Lifeboat Foundation

The standard model of physics remains incomplete. Could supersymmetry fill the gaps? From whether supersymmetric particles could fix the mass of the Higgs Boson to what this would mean for string theory, the world’s leading thinkers explain all.

John Ellis is a British theoretical physicist who is currently Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King’s College London. He was Division Leader for the CERN theory division, a founding member of the LEPC and of the LHCC at CERN and currently chair of the committee to investigate physics opportunities for future proton accelerators.

Continue reading “On Supersymmetry | John Ellis, Catherine Heymans, Ben Allanach, Subir Sakar, Cumrun Vafa” »

An ancient city “ten times the size of Jericho” has been unearthed in northern Israel. The site, En Esur, is still expected to be paved over by a new road.

Delivery service UPS won the federal government’s first full approval to operate a fleet of drones. It marks a milestone in the race to commercial drone delivery.

More than 100 people in North Carolina were sickened with Legionnaires’ disease and Pontiac fever last month. One person died.

It’s good to see a growing response to the materialist superstition about the mind and the brain from the neuroscience and philosophy community. Materialist theories of the mind are philosophically indefensible and scientifically discredited. Dualism is necessary to account for the immaterial nature of the intellect, for the metaphysical simplicity of the mind, and for free will. Of the varieties of dualism, I believe that Thomistic dualism offers the most satisfactory framework for neuroscience.

Continue reading “An Oxford Neuroscientist Explains Mind vs. Brain” »

Virgin thinks it can make its way to orbit — but can it compete with SpaceX?

China has broken new lunar ground, successfully growing cotton on the moon for the first time. The experiment was part of the Chang’e 4 project, in which China is exploring the far side of the moon with a lander. This is the same lander that recently discovered a mysterious gel-like substance on the moon’s surface.

The cotton plant was one of several organisms encased in a mini biosphere weighing just 2.6 kilograms (5.7 lbs) with a pressure of 1 atmosphere which was aboard the lander. The organisms experienced an environment largely similar to that on Earth, however, they did have to contend with both space radiation and microgravity.

In an interview with engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum, project leader for the experiment Xie Gengxin explained more about the challenges of growing plants in the restricted environment. “The weight of the Chang’e-4 probe demanded that the weight [of the experiment] can’t exceed three kilograms,” he said. That’s why it was important to select the biological samples in the experiment carefully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOHFE0hEyU&feature=share

Sajad Zalzala wants to enable off-label uses of common drugs, like Metformin, to slow aging.