Lifeboat Foundation

What does a 1.1-sec, 0–60 mph acceleration even look like? A graphic artist tried to visualize what a Tesla Roadster with SpaceX thruster looks like when accelerating in 1.1 seconds.

When first unveiling the vehicle, Tesla claimed a list of insanely impressive specs for the new Roadster, including 0–60 mph in 1.9 sec, 620 miles of range, and more.

However, the CEO quickly added that the insane specs announced in 2017 for the new electric hypercars are only “the base specs.”

A gold wedding band will melt at around 1,000 degrees Celsius and vaporize at about 2,800 degrees, but these changes are just the beginning of what can happen to matter. Crank up the temperature to trillions of degrees, and particles deep inside the atoms start to shift into new, non-atomic configurations. Physicists seek to map out these exotic states — which probably occurred during the Big Bang, and are believed to arise in neutron star collisions and powerful cosmic ray impacts — for the insight they provide into the cosmos’s most intense moments.

Now an experiment in Germany called the High Acceptance DiElectron Spectrometer (HADES) has put a new point on that map.

For decades, experimentalists have used powerful colliders to crush gold and other atoms so tightly that the elementary particles inside their protons and neutrons, called quarks, start to tug on their new neighbors or (in other cases) fly free altogether. But because these phases of so-called “quark matter” are impenetrable to most particles, researchers have studied only their aftermath. Now, though, by detecting particles emitted by the collision’s fireball itself, the HADES collaboration has gotten a more direct glimpse of the kind of quark matter thought to fill the cores of merging neutron stars.

The number of deaths linked to a Listeria outbreak from meat products in 2019 has doubled.

It had been thought 21 people were infected with Listeria monocytogenes in the Netherlands and Belgium. One person fell sick in October 2017, eight in 2018, and 12 in 2019. Three people died. All patients were hospitalized and one woman had a miscarriage. Two Dutch patients were pregnant women in their 30s. The others were from 64 to 94 years old and 10 were men.

Now it is known that Listeria in processed meats from Offerman, a Ter Beke subsidiary, made 35 people sick. Two women miscarried and six patients died. The information was revealed in the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority’s (NVWA) annual report.

NASA has released a stunning image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907.

To create artificial general intelligence, we need to study the brain.

Relativity Space, a growing startup that aims to almost entirely 3D-print rockets, on Wednesday announced it struck another major launch deal, as well as an agreement with the U.S. Air Force, to build a launchpad on the California coastline.

The Los Angeles-based rocket builder signed an agreement with satellite operator Iridium Communications, to launch up to six satellites as needed as early as 2023. Over the course of more than half a dozen launches with SpaceX, Iridium completed its second-generation satellite constellation in January 2019, with 66 operational satellites and 9 spares in orbit.

The Iridium deal means Relativity now has agreements to launch for five different companies, having previously announced contracts with Canadian satellite communications operator Telesat, California-based Momentus, Thai satellite broadband company mu Space and Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc. All the contracts have remarkably come before Relativity’s first launch, which is scheduled to happen before the end of 2021.

The world’s largest genetic study into chronic fatigue syndrome is to be launched in the UK after receiving £3.2m of funding from the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research.

The research aims to shine a light on the debilitating long-term condition, about which little is known, by collecting DNA samples from 20,000 people who have CFS, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

CFS is believed to affect about 250,000 people in the UK and has been estimated to cost the economy billions of pounds each year. Individuals experience exhaustion that is not helped by rest, with one in four so severely affected they are unable to leave the house and, frequently, unable to leave their bed. Other symptoms include, pain, mental fogginess, light and noise sensitivities, as well as trouble with memory and sleep. No effective treatment exists.

The governing council of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known internationally as CERN, wants to build a brand new, bigger-than-ever $23.6 billion particle collider. At one time, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) made news for costing a mere $5 billion. Is the escalating cost of these colliders worth it for the research scientists are able to do?

At least one prominent physicist says no. Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, argues in Scientific American that bigger and bigger particle collider schemes have run out of room to make meaningful progress.

Springer ditches paper from research tome, boffins rail against junk science.