Lifeboat Foundation

NASA is flying astronauts to the International Space Station from the United States using commercial vehicles.

On Nov. 14, the first operational mission of this program, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, is set to launch four astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle.

Watch as the crew explains what their mission is, how it is different from Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley’s Demo-2 flight, and what it means for people here on Earth. https://www.nasa.gov/crew-1

As scientists await the highly anticipated initial results of the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, collaborating scientists from DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory continue to employ and maintain the unique system that maps the magnetic field in the experiment with unprecedented precision.

Argonne scientists upgraded the measurement system, which uses an advanced communication scheme and new magnetic field probes and electronics to map the field throughout the 45-meter circumference ring in which the experiment takes place.

The experiment, which began in 2017 and continues today, could be of great consequence to the field of particle physics. As a follow-up to a past experiment at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, it has the power to affirm or discount the previous results, which could shed light on the validity of parts of the reigning Standard Model of particle physics.

BMW i EV technology isn’t only working in two dimensions — now it’s taking to the skies in an electric wingsuit.

It’s not the most conventional electric flight, but that hasn’t stopped the concept from progressing to its maiden flight. The electric wingsuit project has been in the works for three years, since it began as just a concept in the mind of air sports pioneer Peter Salzmann.

With the collaboration of BMW i and Designworks, the group brought the electric wingsuit to life for Peter to test.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lxRDGSft2wI

An H&M store in Stockholm, Sweden, will receive the world’s first in-store garment to garment recycling machine.

A new documentary highlights the challenges overcome by the experimental aircraft, Solar Impulse.

In 1973, physicist and later Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson proposed a bizarre state of matter: the quantum spin liquid (QSL). Unlike the everyday liquids we know, the QSL actually has to do with magnetism—and magnetism has to do with spin.

Disordered electron spin produces QSLs

What makes a magnet? It was a long-lasting mystery, but today we finally know that magnetism arises from a peculiar property of sub-atomic particles, like electrons. That property is called “spin,” and the best—yet grossly insufficient—way to think of it is like a child’s spinning-top toy.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a CRISPR-based “lab on a chip” to detect COVID-19, and are working with automakers at Ford to develop their prototype into a market-ready product.

This could provide an automated, hand-held device designed to deliver a coronavirus test result anywhere within 30 minutes.

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the test spotted active infections quickly and cheaply, using electric fields to purify fluids from a nasal swab sample and drive DNA-cutting reagents within the system’s tiny passages.

Richard Branson, the thrill-seeking British billionaire, founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 on the promise that a privately developed spacecraft would make it possible for hundreds of people to become astronauts, no NASA training required. And if a 2,500-mile-per-hour ride to the edge of space sounded off-putting, Branson also pledged to take the journey himself before letting paying customers on board.

Branson is the only one among the group of the so-called space barons, the group of space-loving billionaires that includes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who has publicly pledged to take a ride in the near future aboard a spacecraft he has bankrolled.

Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, is working on a competing suborbital space tourism rocket. Musk’s SpaceX, however, is focused on transporting astronauts and perhaps one day tourists on days-long missions to Earth’s orbit.