Lifeboat Foundation

Are there new, unknown particles that can explain dark matter and other mysteries of the universe? To try to answer this question, particle physicists typically sift through the myriad of particles that are produced in particle collisions. But they also have an indirect but powerful way of looking for new particles, which is to measure processes that are both rare and precisely predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. A slight discrepancy between the Standard Model prediction and a high-precision measurement would be a sign of new particles or phenomena never before observed.

One such process is the transformation, or “decay”, of a positively charged variant of a particle known as kaon into a positively charged pion and a neutrino–antineutrino pair. In a seminar that took place today at CERN, the NA62 collaboration reported two potential instances of this ultra-rare kaon decay. The result, first presented at the International Conference on Kaon Physics, shows the experiment’s potential to make a precise test of the Standard Model.

The Standard Model predicts that the odds of a positively charged kaon decaying into a positively charged pion and a neutrino–antineutrino pair (K⁺ → π⁺ ν ν) are only about one in ten billion, with an uncertainty of less than ten percent. Finding a deviation, even if small, from this prediction would indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Boston Dynamics is announcing this morning that Spot, its versatile quadruped robot, is now for sale. The machine’s animal-like behavior regularly electrifies crowds at tech conferences, and like other Boston Dynamics’ robots, Spot is a YouTube sensation whose videos amass millions of views.

Now anyone interested in buying a Spot—or a pack of them—can go to the company’s website and submit an order form. But don’t pull out your credit card just yet. Spot may cost as much as a luxury car, and it is not really available to consumers. The initial sale, described as an “early adopter program,” is targeting businesses. Boston Dynamics wants to find customers in select industries and help them deploy Spots in real-world scenarios.

A paint so impractical (and cool) — think matte black squared — you know some idiot will have to try it on a street car, even though it doesn’t like being left outside, or washed. This nanotube coating reflects just 0.036 percent of light.

Get your self-lacing Nikes ready, because its time to shred up the streets on your very own real hover board! After decades of waiting, the hoverboards seen in Back To The Future will now be available for your personal enjoyment. This is heavy, Doc.

$10,000.

An Israeli scientist has proposed a way to build a quantum propulsion machine by pushing on the electromagnetic fields within a quantum vacuum, generating a force that, theoretically, could be harnessed. Sounds simple enough, right? But leaving the complex jargon of quantum mechanics aside, the implications are pretty amazing.

Watch this robot do gymnastics 🤖.

The tool instrumental to the exploits of Michael J. Fox’s time-traveling Marty McFly would have ended on more than one occasion if not for the help of the futuristic skateboard.

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Making the world more epic, one giant robot at a time.

The quantum superposition principle has been tested on a scale as never before in a new study by scientists at the University of Vienna in collaboration with the University of Basel. Hot, complex molecules composed of nearly two thousand atoms were brought into a quantum superposition and made to interfere. By confirming this phenomenon—” the heart of quantum mechanics,” in Richard Feynman’s words—on a new mass scale, improved constraints on alternative theories to quantum mechanics have been placed. The work will be published in Nature Physics.

Quantum to classical?

The superposition principle is a hallmark of quantum theory which emerges from one of the most fundamental equations of quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation. It describes particles in the framework of wave functions, which, much like water waves on the surface of a pond, can exhibit interference effects. But in contrast to water waves, which are a collective behavior of many interacting water molecules, quantum waves can also be associated with isolated single particles.