Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have developed a new way to produce and shape large, high-quality mirrors that are much thinner than the primary mirrors previously used for telescopes deployed in space. The resulting mirrors are flexible enough to be rolled up and stored compactly inside a launch vehicle.

“Launching and deploying space telescopes is a complicated and costly procedure,” said Sebastian Rabien from Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. “This new approach—which is very different from typical mirror production and polishing procedures—could help solve weight and packaging issues for telescope mirrors, enabling much larger, and thus more sensitive, telescopes to be placed in orbit.”

In the journal Applied Optics, Rabien reports successful fabrication of parabolic membrane mirror prototypes up to 30 cm in diameter. These mirrors, which could be scaled up to the sizes needed in space telescopes, were created by using chemical vapor deposition to grow membrane mirrors on a rotating liquid inside a vacuum chamber. He also developed a method that uses heat to adaptively correct imperfections that might occur after the mirror is unfolded.

An international team, headed by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has created a quantum material that allows the fabric of the space inhabited by electrons to be curved on demand.

The advent of cutting-edge information and communication technologies presents scientists and industry with new hurdles to overcome. To address these challenges, designing new quantum materials, which derive their remarkable characteristics from the principles of quantum physics, is the most promising approach.

A global collaboration headed by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and featuring researchers from the universities of Salerno, Utrecht, and Delft, has developed a material that allows for the control of electron dynamics by curving the fabric of space in which they evolve. This advancement holds promise for future electronic devices, particularly in the field of optoelectronics. The findings were published in the journal Nature Materials.

Remark: This article is from The Conversation “En Anglais” written by Victor DOS SANTOS PAULINO & Nonthapat PULSIRI (V&N) — Experts from Toulouse Business School and The SIRIUS Chair (France)

When talking about space, one might think about the stars one sees at night or a good sci-fi film. But space is also crowded with satellites, spacecrafts and astronauts, whose missions can last anywhere from several days to months. Meanwhile, 8,216 unmanned satellites revolve around Earth’s orbits to improve our daily lives. Communication satellites contribute to enhancing Internet access in regions deprived of infrastructure (so-called “white areas”); meteorology satellites have become essential for weather forecasts, while navigation satellites (including GPS) are crucial for current and future transportation needs such as automatic driving vehicles.

Technological advances in the sector have unlocked many new business opportunities. The industry can now launch constellations of thousand satellites to reach corners of the earth as it had never before (e.g., Starlink), while new markets such as space mining and space tourism are steadily growing. National champions (including the United States and France) have also framed the space sector as a top economic priority. It is thought the technological benefits accrued by companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin or OneWeb, launched by billionaires such as Elon Musk, will also be able to trickle down to non-space sectors such as the energy or freight industries.

Continue reading “How can we make the space sector more sustainable?” »

SpaceX is preparing to carry out a launch rehearsal of its next-generation Starship rocket as early as next week.

Researchers have developed a new method for creating realistic 3D holographic projections that are three orders of magnitude better than the current state-of-the-art technology. Previous attempts to improve the resolution of holograms have run into three basic roadblocks. However, this new ultrahigh-density method shows that two of those have now been solved, dramatically improving the overall quality, resolution, and appearance of holographic projections.

“Our new method overcomes two long-existing bottlenecks in current digital holographic techniques — low axial resolution and high interplane crosstalk — that prevent fine depth control of the hologram and thus limit the quality of the 3D display,” said Lei Gong, who led a research team from the University of Science and Technology of China. “Our approach could also improve holography-based optical encryption by allowing more data to be encrypted in the hologram.”

Limitations of Current Methods for Generating Holograms.

By allowing creators to explore more directions more quickly, generative AI will help them rather than displace them.

Researchers in New York developed a virtual reality maze for mice in an attempt to demystify a question that’s been plaguing neuroscientists for decades: How are long-term memories stored?

What they found surprised them. After forming in the hippocampus, a curved structure that lies deep within the brain, the mice’s memories were actually rooted through what’s called the anterior thalamus, an area of the brain that scientists haven’t typically associated with memory processing at all.

“The thalamus being a clear winner here was very interesting for us, and unexpected,” said Priya Rajasethupathy, an associate professor at Rockefeller University and one of the coauthors of a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cell this week. The thalamus “has often been thought of as a sensory relay, not very cognitive, not very important in memory.”

On Wednesday, Meta announced an AI model called the Segment Anything Model (SAM) that can identify individual objects in images and videos, even those not encountered during training, reports Reuters.

According to a blog post from Meta, SAM is an image segmentation model that can respond to text prompts or user clicks to isolate specific objects within an image. Image segmentation is a process in computer vision that involves dividing an image into multiple segments or regions, each representing a specific object or area of interest.

Silicon Valley AI company Cerebras released seven open source GPT models to provide an alternative to the tightly controlled and proprietary systems available today.