Lifeboat Foundation

After his PhD thesis invalidates an old assumption, Norman Cao wonders what’s next.

“What are some challenges in controlling plasma and what are your solutions? What is the most effective type of fusion device? What are some difficulties in sustaining fusion conditions? What are some obstacles to receiving fusion funding?”

For the past four years, graduate student Norman Cao ’15 PhD ’20 has been the Plasma Science and Fusion Center’s (PSFC’s) go-to “answer man,” replying to questions like these emailed by students and members of the general public interested in getting a deeper understanding of fusion and its potential as a future energy source.

Satellite observations have revealed an unprecedented ‘space hurricane’ in Earth’s upper atmosphere, hinting that such events could occur on other planetary bodies.

Scientists have previously documented hurricanes in the lower atmospheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Similar phenomena have even been spotted on the Sun. But the existence of space hurricanes — hurricane-like circulation patterns in planets’ upper atmospheres — has been uncertain.

Earth’s upper atmosphere cooks up a storm.

NEW: A microchip carrying more than 27,000 Civil Air Patrol names with related messages and images is set to be carried to the moon later this year aboard space robotics company Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. https://www.cap.news/next-stop-the-moon-for-27000-cap-names/

A microchip carrying more than 27000 Civil Air Patrol names with related messages and images is set to be carried to the moon later this year aboard space robotics company Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander.

They may not be black or holes.

Black holes may not be black or holes, a new theory proposes.

A silicone robot has survived a journey to 10900 metres below the ocean’s surface in the Mariana trench, where the crushing pressure can implode all but the strongest enclosures. This device could lead to lighter and more nimble submersible designs.

A team led by Guorui Li at Zhejiang University in China based the robot’s design on snailfish, which have relatively delicate, soft bodies and are among the deepest-living fish. They have been observed swimming at depths of more than 8000 metres.

The submersible robot looks a bit like a manta ray and is 22 centimetres long and 28 centimetres in wingspan. It is made of silicone rubber with electronic components spread throughout the body and connected by wires, rather than mounted on a circuit board like most submersibles. That’s because the team found in tests that the connections between components on rigid circuit boards were a weak point when placed under high pressure.

Supermassive black holes in the Milky Way and Andromeda will engulf each other less than 17 million years after the galaxies merge, simulations show.

Israel is investing 1.25 billion NIS in a national initiative to build up quantum proficiency, and this project in particular is part of that initiative.

Ultimately, Cyrille Przybyla, an aquaculture researcher at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea who led the research, dreams of designing a lunar fish farm that uses water already on the moon to help feed residents of the future Moon Village set to be established by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Lunar Hatch project is just one of around 300 ideas currently under evaluation by the ESA, and may or may not be selected for the final mission. Przybyla’… See More.

To boldly farm fish where no one has farmed fish before.

This is the Hadrian X by FBR, a pioneering and autonomous bricklaying robot that can build a standard 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house every 2 days on average.