Lifeboat Foundation

In 2022, if all goes well, NASA will launch Psyche, a space probe intended to visit the asteroid of the same name (16 Psyche is its formal designation). It’s a particularly exciting mission given Psyche’s unique nature and highly unusual composition.

The asteroid belt is composed of three types of asteroid: C-type (carbonaceous, ~75 percent of all asteroids), S-type (silicate-rich, ~17 percent of asteroids) and M-type (metal-rich), which are roughly 10 percent of the total population. The numbers, in this case, don’t add up to 100 percent because we aren’t sure of the exact ratios. 16 Psyche is an M-type asteroid made of iron-nickel. What makes it unusual is that it’s believed to be the now-exposed core of a protoplanet. It’s also estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion dollars, if anybody has a towing hitch handy.

Continue reading “NASA Preps Mission to Most Interesting Asteroid in Our Solar System” »

Just as the modern computer transformed our relationship with bits and information, AI will redefine and revolutionize our relationship with molecules and materials. AI is currently being used to discover new materials for clean-tech innovations, such as solar panels, batteries, and devices that can now conduct artificial photosynthesis.

Today, it takes about 15 to 20 years to create a single new material, according to industry experts. But as AI design systems skyrocket in capacity, these will vastly accelerate the materials discovery process, allowing us to address pressing issues like climate change at record rates. Companies like Kebotix are already on their way to streamlining the creation of chemistries and materials at the click of a button.

Atomically precise manufacturing will enable us to produce the previously unimaginable.

Continue reading “5 AI Breakthroughs We’ll Likely See in the Next 5 Years” »

The cosmos are filled with roughly Earth-sized exoplanets. Various moons, comets, and planets have stores of water, organic molecules, and amino acids like those that make up life on Earth.

Cathal O’Donnell, a 3D bioprinting researcher at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbournethose odds — he argues in The Conversation that the abundance of potentially habitable worlds out there makes the discovery of extraterrestrial life “inevitable and possibly imminent.”

By Alex Vikoulov

After decades of research and development, fusion may be poised for its “SpaceX moment.”

A visualization of SPARC, a compact, experimental fusion facility now under construction on MIT’s campus. Ken Filar / PSFC Research Affiliate.

This book demystifies and rectifies the problems inherent in autism by examining in clear terms the whole panorama of the subject, not just individual bits, beginning with its history and including practical advice at every level, yet without being an overblown medical-type textbook.

The number of staff members and students who were under quarantine on Friday was up by about 400 from the day before, according to the authorities.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JCWbdpysGu4

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reportedly interested in a new wirelessly-connected contact lens recently unveiled in France, the latest in the agency’s ongoing search for small-scale technology to augment U.S. service members’ visual capabilities in the field.

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, shared a cryptic photo of famed explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expedition in a tweet on Friday.

But, with only the date of May 9 in the photo’s caption, the company left the context for the post unexplained. One likely meaning is the possible connection between Shackleton’s expedition and Blue Origin’s bid to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon.