Lifeboat Foundation

A group of researchers at Sofia University has found evidence that suggests the reason that a wormhole has never been observed is that they appear almost identical to black holes.

In their paper published in the journal Physical Review D Petya Nedkova, Galin Gyulchev, Stoytcho Yazadjiev and Valentin Delijski describe studying theoretical linear polarization from an accretion disk that would be situated around a class of static traversable wormholes and compared the findings to images of black holes.

For many years, scientists and science fiction writers have considered the theoretical possibility of a wormhole. Such an object, theory suggests, would take the form of a tunnel of sorts that connects two different parts of the universe. Moving through the tunnel would allow for travel to distant destinations in ways not available to spaceships incapable of moving faster than the speed of light —by taking a shortcut.

Building on the CRISPR gene-editing system, MIT researchers have designed a new tool that can snip out faulty genes and replace them with new ones, in a safer and more efficient way.

Using this system, the researchers showed that they could deliver genes as long as 36,000 DNA base pairs to several types of human cells, as well as to liver cells in mice. The new technique, known as PASTE, could hold promise for treating diseases that are caused by defective genes with a large number of mutations, such as cystic fibrosis.

“It’s a new genetic way of potentially targeting these really hard to treat diseases,” says Omar Abudayyeh, a McGovern Fellow at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “We wanted to work toward what gene therapy was supposed to do at its original inception, which is to replace genes, not just correct individual mutations.”

Some neuroscience studies suggest that distinct human emotional states are associated with greater activity in different regions of the brain. For instance, while some parts of the brain have been associated with all emotional responses, the hypothalamus has often been linked to sexual responses and feelings of intimacy, the hippocampus to the retrieval of emotion-eliciting memories, and the amygdala to fear and anger.

Humans can experience emotional responses to an extremely wide range of sensory and environmental stimuli, including the food they consume. So far, however, relatively few studies have explored the link between emotional states elicited by different food flavors and activity in different parts the cortex (i.e., the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive processes).

Researchers at Niigata University, Hyogo College of Medicine, Meiji University, the Sakagami Dental Clinic and Otemae Junior College have recently carried out a study investigating the emotional responses elicited by differently flavored chewing gums and the cortical activity associated with these responses. Their findings, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, highlight the potential role of the left prefrontal cortex in eliciting emotional states during the consumption of palatable (i.e., pleasant-tasting) or less flavorful foods.

The new work, from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), builds on years of research, including recent studies demonstrating that objects such as a deformable airplane wing and a functional racing car could be assembled from tiny identical lightweight pieces — and that robotic devices could be built to carry out some of this assembly work. Now, the team has shown that both the assembler bots and the components of the structure being built can all be made of the same subunits, and the robots can move independently in large numbers to accomplish large-scale assemblies quickly.

The new work is reported in the journal Nature Communications Engineering, in a paper by CBA doctoral student Amira Abdel-Rahman, Professor and CBA Director Neil Gershenfeld, and three others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgLo4gmEraU

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist, co-inventor of loop quantum gravity, and a contributor of many interesting ideas to cosmology, quantum field theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, theoretical biology, and the philosophy of science. He is the author of several books including one that critiques the state of physics and string theory called The Trouble with Physics, and his latest book, Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum.

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An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them—known as ‘intra-group light’—to characterize the stars that dwell there.

Lead author of the study published in MNRAS, Dr. Cristina Martínez-Lombilla from the School of Physics at UNSW Science, said We know almost nothing about intra-group light.

The brightest parts of the intra-group light are ~50 times fainter than the darkest night sky on Earth. It is extremely hard to detect, even with the largest telescopes on Earth—or in space.

In the first court hearing for the bankruptcy case on Tuesday, a lawyer for the company gave a damning verdict of FTX and its leadership, saying the company was run as the “personal fiefdom” of Bankman-Fried.

Binance said the vehicle “is not an investment fund” and is intended to support companies and projects that, “through no fault of their own, are facing significant, short term, financial difficulties.” Zhao has said previously it is his intention to prevent further “cascading contagion effects” stemming from FTX’s collapse.

Binance said it anticipates the program will last around six months. It is accepting applications from investors to contribute additional funds.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a faraway planet’s skies, scoring another first for the exoplanet science community.

WASP-39b, otherwise known as Bocaprins, can be found orbiting a star some 700 light-years away. It is an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — as massive as Saturn but much closer to its host star, making for an estimated temperature of 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (871 degrees Celsius) emitting from its gases, according to NASA. This “hot Saturn” was one of the first exoplanets that the Webb telescope examined when it first began its regular science operations.

The new readings provide a full breakdown of Bocaprins’ atmosphere, including atoms, molecules, cloud formations (which appear to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket as scientists previously expected) and even signs of photochemistry caused by its host star.

Made using windows movie maker and the internet and kampfbereit because I was bored.