Lifeboat Foundation

From self-replicating molecules in Archean seas, to eyeless fish in the Cambrian deep, to mammals scurrying from dinosaurs in the dark, and then, finally, improbably, ourselves – evolution shaped us.

Organisms reproduced imperfectly. Mistakes made when copying genes sometimes made them better fit to their environments, so those genes tended to get passed on. More reproduction followed, and more mistakes, the process repeating over billions of generations. Finally, Homo sapiens appeared. But we aren’t the end of that story. Evolution won’t stop with us, and we might even be evolving faster than ever.

It’s hard to predict the future. The world will probably change in ways we can’t imagine. But we can make educated guesses. Paradoxically, the best way to predict the future is probably looking back at the past, and assuming past trends will continue going forward. This suggests some surprising things about our future.

A planetary scientist is working on a pulverizing system to destroy asteroids before they hit Earth. Learn more about his technology through this article.

Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute have taken a major step towards mapping the entirety of genetic relationships among humans: a single genealogy that traces the ancestry of all of us. The study has been published today in Science.

The Kardashev scale ranks civilizations from Type 1 to Type 3 based on energy harvesting. Humanity isn’t even at Type 1, yet.

Perpetuum mobile of the past and the future seems to form the present in which the thought of thoughts is formed. Hidden meanings in the past that are often keys that unlooked the doors of the future. And a lot questions take us through worlds from which we want to imagine the probable and improbable answer like Dr. Robert Ford from Westworld…

This Williamsburg, Virginia home has concrete walls laid down by a 3D printer dramatically reducing costs and the time to construct.

About 66 million years ago, a “planet killer” — a 10-kilometer-wide rocky asteroid — hit Earth. The Chicxulub impact caused a mass extinction on a planetary scale, killing off an estimated 76 percent of all species living on Earth at the time, including the dinosaurs. According to a study published by Philip Lubin and Alexander N. Cohen, both physicists at the University of California in Santa Barbara, there is a chance that humanity could survive such a similar impact happening in the near future.

There currently are about 1,200 asteroids on a publicly available asteroid risk list, but all are smaller than one kilometer. The probability of a Chicxulub sized asteroid (5 to 15 kilometers across) hitting Earth is once in a billion years — very low, but not impossible.

FeaturedRead our 3 books at https://lifeboat.com/ex/books.

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, such as new methods to combat viruses, effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

Continue reading “HumanityMars NEW YEAR 2030 PARTY IN MARS CITY!” »

Over the last year home prices have skyrocketed (along with prices of almost everything else), leaving millions of people unable to afford to move or to change their housing situation. Mortgage lender Freddie Mac estimated last year that the US has a housing supply shortage of 3.8 million homes. It’s partly Covid-related; construction has slowed due to labor shortages, high raw material costs, and supply chain issues—but the problem predates the pandemic, as demand for homes was already outpacing supply in 2019.

Middle-and low-income families have been hit hardest by the housing shortage. In an effort to assist those in need, Habitat for Humanity launched an initiative last year to incorporate 3D printing into its construction process to cut costs. The first home was completed last month, and a family moved in just before Christmas.

Continue reading “Habitat for Humanity Is Using 3D Printing to Build Affordable Houses” »