Lifeboat Foundation

There are endless possibilities for the creative crafter. And for the more experienced DIY-ers, there’s an even bigger project that’s just waiting to be built for those daring enough to try: How about an entire guest house for your backyard? After an internet frenzy sold out this particular model, the DIY Allwood Solvalla Garden House is back in stock and better than ever.

If you’re not quite ready to move your entire life into a tiny space like this, never fear: You can convert it into a guest home, a studio, garden house, pool house, or truly anything your heart desires. Plus, you can purchase all the parts and instructions on Amazon.

At a mere 172 square feet, the tiny space is compact enough to actually fit but still has enough room to be useful, whether it’s used for storage or for pure fun. In the description, the plans say that this tiny structure can be built in way less than a day—in eight hours, to be exact—when two adults team up for the job.

Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story.

But is time travel in fact possible? Given the popularity of the concept, this is a legitimate question. As a theoretical physicist, I find that there are several possible answers to this question, not all of which are contradictory.

The simplest answer is that time travel cannot be possible because if it was, we would already be doing it. One can argue that it is forbidden by the laws of physics, like the second law of thermodynamics or relativity. There are also technical challenges: it might be possible but would involve vast amounts of energy.

The US Department of Defense’s innovative tech unit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is looking for ways to recharge drones while still in flight using laser-shooting tanker planes as the source of that energy.

“This Airborne Energy Well is a potential component of a more expansive energy web of power generation, transfer relays and receiving solutions, enabling the Department of Defense (DoD) to dynamically allocate energy resources to more flexibly deliver military effects,” the RFI notes.

https://reut.rs/3aVGLpq

A UC Riverside genetic discovery could turn disease-carrying mosquitoes into insect Peter Pans, preventing them from ever maturing or multiplying.

In 2018, UCR entomologist Naoki Yamanaka found, contrary to accepted scientific wisdom, that an important steroid hormone requires transporter proteins to enter or exit fruit fly cells. The hormone, ecdysone, is called the “molting hormone.” Without it, flies will never mature, or reproduce.

Before his discovery, textbooks taught that ecdysone travels freely across cell membranes, slipping past them with ease. “We now know that’s not true,” Yamanaka said.

New findings have revealed strange details about a bright nova that appeared in June 2021.

While these events usually fade over a period of a few weeks or even longer, V1674 Hercules was remarkable because it went faint quickly, in just over a day. The previous fastest nova faded in a period of between two to three days, and in general rapid novas are rare.

But, the rapid fade wasn’t the only remarkable thing about this system, according to new research on the nova, which determined that the energy and light output of V1674 Hercules is reverberating like a rung bell. And the “wobble” — which occurs every 501 seconds and can be seen in both visible and X-ray light — continues a year after the initial explosion.

Continue reading “Fastest nova ever seen ‘rings’ like a bell thanks to feeding white dwarf” »

Ultracold calcium monohydroxide created in magneto-optical trap.

A mathematical ‘playground’ to study quantum information.

UCLA engineers developed a 3D printing technique to build robots in a single step. Made of piezoelectric metamaterials, the robots can walk, maneuver and jump.