Lifeboat Foundation

Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets could take to the skies over Florida in back-to-back Saturday evening launches.

Invisible vacuum energy is all around us. We could use it to power propulsion, enhance nanostructures, and build levitating devices.

“Deep Sky” chronicles the high-stakes global mission that brought the James Webb Space Telescope and the mind-blowing discoveries the mission has revealed so far.

The heliosphere—made of solar wind, solar transients, and the interplanetary magnetic field—acts as our solar system’s personal shield, protecting the planets from galactic cosmic rays. These extremely energetic particles accelerated outwards from events like supernovas and would cause a huge amount of damage if the heliosphere did not mostly absorb them.

From March 23–24, 2024, NOAA’s GOES satellites, and others operated by international partners, observed numerous flares erupt from the sun, including a powerful X-class solar flare. Additionally, a surge of extremely hot plasma, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), raced toward Earth resulting in geomagnetic storms and auroras.

This CME reached our planet at 10:37 a.m. EDT (1437 GMT) on Sunday, March 24, triggering a severe G4-class geomagnetic storm, marking the most potent solar storm since 2017. However, according to a Geomagnetic Storm Watch from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, there was no reason for the public to be alarmed.

Continue reading “NOAA Satellites Detect Severe Solar Storm” »

BEIJING, Feb 6 (Reuters) — Freezing rain, snow and ice have snarled traffic in central, eastern and southern China as millions of people travel home ahead of the Spring Festival holiday in the blistering cold that has swept through parts of the country over the past week.

Southern Hunan and central Hubei provinces bore the brunt of the severe weather, which deteriorated over the weekend, slowing highway traffic to a crawl, cancelling hundreds of trains and delaying flights.

The disruptions coincide with the biggest mass travel migration in the world as people across the country flock home to see their families for the Chinese New Year holiday, which officially begins on Saturday.

This is the solar maximum I was talking about. Happening in 2025 on earth.

December 2019 marked the beginning of Solar Cycle 25. The Sun’s activity has quickly ramped up and even though we haven’t reached peak levels in this cycle, the Sun’s activity is already exceeding predictions. Solar events will continue to increase as we near solar maximum in 2025, and our lives and technology on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space, will be impacted.

NASA’s Heliophysics Division is developing a mission that will provide crucial advances in our understanding of the ionosphere-thermosphere (I-T) system – the Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC). This mission will provide the first coordinated global-scale observations of the I-T region, where the effects of solar activity are often seen. The I-T region is a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that extends up to about 400 miles altitude and includes low-Earth-orbit, where the International Space Station and many commercial and governmental satellites reside. The I-T system is a region that affects our technological society in many ways, from creating interference in radio signals to generating large electric currents in power distribution systems. The GDC mission’s study of the global, coupled system will enable dramatic improvements in our space weather models, which will lead to the mitigation of negative effects on space-based, air-based, and ground-based assets.

Continue reading “Solar Cycle 25 is Exceeding Predictions and Showing Why We Need the GDC Mission” »

Yale researchers have developed a cancer vaccine for dogs that nearly doubles their 12-month survival rate — and it might be a powerful treatment for humans with cancer, too.

Sick as a dog: In 2011, the FDA approved the first ever cancer immunotherapy — a treatment that supercharges the immune system to fight cancer — and today, oncologists have dozens of powerful immunotherapies in their arsenal, with more coming every year.

Continue reading “Cancer vaccine for dogs appears to nearly double survival rate” »

Sometimes a cough is just a cough. But if it sticks around for a while, you may have something more serious. Find out more about what may be causing your nagging cough.