Lifeboat Foundation

When some materials are cooled to a certain temperature, they lose electric resistance, becoming superconductors.

In this state, an electric charge can course through the material indefinitely, making superconductors a valuable resource for transmitting high volumes of electricity and other applications. Superconductors ferry electricity between Long Island and Manhattan. They’re used in medical imaging devices such as MRI machines, in particle accelerators and in magnets such as those used in maglev trains. Even unexpected materials, such as certain ceramic materials, can become superconductors when cooled sufficiently.

But scientists previously have not understood what occurs in a material to make it a superconductor. Specifically, how high-temperature superconductivity, which occurs in some copper-oxide materials, works hasn’t been previously understood. A 1966 theory examining a different type of superconductors posited that electrons which spin in opposite directions bind together to form what’s called a Cooper pair and allow electric current to pass through the material freely.

Including Charlie Kam, Dr. Aubrey deGrey, Valery Chuprin, Jose Cordeiro, Gennady Stolyarov, Joseph Kowalsky & Richard Daley.

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Continue reading “Open Mic Night, including Dr. Aubrey deGrey, Gennady Stolyarov, Jose Cordeiro & Joseph Kowalsky” »

Tomorrow, Friday, August 26, is International Dog Day and this year Teck is celebrating with Spot, the robot dog developed by Boston Robotics that is supporting safety inspections and data collection at its Elkview mine operations.

Spot is an artificial intelligence (AI) assisted robot designed as man’s best friend.

Spot is a four-legged sensor device that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility – getting into places that are frequently unsafe or challenging for people, allowing the mine to automate routine inspection tasks and data capture safely, accurately, and frequently.

Circa 2021 face_with_colon_three

Researchers have found a new way to convert methane into rocket fuel on Mars — adding crucial flexibility to future astronaut missions to the Red Planet, according to a recent blog post on the University of California, Irvine’s (UCI’s) official website.

RELATED: LIFE ON MARS: SCIENTISTS ARE A LITTLE CLOSER TO SOLVING THE METHANE MYSTERY ON MARS

Continue reading “Scientists Just Created New Way to Make Rocket Fuel From Methane on Mars” »

face_with_colon_three circa 2017.

Project Icarus is an extremely fascinating initiative which aims to bring humanity closer to the stars. The latest theory proposed by scientists there is related to the development of system which could allow the harvesting of helium-3 gas from Uranus to fuel a possible interstellar mission. Uranus, then, seems to be a very resourceful planet, considering scientists believe it’s covered in oceans of diamonds.

Continue reading “Harvesting gas from Uranus might power interstellar flight” »

Circa 2017 face_with_colon_three

An MIT team has identified a process that could be used to harness methane that is now wasted by being burned off at wellheads.

Emerging Technologies on the Horizon.

Sharing the 10th Issue of my Security and Tech Insights newsletter! Please check it out and have a great weekend! #security #tech #emergingtechnologies #cybersecurity #innovation

As we gain new knowledge, our scientific picture of how the Universe works evolves. This is a feature of the Big Bang, not a bug.

Physicists from TU Delft, ETH Zürich and the University of Tübingen have built a quantum scale heat pump made from particles of light. This device brings scientists closer to the quantum limit of measuring radio frequency signals, which may be useful in the hunt for dark matter. Their work will be published as an open-access article in Science Advances on Aug. 26.

If you bring two objects of different temperature together, such as putting a warm bottle of white wine into a cold chill pack, heat usually flows in one direction, from hot (the wine) to cold (the chill pack). And if you wait long enough, the two will both reach the same temperature, a process known in physics as reaching equilibrium: a balance between the heat flow one way and the other.

If you are willing to do some work, you can break this balance and cause heat to flow in the “wrong” way. This is the principle used in your refrigerator to keep your food cold, and in efficient heat pumps that can steal heat from the cold air outside to warm your house. In their publication, Gary Steele and his co-authors demonstrate a quantum analog of a heat pump, causing the elementary quantum particles of light, known as photons, to move “against the flow” from a hot object to a cold one.