Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI) and Tohoku University in Japan have recently identified an anomaly in the electromagnetic duality of Maxwell Theory. This anomaly, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could play an important role in the consistency of string theory.

The recent study is a collaboration between Yuji Tachikawa and Kazuya Yonekura, two string theorists, and Chang-Tse Hsieh, a condensed matter theorist. Although the study started off as an investigation into string theory, it also has implications for other areas of physics.

In current physics theory, classical electromagnetism is described by Maxwell’s equations, which were first introduced by physicist James Clerk Maxwell around 1865. Objects governed by these equations include electric and magnetic fields, electrically charged particles (e.g., electrons and protons), and magnetic monopoles (i.e. hypothetical particles carrying single magnetic poles).

In what is believed to be a transit industry first in the United States, TriMet’s all-electric buses will be powered by 100 percent wind energy. TriMet and project partner Portland General Electric made the historic announcement on Tuesday, April 16, 2019. As Oregon’s largest transit provider, TriMet has committed to a non-diesel bus fleet by 2040. The initial journey toward a non-diesel fleet now begins with battery-electric buses that will be powered by PGE’s Clean Wind℠ renewable energy program.

“Today, we are riding the winds of change. TriMet’s commitment to a zero-emissions bus fleet by 2040 and support of wind power put the agency and our region at the forefront of a cleaner future.”

Continue reading “A US transit industry first: TriMet’s new electric buses powered entirely by wind” »

Forget everything you thought you knew about boiling and freezing, thanks to these MIT scientists.

The Air Force’s mystery space plane is back on Earth, following a record-breaking two-year mission.

The X-37B landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Sunday. The Air Force is mum about what the plane did in orbit after launching aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2017. The 780-day mission sets a new endurance record for the reusable test vehicle.

It looks like a space shuttle but is one-fourth the size at 29 feet.

Security researchers have been following the xHelper malware on Android with great interest, owing to the app’s seemingly incomprehensible ability to reinstall itself on an infected device despite factory resets.

When we think of avatars, we imagine a blue film character. But now they’re being used very differently.

Prostate cancer runs in Jeff Nelson’s family. His brother, uncle and cousins have all been diagnosed with the disease. When his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test results jumped to 5.5 from 4 in summer 2018, he knew he had to move quickly.

Jeff Nelson chose UCI Health and an investigative treatment for prostate cancer that uses high-intensity sound waves to destroy only the cancer tissue. He’s glad he did.

Diamonds as big as jewels fall as “rain” on Saturn and Jupiter, seeded by giant lightning storms, according to new calculations by US scientists.

Hard light computers could be exponential.

Structured light is a fancy way to describe patterns or pictures of light, but deservedly so as it promises future communications that will be both faster and more secure.

Quantum mechanics has come a long way during the past 100 years but still has a long way to go. In AVS Quantum Science researchers from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa review the progress being made in using structured light in quantum protocols to create a larger encoding alphabet, stronger security and better resistance to noise.

Continue reading “Structured light promises path to faster, more secure communications” »