Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space – Page 891

ISS Sees Thunderstorm Beaming Electromagnetic Pulse Into Space, Producing Gamma Rays and ‘Elves’

O…O.

At 8:01 p.m. on October 10, 2018, a bolt of lightning flashed inside of a storm cloud just east of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The International Space Station was passing overhead at the time, and a suite of instruments observed as the bolt produced a flash of gamma radiation—and, simultaneously, emitted a glowing ring of ultraviolet and visible light in the topmost layer of the atmosphere.

Scientists today are presenting the results of this observation, the first to capture both a terrestrial gamma ray flash, or TGF, and the visible-light component of an Elve, a dim disk of ionospheric radiation. This observation provides more evidence for the connection between lightning, the radiation produced by storms, and electromagnetic phenomena at the top of the atmosphere, while illustrating more of the wild radioactive curiosities that weather can generate.

Red Angel

O.,o.

The Red Angel was an entity sought by both Starfleet and Section 31 in relation to a series of mysterious red bursts that occurred in the late 2250s. The crew of the USS Discovery adopted the term “Red Angel” from Spock, who had encountered her during his youth. ( DIS : “ Point of Light ”, ” An Obol for Charon ”)

While Starfleet could not link its appearance to any known winged or avian lifeforms in the Federation, it became gradually clear that the Red Angel was a time traveler operating a suit developed under the Daedalus Project by Section 31. It was ultimately discovered that the Angel was in fact two separate entities wearing different time-travel suits, and their identities were later determined to be Gabrielle Burnham and a future version of her daughter Michael. The former had attempted to prevent Control from taking over the galaxy, while the latter set the red bursts in order to guide Discovery’s mission in a way conducive to defeating Control. ( DIS : ” An Obol for Charon ”, ” The Red Angel ”, ” Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2 ”)

New frontiers for health, space tech leadersin SA

Two of SA’s most promising female technology entrepreneurs have this year raised millions from astute local and international investors for their global-impact businesses in healthcare and space.

Presagen, co-founded by Dr Michelle Perugini, raised a total of $4.5 million from Jungle Capital group in Australia and US private investor 3Lines Venture Capital, with the SA Government also pitching in.

The funding will help commercialise its Life Whisperer artificial intelligence (AI) platform. Life Whisperer uses AI to identify healthy embryos in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) with the aim of improving pregnancy outcomes for infertile couples globally.

Using Quantum Mechanics to Trigger Atomic Fusion

Nuclear physics usually involves high energies, as illustrated by experiments to master controlled nuclear fusion. One of the problems is how to overcome the strong electrical repulsion between atomic nuclei which requires high energies to make them fuse. But fusion could be initiated at lower energies with electromagnetic fields that are generated, for example, by state-of-the-art free electron lasers emitting X-ray light. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) describe how this could be done in the journal Physical Review C.

During nuclear fusion two atomic nuclei fuse into one new nucleus. In the lab this can be done by particle accelerators, when researchers use fusion reactions to create fast free neutrons for other experiments. On a much larger scale, the idea is to implement controlled fusion of light nuclei to generate power – with the sun acting as the model: its energy is the product of a series of fusion reactions that take place in its interior.

For many years, scientists have been working on strategies for generating power from fusion energy. “On the one hand we are looking at a practically limitless source of power. On the other hand, there are all the many technological hurdles that we want to help surmount through our work,” says Professor Ralf Schützhold, Director of the Department of Theoretical Physics at HZDR, describing the motivation for his research.

Scientists Are Contemplating a 1,000-Year Space Mission to Save Humanity

VR and Interstellar Travel

Crew members in route to a distant planet may best be accommodated by full immersion VR. The actual spaceship could be reduced to a relatively simple, small, well-shielded vehicle. Inside the crew’s biological material could be supported by a simplified nutrition, waste and maintenance system. Their minds could inhabit a fully immersive VR environment that would provide them with all the luxuries of vast, diverse spaces and experiences — complete with simulated gravity, simulated pleasant nature-like and artificial environments, and simulated meals.

They could also engage in simulating the type of society they intend to build once they arrive in their new physical environment, using similar constraints to the ones they will encounter. This could allow many years for actual human experiences to test and refine what they will build and how they will interact in their new home.

Advances in maintaining biological material may even allow a single generation to survive the entire journey. They may adopt their own conventions for simulating death and birth for reasons related to simulating their new home or for maintaining psychological well-being over many centuries. Simulated death and reincarnation may allow a single crew to experience many childhoods and parenting situations without the need for actual procreation.

Another concern that this addresses is the need for massive funding for research and development as well as resource provisioning when building conventional spacecraft intended to deliver things like artificial gravity, agriculture and pleasant living spaces for large multigenerational populations — all while shielding them from radiation. Funding the development of fully immersive VR seems like a relatively easier to fund activity that has immediate uses here on earth and elsewhere. The types of ships that would be sufficient for sustaining and shielding humans living mostly in immersive VR would be so simplified that most of the fundamental research that would be specific to designing such crafts may have already occurred.

After 200,000 years or so of human existence, climate change threatens to make swathes of our planet unlivable by the end of the century. If we do manage to adapt, on a long enough timeline the Earth will become uninhabitable for other reasons: chance events like a comet strike or supervolcano eruption, or ultimately — if we make it that long — the expansion of the sun into a red giant in around five billion years, engulfing the planet completely or at a minimum scorching away all forms of life. Planning for potential escape routes from Earth is, if not exactly pressing, then at least a necessary response to a plausible threat.

Continue reading “Scientists Are Contemplating a 1,000-Year Space Mission to Save Humanity” | >

/* */