Futurism – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jun 8
2019

Halo Drive: Lasers and Black Holes Could Launch Spaceships to Near Light Speed

Future spaceships could use black holes as powerful launch pads to explore the stars.

A new study envisions firing laser beams that would curve around a black hole and come back with added energy to help propel a spacecraft to near the speed of light. Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are using such a “halo drive,” as the study dubs it, by seeing if pairs of black holes are merging more often than expected.

Study author David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York, came up with the idea of the halo drive through what he calls “the gamer’s mindset.”

Jun 7
2019

Google’s TensorNetwork library speeds up computation

Google has open-sourced TensorNetwork, a tensor network library designed in collaboration with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and X.

Jun 7
2019

Everything as Code: The future of ops tools

How do we manage our complex, multi-cloud, hybrid infrastructures? Seth Vargo maps the operations tooling ecosystem you need to know in order to maintain your sanity, but he also looks into the future of infrastructure as code tools and what cool innovations we can expect.

Jun 7
2019

In2Chess — The chess board of the future

A radical new innovation helping you to learn and excel in chess quickly with real time learning and progression.

Jun 7
2019

Google Maps can now tell you your speed in real time

The Waze features keep on coming.

Jun 6
2019

The Crucial Role of Brain Simulation in Future Neuroscience

“Do we have a chance of ever understanding brain function without brain simulations?” So asked the Human Brain Project (HBP), the brainchild of Henry Markram, in a new paper in the prestigious journal Neuron.

The key, the team argued, is to consider brain simulators in the vein of calculus for Newton’s laws—not as specific ideas of how the brain works, but rather as a programming language that can execute many candidate neural models, or programs, now and in the future. When viewed not as a vanity project, but rather as the way forward to understand—and eventually imitate—higher brain functions, the response to brain simulation is a resounding yes.

Because of the brain’s complexity and chaotic nature, the authors argue, rather than reining in simulation efforts, we need to ramp up and develop multiple “brain-simulation engines” with varying levels of detail.

Jun 6
2019

Free “Shazam for Nature” App Identifies Plants and Animals in Your Pics

It’s like Shazam meets Pokémon Go meets nature.

Jun 6
2019

The U.S. could lose its measles elimination status

It’s been nearly two decades since the U.S. officially eliminated measles, but we may lose that status before we hit the 20-year mark.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that we’ve now topped 1,000 cases in 2019. Elimination isn’t about case numbers, though, it’s about time—and just last week, the Director of the CDC warned that we could be in danger of losing our status as a measles-eliminated country.

Jun 6
2019

Biodegradable Coffee Cups Embedded With Seeds Grow Into Trees When Thrown Away

A creative company in California called Reduce. Reuse. Grow has designed a coffee cup that is not only biodegradable, but even has seeds in its walls so that it can be planted and grown!

The cups, which are currently part of a Kickstarter campaign, will have seeds embedded in their walls based on their locations. Participating stores will encourage people to plant the cups themselves or to return them to be planted by the company.

Read on for designer Alex Henige’s answers to some of Bored Panda’s questions about his unique cup design!

Jun 6
2019

Swarm of ladybugs so large it registers on National Weather Service radar in California

A swarm of ladybugs moving through San Diego County was so large it registered on the National Weather Service’s (NWS) weather radar Tuesday night, CBS Los Angeles reports. The NWS office in San Diego tweeted out a video of the radar that looked to be showing precipitation but was in fact what they called a ladybug “bloom.”

“The large echo showing up on SoCal radar this evening is not precipitation, but actually a cloud of ladybugs termed a ‘bloom,’” the tweet read.