Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 7748

Circa 2012

Back in 1871, James Clerk Maxwell predicted that light exerts a force on any surface it hits. This radiation pressure was experimentally discovered some 30 years later and has since emerged as a hugely important force that is now exploited in systems such as solar sails and laser cooling.

Today, John Zhang and buddies at the University of Southampton in the UK go one better. These guys predict that a far more powerful optical force can exist between a metal or dielectric plate and a metamaterial, a substance with optical properties that have been engineered to control light in specific ways.

Metamaterials can be designed so they allow tiny oscillations of electrons called plasmons to exist on their surfaces. The oscillations are tiny–measured in nanometres, that’s about the same as the wavelength of visible light.

Continue reading “Metamaterials Generate Gecko-Like Adhesive Force” | >

Circa 2018

Measuring one million times less than the width of a human hair, graphene is harder than diamonds and 200 times stronger than steel. Small, strong, and flexible, it is the most conductive material on earth and has the potential to charge a cell phone in just five seconds or to upload a terabit of data in one. It can be used to filter salt from water, develop bullet-stopping body armor, and create biomicrorobots.

These incredible properties have captured the attention of scientists and industry specialists around the world, all seeking to harness graphene’s potential for applications in electronics, energy, composites and coatings, biomedicine, and other industries.

Derived from graphite, the same graphite used in pencils and many other common use products, graphene is, ironically, one of the most expensive materials on the planet. This is because the process of chemically peeling off, or exfoliating, a single layer of graphene from graphite ore is cost-prohibitive on an industrial scale.

Continue reading “A Wood Product Stronger than Steel that Could Change the World” | >

It seems a fusion shield could survive a supernova explosion.

“That’s what makes this white dwarf unique — it did undergo nuclear burning, but stopped before it got to iron,” Gänsicke told Space.com.

“This star is unique because it has all the key features of a white dwarf but it has this very high velocity and unusual abundances that make no sense when combined with its low mass,” Boris Gänsicke, physics professor at the University of Warwick, UK, and lead author of a paper about the research published the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, said in a statement.

“It would have been a type of supernova, but of a kind that that we haven’t seen before,” he added.

Continue reading “This Star Appears to Have Survived a Supernova” | >

Quantifications are produced by several disciplinary houses in a myriad of different styles. The concerns about unethical use of algorithms, unintended consequences of metrics, as well as the warning about statistical and mathematical malpractices are all part of a general malaise, symptoms of our tight addiction to quantification. What problems are shared by all these instances of quantification? After reviewing existing concerns about different domains, the present perspective article illustrates the need and the urgency for an encompassing ethics of quantification. The difficulties to discipline the existing regime of numerification are addressed; obstacles and lock-ins are identified. Finally, indications for policies for different actors are suggested.

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