In our global struggle to deal with COVID-19 and the existential threat that is climate change, there is a growing anti-intellectual, anti-science movement afoot.
Is 21st-century civilization following Rome and China as we turn to disinformation delivered by the technologies science has fostered?
A team from the Tulane University School of Science and Engineering has developed a new family of two-dimensional materials that researchers say has promising applications, including in advanced electronics and high-capacity batteries.
Led by Michael Naguib, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, the study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.
“Two-dimensional materials are nanomaterials with thickness in the nanometer size (nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter) and lateral dimensions thousands of times the thickness,” Naguib said. “Their flatness offers unique set of properties compared to bulk materials.”
On 12 May at 15:00 CEST, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project will hold a press conference to present groundbreaking Milky Way results from the EHT.
The ESO Director General will deliver the opening words. EHT Project Director Huib Jan van Langevelde and EHT Collaboration Board Founding Chair Anton Zensus will also deliver remarks. A panel of EHT researchers will explain the result and answer questions from journalists.
Following the press conference, at 16:30 CEST ESO will host an online event for the public via this same streaming link: a live question and answer session where members of the public will have the opportunity to query another panel of EHT experts.
More information: https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann22006/
For our inaugural episode of Let’s Talk Longevity, we want to figure out if we are anywhere near Longevity Escape Velocity. Defined as a hypothetical situation in which life expectancy is extended longer than the time that is passing, we decided the best conversation on it would be with its biggest advocate, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, and an equally well-known skeptic of the likelihood of it taking place, Dr. Charles Brenner. This debate did not need hosts!
Join us for the live Q&A on Twitter Spaces this Thursday, May 12th at 12 pm PDT
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ypKdEmgDANGW
Also available on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-talk-longevity/id1623103254
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Well, happily, Ingenuity did call home after about 24 hours. According to NASA, the link was stable, and the solar array managed to charge its batteries to 41 percent. The engineers say they hope to resume Ingenuity’s flight campaign within the next several days after bringing the helicopter’s batteries to a full charge.
Unfortunately, this may be the beginning of the end for a helicopter that has vastly exceeded all expectations. The NASA engineers have had to take some fairly drastic steps to preserve Ingenuity’s battery charge. For example, they have now commanded the helicopter’s heaters to come on only when the battery’s temperature falls to −40°, far colder than the previous point of 5° Fahrenheit. It is not known how many of the off-the-shelf components on the vehicle will fare without this additional heating during the cold Martian nights.
And Mars will only get colder and darker for the next 10 weeks as winter deepens.
The freighter will help get China’s Tianhe core module ready for a new crewed mission.
China has launched a new cargo mission to its space station module in preparation for the arrival of a new crew in June.
A Long March 7 rocket carrying the robotic Tianzhou 4 spacecraft lifted off from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan Province today (May 9) at 1:56 p.m. EDT (1756 GMT; 1:56 a.m. local time on May 10).
Posted in nuclear energy
50-milliwatt Water Boiler reactor went critical at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It held about 20 ounces of uranium dissolved in a water-filled, 12-inch sphere. It was the first nuclear reactor to use enriched uranium, and the first critical assembly built at the lab.
Are Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell right? Is Mars that important? Why must we become a multiplanetary civilization?
#space #nasa #spacex #elonmusk.
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Giving robots sight and hearing is fairly straightforward these days, but equipping them with a robust sense of touch is far more difficult.
Cryostasis Revival by Robert Freitas is the first comprehensive technical exposition how to revive cryonics patients in the future. This 700+ page book with thousands of references, and technical color illustrations, is now available on Amazon in a limited textbook hardcover edition.
Cryostasis is an emergency medical procedure in which a human patient is placed in biological stasis at cryogenic temperatures. A cryopreserved patient can be maintained in this condition indefinitely without suffering additional degradation, but cannot yet be revived using currently available technology. This book presents the first comprehensive conceptual protocol for revival from human cryopreservation, using medical nanorobots. The revival methods presented in this book involve three stages: collecting information from preserved structure, computing how to fix damaged structure, and implementing the repair procedure using nanorobots manufactured in a nanofactory – a system for atomically precise manufacturing that is now visible on the technological horizon.
