Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

After 12 years of work, researchers at the University of Manchester in England have completed construction of a “SpiNNaker” (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) supercomputer. It can simulate the internal workings of up to a billion neurons through a whopping one million processing units.

Continue reading “Million-core neuromorphic supercomputer could simulate an entire mouse brain” »

Creating believable characters using high-quality character shader techniques, data scans of Actors, and improved geometry workflow.

Careful manufacturing yields a lithium-ion battery for compact medical devices by.

Katherine Bourzac

Sometimes science is super simple—and super tasty. A classic science experiment demonstrating how to use your microwave and a bar of chocolate to measure the speed of light is making the rounds, with easy-to-follow instructions for replicating the test at home.

🔬 You love badass science experiments. So do we. Let’s play around together.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, has previously said the drug would set “a new standard of care” for Covid-19 patients.

An MIT CSAIL AI system that can automatically decipher extinct languages offers hope of preserving a wealth of historical heritage.

Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A is partnering with Canadian energy company General Fusion to design a pioneering power plant that will use nuclear fusion.

The prototype plant will act as a demonstration facility for the technology, which uses hydrogen as fuel, with onsite facilities for experts and the general public to visit.

“General Fusion wants to transform how the world is energised by replicating the process that powers the sun and the stars,” said AL_A.

Though its a bit old, and sometimes innacurate or snarky in narration, it’s still the most detailed depiction of the cryonics process — the procedure itself on a real person, the person preserved before dying and her family as they decide to do this, deal with her death, and reflect on it after she’s preserved. It’s quite emotional and sometimes graphic, but well worth watching. Will it work? Maybe. But if you are NOT preserved there is NO chance at all. From your perspective it’d be like waking up right after dying in some distant future without feeling like any time passed at all.

That sounds a hell of a lot more appealing and likely than a bearded man on a fluffy cloud winking at me after I die.

Continue reading “Frozen humans brought back to life | 60 Minutes Australia” »

Firefly Aerospace currently plans for its maiden Alpha rocket launch to happen as early as Dec. 22, co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC, as his company prepares for the next major milestone in its plan to offer a variety of space transportation services.

Markusic is confident in the launch date because of the “rigid” requirements of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where Firefly is finishing up work to prepare the launchpad at SLC-2. While “everything is susceptible to surprises,” with room in the schedule to launch as late as Jan. 31, Markusic said the “full gamut of rules” at Vandenberg means the company has put extra work into certification for Alpha’s first launch.

“We took the hard route to flight, and that was by going to a launch range that has very strict requirements,” Markusic said. “So our design has been highly vetted, as we have a lot of requirements that are put on us by the range and that makes the rocket ultimately more reliable.