Lifeboat Foundation

A team of Harvard astronomers have a wild new theory: the Sun used to have a companion star, making our solar system a binary one during its ancient history.

The astronomers say the theory could explain the formation of the Oort cloud, a theoretical cloud of dust and smaller objects in the distant regions of our solar system that many believe was created out of the left overs from the early solar system.

In a new preprint submitted last month to the preprint archive arXiv, the team suggests that the Sun used to have a long lost binary star companion. Such a system could explain how some objects were scattered to the far reaches of the solar system, sometimes even making it to neighboring systems and vice versa.

Continue reading “Harvard Astronomers Propose That Our Star System Used to Be Binary” »

Aubrey interviewed by, um, alien scientists.

Our conversation covers the importance of non-academic institutions in science, strategies for combating for repair the damage of aging, and an exploration of how extending human lifespan will change the Earth. In Dr. de Gray’s perspective, age-related decline is a medical problem like any other that can be treated and cured by cutting edge technology. He’s devoted himself to this pursuit as a founder of the SENS Research Foundation, the Methuselah Foundation, and the medical startup AgeX.

Continue reading “A Future Without Aging — Dr. Aubrey de Grey” »

There is little in the way of law or custom to restrain this new arms race. Alarmed by the risks, several groups of diplomats and lawyers are trying to change that, and work out how to extend the laws that cover Earth-bound war into orbit.

Experts want to clarify how the laws of war on Earth apply beyond it.

Science & technology Aug 15th 2020 edition.

Continue reading “An arms race is brewing in orbit” »

Valuing diversity leads to scientific excellence, the progress of science and, most importantly, it is simply the right thing to do. We must value diversity not only in words, but also in actions.

What if I were to tell you that passwords could be replaced by 1,000 trillion atoms to create an unclonable ID tag? Yeah, that.

Light is notoriously fast. Its speed is crucial for rapid information exchange, but as light zips through materials, its chances of interacting and exciting atoms and molecules can become very small. If scientists can put the brakes on light particles, or photons, it would open the door to a host of new technology applications.

Now, in a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon chips into nanoscale bars to resonantly trap light and then release or redirect it later. These “high-quality-factor” or “high-Q” resonators could lead to novel ways of manipulating and using light, including new applications for quantum computing, virtual reality and augmented reality; light-based WiFi; and even the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

“We’re essentially trying to trap light in a tiny box that still allows the light to come and go from many different directions,” said postdoctoral fellow Mark Lawrence, who is also lead author of the paper. “It’s easy to trap light in a box with many sides, but not so easy if the sides are transparent—as is the case with many Silicon-based applications.”

Hong Kong’s biggest container port facility Kwai Tsing Container Terminals has been linked to around 65 coronavirus infection cases, Bloomberg reported.

According to local media outlets, the virus was most probably picked up from communal resting facilities and dormitories, where social distancing measures are difficult to implement as dozens of workers can be confined to the same place at the same time.

Most of the workers were linked to Wang Kee Port Operation Services Ltd. and were predominantly asymptomatic. Around 100 workers have reportedly been quarantined.

Advances in artificial intelligence continue to provide entrepreneurs with exciting ways to improve their companies.