Lifeboat Foundation

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.

We need the computers and sensors to better our lives, to allow everyone access to the wisdom of the ages. We can’t collect all the data ourselves and try to make sense of it without machines because our brains aren’t up to the task. Imagine if every little decision everyone has made over the past thousand years along with its outcome had been recorded on index cards and stored in a gargantuan facility somewhere. Remember that giant warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie where they ended up storing the Ark of the Covenant? That’s where index cards AA through AC are housed. Imagine five thousand more of those to store all that data. What could we do with it? Nothing useful.

Computers can do only one thing: manipulate ones and zeros in memory. But they can do that at breathtaking speeds with perfect accuracy. Our challenge is getting all that data into the digital mirror, to copy our analog lives in their digital brains. Cheap sensors and computers will do this for us, with prices that fall every year and capabilities that increase.

Coupling massive processing power with sensors will create a species-level brain and memory. Instead of being billions of separate people with siloed knowledge, we will become billions of people who share a single vast intellect. Comparisons to The Matrix are easy to make but are not really apropos. We aren’t talking about a world without human agency but with enhanced agency, information-based agency. Making decisions informed by data is immeasurably better. Even if someone ignores the suggestion of the digital mirror, they are richer for knowing it. Imagine having an AI that could not only tell you what you should do but would allow you to insert your own values into the decision process. In fact, the system would learn your values from your actions, and the suggestions it gives you would be different from those it would give everyone else, as they should be. If knowledge is power, such a system is by definition the ultimate in empowerment. Every person on the planet could effectively be smarter and wiser than anyone who has ever lived.

Interaction between glass spheres suspended in a vacuum might one day lead to advances in quantum computing.

NGC 7,727 will someday merge with a nearby galaxy — and intertwine their black holes in the process.

The galaxy’s violent past is written into its shape and composition, and the details are visible via telescope. This week, the European Southern Observatory released a new image of NGC 7,727 taken with the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Captured in visible light with the VLT’s FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 instrument, streams of dust kicked up by the two merging galaxies can be seen spiraling around NGC 7727. Bright blue and purple clusters of stars dot the inner arms of the galaxy.

Continue reading “Behold! Telescope image captures a dusty dance from merging galaxies” »

Have we found a water planet with deep oceans nearby (in astronomical terms)? Could water worlds be plentiful near red dwarf stars? Would life have a better chance on such worlds? Listen to see what we know so far about this and planet TOI-1452 b.

Worm-hole generators by the pound mass: https://greengregs.com/

Continue reading “Water World Found? Just 100 Light Years Away! Prospects for Life Profound” »