Lifeboat Foundation

A team of scientists has discovered a new possible pathway toward forming carbon structures in space using a specialized chemical exploration technique at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The team’s research has now identified several avenues by which ringed molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, can form in space. The latest study is a part of an ongoing effort to retrace the chemical steps leading to the formation of complex carbon-containing molecules in deep space.

PAHs—which also occur on Earth in emissions and soot from the combustion of fossil fuels—could provide clues to the formation of life’s chemistry in space as precursors to interstellar nanoparticles. They are estimated to account for about 20 percent of all carbon in our galaxy, and they have the chemical building blocks needed to form 2-D and 3D carbon structures.

Square Enix studio Luminous Productions has unveiled a new tech demo called “Back Stage” that shows how it uses ray-tracing tech. The demo is rendered in real-time.

Luminous Productions was established last year and staffed with former Final Fantasy XV staff. The game’s director Hajime Tabata initially headed up the studio. He has since left Square Enix.

As Siliconera points out, this tech demo shows off next-gen possibilities for its in-house Luminous Engine. Here, the real-time ray tracing shows the character’s face and emotions reflected in a realistic way that simply isn’t possible in previous real-time rending tech.

Excavation may be an Earth-centric phenomenon.

Owning one full bitcoin is becoming a recognized attainment goal. And thereby hangs a tale.

Is it just a numbers game? Isn’t the unit a bit arbitrary and meaningless?…

The logistics and the math are compelling. I recognized the importance of reaching this personal milestone more than 8 years ago. But I was a nobody. No one cared. Then, in April 2019, we started to see articles in legitimate venues about this concept—and articulated in exactly this way. I borrowed the title of this post from this article in Medium.

Who Says So?

Continue reading “The Race to Own One Bitcoin” »

X conducted a static-fire test Thursday (Aug. 29) of the Falcon 9 rocket that will send two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in the near future.

“Dark energy is incredibly strange, but actually it makes sense to me that it went unnoticed,” said Noble Prize winning physicist Adam Riess in an interview. “I have absolutely no clue what dark energy is. Dark energy appears strong enough to push the entire universe – yet its source is unknown, its location is unknown and its physics are highly speculative.”

Physicists have found that for the last 7 billion years or so galactic expansion has been accelerating. This would be possible only if something is pushing the galaxies, adding energy to them. Scientists are calling this something “dark energy,” a force that is real but eludes detection.

One of the most speculative ideas for the mechanism of an accelerating cosmic expansion is called quintessence, a relative of the Higgs field that permeates the cosmos. Perhaps some clever life 5 billion years ago figured out how to activate that field, speculates astrophysicist Caleb Scharf in Nautil.us. How? “Beats me,” he says, “but it’s a thought-provoking idea, and it echoes some of the thinking of cosmologist Freeman Dyson’s famous 1979 paper ”Time Without End,” where he looked at life’s ability in the far, far future to act on an astrophysical scale in an open universe that need not evolve into a state of permanent quiescence. Where life and communication can continue for ever.

A joint study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Maryland (UMD) has revealed a previously undocumented protective function of the telomerase enzyme.

Telomerase is used by somatic cells too

It was thought for a long time that telomerase is only active in certain cell types, such as stem cells, immune cells, and embryonic cells, in order to protect them from aging. Aside from a few cell types and, of course, cancer cells, which are able to hijack the telomerase enzyme in order to replicate uncontrollably, researchers believed that the enzyme is switched off in other types of cells.

Instant Bestseller on Amazon, this new book is a collection of remarkable essays on our near future with AI, cybernetics, transhumanism, the Simulation Hypothesis, the Technological Singularity, the emergence of the Global Mind, and corresponding philosophical issues. Written by Alex M. Vikoulov; Foreword by Antonin Tuynman, PhD; Publisher: Ecstadelic Media Group; Publication Date: September 1, 2019; Format: Kindle eBook; Print Book Length: 245 pages; ISBN: 9781733426107; Price: $9.99.

Ecstadelic Media Group releases a new non-fiction book The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence. Written by Alex M. Vikoulov; Foreword by Antonin Tuynman PhD; Format: Kindle eBook (Press Release, San Francisco, CA, USA, September 3, 2019 11.00 AM PST)