Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2019

In 1841, Alexander Bain confirmed the capacity of moist dirt in the generating of electricity. An Earth Battery is a pair of electrodes, consisting of two dissimilar metals, using moist earth as an electrolyte. To make the battery, Bain buried plates of zinc (anode) and copper (cathode) in the ground about a yard apart. It produced an output voltage of approximately 1 volt.

When you place a zinc anode and a copper cathode in a container of wet mud, the two metals start reacting, because zinc loses electrons easier than copper and because the mud contains ions. By wetting the dirt, it turns into a true electrolyte solution. Therefore, the electrodes start exchanging electrons, just like an ordinary battery does.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced plans to send a compact rover named Rashid to study the Moon in 2024, marking an intensification in the small nation’s spacefaring ambitions. If Rashid is successful, the UAE could become only the fourth country to operate a craft on the Moon’s surface, and the first in the Arab world.

With its orbiter Hope on its way to Mars, the United Arab Emirates has now set its sights on the Moon.

These findings represent a bridge in physics, AI and neuroscience, and has the potential to advance on-the-spot decision making in AI.

SpaceX and NASA have spent years working towards today’s Crew-1 mission, which is set to launch from Florida at 7:27 PM EST (4:27 PM PST). This is the first time that SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket will be officially used as a spacecraft certified by NASA for human flight on a regular astronaut transportation operation. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, will also be aboard the Dragon spacecraft and, barring any weather delays, on their way to the International Space Station later Sunday night.

SpaceX has already flown people using Dragon – NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley had the honor of being the first humans ever to be launched to the ISS aboard a commercial spacecraft when they took part in SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission earlier this year. That was obviously a historic achievement, but it was also technically the last stage in SpaceX’s test and demonstration program for Dragon and Falcon 9, whereas today’s Crew-1 launch no longer qualifies as a test. Think of it this way: If Demo-2 was akin to the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight, Crew-1 will be the equivalent of the first U.S. scheduled commercial airline flight in 1914.

Crew-1 will be the first time that a full complement of astronauts are flown on Dragon (there are six total seats but NASA has said it will only ever fly a max of four of its and partner agency crew to the ISS on these flights). The astronauts will join the existing crew on the ISS for a regular tour of performing experiments, maintaining and upgrading the station, which will also see the active ISS population swell by one additional astronaut for the first time during a standard rotation, which means more science can get done according to the agency.

What happened: A SpaceX spacecraft carrying four astronauts soared into outer space Sunday — marking the kick off of what NASA hopes will be years of the company helping to keep the International Space Station fully staffed.

What’s next: The Crew Dragon is expected to dock with the International Space Station at around 11 pm ET Monday, November 16.

#emergingtech

Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning (AI/ML): The cognitive technologies AI & ML also have quite a hot measurement on the Scoville pepper scale.

Omo circa 2018.

Humanity has big dreams when it comes to space travel, but our technology isn’t quite there yet. Spacecraft that can take astronauts to Mars and beyond are already in development but some huge questions remain, and one of the biggest issues is food.

Simply packing enough food to last for the entirety of the trip would be terribly inefficient and would leave space travelers in a tight spot if their return is delayed and they somehow run out of things to eat. Growing traditional foods onboard is also a tough sell due to the length of time it would take to grow and harvest it. Now, researchers from Penn State have come up with a novel alternative, and it starts with something astronauts will have no shortage of: poop.

Now that researchers have created time crystals, the next step is to understand more about this bizarre material.

In a remote galaxy, two neutron stars circled one another in a ballet of ultimate destruction and inevitable creation. Both objects were the remnants of massive stars, probably from a binary system, that had become supernovae long before. Each was incredibly massive, with neutrons so closely packed that their cores became diamond. The dance, alas, could not go on forever and the stars collided, releasing unimaginable energy and sending gravitational waves speeding through the fabric of space-time.

In 2017, 1.3 billion years later, astronomers detected those waves with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. Albert Einstein’s prediction that the universe should be filled with such faint ripples caused by gravity from massive objects included sources such as neutron star mergers. Yet finding a disturbance in the fabric of space-time from this kind of event had proven elusive until then. When news of the detection of gravitational waves broke, the media wanted to know what else happens when neutron stars collide. Astronomers explained that, beyond the destruction of the stars and the ripples in space, such events also create all the heavy elements we know in the blink of an eye. But what did the media key into? That gold comes from outer space.