Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 2788

The universe is bigger than you think.

This means any deep-space future awaiting humanity outside our solar system will remain beyond the span of a single life until we develop a means of propulsion that outclasses conventional rockets. And, when three studies rocked the world earlier this year, it felt like a dream come true: Warp drive was no longer science fiction, potentially unlocking a theoretical basis to build faster-than-light warp drive engines that could cut a trip to Mars down to minutes.

However, a recent study shared in a preprint journal cast doubt on the theory, pointing to a gap in the math that could put the viability of a physical warp drive back into the realm of speculation.

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MaxKolmeto / iStock.

A team of researchers led by Seung-Cheol Lee, director of the Indo-Korea Science and Technology Center(IKST) at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), developed a method to predict the distribution of molecules on the surface using the magnetoresistance property of MXene, according to a statement by the scientists.

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Autonomous underwater robots have been contracted to survey the site of the US’s first floating offshore wind farm.

In December, Norwegian energy giant Equinor won a 2-gigawatt (GW) lease in Morro Bay, California, in the first-ever offshore wind lease sale on the US West Coast. It was also the first US sale to support commercial-scale floating offshore wind development.

The Morro Bay project has the potential to generate enough energy to power around 750,000 US households.

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Penn State researchers have recently harnessed the biological concept for application in artificial intelligence to develop the first artificial, multisensory integrated neuron, which may forever change the world of AI and robotics.

Associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State Saptarshi Das explains: “Robots make decisions based on the environment they are in, but their sensors do not generally talk to each other. A collective decision can be made through a sensor processing unit, but is that the most efficient or effective method? In the human brain, one sense can influence another and allow the person to better judge a situation.”

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Quantum behavior is a strange, fragile thing that hovers on the edge of reality, between a world of possibility and a Universe of absolutes. In that mathematical haze lies the potential of quantum computing; the promise of devices that could quickly solve algorithms that would take classic computers too long to process.

For now, quantum computers are confined to cool rooms close to absolute zero (−273 degrees Celsius) where particles are less likely to tumble out of their critical quantum states.

Breaking through this temperature barrier to develop materials that still exhibit quantum properties at room temperatures has long been the goal of quantum computing. Though the low temperatures help keep the particle’s properties from collapsing out of their useful fog of possibility, the bulk and expense of the equipment limits their potential and ability to be scaled up for general use.

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“In particular, the wind turbine sector uses very large quantities of a rare earth magnet that’s an alloy of neodymium, iron and boron (NdFeB). These NdFeB magnets are critical components used in PMSGs (Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator) in larger onshore and offshore wind turbines”.

Extracting the rare earth magnets from end-of-life wind turbines and enabling their use in new wind turbines, both onshore and offshore

Named Re-Rewind, the partnership, partly funded by Innovate UK, aims to establish the UK’s first circular supply chain for the rare earth magnets used in wind turbines.

“From high-quality construction steel, copper and other metals to a range of rare earth elements (such as praseodymium and dysprosium), modern wind turbines contain a wealth of materials which, if they cannot be sourced from recycled channels, must be mined, leading to increased environmental impacts and resource scarcity”, the newly created partnership states.

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