slipstream Effect.

A Long Way From Home

Alongside the killer and survivor characters, End Transmission will also introduce a new arena into Dead by Daylights map rotation. That being the aforementioned jungle planet where Gabriels and his crewmates sealed their collective fates.

Describing this inhospitable environment, Richard said: Toba Landing is an obscure and foreign place. Its dangerous flora, fauna and structure are unlike anything that can be found on Earth. So it will be very different for our players.

There were several big themes that we wanted to explore when designing this realm. First of all, it was important that its clearly an alien world. We wanted the player to feel as though they are far from home and lost in space.

Elaborating upon how they pulled off this vibe, he continued: We took inspiration from the weirdest things that we could find in real-world nature and then modified them further to make it all feel even less familiar. We also added hints of a long-lost alien civilisation throughout, as a reminder that even powerful civilisations like ours can disappear and be forgotten.

Rest assured that there will be some recognisable elements in Toba Landing, however, as Richard confirmed that all of the staple Dead by Daylight assets will remain intact. He clarified: Our lore permits that palettes, hooks and generators can all exist within this futuristic sci-fi universe.

The Entity creates them so that they can be distributed across all of the different Omniverse realms for its trials. So those things do look the same for gameplay purposes. That way players can quickly identify them and get on with the match.

END TRANSMISSION will be coming to Dead by Daylight on the 13th of June and will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

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Check Out the Prototype for Bodycam Horror Game 'Deppart' [Video] - Bloody Disgusting