Lifeboat Foundation

Every day space telescopes provide spectacular images of the solar activity. However, their instruments are blind to its main driver: the magnetic field in the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that occasionally affect the Earth occur. The extraordinary observations of the polarization of the Sun’s ultraviolet light achieved by the CLASP2 mission have made it possible to map the magnetic field throughout the entire solar atmosphere, from the photosphere until the base of the extremely hot corona. This investigation, published today in the journal Science Advances, has been carried out by the international team responsible for this suborbital experiment, which includes several scientists of the POLMAG group of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).

The chromosphere is a very important region of the solar atmosphere spanning a few thousand kilometers between the relatively thin and cool photosphere (with temperatures of a few thousand degrees) and the hot and extended corona (with temperatures above a million degrees). Although the temperature of the chromosphere is about one hundred times lower than that of the corona, the chromosphere has a far higher density, and thus much more energy is required to sustain it. Moreover, the mechanical energy necessary to heat the corona needs to traverse the chromosphere, making it a crucial interface region for the solution of many of the key problems in solar and stellar physics. One of the current scientific challenges is to understand the origin of the violent activity of the solar atmosphere, which on some occasions perturb the Earth’s magnetosphere with serious consequences for our present technological world.

The quartz oscillator is an important electronic circuit, providing highly-accurate timing signals at a low cost. A quartz crystal has the special property of piezoelectricity, changing its electrical properties as it vibrates. Since a crystal can be cut to vibrate at a very precise frequency, quartz oscillators are useful for many applications. Quartz oscillators were introduced in the 1920s and provided accurate frequencies for radio stations. Wristwatches were revolutionized in the 1970s by the use of highly-accurate quartz oscillators. Computers use quartz oscillators to generate their clock signals, from ENIAC in the 1940s to modern computers. 1

A quartz crystal requires additional circuitry to make it oscillate, and this analog circuitry can be tricky to design. In the 1970s, crystal oscillator modules became popular, combining the quartz crystal, an integrated circuit, and discrete components into a compact, easy-to-use module. Curious about the contents of these modules, I opened one up and reverse-engineered the chip inside. In this blog post, I discuss how the module works and examine the tiny CMOS integrated circuit that runs the oscillator. There’s more happening in the module than I expected, so I hope you find it interesting.

Billionaire CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday the price of bitcoin and ethereum seemed high, at a time when the cryptocurrencies have hit record highs, with bitcoin crossing the $1 trillion market-capitalization threshold.

DNA variants passed on to modern humans from Neanderthals can increase as well as decrease our ability to fight SARS-CoV-2, a new PNAS study finds. New research has found that a group of genes that reduces the risk of developing severe COVID-19 by around 20% is inherited from Neanderthals Th.

Companies that are creating rejuvenation biotechnology interventions must develop their products to target individual diseases in order to be approved by the FDA. While that is still the case, this particular FOA is intended to promote broader research that does not necessarily target individual diseases as endpoints.

The National Institutes of Aging in the United States, a component of the National Institutes of Health, is funding clinical trials for interventions that directly affect the root causes of age-related diseases.

Direct funding for trials against aging

Continue reading “The NIA Is Funding Clinical Trials Against Aging” »

When enough anomalies accumulate over time, paradigms change. We may be close to that inflection point right now. At this juncture of technoscientific progress, the boldest of us may admit that we’re overdue for the next post-materialist paradigm: Conventional scientific method is already bankrupt and needs to be supplanted by AI-powered quantum neo-empiricism, computational thinking and the cybernetic approach to reality.

#materialism #physicalism #philosophy #scientificmethod #evolutionarycybernetics

“The only reality is mind and observations but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our…

Continue reading “Why Materialism is a Flatlander Philosophy” »

Things are getting pretty heated in the South China Sea.

The United States and China are engaged in the first military back-and-forth of the new year, sending many ships and aircraft into the South China Sea over the past few days.

This latest round kicked off with the return of an American carrier battle group to the region, followed by an unprecedented flight of eight Chinese bombers into nearby Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Both sides piled on more fighters, surveillance aircraft, and bombers, making this dance-off a considerable escalation over previous years.

Continue reading “The U.S. and China Are Annoying Each Other With a Ton of Warplanes” »

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now worth $74 billion and investors believe the company’s Starlink and Starship projects will drive that valuation even higher.

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