Lifeboat Foundation

A new paper in AIP Advances argues that the controversial EM Drive doesn’t break physics as we know it, as it emits light (photons) as exhaust. However, other experts assert that it’s likely just an artifact.

Want to get people excited about science? Simple. Just post about EM Drive.

For those of you who may be new to the topic, EM Drive is a method of space travel that, if realized, would utterly transform our way of life. We could get to Mars in just 10 weeks (as opposed to the current 6+ month journey), and we could save a massive amount of money on fuel. We could have a truly viable space industry.

Continue reading “New Paper Claims EM Drive Works, Produces Light As Exhaust” »

The Sun has hit a heretofore unforseen middle-aged evolutionary phase that is characterized by decreasing solar magnetic activity, including starspots and coronal mass ejections, say the authors of a new paper just submitted to APJ Letters. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope enabled the team to make the determination. The good news is that we have another 5 billion years of relative quiescence before the Sun begins its expansion as a Red Giant.

The Sun has likely already entered into a new unpredicted long-term phase of its evolution as a hydrogen-burning main sequence star — one characterized by magnetic sputtering indicative of a more quiescent middle-age. Or so say the authors of a new paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using observations of other sunlike stars made by NASA ’s Kepler Space Telescope, the team found that the Sun is currently in a special phase of its magnetic evolution.

Continue reading “Sun Has Likely Entered New Evolutionary Phase, Say Astronomers” »

“The legendary engineer’s building philosophy has never been more relevant. This summer, he’s getting his first major museum retrospective.”

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A “huge” stash of helium discovered in East Africa could ease a decades-long shortage of the rare and valuable gas.

Researchers in the United Kingdom and Norway say the newly discovered helium gas field, found in the East African Rift Valley region of Tanzania, has the potential to ease a critical global shortage of helium, a gas that is vital to many high-tech applications, such as the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners used in many hospitals.

The researchers say the discovery is the result of a new approach to searching for helium that combines prospecting methods from the oil industry with scientific research that reveals the role of volcanic heat in the production of pockets of helium gas. [Elementary, My Dear: 8 Elements You Never Heard Of].

Continue reading “Huge Cache of Ancient Helium Discovered in Africa’s Rift Valley” »

Windows 10 is a “recommended update,” meaning some computers attempt to install it by default.

Geez! Is no one safe anymore; Google’s CEO has been hacked. Oh boy; guess there is definitely a bigger message to Google and others of big tech around this one. Whose next Bezos, Schmidt, etc? BTW — how is that AI working out.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has become the latest tech executive to have a social media account hacked, and the group responsible says more targets will follow.

On Sunday, a group of hackers calling themselves OurMine briefly took over Pichai’s account on Quora, a question-and-answer site.

Continue reading “Google’s Sundar Pichai has been hacked — which CEO will be next?” »

We’re on a roll with QC.

The era of quantum computers is one step closer as a result of research published in the current issue of the journal Science. The research team has devised and demonstrated a new way to pack a lot more quantum computing power into a much smaller space and with much greater control than ever before. The research advance, using a 3-dimensional array of atoms in quantum states called quantum bits—or qubits—was made by David S. Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State University, and three students on his lab team. He said “Our result is one of the many important developments that still are needed on the way to achieving quantum computers that will be useful for doing computations that are impossible to do today, with applications in cryptography for electronic data security and other computing-intensive fields.”

The new technique uses both laser light and microwaves to precisely control the switching of selected individual qubits from one quantum state to another without altering the states of the other atoms in the cubic array. The new technique demonstrates the potential use of atoms as the building blocks of circuits in future quantum computers.

Continue reading “New, better way to build circuits for world’s first useful quantum computers” »

Gravitational waves captured by space-based detectors could help identify the origins of supermassive black holes, according to new computer simulations of the universe.

We now have a way to do tracibility in QC.

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Chinese scientists won a major victory recently, by proving that the Majorana fermion — a particle we’ve found tantalizing hints of for years — genuinely exists. This discovery has huge implications for quantum computing, and it might change the world. But how?

Continue reading “How The Majorana Fermion Is Going To Change The World” »