Lifeboat Foundation

mission experts will talk about the robotic scientist’s touchdown in the most challenging terrain on Mars ever targeted.

Perseverance, which launched July 302020, will search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect carefully selected rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) samples for future return to Earth, characterize Mars’ geology and climate, and pave the way for human exploration beyond the Moon.

Tune in to watch a live broadcast from the Von Karman Auditorium at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Zero 2 Infinity wants to launch passengers 40 kilometers into space with helium balloons at a much lower price, at just over $130000.

When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn’t sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple saplings getting bitten by insects release a spurt of chemicals that float through the air. You and I wouldn’t notice, but these chemicals carry a slight odor that neighboring plants can detect. It’s a little like a silent scream.

These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. Maybe not an intentional warning like, “Watch Out! Aphid Attack!” but more like a simple distress call like, “Aphids! Aphids! Aphids!” or, “Attack! Attack!” The chemicals the plants pump through the air are a blend of organic molecules — alcohols, aldehydes, ketones and esters — known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.”

Animals bark, sing, growl and chat. Plants, one would think, just sit there. But it turns out that plants bark, growl and chat as well. Here’s how they do it.

Continue reading “Plants Talk. Plants Listen. Here’s How” »

Dogecoin may have started as a joke, but one of its holders is sitting on some serious dough.

A single cryptocurrency account contains about $2 billion worth of the meme-inspired coin whose price has been pumped up by celebrities such as Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons.

The account holds about 36.8 billion dogecoins — a massive stash that accounts for more than 28 percent of all the coins currently in circulation, according to cryptocurrency data website Bitinfocharts.

A NASA rover streaked through the orange Martian sky and landed on the planet Thursday, accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on Mars.

Locus Robotics, a startup developing warehouse automation technologies, has raised $150 million at a $1 billion post-money valuation.

Physicists from the University of Sussex have created what they called the tiniest microchips yet. The little microchips are made using graphene and other 2D materials and a form of “nano-origami.” The technique used in creating the tiny microchips marks the first time any researchers have been able to do this.

Researchers succeeded in making the tiny microchips by creating kinks in the structure of graphene to make the nanomaterial behave like a transistor. In their study, the team showed that when a graphene strip is crinkled in a specific way, it behaves like a microchip only about 100 times smaller than a conventional microchip. New construction methods are needed for microchips because traditional semiconducting technology is at the limit of what it can do.

The researchers believe that using the materials in their technique will make computer chips smaller and faster. The technology is dubbed “straintronics” and uses nanomaterials rather than electronics, allowing space for more chips inside a given device. The researchers believe everything we want to do with computers to speeding them up can be done by crinkling graphene.

Joshua P. Meltzer and Cameron F. Kerry outline the requirements for the U.S. to lead international cooperation on artificial intelligence.