Lifeboat Foundation

A million here, times a million there. Pretty soon you’re talking about big numbers. So Nvidia claims for its AI accelerating hardware in terms of the performance boost it has delivered over the last decade and will deliver again over the next 10 years.

The result, if Nvidia is correct, will be a new industry of AI factories across the world and gigantic breakthroughs in AI processing power. It also means, ostensibly, AI models one million times more powerful than existing examples, including ChatGPT, in AI processing terms at least.

Bits of the stars are all around us, and in us, too. About half of the abundance of elements heavier than iron originates in some of the most violent explosions in the cosmos. As the universe churns and new stars and planets form out of old gas and dust, these elements eventually make their way to Earth and other worlds. After 3.7 billion years of evolution on our planet, humans and many other species have come to rely on them in our bodies and our lives. Iodine, for instance, is a component of hormones we need to control our brain development and regulate our metabolism. Ocean microplankton called Acantharea use the element strontium to create intricate mineral skeletons. Gallium is critical for the chips in our smartphones and our laptop screens. And the mirrors of the JWST are gilded with gold, an element useful for its unreactive nature and ability to reflect infrared light (not to mention its popularity in jewelry).

Scientists have long had a basic idea of how these elements come to be, but for many years the details were hazy and fiercely debated. That changed recently when astronomers observed, for the first time, heavy-element synthesis in action. The process, the evidence suggests, went something like this.

Continue reading “How Star Collisions Forge the Universe’s Heaviest Elements” »

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Alpha Centauri may be the closest star system to us, but reaching it will be the voyage of a lifetime.

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Continue reading “Journey to Alpha Centauri” »

Whether it is steamed idli, Gujarati snack, panki; Parsi’s patra ni machchi, Assam’s bhapot diya maach or the elaborate Onam Sandhya from Kerala, the humble banana leaf has found its way into many cuisines.

It is also very versatile as food can be steamed, grilled and deep-fried. It can also be used as a serving plate and packaging material.

While banana leaves have been an integral part of the desi food and traditions, did you know there are health benefits to it as well?

“These objects are way more massive than anyone expected,” said study coauthor Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, in a statement. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”

The telescope observes the universe in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, and is capable of detecting the faint light from ancient stars and galaxies. By peering into the distant universe, the observatory can essentially see back in time up to about 13.5 billion years ago. (Scientists have determined the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.)

The operations center for the telescope is in Baltimore City, at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins campus.

Russia launched a rescue ship on Friday for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose original ride home sprang a dangerous leak while parked at the International Space Station.

The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.

Continue reading “Russia launches rescue ship to space station after leaks” »

Two weeks since initial catastrophic earthquakes, seismologists weigh in on how much longer Turkey could face additional tremors.

But the computing power necessary for a company to adopt in-house AI capabilities is enormous, and that’s where Nvidia’s new service offering comes in. Dubbed “DGX Cloud,” Nvidia is offering an AI supercomputer accessible to its customers via a web browser. The company partnered with various cloud providers, including Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, to launch the service.

“Nvidia AI as a service offers enterprises easy access to the world’s most advanced AI platform, while remaining close to the storage, networking, security and cloud services offered by the world’s most advanced clouds,” Huang explained.

“Nvidia AI is essentially the operating system of AI systems today,” Huang also said.

Earlier today, Samsung announced its own solution for satellite communication on smartphones. The company unveiled the 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN) modem so phones can communicate with satellites in locations where there is no cellular network connectivity.

The company said that it aims to integrate this tech into its own Exynos chip, which is used in a lot of Samsung smartphones — but not the current flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S23. The Korean tech giant describes this tech as using “satellites and other non-terrestrial vehicles” to provide connectivity in remote areas.

The move follows Apple, which launched satellite connectivity with iPhone 14 and 14 Pro for off-grid connectivity. The company first made this tech available in the U.S. and Canada, later expanding it to France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K. Apple relies on Globalstar’s satellite network.