Lifeboat Foundation

Our solar system appears to be home to a huge and unknown dwarf planet-sized asteroid, according to a new study.

A small shard of meteorite that arrived on Earth in 2008 appears to have come from the asteroid, according to researchers who have studied the sample.

The parent asteroid appears to be roughly the size of Ceres, the dwarf planet is the biggest object in the asteroid belt, the researchers say. It also appears to have been formed around water and under some pressure, they found.

🎆 To celebrate another successful trip around our central star 🌞, we would like to invite you to a 🚀SpAsiaXtraordinary Party🎉

If you are interested in 🛰️space (or, even if not and just want to hang out with strangers online), then join this party tomorrow (January 2, at any time from 4:00pm to 12:00am GMT+8) at bit.ly/SpAsiaXtraordinary21

You can just show up or feel free to do more:

Continue reading “Happy New Year everyone!” »

We’re getting a lot of these aren’t we? 😃

Before that, this year’s final asteroid, 2020 YB4, measuring just 36 meters in diameter or roughly half the wingspan of a 747, passed by the Earth shortly after 6am UTC at a distance of 6.1 million kilometers. That means, in terms of the threat posed by space rocks at least, the planet made it out of 2020 somewhat intact.

Continue reading “Rocky start: 2021 will begin with unwelcome, 220-meter wide asteroid visitor, NASA warns” »

An ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes, including: (i) Such a telescope can observe the universe at wavelengths greater than 10m (i.e., frequencies below 30MHz), which are reflected by the Earth’s ionosphere and are hitherto largely unexplored by humans, and (ii) the Moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the lunar-surface telescope from radio interferences/noi… See More.

Using data from the Large Sky Area Multi-object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and ESA’s star-mapping satellite Gaia, astronomers have discovered 591 new high-velocity stars in the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy.

In the not so distant future you could be making money from home by controlling robots, robots that are in another country. Or there will be products, such as a self driving Tesla car, that can go out and earn money on their own.

This video takes a look at the futuristic ways people will be earning money. From telepresence jobs and future business ideas, to new space businesses, and even how people will be storing their money — moving away from cash and credit cards to using chips that are in their bodies.

Continue reading “Making Money in a Futuristic World (Jobs and Future Business Ideas)” »

Researchers at Osaka University synthesized twisted molecular wires just one molecule thick that can conduct electricity with less resistance compared with previous devices. This work may lead to carbon-based electronic devices that require fewer toxic materials or harsh processing methods.

Organic conductors, which are carbon-based materials that can conduct electricity, are an exciting new technology. Compared with conventional silicon electronics, organic conductors can be synthesized more easily, and can even be made into molecular wires. However, these structures suffer from reduced electrical conductivity, which prevents them from being used in consumer devices. Now, a team of researchers from The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University has developed a new kind of molecular wire made from oligothiophene molecules with periodic twists that can carry electric current with less resistance.

Molecular wires are composed by several-nanometer-scale long molecules that have alternating single and double chemical bonds. Orbitals, which are states that electrons can occupy around an atom or molecule, can be localized or extended in space. In this case, the pi orbitals from individual atoms overlap to form large “islands” that electrons can hop between. Because electrons can hop most efficiently between levels that are close in energy, fluctuations in the polymer chain can create energy barriers. “The mobility of charges, and thus the overall conductivity of the molecular wire, can be improved if the charge mobility can be improved by suppressing such fluctuations,” first author Yutaka Ie says.

Containing various structures with a range of masses, from massive and dense clusters of galaxies to low-density bridges, filaments and sheets of matter, superclusters are among the largest structures in the known universe. Finding and investigating superclusters in detail could be essential in order to improve our understanding of the formation and evolution of large cosmic filaments.

Now, a group of astronomers led by Vittorio Ghirardini of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, reports the discovery of a new supercluster. The structure was identified by the eFEDS survey during its Performance Verification (PV) phase.

A team of European researchers discovered a new high-pressure mineral in the lunar meteorite Oued Awlitis 001, named donwilhelmsite [CaAl4Si2O11]. The team around Jörg Fritz from the Zentrum für Rieskrater und Impaktforschung Nördlingen, Germany and colleagues at the German Research Centre for Geoscience GFZ in Potsdam, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Natural History Museum Vienna, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Science, Natural History Museum Oslo, University of Manchester, and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt Berlin published their findings in the scientific journal American Mineralogist.

Besides the about 382 kilograms of rocks and soils collected by the Apollo and Luna missions, lunar meteorites allow valuable insights into the formation of the Moon. They are ejected by impacts onto the lunar surface and subsequently delivered to Earth.

Some of these meteorites experienced particularly high temperatures and pressures. The extreme physical conditions often led to shock melting of microscopic areas within these meteorites. These shocked areas are of great relevance as they mirror pressure and temperature regimes similar to those prevailing in the Earth’s mantle. Therefore, the microscopic shock melt areas are natural crucibles hosting minerals that are otherwise naturally inaccessible at the Earth’s surface. Minerals like wadsleyite, ringwoodite, and bridgmanite, constitute large parts of the Earth’s mantle. Theses crystals were synthesized in high-pressure laboratory experiments. As natural minerals they were first described and named based on their occurrences in meteorites.