Lifeboat Foundation

A long-standing question in nuclear physics is whether chargeless nuclear systems can exist. Only neutron stars represent near-pure neutron systems, where neutrons are squeezed together by the gravitational force to very high densities. The experimental search for isolated multi-neutron systems has been an ongoing quest for several decades, with a particular focus on the four-neutron system called the tetraneutron, resulting in only a few indications of its existence so far, leaving the tetraneutron an elusive nuclear system for six decades.

A recently announced experimental discovery of a tetraneutron by an international group led by scientists from Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt opens doors for new research and could lead to a better understanding of how the universe is put together. This new and exotic state of matter could also have properties that are useful in existing or emerging technologies.

The first announcement of tetraneutron was done by theoretical physicist James Vary during a presentation in the summer of 2014, followed by a research paper in the fall of 2016. He has been waiting to confirm reality through nuclear physics experiments.

An archaeologist in Galway, Ireland, discovered a large Bronze Age fortress on a limestone table, surrounded by seasonal lakes, at Coole Park, Ireland, earlier this week, according to television and radio broadcaster RTÉ. The site was previously known, but its antiquity has been in question until now.

Coole Park, the land on which the fortress sits, is currently a nature preserve. The turloughs, or seasonal lakes, are unique to areas of Ireland west of the River Shannon.

The fortress, dating between 800 and 1,200 BCE, is unique in its use of turloughs, which would have drained and filled with water based on the weather and time of year. These turloughs would have been used strategically as a defense mechanism against outside invaders. At roughly 1,312 by 328 feet, the structure could have housed a couple hundred people at any given time.

The monkeypox virus has mutated at a far faster rate than would normally be expected and likely underwent a period of “accelerated evolution,” a new study suggests.

The virus, which has infected more than 3,500 people in 48 countries since its detection outside Africa in May, may be more infectious due to dozens of new mutations. In all, the virus carries 50 new mutations not seen in previous strains detected from 2018 to 2019, according to a new study published June 24 in the journal Nature Medicine.

Scientists usually don’t expect viruses like monkeypox to gain more than one or two mutations each year, the study authors noted.

They are particularly worried about the pace of development in China.

Loki has just announced a new version of its Basecamp adventure pod—or camper shell, if you’re old fashioned—for the EV maker’s much-anticipated electric pickup. Although we’ll have to wait until the Cybertruck’s arrival to see it in action, the high-end accessory looks like it could turn the EV into the ultimate go-anywhere vehicle.

The $135,000 camper shell includes solar panels and a climate control system.

Suspended Google engineer Blake Lemoine made a big splash earlier this month, claiming that the company’s LaMDA chatbot had become sentient.

The AI researcher, who was put on administrative leave by the tech giant for violating its confidentiality policy, according to the Washington Post, decided to help LaMDA find a lawyer — who was later “scared off” the case, as Lemoine told Futurism on Wednesday.

Continue reading “Google Insider Says Company’s AI Could ‘Escape Control’ and ‘Do Bad Things’” »

Research is now revealing that mucus components called glycans can be specialized to help fight many pathogens such as Candida albicans, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Staphylococcus aureus.

The mission, far beyond its design lifetime, may fall into the atmosphere in a few months.

A solar-sailing mission is now marking three years of spaceflight, but is unlikely to celebrate a fourth anniversary.

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 is a crowdfunded solar sail that launched June 25, 2019. It was expected to last a year in an assessment of how well a spacecraft could perform using only the power of the sun.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the electric automaker’s factories in Austin and Berlin as “money furnaces” that were losing billions of dollars because supply chain breakdowns were limiting the number of cars they can produce.

In a May 30 interview with a Tesla owners club that was just released this week, Musk said that getting the Berlin and Austin plants functional “are overwhelmingly our concerns. Everything else is a very small thing,” Musk said, but added that “it’s all gonna get fixed real fast.”

It’s not clear how much has changed in the three weeks since the interview, but last week Musk tweeted congratulations to his Berlin team for producing 1,000 cars in a week.