Lifeboat Foundation

First-of-their-kind images of the magnetic field around a black hole may explain how the black hole shoots out a jet of energy and matter more than 5,000 light-years into space.

The new images come from the first black hole ever photographed, which sits at the center of Messier 87 a giant elliptical galaxy 55 million light-years away. In 2,017 an international collaboration of more than 300 researchers coordinated 11 radio telescopes around the globe to observe the center of M87. The resulting joint telescope was dubbed the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The result, released in 2,019 was an image of a black hole surrounded by a doughnut of glowing matter.

Now, a new analysis of the data reveals that the light in that glowing doughnut is partially polarized, meaning the light waves vibrate in a single plane. This is a signature of light that has passed through hot, magnetized space, and its presence means researchers can begin to map out the magnetic field at the edge of the black hole.

Two AI’s talking to each other power by GPT3!

Here we look at a conversation between two AIs.
The AIs were built using GPT-3, a language model that understands the English language better than anything else in the world right now.

Continue reading “Two AIs talk about becoming human. (GPT-3)” »

Can this be true?

Elon Musk has criticized fellow centibillionaire and space cowboy Jeff Bezos for filing lawsuits against the former’s aerospace company SpaceX.

Earlier this month, Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin sued NASA after it lost a critical government contract to put astronauts on the Moon to SpaceX. This has had the effect of delaying SpaceX’s own work on the project. And now, this week, Amazon has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dismiss newly-submitted plans by SpaceX to launch another cluster of satellites to power its satellite internet service Starlink.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: ‘Bezos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX’” »

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed metasurfaces capable of manipulating the polarization of light with an unprecedented degree of control.

Neuroinflammation may unleash tau in ways that lead to cognitive impairment.

Because the brain responses in children with different forms of autism overlapped, future therapies that are effective for Phelan-McDermid syndrome could potentially help other autistic children with similar neural patterns, Siper says.

Brain responses to visual stimuli are smaller and weaker in children with Phelan-McDermid syndrome, an autism-linked genetic condition, than in non-autistic children, according to a new study. The difference in response is greater in children with larger genetic mutations.

Mutations or deletions in SHANK3, one of the genes most strongly linked to autism, cause Phelan-McDermid syndrome. More than 80 percent of people with the condition have autism; they also often have intellectual disability, developmental delays and other medical issues, though these traits and their severity can vary widely.

Continue reading “Visual response shows promise as biomarker in autism-linked condition” »

Hurray.

Tesla has started to hire roboticists to build its recently announced “Tesla Bot,” a humanoid robot to become a new vehicle for its AI technology.

When Elon Musk explained the rationale behind Tesla Bot, he argued that Tesla was already making most of the components needed to create a humanoid robot equipped with artificial intelligence.

Continue reading “Tesla starts hiring roboticists for its ‘Tesla Bot’ humanoid robot project” »

A Tesla semi-truck with a very Tesla-worthy aesthetics highlighted by the contoured yet sharp design language that in a way reminds me of the iPhone 12!

Tesla’s visionary Semi all-electric truck powered by four independent motors on the rear is scheduled for production in 2022. The semi is touted to be the safest, most comfortable truck with an acceleration of 0–60 mph in just 20 seconds and a range of 300–500 miles. While the prototype version looks absolutely badass, how the final version will look is anybody’s guess.

Proteins are essential to life, and understanding their 3D structure is key to unpicking their function. To date, only 17% of the human proteome is covered by an experimentally determined structure. Two papers in this week’s issue dramatically expand our structural understanding of proteins. Researchers at DeepMind, Google’s London-based sister company, present the latest version of their AlphaFold neural network. Using an entirely new architecture informed by intuitions about protein physics and geometry, it makes highly accurate structure predictions, and was recognized at the 14th Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction last December as a solution to the long-standing problem of protein-structure prediction. The team applied AlphaFold to 20,296 proteins, representing 98.5% of the human proteome.