Lifeboat Foundation

Earlier today, Genevieve O’Hagan updated Lifeboat readers on this week’s momentous event in Astronomy. At least, I find it fascinating—and so, I wish to add perspective…

30 years ago, astronomer Jack Hills demonstrated the math behind what has become known as the “Hills Mechanism”. Until this week, the event that he described had never been observed.* But his peer astronomers agreed that the physics and math should make it possible…

Hills explained that under these conditions, a star might be accelerated to incredible speeds — and might be even flung out of its galaxy:

• Suppose that a binary star passes close to a black hole, like the one at the center of our galaxy
• The pair of self-orbiting stars is caught up in the gravity well of a black hole, but not sucked in

If conditions are right, one star ends up orbiting the back hole while the other is jettisoned at incredible speed, yet holding onto its mass and shape. All that energy comes from the gravity of the black hole and the former momentum of the captured star. [20 sec animation] [continue below]

This week, astronomers found clear evidence of this amazing event and traced it back to our galactic center: Five million years ago — as our ancestors learned to walk upright — a star that passed close to the massive black hole at The Milky Way center was flung away at a staggering 6 million Kmh. It is traveling so fast, that it is no longer bound to our galaxy or galactic cluster. It is headed out of the galaxy.

• Rifle Bullet: Can exceed Mach 3 (2,300 mph)
• Apollo Rocket: Reached 25,000 mph; Earth escape velocity.
• Juno Probe: 165,000 mph, a record prior to 2019. (It used Jupiter’s gravity to accelerate)
• Parker Probe: 213,000 mph (Nov 2019), but will soon reach 430,000 in a tight arc around the Sun

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Footage has since emerged capturing the US Space Force craft “following” the astronauts in the sky, conspiracists have claimed.

Astronomers say S5-HVs1 ventured close to supermassive black hole before being ejected.

Neutron stars cannot exist.

“The sky was clear—remarkably clear—and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.” —Thomas Hardy.

On June 13, 2012 NASA launched the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) on a mission to study X-rays in what are thought to be the remnants of supernova explosions, called pulsars. NuStar joins other X-ray space telescopes like Chandra and XMM-Newton, except that it is capable of focusing X-rays to a sharp point, enabling it to “see” energies up to 79,000 electron-volts. That capability makes it more than 100 times more powerful than the other observatories.

Caption: Two minute explainer video of the Multimodal Acoustic Trap Display developed at the University of Sussex.

Credit: Eimontas Jankauskis

Walking, talking holograms have been a staple of sci-fi films since Princess Leia was magically brought to life in “Star Wars”.

Now scientists in Britain say they can make even more realistic 3D versions—a butterfly, a globe, an emoji—which can be seen with the naked eye, heard and even felt without the need for any virtual reality systems.

Writing in the journal Nature, a team at the University of Sussex in southern England, said technology currently in use can create 3D images but they are slow, short-lived and “most importantly, rely on operating principles that cannot produce tactile and auditive content as well”.

UPS is rolling along with its drone delivery program, working with partner CVS Pharmacy to deliver prescription drugs to customer doorsteps via its newly deployed commercial drones. UPS delivered medications to two paying customers on November 1 using the Matternet M2 drone system that the logistics company is using in partnership with Matternet…