Lifeboat Foundation

This week, scientists announced that the James Webb Space Telescope, which among its many talents can analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets, just confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on a world orbiting a sun some 700 light-years away. It’s the first observation of CO₂ in a planetary atmosphere beyond our solar system.

But that discovery, made about a world very unlike our own, is just the first taste of what Webb’s instruments may soon reveal. Astronomers are eager to focus the telescope on planets like Earth, where liquid water, a crucial ingredient for life as we know it, is abundant. In the coming months and years, they will undoubtedly get their chance.

There are a number of promising Earth-like planets Webb could study in the near future, but in a paper published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists from the University of Montreal argue they’ve discovered one of the best such candidates yet.

As her new book on the origins of the universe is published, the Albanian-American scientist explains how her work on multiverse theory influenced Stephen Hawking.

The team even transmitted video games through the atoms to a monitor.

Scientists at the US National Institute of Standards have developed an ‘Atomic Television’ that uses lasers and atom clouds to pick up video transmissions that meet the 480i resolution standard. The team demonstrated the same by transmitting live video feeds and even video games through the atoms to a monitor.

Continue reading “Researchers create ‘atomic television’ that transmits live video with big atoms and small lasers” »

This will be very useful in progressing the field of quantum computers and communication.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics set a new record after achieving a quantum entanglement of 14 photons, the largest on record so far, an institutional press release said.

Quantum entanglement, famously described by Albery Einstein as “spooky action at a distance” is a phenomenon where particles become intertwined in such a way that they cease to exist individually, and changing the specific property of one results in an instant change of its partner, even if it is far away.

Continue reading “Entangled photons tailor-made” »

Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) has been working for more than a decade on a floating wave energy device it calls the Waveline Magnet. With several prototypes tested on-and off-shore, the company claims it delivers “ultra low cost,” with high output.

Solar electricity generation is proliferating globally and becoming a key pillar of the decarbonization era. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer; tidal and wave energy is tantalizingly easy to see; step into the surf in high wave conditions and it’s obvious there’s an enormous amount of power in the ocean, just waiting to be tapped. But it’s also an incredibly harsh and punishing environment, and we’re yet to see tidal or wave energy harnessed on a mass scale.

Continue reading “Wave-riding generators promise the cheapest clean energy ever” »

Circa 2014 face_with_colon_three

The dreams of our counterparts in parallel worlds.

Americans keep moving to where the water isn’t and where extreme weather is becoming the norm.

People are still flocking to Sunbelt regions where the housing is cheaper and plentiful — but climate change and extreme weather are worsening.

Summary: Researchers at the Human Brain Project have identified and mapped 7 new areas of the insular cortex.

Source: Human Brain Project.

All newly detected areas are now available as 3D probability maps in the Julich Brain Atlas, and can be openly accessed via the HBP’s EBRAINS infrastructure.

Summary: Dampening retromer activity slows down the trafficking of tau in neurodegenerative disorders, a new study reports.

Source: EPFL

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease are associated with atypical proteins that form tangles in the brain, killing neurons. Neurobiologists at EPFL have now identified some key mechanisms underlying the formation of these tangles.