Lifeboat Foundation

A decade before Elon Musk founded his fast-rising rocket company, SpaceX, or spoke publicly about colonizing Mars, a different billionaire captivated the world with Biosphere 2.

Ed Bass, an oil tycoon, spent about $250 million to build and operate that facility as a proof-of-concept for a permanent, self-sustaining habitat on Mars. Four men and four women sealed themselves inside the airtight space in September 1991 and emerged two years later.

The experimental space-age facility served as the stage for a spectacular and controversial story of human endurance.

Abstractions navigates promising ideas in science and mathematics. Journey with us and join the conversation.

What happens if you launch satellites into space without government permission, but with government funding?

We may find out soon, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates satellite operations by US citizens and companies. It has completed an inquiry into the January launch of four small satellites built by a start-up called Swarm Technologies, and has referred the case to its enforcement bureau, according to a spokesperson.

The FCC, which does not comment on potential enforcement actions, can propose financial penalties and ban companies and individuals from operating satellites. Swarm’s CEO, Sara Spangelo, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Business Impact

If quantum computers threaten blockchains, quantum blockchains could be the defense.

Quantum computers could break the cryptography that conventional blockchains rely on. Now physicists say a way of entangling the present with the past could foil this type of attack.

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It’s 2018, and the Open Access debate has been settled: institutions, researchers, funders and the public all hate paywalled science, and only the journal publishers — whose subscription rates have gone up several thousand percent in recent decades, despite the fact that they don’t pay for research, review, editing, or (increasingly) paper — like locking up scholarship.

As April ends and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, summer approaches, let’s have a look at the progress of worldwide efforts to extend the summer of life.

Kazan 2018: Interventions to Extend Healthspan and Lifespan

The highlight of April was unquestionably the Interventions to Extend Healthspan and Lifespan Conference, which was held in Kazan, Russia on April 23–26. Featuring over 40 distinguished speakers from the field of aging research, this conference, which was the fifth in the series, included talks on epigenetics, genomics, metabolomics, aging biomarkers, bioinformatics, effective advocacy, and more. LEAF board director Elena Milova attended the event and had the chance to interview several of the experts present, such as Dr. Andrei Gudkov and Professor David Gems. We will publish more interviews of these speakers in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

ALON — Transparent Aluminum — is a ceramic composed of Aluminium, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Transparent Aluminum, was once pure science fiction, a technical term used in a Star Trek Movie from the 80’s.

In the movie Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk and his team, go back in time to acquire 2 whales from the past and transport them back to the future. Scotty needed some materials to make a holding tank for whales on his ship, but had no money to pay for the materials.

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No aliens yet, but we’ve learned a lot.

One year ago, Franck Marchis wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here’s an update.

NASA wants to send a space submarine to Saturn’s largest moon in hopes that it will bring us one step closer to discovering alien life.

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