Lifeboat Foundation

Winter solstice, the shortest day of 2018, is Friday, December 21.

The solstice this year will be extra special because it will be followed the next day by a full moon known as the Cold Moon, and you might be able to see a meteor shower to boot.

First, CNN meteorologists Dave Hennen, Judson Jones and Brandon Miller help us understand the science behind the solstice.

This is a supernova remnant in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Don’t miss the full-size of this stunning image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory: https://go.nasa.gov/2EFFL7z

“In the early 21st century, perhaps the most important artistic genre is science fiction … [It shapes] how people understand the most important technological, social, and economic developments of our time.” —Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

The most detailed simulation of the universe shows how galaxies evolved since the dawn of time.

Next stop: the desk of President Trump.

The U.S. is ready to invest big in quantum computing.

It isn’t unreasonable to think of drones as pesky technological nuisances. Our modern digital ecosystem regularly infringes on traditional notions of privacy and bombards our limited attention spans with stimuli. A swarm of drones hovering overhead seems like the physical manifestation of these intrusions and distractions. But we shouldn’t swat them away just yet. Drones still have practical utility and the potential to change industries.

An Expanding Market

Continue reading “This Drone Seamlessly Transitions Between Swimming and Flying” »

Had a great time with my regenerative biology Q&A session with Ayersville (Ohio, USA) Schools 2nd graders and high school advanced anatomy class — so happy to see kids out there that are interested in these topics at such a young age — creating the future, one mind at a time — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_uu9f7nafc

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, ETH Zurich, and Argonne National Laboratory, U.S, have described an extended quantum Maxwell’s demon, a device locally violating the second law of thermodynamics in a system located 1–5 meters away from the demon. The device could find applications in quantum computers and microscopic refrigerators cooling down tiny objects with pinpoint accuracy. The research was published Dec. 4 in Physical Review B.

The second law says that the entropy — that is, the degree of disorder or randomness — of an isolated system never decreases.

“Our demon causes a device called a qubit to transition into a more orderly state,” explained the study’s lead author Andrey Lebedev of MIPT and ETH Zurich. “Importantly, the demon does not alter the qubit’s energy and acts over a distance that is huge for quantum mechanics.”

More information: Mireia Montes et al, Intracluster light: a luminous tracer for dark matter in clusters of galaxies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2858, dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2858

Provided by: ESA/Hubble Information Centre.