Lifeboat Foundation

A modified version of the Drake Equation, and what it tells us.

For years, physicists have attempted to explain dark energy — a mysterious influence that pushes space apart faster than gravity can pull the things in it together. But physics isn’t always about figuring out what things are. A lot of it is figuring out what things cause.

And in a recent paper, a group of physicists asked this very question about dark energy, and found that in some cases, it might cause time to go forward.

When you throw a ball into the air, it starts with some initial speed-up, but then it slows as Earth’s gravity pulls it down. If you throw it fast enough (about 11 km per second, for those who want to try), it’ll never slow down enough to turn around and start falling back towards you, but it’ll still move more slowly as it moves away from you, because of Earth’s gravity.

Continue reading “Physicists just found a link between dark energy and the arrow of time” »

“Driverless cars, drones and a commercial spaceport all featured in the Queen’s Speech.”

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Watch the video NASA’s Mars rover has measured something in the air that scientists can’t explain on Yahoo Finance. VIDEO: NASA just uncovered another clue.

Nice.

NILES, Ill., May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — MicroLink Devices is proud to announce that Airbus Defence and Space has issued a production contract for MicroLink’s epitaxial liftoff (ELO)-based multijunction solar sheets for use on the new Zephyr S platform.

Photo — http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160517/368562

Continue reading “Airbus Defence and Space Enters Solar Cell Production Contract with MicroLink Devices for Next Generation Zephyr HAPS” »

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new highly efficient power amplifier for electronics could help make possible next-generation cell phones, low-cost collision-avoidance radar for cars and lightweight microsatellites for communications.

Fifth-generation, or 5G, mobile devices expected around 2019 will require improved power amplifiers operating at very high frequencies. The new phones will be designed to download and transmit data and videos faster than today’s phones, provide better coverage, consume less power and meet the needs of an emerging “Internet of things” in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data.

Power amplifiers are needed to transmit signals. Because today’s cell phone amplifiers are made of gallium arsenide, they cannot be integrated into the phone’s silicon-based technology, called complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). The new amplifier design is CMOS-based, meaning it could allow researchers to integrate the power amplifier with the phone’s electronic chip, reducing manufacturing costs and power consumption while boosting performance.

Continue reading “High-efficiency power amplifier could bring 5G cell phones” »

ACTON, Australia, May 16 (UPI) — A pair of physicists in Australia have trained an artificial intelligence system to replicate the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize.

The experiment involves what is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, the trapping of an ultra-cool gas in a series of lasers.

At just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, Bose-Einstein condensates constitute some of the coldest temperatures in the universe — colder than interstellar space.

Continue reading “Researchers teach AI system to run complex physics experiment” »

What I really want to do is to use the machine to complete the Sagrada Familia. And to build on the moon.

Why carry building materials from Earth into space, when we can build structures by 3D printing using materials found out there?

“This month, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)—India’s equivalent of NASA—will begin the mission to launch its indigenous space shuttle, the Press Trust of India reported on May 15.”

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