Lifeboat Foundation

Dr. Shantanu Naidu: “When DART made impact, things got very interesting…the entire shape of the asteroid has changed, from a relatively symmetrical object to a ‘triaxial ellipsoid’ – something more like an oblong watermelon.”

On November 24, 2021, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission with the goal of demonstrating that deflecting an incoming asteroid could prevent it from striking Earth by striking the asteroid itself. Just over nine months later, on September 26, 2022, this demonstration was successfully carried out as DART acted as a kinetic impactor and intentionally struck the Dimporphos asteroid, which measures 560 feet (170 meters) in diameter.

But while the impact successfully altered Dimorphos’ orbit around the binary near-Earth asteroid, Didymos, could it have altered other aspects of Dimorphos, as well? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) discovered the impact also altered the shape of Dimporphos.

Continue reading “DART Impact: Reshaping Dimorphos and Redefining Asteroid Dynamics” »

Extinction is a regular part of nature. An estimated 99% of all species that have existed on Earth have gone the way of the dodo, sometimes because a fitter competitor came along or their environment changed (often because of humans) and they couldn’t adapt.

While life can go on relatively unchanged after the extinction of some species, the loss of a keystone species — one that plays a significant role in its environment — can upend an ecosystem.

Now, researchers exploring the idea of “de-extinction” believe that science might be able to intervene and restore the balance.

When it was first discovered in 2004, Apophis was identified as one of the most dangerous asteroids in that there was a risk that it could impact Earth. But that impact assessment changed over the years after astronomers tracked Apophis, also known as asteroid 99,942, and its orbit became better determined, and it became clear that it was on course to miss our planet.

Getting into space is difficult, but it may be that other worlds have even harder times at it than we do, imprisoned by orbital debris, high gravity, or even being quarantined by alien civilizations.

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Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Imprisoned Planets” »

The great mystery of where all the aliens are in our vast Universe contemplates ancient interstellar civilizations building enormous megastructures that rival worlds or even stars in the immensity… and asks why we can’t see these giant alien artifacts.

David Brin on Event Horizon with John Michael Godier: • A.I. Wars, The Fermi Paradox and Grea…
This Week in Space with Rod Pyle: • Alien Megastructures — Isaac Arthur a…

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Absent Megastructures” »

Will artificial intelligence weapons cause World War III? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiJTq11kqdwThis animated clip is from my friends at http://ve42.co/.…

Radical Plan to Stop ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Melting to Cost $50 Billion.

Working on these next-gen intelligent AIs must be a freaky experience. As Anthropic announces the smartest model ever tested across a range of benchmarks, researchers recall a chilling moment when Claude 3 realized that it was being evaluated.

Anthropic, you may recall, was founded in 2021 by a group of senior OpenAI team members, who broke away because they didn’t agree with OpenAI’s decision to work closely with Microsoft. The company’s Claude and Claude 2 AIs have been competitive with GPT models, but neither Anthropic nor Claude have really broken through into public awareness.

Continue reading “Smarter than GPT-4: Claude 3 AI catches researchers testing it” »

At a San Diego laboratory, four women do the painstaking work of preserving cells amid a growing extinction crisis.

Star Trek is the most popular and longest running Sci-Fi franchise in American history. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek follows the various crew of Starfleet in their missions across the galaxy.

This presentation showcases the inspiration behind Star Trek, how the Federation came to be, examines the post-scarcity economy featured in their future Earth society, and explores the philosophies of all of the major alien cultures shown throughout the Star Trek series.

Continue reading “The Philosophy of Star Trek [Federation, Post Scarcity Economy, Alien Cultures]” »