Lifeboat Foundation

The James Webb Space Telescope has delivered yet another astounding discovery, spying an active supermassive black hole deeper into the universe than has ever been recorded.

The black hole lies within CEERS 1,019 — an extremely old galaxy likely formed 570 million years after the big bang — making it more than 13 billion years old. And scientists were perplexed to find just how small the celestial object’s central black hole measures.

“This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses,” according to a NASA news release. A solar mass is a unit equivalent to the mass of the sun in our home solar system — which is about 333,000 times larger than the Earth.

To avert the extremely remote risk that debris poses to life, ESA is targeting the reentry at a vast expanse of ocean far away from land.

If the manoeuvres are successful, ESA expects to complete the journey in late July or early August. However, as a first-ever attempt at an assisted reentry, it’s not guaranteed to work. If the plan has to be aborted, Aeolus’ natural descent will continue.

But if the mission is accomplished, it will set a new standard for satellite reentry and space junk mitigation.

AI had its nuclear bomb threshold. The biggest thing that happens to human technology maybe since the splitting of the atom.

A conversation with Science Fiction author and a NASA consultant David Brin about the existential risks of AI and what approach we can take to address these risks.

Continue reading “From Sci-Fi to Reality: Addressing AI Risks — with David Brin” »

Pulsar Fusion has begun construction of the world’s largest rocket engine, which will be fuelled by fusion. Within four years, the British company intends to create an 8-metre-long combustion chamber.

Here’s What We Know

The fusion engine will be based on a very hot plasma trapped inside an electromagnetic field. Now scientists are working on how to keep the plasma in the electromagnetic field. The announcement was made by James Lambert, CFO of the UK-based company.

A small selection of volunteers who were completely color blind can now faintly detect a splash of color following retinal gene therapy.

Following the trial by researchers in Israel, three adults and one child who could only sense brightness of light found that after gene therapy they were able to tell a red object apart from its darker background.

Achromatopsia is caused by defects in genes that control cone cells, our eyes’ color-sensors. The approximately 1 in 30,000 people affected see all the vibrant colors of the world as blurry shades of gray.

Long-lived fungi are the latest organisms to go under the microscope in search of new understandings as to why they don’t accrue life-limiting mutations, given their age.

Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands set out to compare “the peculiarities” of multicellular growth in filamentous fungi. What they ended up with was a new hypothesis explaining how certain types of fungi keep a lid on freeloading mutations that accumulate in their thread-like mycelia; the root-like structures of fungal colonies.

The filaments of mushroom-forming fungi spend much of their long lives with two, separate nuclei, each containing one-half of a full set of chromosomes. Only in the gills of mushrooms moments before forming spores do the two haploid nuclei mesh together in a brief union to reproduce asexually.

In a study published recently in Advanced Intelligent Systems, researchers from Queen Mary University of London have made significant advancements in the field of bionics with the development of a new type of electric variable-stiffness artificial muscle that possesses self-sensing capabilities. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize soft robotics and medical applications.

Muscle contraction hardening is not only essential for enhancing strength but also enables rapid reactions in living organisms. Taking inspiration from nature, the team of researchers at QMUL’s School of Engineering and Materials Science has successfully created an artificial muscle that seamlessly transitions between soft and hard states while also possessing the remarkable ability to sense forces and deformations.

Dr. Ketao Zhang, a Lecturer at Queen Mary and the lead researcher, explains the importance of variable stiffness technology in artificial muscle-like actuators. “Empowering robots, especially those made from flexible materials, with self-sensing capabilities is a pivotal step towards true bionic intelligence,” says Dr. Zhang.

New glasses use sonar sensing technology and AI to allow users to control devices via silent, mouthed commands.

A powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck near the Alaska Peninsula late Saturday.

Preliminary data placed the quake about 55 miles southwest of Sand Point, Alaska, the National Weather Service said. It had initially been measured at a magnitude of 7.4, the United States Geological Survey said on Twitter.

It struck at about 10:48 p.m. local time. In Kodiak, Alaska, sirens sounded late at night, according to a video posted on social media.