Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists who study the cosmos have a favorite philosophy known as the “mediocrity principle,” which, in essence, suggests that there’s really nothing special about Earth, the sun or the Milky Way galaxy compared to the rest of the universe.

Now, new research from CU Boulder adds yet another piece of evidence to the case for mediocrity: Galaxies are, on average, at rest with respect to the early universe. Jeremy Darling, a CU Boulder astrophysics professor, recently published this new cosmological finding in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“What this research is telling us is that we have a funny motion, but that funny motion is consistent with everything we know about the universe —there’s nothing special going on here,” said Darling. “We’re not special as a galaxy or as observers.”

Did life begin on Earth, or did it come from space? Amino acids, peptides and proteins may have an off-world origin giving credence to panspermia.

Twenty amino acids discovered in the sample materials returned provide evidence to support the evolving panspermia hypothesis.

During my research, preparing my next presentations, i found this beautiful speech by Krafft Ehricke, in 1984, before he passed away.

Every single word is a precious teaching, a beautiful lecture on natural philosophy.

Continue reading “Krafft Ehricke: ‘Lunar Industrialization & Settlement—Birth of Polyglobal Civilization’” »

Astronomers have cast a wide net to collect treasures from deep space.

NASA used the telescope in an innovative way to capture a group of massive galaxies in the COSMOS field.

Researchers believe they’ve found the chemical process that gave rise to RNA, and not only is it remarkably simple, it could have happened on Mars, too.

India launches its first liquid-mirror telescope for astronomy, which is Asia’s largest and the only one of its kind operational in the world.

The Ingenuity chopper on Mars has lost an instrument that helps it navigate. Flight controllers have found a work-around.

Things are getting challenging for the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. The latest news from Håvard Grip, its chief pilot, is that the “Little Chopper that Could” has lost its sense of direction thanks to a failed instrument. Never mind that it was designed to make only a few flights, mostly in Mars spring. Or that it’s having a hard time staying warm now that winter is coming. Now, one of its navigation sensors, called an inclinometer, has stopped working. It’s not the end of the world, though. “A nonworking navigation sensor sounds like a big deal – and it is – but it’s not necessarily an end to our flying at Mars,” Grip wrote on the Mars Helicopter blog on June 6. It turns out that the controllers have options.

Like other NASA planetary missions, Ingenuity sports a fair amount of redundancy in its systems. It has an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that measures accelerations and angular rates of ascent and descent in three directions. In addition, there’s a laser rangefinder that measures the distance to the ground. Finally, the chopper has a navigation camera. It gives visual evidence of where Ingenuity is during flight or on the ground. An algorithm takes data from these instruments and uses it during flight. But, it needs to know the chopper’s roll and pitch attitude, and that’s what the inclinometer supplies.

Continue reading “Ingenuity has Lost its Sense of Direction, but It’ll Keep on Flying” »

we will be bringing you extracts from 9 trailblazer profiles from our new Neurotech report – dynamic and innovative companies we feel are driving this exciting space. Each profile includes a flagship product deep dive which offers a forensic consideration of product development, efficacy, target market, channels to market, success factors, IP and funding.

AE was born of the vision to increase human agency for end users through the technology the group develops for their partners and their wholly-owned and operated skunkworks companies. Running a highly collaborative agile process, these efforts are extended by investing heavily in the brain computer interface (BCI) space. BCI represents, to AE, the pinnacle of agency increasing tech with massive implications for users and the whole of humanity.

This time, astronomers will see all the way to the Milky Way’s edge.

The upcoming release will add some previously unavailable information, including about the chemical compositions, ages and masses of millions of stars.

Related: 4 big Milky Way mysteries the next Gaia mission data dump may solve.