Lifeboat Foundation

Pfizer pill to treat COVID symptoms could be ready by year’s end, CEO says.

An oral drug like the one Pfizer is developing could be taken at home and might keep people out of the hospital.

“Particular attention is on the oral because it provides several advantages,” Bourla said. “One of them is that you don’t need to go to the hospital to get the treatment, which is the case with all the injectables so far. You could get it at home, and that could be a game-changer.”

Continue reading “Pfizer Pill for COVID Could Be Ready by End of Year, CEO Says” »

As the command module pilot on NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, Collins circled the moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969. When his two crewmates returned from the surface, Collins was in the unique position to capture a photo of all of humanity — his fellow astronauts on board the lunar module and everyone else on Earth off in the distance.

Mission Control likened Collins’ experience to that of the first human in existence. “Not since Adam has any human known such solitude,” a mission commentator said. Collins later rejected that notion.

“That’s baloney,” Collins said on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in 2019. “You put some Samoan on his little canoe out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at night and he doesn’t really know where he’s going, he doesn’t know how to get there. He can see the stars, they’re his only friend out there, and he’s not talking to anybody. That guy is lonely.”

Trouble thinking, concentrating, and remembering can be among the most debilitating “long haul” #COVID19 symptoms. Here’s what researchers are doing to help combat them.

Disentangling the roots of survivors’ cognitive deficits is no easy task.

Well done the SpaceX crew!

Tech boss ‘proud’ to be working with space agencies as astronauts begin six-month mission.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s SpaceX delivers new crew to International Space Station” »

In a major milestone for quantum physics, thousands of molecules have been induced to share the same quantum state, dancing together in unison like one huge super molecule.

This is a goal long-sought by physicists, who hope to harness complex quantum systems for technological applications — but getting a bunch of unruly molecules to work together is on a difficulty par with herding cats.

Continue reading “Physicists Harnessed Thousands of Molecules Into a Single Quantum State” »

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has died at the age of 90 after a battle with cancer, his family confirmed Wednesday morning.

Collins was part of the three-man crew that made history with the lunar landing in 1969, but unlike Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, he never walked on the moon.

Consciousness remains scientifically elusive because it constitutes layers upon layers of non-material emergence: Reverse-engineering our thinking should be done in terms of networks, modules, algorithms and second-order emergence — meta-algorithms, or groups of modules. Neuronal circuits correlate to “immaterial” cognitive modules, and these cognitive algorithms, when activated, produce meta-algorithmic conscious awareness and phenomenal experience, all in all at least two layers of emergence on top of “physical” neurons. Furthermore, consciousness represents certain transcendent aspects of projective ontology, according to the now widely accepted Holographic Principle.

#CyberneticTheoryofMind

Continue reading “The Science of Consciousness: Towards the Cybernetic Theory of Mind” »

This article is part of our new series, Currents, which examines how rapid advances in technology are transforming our lives.

Imagine operating a computer by moving your hands in the air as Tony Stark does in “Iron Man.” Or using a smartphone to magnify an object as does the device that Harrison Ford’s character uses in “Blade Runner.” Or a next-generation video meeting where augmented reality glasses make it possible to view 3D avatars. Or a generation of autonomous vehicles capable of driving safely in city traffic.

These advances and a host of others on the horizon could happen because of metamaterials, making it possible to control beams of light with the same ease that computer chips control electricity.

A red giant star may have a black hole companion that is only three solar masses in size.

In theory, a black hole is easy to make. Simply take a lump of matter, squeeze it into a sphere with a radius smaller than the Schwarzschild radius, and poof! You have a black hole. In practice, things aren’t so easy. When you squeeze matter, it pushes back, so it takes a star’s worth of weight to squeeze hard enough. Because of this, it’s generally thought that even the smallest black holes must be at least 5 solar masses in size. But a recent study shows the lower bound might be even smaller.

The work focuses red giant star known as V723 Monoceros. This star has a periodic wobble, meaning it’s locked in orbit with a companion object. The companion is too small and dark to see directly, so it must be either a neutron star or black hole. Upon closer inspection, it turns out the star is not just wobbling in orbit with its companion, it’s being gravitationally deformed by its companion, an effect known as tidal disruption.

Continue reading “Smallest, Closest Black Hole Ever Discovered is Only 1,500 Light-Years Away” »