Lifeboat Foundation

After years of detective work, scientists working on the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta mission have now been able to locate where the Philae lander made its second and penultimate contact with the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014, before finally coming to a halt 30 metres away. This landing was monitored from the German Aerospace Center Philae Control Center. Philae left traces behind; the lander pressed its top side and the housing of its sample drill into an icy crevice in a black rocky area covered with carbonaceous dust. As a result, Philae scratched open the surface, exposing ice from when the comet was formed that had been protected from the Sun’s radiation ever since. The bare, bright icy surface, the outline of which is somewhat reminiscent of a skull, has now revealed the contact point, researchers write in the scientific publication Nature.

All that was known previously was the location of the first contact, that there had been another impact following the rebound, and the location of the final landing site where Philae came to rest after two hours and where it was found towards the end of the Rosetta mission in 2016. “Now we finally know the exact place where Philae touched down on the comet for the second time. This will allow us to fully reconstruct the lander’s trajectory and derive important scientific results from the telemetry data as well as measurements from some of the instruments operating during the landing process,” explains Jean-Baptiste Vincent from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, who was involved in the research published today. “Philae had left us with one final mystery waiting to be solved,” says ESA’s Laurence O’Rourke, the lead author of the study.

This could lead to artificial gravity like we see on star trek.

Many physicists said that gravitons exist but some believe that it is impossible to observe it in the natural world. Recent studies suggest that gravitons create ‘noise’ making them easier to spot.

Continue reading “Gravitons Create ‘Noise’ in Gravitational Wave Detectors, New Study Reveals” »

Circa 2015.

LEDs have come a long ways. From the early 70s when a bulky LED watch cost thousands of dollars to LG’s announcement last month that it had created an OLED TV as thin as a magazine, these glowing little bits of magic have become wonderfully cheap and impossibly small. But guess what: they’re about to get much smaller.

A team scientists from the University of Washington just built the world’s thinnest possible LED for use as a light source in electronics. It’s just three atoms thick. No, not three millimeters. Not three nanometers. Three atoms.

Continue reading “The world’s smallest LED will be 3 atoms thick!” »

The future of disaster management, using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a bit of Waffle House and Starbucks 🙂

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Craig Fugate Chief Emergency Management Officer of One Concern and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Continue reading “Think Big, Move Fast, Build Capacity and Resilience: Disaster Management” »

Chief technology officer of Turkish aviation firm shares video of Turkish engine’s test phase — Anadolu Agency.

Google says hardware in embedded devices needs to improve to make possible a world of peel-and-stick sensors free of wall power and human maintenance.

SpaceX is preparing to conduct a national security mission for the United States Space Force. The aerospace company is tasked to deploy the military’s fourth new-generation series Global Positioning System satellite, known as GPS-III Space Vehicle 04. On October 2nd, SpaceX attempted to launch the satellite to orbit but at around two seconds before the 9:43 p.m. EDT liftoff time, launch controllers aborted the launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 40.

During the Live broadcast of the launch attempt the Principal Integration Engineer at SpaceX John Insprucker said the next launch opportunity for this mission is on Saturday, October 3rd at 9:39 p.m. EDT. but the rocket did not attempt a second launch because SpaceX found issues on one of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin 1D engines. According to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the GPS-III satellite experienced an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator,” he wrote. “… We’re doing a broad review of launch site, propulsion, structures, avionics, range & regulatory constraints this weekend. I will also be at the Cape next week to review hardware in person,” he said early October.

SpaceX’s Vice President of build and flight reliability, Hans Koenigsmann, said during a news conference on October 28th that SpaceX engineers worked alongside the U.S. Space Force and NASA to perform a deep investigation into the issue. They came to the conclusion that the Falcon 9 engine issue was due to a residue of a “masking lacquer” designed to protect sensitive parts during anti-corrosion anodizing treatment. Koenigsmann told reporters the SpaceX vendor that performed the lacquer coating treatment failed to remove all of the lacquer afterward, causing a blockage of small vent holes for Merlin engine valves. “It’s not necessarily bad,” he said, “In most cases, it rattles the engine, and it may cause a little bit of damage to the engine. In extreme cases, it may cause more damage to the engine.” SpaceX officials announced they would fix the issue by replacing the engine. Now, SpaceX targets to deploy GPS-III Space Vehicle 04 satellite atop the Falcon 9 no earlier than Thursday, November 5th at 6:24 p.m. EDT [date is subject to change]. This mission is important for the United States because the GPS-III satellite is designed to upgrade the satellite constellation that actively provides navigation services to over 4 billion users.

As progress in traditional computing slows, new forms of computing are coming to the forefront. At Penn State, a team of engineers is attempting to pioneer a type of computing that mimics the efficiency of the brain’s neural networks while exploiting the brain’s analog nature.

Modern computing is digital, made up of two states, on-off or one and zero. An analog computer, like the brain, has many possible states. It is the difference between flipping a light switch on or off and turning a dimmer switch to varying amounts of lighting.

Neuromorphic or brain-inspired computing has been studied for more than 40 years, according to Saptarshi Das, the team leader and Penn State assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. What’s new is that as the limits of digital computing have been reached, the need for high-speed image processing, for instance for self-driving cars, has grown. The rise of big data, which requires types of pattern recognition for which the brain architecture is particularly well suited, is another driver in the pursuit of neuromorphic computing.

Virgin Hyperloop, the transportation company owned by business magnate Richard Branson, has ambitious plans to build a vacuum tube transportation system that travels over 600 miles per hour.

But before it does so, the company has made the reasonable decision to figure out what traveling that quickly might to do the brain. To wit, scientists at West Virginia’s Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (RNI) will find out what to expect when launching passengers at 78 percent the speed of sound.

Hold on to your brains!