Lifeboat Foundation

A meteorite that originated on Mars billions of years ago reveals details of ancient impact events on the red planet. Certain minerals from the Martian crust in the meteorite are oxidized, suggesting the presence of water during the impact that created the meteorite. The finding helps to fill some gaps in knowledge about the role of water in planet formation.

There’s a longstanding question in planetary science about the origin of water on Earth, Mars and other large bodies such as the moon. One hypothesis says that it came from asteroids and comets post-formation. But some planetary researchers think that water might just be one of many substances that occur naturally during the formation of planets. A new analysis of an ancient Martian meteorite adds support for this second hypothesis.

Several years ago, a pair of dark meteorites were discovered in the Sahara Desert. They were dubbed NWA 7034 and NWA 7533, where NWA stands for North West Africa and the number is the order in which meteorites are officially approved by the Meteoritical Society, an international planetary science organization. Analysis showed these meteorites are new types of Martian meteorites and are mixtures of different rock fragments.

Circa 2009.

A 270-kilometre optical fiber has been transformed into the world’s longest laser, a feat its inventors believe will lead to a radical new outlook on information transmission and secure communications.

Engineering academics at Aston University, UK, are leading research into ultralong fiber lasers, to create a platform capable of delivering ‘next generation’ information transmission, including telecommunications and broadband.

Continue reading “World’s longest laser -- 270 km long -- created” »

The McDonald Laser Ranging Station, near Fort Davis, Texas, USA, uses a laser to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon to an accuracy of 1 cm (0.39 inches). It bounces a laser off reflective targets left on the lunar surface by three US Apollo missions and two Soviet Lunokhod missions. The distance between the centres of the Earth and the Moon is 385,000 km (239,000 miles), and the laser ranging has shown that the Moon is receding from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) per year. This is one of the most accurate distance measurements ever made.

India has decided to fly the three Rafale fighter jets from France directly to India, which are scheduled to arrive on November 4, according to Indian government sources. The Indian Air Force will now have eight of the 36 Rafale jets in operation.

But there’s some bad news: Proxima Centauri tends to bombard any planets in its vicinity with a ferocious amount of X rays — Proxima b receives about 400 times the amount as Earth receives from its Sun.

That leads to the question: “Is there an atmosphere that protects the planet from these deadly rays?” asked co-author Christophe Lovis, a researcher who worked on ESPRESSO, in the statement. Lovis hopes that the next generation of spectrographs — ESPRESSO’s successor, “RISTRETTO,” is already in the works — could help us find the answer.

For us to get a closer look at Proxima b however, Proxima Centauri is “only” 4.2 light-years from the Sun — meaning it would still take several thousand years to get there using today’s propulsion technology.

Increase in sorties comes amid reported unease in Taipei over softer China stance if Joe Biden wins US presidency.

This is one of four blogs in a series examining current challenges and opportunities for recycling of clean energy technologies. Please see the introductory post, as well as other entries on solar panels and wind turbines.

us department of energy[ caption] courtesy union concerned scientists. by james gignac, lead midwest energy analyst this is one four blogs in a series examining current challenges and opportunities for recycling clean technologies. please see the introductory post, as well other entries on solar panels and wind turbines. special thanks to jessica garcia, ucs’s=

The zero-day appears to have been bought off a black-market website for $3,000.

The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is based on the mass release of sterilized male insects to reduce the pest population size via infertile mating. Critical for all SIT programs is a conditional sexing strain to enable the cost-effective production of male-only populations. Compared to current female-elimination strategies based on killing or sex sorting, generating male-only offspring via sex conversion would be economically beneficial by doubling the male output. Temperature-sensitive mutations known from the D. melanogaster transformer-2 gene (tra2^ts) induce sex conversion at restrictive temperatures, while regular breeding of mutant strains is possible at permissive temperatures. Since tra2 is a conserved sex determination gene in many Diptera, including the major agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata, it is a promising candidate for the creation of a conditional sex conversion strategy in this Tephritid. Here, CRISPR/Cas9 homology-directed repair was used to induce the D. melanogaster-specific tra2^ts SNPs in Cctra2. 100% female to male conversion was successfully achieved in flies homozygous for the tra2^ts2 mutation. However, it was not possible, to identify a permissive temperature for the mutation allowing the rearing of a tra2^ts2 homozygous line, as lowering the temperature below 18.5 °C interferes with regular breeding of the flies.