Lifeboat Foundation

A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars.

First theorized in the 1970s as part of a solution to a fundamental particle physics problem, axions are expected to be produced at the core of stars, and to convert into particles of light, called photons, in the presence of a magnetic field.

Axions may also make up dark matter —the mysterious stuff that accounts for an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, yet we have so far only seen its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. Even if the X-ray excess turns out not to be axions or dark matter, it could still reveal new physics.

This is what the world will look like, 250 million years from now.

A month later, Elon Musk’s company is trying again.

Remember the Hubble Deep Field? And its successor the Hubble Ultra Deep Field? We sure do here at Universe Today. How could we forget them?

Well, just as the Hubble Space Telescope has successors, so do two of its most famous images. And those successors will come from one of Hubble’s successors, NASA’s Roman Space Telescope.

The Hubble Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field showed a generation of people how expansive and wondrous the Universe is. They showed that even empty-looking patches of sky are, in fact, full of galaxies. All sizes, shapes, and ages of galaxies.

A small prototype of a drone-based quantum network has successfully relayed a quantum signal over a kilometer of free space.

The airwaves are chock full of “classical” information from cell phones, radio stations, and Wi-Fi hubs, but one day those waves could be carrying quantum encrypted messages or data input for a quantum computer. A new experiment has used a pair of hovering drones to dole out quantum information to two ground stations separated by 1 km [1]. This demonstration could lead to a drone-based quantum network that could be positioned—and easily repositioned—over a city or rural area.

Quantum communication promises fully secure message sharing. For example, two users could exchange encrypted messages using “entangled” photons, pairs of particles with a unique quantum-mechanical relationship. For every pair, one photon would be sent to each of the users, who would be alerted to any eavesdropping by a loss of entanglement between the photons. One of the most common methods for sending such quantum encrypted messages relies on optical fibers (see Viewpoint: Record Distance for Quantum Cryptography). But in fibers, a large fraction of the photons scatter before reaching their destination. More photons can survive if quantum information is transmitted through the atmosphere, as in the quantum link established using a Chinese satellite in 2018 (see Focus: Intercontinental, Quantum-Encrypted Messaging and Video). However, satellites are expensive and difficult to adapt to changing demands on the ground.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink showcases working implanted brain computer and promises future health benefits.

Elon Musk company Neuralink has been researching how directly interfacing with the brain could be used as therapy for chronic and debilitating medical conditions, as well as exploring how technological augmentation could expand and develop the capabilities of the human brain.

Continue reading “Neuralink reveals the ‘Fitbit for your brain’” »

Circa 2020

The acute problem of eutrophication increasing in the environment is due to the increase of industrial wastewater, synthetic nitrogen, urine, and urea. This pollutes groundwater, soil and creates a danger to aquatic life. Therefore, it is advantageous to use these waste materials in the form of urea as fuel to generate power using Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). In this work, we studied the compost soil MFC(CSMFC) unlike typical MFC with urea from the compost as fuel and graphite as a functional electrode. The electrochemical techniques such as Cyclic Voltammetry, Chronoamperometry are used to characterise CSMFC. It is observed that the CSMFC in which the compost consists of urea concertation of 0.5 g/ml produces maximum power. Moreover, IV measurement is carried out using polarization curves in order to study its sustainability and scalability. Bacterial studies were also playing a significant role in power generation. The sustainability study revealed that urea is consumed in CSMFC to generate power. This study confirmed that urea has a profound effect on the power generation from the CSMFC. Our focus is to get power from the soil processes in future by using waste like urine, industrial wastewater, which contains much amount of urea.

In Oranmore, a town on the west coast of Ireland, residents have turned to ordering books, groceries, and their morning coffee via drone delivery.

Circa 2019

Conventionally speaking, there is a single physicist named Sean Carroll at Caltech, busily puzzling over the nature of the quantum world. In the theoretical sense, though, he may be one of a multitude, each existing in its own world. And there’s nothing unique about him: Every person, rock, and particle in the universe participates in an endlessly branching reality, Carroll argues, splitting into alternate versions whenever an event occurs that has multiple possible outcomes.

He is well aware that this idea sounds like something from a science fiction movie (and it doesn’t help that he was an advisor on Avengers: Endgame). But these days, a growing number of his colleagues take the idea of multiple worlds seriously. In his new book, Something Deeply Hidden, Carroll proposes that the “Many Worlds Interpretation” is not only a reasonable way to make sense of quantum mechanics, it is the most reasonable way to do so.

Continue reading “Endless Versions of You in Endless Parallel Universes? A Growing Number of Physicists Embrace the Idea” »