Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4,585

Although dark matter is a central part of the standard cosmological model, it’s not without its issues. There continue to be nagging mysteries about the stuff, not the least of which is the fact that scientists have found no direct particle evidence of it. Despite numerous searches, we have yet to detect dark matter particles. So some astronomers favor an alternative, such as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MoND) or modified gravity model. And a new study of galactic rotation seems to support them.

The idea of MoND was inspired by galactic rotation. Most of the visible matter in a galaxy is clustered in the middle, so you’d expect that stars closer to the center would have faster orbital speeds than stars farther away, similar to the planets of our solar system. We observe that stars in a galaxy all rotate at about the same speed. The rotation curve is essentially flat rather than dropping off. The dark matter solution is that galaxies are surrounded by a halo of invisible matter, but in 1983 Mordehai Milgrom argued that our gravitational model must be wrong.

Read more | >

Australian scientists have created the most detailed map ever of the communication links between the hippocampus, the brain’s memory control center, and the rest of the brain, potentially revolutionizing our understanding of human memory.

“We were surprised to find fewer connections between the hippocampus and frontal cortical areas, and more connections with early visual processing areas than we expected to see,” said Dr. Marshall Dalton, a Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. “Although, this makes sense considering the hippocampus plays an important role not only in memory but also imagination and our ability to construct mental images in our mind’s eye.”

Located within the brain, the hippocampus is a complex structure that resembles a seahorse. It is essential for the brain and plays a crucial role in memory formation as well as the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage. In addition to these functions, the hippocampus also plays a role in navigation, the ability to imagine future or fictitious experiences, the creation of mental imagery, and even in visual perception and decision-making.

Read more | >

It’s all part of an in-space manufacturing initiative that could drastically reduce costs for future space missions.

A new experiment does away with one of the biggest hindrances manufacturers face here on Earth — Gravity.

MIT scientists are collaborating with NASA to build test parts in space as part of a research program aimed at unleashing the full potential of microgravity manufacturing.

Read more | >

Though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said it would be “a mistake” to use ChatGPT for anything important.

Microsoft aims to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot into its Bing search engine in order to boost its user count and rival Google, as per a report from The Information.

Could OpenAI enhance Microsoft’s search engine credibility?

Picture alliance/Getty Images.

According to the report, Microsoft hopes a more conversational search experience, in which a bot provides contextual replies based on search queries, will lure users away from Google, which currently dominates the search landscape.

Read more | >

Just like the distant galaxies, the deep seas continue to bring us wonder and awe.

Beyond every shoreline lies a sea, a seemingly uniform body of water with turbulent, ceaseless movement that joins the coastlines into a continuous whole, showing no sign of the borders and labels we set upon it. In many ways, these large bodies of water are as mysterious to us as the distant galaxies and stars in the cosmos. But they are also right here, in the midst of our own world and interacting with our planet’s atmosphere as a realm of hidden objects, shadowy dreams, and deep sea creatures.

Do you ever think about the creatures that lie deep below the seas?

EXTREME-PHOTOGRAPHER/iStock.

The deep seas.

Read more | >

“This research signifies an extraordinary advance in knowledge about the origin and evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems.”

An international research team reconstructed the CRISPR-Cas system for the first time, dating back to 26 billion years ago. Their findings imply that the revived systems are functional and more adaptable than the previous iterations.

Led by teams from the Spanish National Research Council, the University of Alicante, the Rare Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Center (CIBERER), the Ramón y Cajal Hospital-IRYCIS, and other national and international institutions are working with Ikerbasque research professor Rául Pérez-Jiménez of CIC nanoGUNE.

Read more | >

Bridge did not appear until roughly 35,700 years ago, fewer than 10,000 years before the last ice age peaked.

It is thought humans arrived in the Americas for the first time through the Bering Land Bridge. Now, researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz claim that Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during the last ice age.

“Last Glacial Maximum grew after 46,000 years ago”

Getty Images.

According to a recent study that reconstructs the history of water level at the Beringia, the Bering Land Bridge did not appear until roughly 35,700 years ago, fewer than 10,000 years before the last ice age peaked, as per the new study.

Read more | >

He was also a physicist and a night fighter pilot.

Walter Cunningham, NASA astronaut who flew on Apollo 7, an 11-day mission manned mission in 1968 that paved the way for the first human landing on the Moon, has died at the age of 90, NASA said on its website. Cunningham died of natural causes at a hospital in Houston on Tuesday.

Born in 1932, Walter Cunningham joined the U.S. Navy in 1951, where he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and flew 54 missions as a night fighter pilot In Korea before retiring at the rank of a colonel. He then graduated with Honors in Physics in 1960 and followed it up with a distinction in Physics a year later at the University of California at Los Angeles. astronaut Walter Cunningham, who flew into space on Apollo 7, the first flight with crew in NASA’s Apollo Program, died early Tuesday morning in Houston. He was 90 years old.

Read more | >