Lifeboat Foundation

A ghostly dust satellite or two might be orbiting the Earth, according to new research building on a 60-year-old idea.

Massive objects attract one another through the force of gravity. But when you have multiple huge objects with just the right masses, their mutual gravitational field can introduce some anomalies—like gravitational points that can hold things stable. Scientists have found objects orbiting in these “Lagrange points” created by the combined gravity of the Sun and Mars, the Sun and Neptune, and the Sun and Jupiter. Researchers are now reporting evidence of dust clouds, called Kordylewski dust clouds, in the Lagrange points created by the Earth and the Moon.

There’s a Strange Cloud on Mars Right Now, and It’s Just Hanging Around — For more than a month now, a European orbiter circling Mars has been watching a long, plume-like cloud on the Red Planet. The cloud has remained in place over a mountain called Arsia Mons near the Martian equator since Sept. 13, according to a statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA). But that location is just a coincidence, the agency adds. No volcanic process is producing the cloud — the volcano hasn’t been active in about 50 million years…at: https://www.space.com/42257-strange-mars-cloud-on-mars-phot…

We’re in for quite the spectacle… 👀😲.

Just a normal Friday night at my house, then.

Not in the Philippines?

Rocket scientists are planning to suspend a man-made moon bright enough to reduce the need for streetlamps.

In the Sichuan city of Chengdu, Chinese rocket scientists are planning to suspend a man-made moon bright enough to reduce the need for streetlamps.

It’s exactly that kind of ingenuity that has helped the world’s most populous nation churn out new billionaires at a prodigious clip, according to John Mathews, head of ultra-high net worth in the Americas for UBS Group AG.

Continue reading “Fake Moon Over Chengdu Shows Why China Is Billionaire Powerhouse” »

Human organs may one day be grown in space.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist extraordinaire who helped discover radio pulsars while a graduate student in 1967 (though only her adviser was recognized when the discovery snagged a Nobel Prize in physics in 1974), is getting long-overdue recognition.

Bell Burnell, now a visiting professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford and chancellor of Scotland’s University of Dundee, was awarded the weighty Breakthrough Prize in physics in September for her pulsar discovery and science leadership.

Continue reading “Robbed of Nobel, Female Physicist Blazed Her Own Amazing Trail: Watch Her Speak Tonight” »

Star formation is one of the most important research fields in astrophysics. This process, in which gravitational instabilities cause the collapse of gas to form more compact structures and finally stars, encompasses a broad range of physical scales. These include star-forming galaxies on the large scale, individual young stars with envelopes and circumstellar disks on the smaller scale, and intermediate scales that include giant molecular clouds and protostellar cores.

The future of humanity will be radically different than what we see today. As Ray Kurzweil put it, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).” We’ll have the potential to live on Mars, connect our minds to machines, and access an abundance of resources.

But is our youth prepared to live in such a world? Are we equipping them with the skills and values necessary to be adaptable, innovative, and purpose-driven in such a world?

Our traditional, industrial-era educational models are simply outdated. What is required is not an incremental change in education, but rather an entire overhaul of the current system. It will take creative imagination to develop new models for 21st-century education.