Lifeboat Foundation

Earth’s potassium arrived by meteoritic delivery service finds new research led by Carnegie’s Nicole Nie and Da Wang. Their work, published in Science, shows that some primitive meteorites contain a different mix of potassium isotopes than those found in other, more-chemically processed meteorites. These results can help elucidate the processes that shaped our solar system and determined the composition of its planets.

“The extreme conditions found in stellar interiors enable stars to manufacture elements using nuclear fusion,” explained Nie, a former Carnegie postdoc now at Caltech. “Each stellar generation seeds the raw material from which subsequent generations are born and we can trace the history of this material across time.”

Some of the material produced in the interiors of stars can be ejected out into space, where it accumulates as a cloud of gas and dust. More than 4.5 billion years ago, one such cloud collapsed in on itself to form our sun.

Tech giants from Google to Amazon and Alibaba —not to mention nation-states vying for technological supremacy—are racing to dominate this space. The global quantum-computing industry is projected to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027, according to an International Data Corp. analysis.

Whereas traditional computers rely on binary “bits”—switches either on or off, denoted as 1s and 0s—to process information, the “qubits” that underpin quantum computing are tiny subatomic particles that can exist in some percentage of both states simultaneously, rather like a coin spinning in midair. This leap from dual to multivariate processing exponentially boosts computing power. Complex problems that currently take the most powerful supercomputer several years could potentially be solved in seconds. Future quantum computers could open hitherto unfathomable frontiers in mathematics and science, helping to solve existential challenges like climate change and food security. A flurry of recent breakthroughs and government investment means we now sit on the cusp of a quantum revolution. “I believe we will do more in the next five years in quantum innovation than we did in the last 30,” says Gambetta.

But any disrupter comes with risks, and quantum has become a national-security migraine. Its problem-solving capacity will soon render all existing cryptography obsolete, jeopardizing communications, financial transactions, and even military defenses. “People describe quantum as a new space race,” says Dan O’Shea, operations manager for Inside Quantum Technology, an industry publication. In October, U.S. President Joe Biden toured IBM’s quantum data center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., calling quantum “vital to our economy and equally important to our national security.” In this new era of great-power competition, China and the U.S. are particularly hell-bent on conquering the technology lest they lose vital ground. “This technology is going to be the next industrial revolution,” says Tony Uttley, president and COO for Quantinuum, a Colorado-based firm that offers commercial quantum applications. “It’s like the beginning of the internet, or the beginning of classical computing.”

From the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer to the return to Earth of an asteroid explorer to India’s first India’s private space launch, 2023 is set to be as busy a space exploration year as 2022. Here’s a preview.

While the idea of teleportation in general sounds quite far-fetched it’s not a concept we’re too terribly far away from. In this day and age, we are much more advanced than people realize and moments like this really prove exactly that.

Just a couple years ago Chinese scientists revealed that they had managed to send a photon from Earth to a satellite that was orbiting the planet at least three hundred miles away. Yes, they teleported it into space. This was a serious feat in the world of quantum physics and at the time was touted as a ‘futuristic breakthrough.’

While a bit ‘out there’ it seems that teleportation has become something quite standard in quantum optics labs globally but this was easily the longest distance something was able to be teleported. The phenomenon that allows this to happen is known as entanglement and it happens when two quantum objects form at the same instant and point in space. This meaning that they hold the same wave function and according to Technology Review, are able to share this even when separated.

“We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb.”

NASA has just revealed a stunning new image of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud captured by its state-of-the-art $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope.

New James Webb image reveals young protostar in a molecular cloud.

Continue reading “James Webb detects complex frozen elements in a molecular cloud” »

Theories on how to build a space elevator have been around for decades. Scientists say not only would such technology change humanity, but that we could have built one by now.

#Space #Science #Technology.

Continue reading “Space Elevators Are Getting Closer to Reality” »

What happens when two dynamic (and wildly entertaining) science educators come together to talk about evolution VS. creationism? This podcast answers the question. With Forrest Valkai and Erika / Gutsick Gibbon.

We could be living in the most important century in history. Here’s how Artificial Intelligence might uphold a historical trend of super-exponential economic growth, ushering us into a period of sudden transformation, ending in a stable galaxy-scale civilization or doom. All within the next few decades.

This video is based on Holden Karnofsky’s “most important century” blog post series: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/

Continue reading “Everything might change forever this century (or we’ll go extinct)” »

About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and the Smithsonian designed to ask—and ultimately answer—humanity’s greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with research facilities across the U.S. and around the world.