Lifeboat Foundation

One problem with a return mission to Neptune is that a flyby focused solely on that world does not provide significant bang for the buck. Without the lucky alignment available to missions in the 1970s and ’80s, we’d have to spend even more fuel to send a probe in that direction, and we wouldn’t get that much more science than we did decades ago.

The next logical step after a successful flyby mission is an orbiter, but the extreme distance to Neptune poses significant challenges. We have no clear way to haul a large enough orbiter to the Neptune system, pack enough fuel to allow it to slow down and do it all in a reasonably short amount of time.

However, researchers have shared a radical new idea for how to overcome these challenges: Use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to capture a spacecraft.

Microsoft Research, the R&D arm of the Redmond software giant, is testing the storage of huge amounts of data on glass plates in a futuristic initiative dubbed “Project Silica.” If successful, it could be used to store information for thousands of years without degradation.

The Microsoft researchers store the data in the glass using three-dimensional pixels called voxels. In contrast to classical storage methods such as magnetic spinning disks, the “saucer-sized glass plates of Project Silica will store data for thousands of years and create sustainable storage for the world,” as Microsoft describes it.

Magnetic storage, while widely used, is problematic, according to Microsoft. Because of their limited lifespan, they need to be recopied frequently, which increases energy consumption and operating costs over time: “A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you’re brave, it might last ten years”, explains Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer, Project Silica.

“This is real physics, not science fiction”. Two physics experiments showed that it is possible to produce energy inside an energy vacuum.

The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works.

ABSTRACT. The production mechanism of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) is still a mystery, and correlations between burst occurrence times and energies may provide important clues to elucidate it. While time correlation studies of FRBs have been mainly performed using wait time distributions, here we report the results of a correlation function analysis of repeating FRBs in the 2D space of time and energy. We analyse nearly 7,000 bursts reported in the literature for the three most active sources of FRB 20121102A, 20201124A, and 20220912A, and find the following characteristics that are universal in the three sources. A clear power-law signal of the correlation function is seen, extending to the typical burst duration (∼ 10 msec) towards shorter time intervals (Δt). The correlation function indicates that every single burst has about a 10–60 per cent chance of producing an aftershock at a rate decaying by a power law as ∝ (Δt)^−p with p = 1.5–2.5, like the Omori–Utsu law of earthquakes. The correlated aftershock rate is stable regardless of source activity changes, and there is no correlation between emitted energy and Δt. We demonstrate that all these properties are quantitatively common to earthquakes, but different from solar flares in many aspects, by applying the same analysis method for the data on these phenomena. These results suggest that repeater FRBs are a phenomenon in which energy stored in rigid neutron star crusts is released by seismic activity. This may provide a new opportunity for future studies to explore the physical properties of the neutron star crust.

Astronomers are one step closer to understanding one of the most enduring solar mysteries, having captured unprecedented data from the sun’s magnetic field.

The groundbreaking data collected from the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii—the most powerful solar telescope in the world—has provided the most detailed representations to date of the magnetic field of the so-called ‘quiet’ surface of the sun.

An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Sheffield, believe the data has implications for how we model energy transfer between the layers of the sun. The research has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Conservation laws are central to our understanding of the universe, and now scientists have expanded our understanding of these laws in quantum mechanics.

A conservation law in physics describes the preservation of certain quantities or properties in isolated physical systems over time, such as mass-energy, momentum, and electric charge.

Conservation laws are fundamental to our understanding of the universe because they define the processes that can or cannot occur in nature. For example, the conservation of momentum reveals that within a closed system, the sum of all momenta remains unchanged before and after an event, such as a collision.

Engineers at Aalto University have developed an improved method for long-distance wireless charging. By enhancing the interaction between transmitting and receiving antennas and leveraging the “radiation suppression” phenomenon, they’ve deepened our theoretical understanding of wireless power transfer beyond the traditional inductive methods, a significant advancement in the field.

Charging over short distances, such as through induction pads, uses magnetic near fields to transfer power with high efficiency, but at longer distances the efficiency dramatically drops. New research shows that this high efficiency can be sustained over long distances by suppressing the radiation resistance of the loop antennas that are sending and receiving power.

The University of Cincinnati has developed a new, water-free redox flow battery design that operates at four volts, eliminating the need for expensive membranes and offering safer and cost-effective energy storage solutions.

Adopting a nanoscale approach to developing materials and designing experiments benefits research on batteries, supercapacitors and hybrid devices at all technology readiness levels.