Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2019

Special Relativity. It’s been the bane of space explorers, futurists and science fiction authors since Albert Einstein first proposed it in 1905. For those of us who dream of humans one-day becoming an interstellar species, this scientific fact is like a wet blanket.

Continue reading “You Could Travel Through a Wormhole, But It’s Slower Than Space, Say Scientists” »

Exotic atoms in which electrons are replaced by other subatomic particles of the same charge allow deep insights into the quantum world. After eight years of ongoing research, a group led by Masaki Hori, senior physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, has now succeeded in a challenging experiment: In a helium atom, they replaced an electron with a pion in a specific quantum state and verified the existence of this long-lived “pionic helium” for the very first time. The usually short-lived pion could thereby exist 1000 times longer than it normally would in other varieties of matter. Pions belong to an important family of particles that determine the stability and decay of atomic nuclei. The pionic helium atom enables scientists to study pions in an extremely precise manner using laser spectroscopy. The research is published in this week’s edition of Nature.

For eight years, the group worked on this challenging experiment, which has the potential to establish a new field of research. The team experimentally demonstrated for the first time that long-lived pionic helium atoms really exist. “It is a form of chemical reaction that happens automatically,” explains Hori. The exotic atom was first theoretically predicted in 1964 after experiments at that time pointed toward its existence. However, it was considered extremely difficult to verify this prediction experimentally. Usually, in an atom, the extremely short-lived pion decays quickly. However, in pionic helium, it can be conserved in a sense so it lives 1000 times longer than it normally does in other atoms.

The Air Force is short of funding to speed development of a laser weapon for what is already one of the most lethal platforms in the U.S. arsenal — the Special Operations AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, Air Force Lt. Gen. Marshall Webb testified Wednesday.

“We’re $58 million short of having a full program that would get us a 60-kilowatt laser flying on an AC-130 by 2022,” Webb, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging threats.

Webb was responding to questions from Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, who said at the current pace of testing and funding, a laser weapon for the AC-130 would not be operational until 2030.

Circa 2013 o.o

Rheinmetall Defense Electronics unveiled their new “Gatling Laser” which can be mounted on ships as part of a new sea-based anti-drone laser system. The four 20 kilowatt lasers fire simultaneously as a single powerful 80 kilowatt beam. The firm boasts units can even be combined for ‘unlimited’ power. The Gatling laser can reportedly shoot down a drone at 500 meters.

Circa 2020

The present age of information technology – the transformation of daily life by laptop computers, smartphones, so-called artificial intelligence, etc – became possible thanks to the exponential increase in the processing power of microcircuits, which began in the 1970s and continues today.

This process is described empirically by the famous Moore’s law: the number of transistor elements that can be packed into an integrated circuit chip doubles about every two years.

Continue reading “Fusion power enters world of ‘extreme light’” »

Circa 2020 o.o

China’s military is soliciting would-be suppliers for a new airborne laser weapon. Notices on a government website invited defense contractors to provide information on an airborne laser attack pod. Depending on the level of power, the pod could be used to defend a friendly aircraft from incoming missile threats or destroy enemy aircraft and ground targets. Laser weapons are the next revolution in aerial warfare and could make dogfighting obsolete.

According to the South China Morning Post, weain.mil.cn, the official weapons and equipment procurement website of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) published two solicitations to contractors, one titled, “procurement plan for airborne laser attack pod” and the other “price inquiry on procurement plan for controlling software module of laser attack platform.” The solicitations, marked confidential, invited China’s defense firms to bid to develop the items. The Pentagon uses a similar system to procure weapons, equipment, and other technology.

PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – Missile-defense experts at Northrop Grumman Corp. will install LAIRCM laser-based missile-defense systems for large military aircraft under terms of a $123.5 million U.S. Navy order announced on Friday.

Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking engineers at the Northrop Grumman Mission Systems segment in Rolling Meadows, Ill., to provide the electro-optical Large Aircraft Infrared Counter Measures (LAIRCM) for a variety of U.S. military aircraft.

LAIRCM automatically detects a missile launch, determines if it is a threat, and activates a high-intensity laser-based countermeasure system to track and defeat the missile, Northrop Grumman officials say.

Key points Compared to sham rats, rats a week after acute lung injury (ALI) express more proinflammatory cytokines in their brainstem respiratory control nuclei, exhibit a higher respiratory freque…

As the number of confirmed COVID −19 cases worldwide approaches 4 million and the pandemic could be with us for months or years, we look at who can access drugs like remdesivir, being developed by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which has the patent for the drug and is poised to make massive profits. We look at how much drugs like remdesivir will cost, and who can access them, with writer Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

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