Lifeboat Foundation

“Another very good test some readers may want to look up… is the Casimir effect, where forces between metal plates in empty space are modified by the presence of virtual particles.” –Gordon Kane

If you ask what the zero-point energy of space itself is, you can sum up all of the quantum fluctuations you can that arise in quantum field theory, and arrive at an absurd answer: 120 orders of magnitude greater than the observed. Yet if you assume that there’s an incredible cancellation and you get exactly zero, that removes the one thing our Universe needs to explain its expansion: dark energy.

The next time your have a drink at your favorite restaurant or bar; it could be in a levitating glass.

Diehard cocktail aficionados swear by serving specific drinks in the correct glass. I wonder what they’ll make of the Levitating CUP, a cocktail glass designed to float above a portable base, in seeming defiance of gravity.

It’s the brainchild of Joe Paglione, CEO of a Chicago-based startup company called Levitating Cup. They’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary capital to bring the products to market. There are cocktail glasses, dessert cups, beer cups, plates, and even pillows for optimal presentation-just in case you want to throw a full dinner party without the usual coasters and place mats.

Continue reading “Your Next Cocktail Could Defy Gravity With the Levitating CUP” »

The realization of reconfigurable modular microrobots could aid drug delivery and microsurgery by allowing a single system to navigate diverse environments and perform multiple tasks. So far, microrobotic systems are limited by insufficient versatility; for instance, helical shapes commonly used for magnetic swimmers cannot effectively assemble and disassemble into different size and shapes. Here by using microswimmers with simple geometries constructed of spherical particles, we show how magnetohydrodynamics can be used to assemble and disassemble modular microrobots with different physical characteristics. We develop a mechanistic physical model that we use to improve assembly strategies. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of dynamically changing the physical properties of microswimmers through assembly and disassembly in a controlled fluidic environment. Finally, we show that different configurations have different swimming properties by examining swimming speed dependence on configuration size.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.

A result from an experiment in Hungary catches the attention of a group of theorists in the United States.

NASA researchers suggest sea levels may be plunging around Greenland because of ice loss and a resulting decline in gravitational pull.

This anti-drone rifle can shoot down any drone.

“An increasing number of US landowners want to build commune-style villages that are completely self-sufficient and have a low carbon footprint”

Read more

Gear & Gadgets —

Transistors will stop shrinking in 2021, but Moore’s law will live on.

Final semiconductor industry roadmap says the future is 3D packaging and cooling.