Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4219

Robert McNair Price (born 7 July 1954) is an American New Testament scholar who argues against the existence of a historical Jesus (the Christ myth theory). He taught theology and religious studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary. Price is a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.

A former Baptist minister, Price was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a “shared universe” created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft. He also co-wrote a book with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush (1999), on the rock band Rush.

Price is a fellow of the suspended Jesus Project, a group of 150 individuals who study the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels, the organizer of a Web community for those interested in the history of Christianity, and sits on the advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance. He is a religious skeptic, especially of orthodox Christian beliefs, occasionally describing himself as a Christian atheist. Among other things, Price does not accept the historicity of Jesus and does not believe that Nazareth existed in the time of Jesus.

=========================

Continue reading “Patriarch names were Deities? How did we get from Polytheism to Monotheism? Dr. Robert M. Price” | >

A team of researchers in China have developed a high-conductivity material that could greatly reduce contact resistance and Schottky barrier height within critical parts of electronic and optoelectronic microchips, paving the way for computer and digital imaging components that consume less power relative to their performance than existing chipsets.

The material, (MoS2) is so thin that it falls into a classification of two-dimensional. That is, it is grown in sheets extending in two directions, X and Y, but virtually immeasurable on a Z axis because the material is often only a single molecule or atom in height.

The team, led by Professor Dong Li and Professor Anlian Pan, College of Materials Science and Engineering at Hunan University, published their findings in Nano Research.

Read more | >

A research team from Skoltech, Aalto University, and Kurnakov Institute has recently developed a new, versatile and simple approach to using carbon nanotubes for manufacturing carbon nanotube-polymer nanocomposites. The method is reported in Carbon and involves making briquettes—dense packages of carbon nanotube powders. Nanocomposites made with briquettes perform equally well as those made from the more expensive masterbatches, which are also polymer-specific—that is, less versatile.

“We believe the use of dense briquettes of carbon nanotubes can significantly facilitate the development of the composite industry. This technique is cheap and applicable to a broad variety of polymer matrices, without sacrificing any of the electrical and thermal properties of the final material,” the lead author of the study, Skoltech Ph.D. student Hassaan Butt, stated.

Carbon nanotubes have been intensively investigated for decades by researchers from academia and industry because of their unique combination of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. Meanwhile, polymer-based nanocomposites have come to be the largest carbon nanotube application and the one closest to widespread integration into everyday life. It is easy to understand why: The smallest amounts of nanotubes added to a polymer endow the material with fundamentally new properties, such as and piezoresistivity, as well as crucially enhancing its thermal and .

Read more | >

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are scaling up the production of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) that could revolutionize diverse commercial products ranging from rechargeable batteries, automotive parts and sporting goods to boat hulls and water filters. The research appears in the journal Carbon.

Most CNT production today is used in bulk composite materials and thin films, which rely on unorganized CNT architectures. For many uses, organized CNT architectures such as vertically aligned forests provide important advantages for exploiting the properties of individual CNTs in macroscopic systems.

“Robust synthesis of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes at large scale is required to accelerate deployment of numerous cutting-edge devices to emerging ,” said LLNL scientist and lead author Francesco Fornasiero. “To address this need, we demonstrated that the structural characteristics of single-walled CNTs produced at wafer scale in a growth regime dominated by bulk diffusion of the gaseous carbon precursor are remarkably invariant over a broad range of process conditions.”

Read more | >

Thin films made of carbon nanotubes hold a lot of promise for advanced optoelectronics, energy and medicine, however with their manufacturing process subject to close supervision and stringent standardization requirements, they are unlikely to become ubiquitous anytime soon.

“A major hindrance to unlocking the vast potential of nanotubes is their multiphase which is extremely difficult to manage. We have suggested using (ANN) to analyze and predict the efficiency of single-walled carbon nanotubes synthesis,” explains one of the authors of the study and Skoltech researcher, Dmitry Krasnikov.

In their work published in the prestigious Carbon journal, the authors show that machine learning methods, and, in particular, ANN trained on experimental parameters, such as temperature, gas pressure and , can help monitor the properties of the carbon nanotube films produced.

Read more | >

This is number 22 on IE’s list of 22 best innovations, a look back at recycling for all plastics.

Two companies, Plastonix and Elemental Recycling have done what others could not: they have found technologies that recycle all types of plastic.

The monumental task of recycling the 380 million tons of plastic disposed of each year, that clog the ocean and beaches throughout the world, has eluded us. Around 80 percent of all plastic ends up in the oceans and landfills.

Ibrahim Can/Interesting Engineering.

Continue reading “All types of plastics now recyclable thanks to two companies” | >

Americium-241 emits power for more than 400 years.

The world’s first space battery fueled by Americium-241, a nuclear-based fuel, will be developed in cooperation between the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and the U.K. Space Agency.

This project will be carried out in a brand-new laboratory in Cumbria costing £19 million ($23 million) and outfitted with cutting-edge machinery and technology, according to a joint press release by NNL and the Space Agency on Friday.

“For the past 50 years space missions have used Plutonium-238 to stop spacecrafts from freezing, but it is in very limited supply,” said professor Tim Tinsley, account director at NNL.

Continue reading “World’s first space battery powered by ‘game-changing’ nuclear fuel is coming soon” | >

Ever skip stones across a pond? Imagine doing it with a spacecraft.

When NASA’s Orion returns to Earth on Dec. 11 at the end of the Artemis I mission, it will attempt a guidance and control maneuver called a skip-entry – the first time a skip entry maneuver will be attempted for a human spacecraft.

While it’s not a perfect analogy, Orion will mimic a stone skipping across a pond by dipping into the Earth’s atmosphere, skipping out, then re-entering. Performed by the crew module, this maneuver gives Orion more space to travel before splashing down, allowing it to be more precise with where it lands.

Read more | >

Black holes are known as the most terrifying, mysterious, and fascinating objects in the Universe. Eternally hungry, they eat everything in their path and are constantly expanding. But how small and how big can a black hole be? Unlike stars and planets, black holes have no size restrictions. They grow when they eat the matter around them. Does it mean that they can be not only super large but super small? Let’s find out!

#brightside.

Credit:
Black Hole: By NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11108
X-ray: By NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10807
Black Holes: By NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13831
Burst: By NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle), https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13886
echoes: By NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12265
star: By NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR), https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13805
stellar: By NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR), https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13805
Suzaku: By NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11821
Star Formation: By NASA, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19412899
Flare: By NASA/JPL/Caltech/Abhimanyu Susobhanan.
Disk Flare: By NASA/JPL-Caltech, https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23687
Quasar: By NASA/CXC/M. Weiss.
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0:
Supermassive: By Quantum squid88, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87860610
Ton618: By Pablo Carlos Budassi, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94445949
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0:
Sgr A: By EHT Collaboration, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117933557
Messier 87: By Event Horizon Telescope, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77916527
M87: By Event Horizon Telescope, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102736603
ULAS J1120+0641: By ESO/M. Kornmesser, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15700804
Jets: By ESO/WFI — https://flic.kr/p/9KgqiH, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34550695
3C 273 Jet: By Pelligton, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123362359
Animation is created by Bright Side.

Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com.

Continue reading “How Strong Would Be a Black Hole the Size of a Coin” | >

For years, Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab has used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to make soft robots and related components – from skin to wearable technology – as nimble and practical as possible.

In fiber-optic sensors, light from a LED is sent through an optical waveguide, and a photodiode detects changes in the beam’s intensity to determine when the material is being deformed. One of the virtues of the technology is that waveguides are still able to propagate light if they are punctured or cut.

The researchers combined the sensors with a polyurethane urea elastomer that incorporated hydrogen bonds, for rapid healing, and disulfide exchanges, for strength.

Read more | >