Lifeboat Foundation

A lot of heat gets lost during the conversion of energy. Estimates even put it at more than 70%. However, in thermoelectric materials, such as those being studied at the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Wien, heat can be converted directly into electrical energy. This effect (the Seebeck effect) can be used in numerous applications in industry but also in everyday life.

Recently, Ernst Bauer’s research team made an exciting discovery in a thermoelectric material consisting of iron, vanadium and aluminum (Fe₂VAl). The researchers recently published their results in Nature Communications.

A unique ultra-faint dwarf galaxy has been discovered on the outer fringes of the Andromeda Galaxy thanks to the discerning eyes of an amateur astronomer examining archival data processed by NSF’s NOIRLab’s Community Science and Data Center. The dwarf galaxy — Pegasus V — was revealed to contain very few heavier elements and is likely to be a fossil of the first galaxies in follow-up observations by professional astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab.

An unusual ultra-faint dwarf galaxy has been discovered on the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy with the help of several facilities of NSF’s NOIRLab. Called Pegasus V, the galaxy was first detected as part of a systematic search for Andromeda dwarfs coordinated by David Martinez-Delgado from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain, when amateur astronomer Giuseppe Donatiello discovered a curious ‘smudge’ in data in a DESI

Continue reading “Unusual Fossil Galaxy Discovered on Outskirts of Andromeda — Could Reveal History of the Universe” »

Global Link Information Network was founded in 1995 by Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal Musk, and Greg Kouri who provided $6,000 in funding. Elon famously dropped out of pursuing a PhD at Stanford in energy physics/material science two days into the program to pursue the opportunity. Global Link Information Network was later renamed as Zip2 and served as a directory for local businesses. In 1996, Zip2 starts pulling data from American Business Information Inc. (ABI) and starts a self-comparison to yellow pages that will continue throughout its lifespan as a brand.

A timeline showing Elon Musk’s first website (Zip2) and its evolutions over the years, starting from 1996 and ending in 2004.

What would happen if you put a couple of physicists in a room with a rope, a box and a black hole? They might come up with a plan to power the Earth for centuries. Black holes aren’t something you come across every day. To make a black hole of your own, you’d have to squeeze a star ten times bigger than our Sun into a sphere the diameter of New York City.

Transcript and sources: https://whatif.show/what-if-we-could-harness-the-energy-of-a-black-hole/
Music: http://bit.ly/whatif-music.

Continue reading “What If We Could Harness the Energy of a Black Hole?” »

Use my link http://www.audible.com/isaac or text “ISAAC” to 500–500 to get a free book including a copy of “Rendevous with Rama” and a 30-day free trial of Audible.
Today we will begin our look at the spaceships we might use for colonizing interstellar space in the future. In order to cover the vast distances between even the nearest stars in our galaxy within the boundaries of known physics, we need vessels able to voyage at high speeds for very long periods of time while carrying everything they need to colonize another solar system, a concept typically known as a space ark or generation ship. We will explore the challenges and options for such a vessel, as well as some alternative approaches to the problem.

“The World, The Flesh And The Devil” by J.d. Bernal:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.

Continue reading “Generation Ships” »

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Continue reading “Is Interstellar Travel Impossible?” »

Researchers in Switzerland show that hydrogen injections into magnetically-contained plasma can double to yield significantly more energy.

Aging binary systems could be giving birth to second-generation planets.

When a Sun-like star exhausts the helium fuel in its core, it enters its death throes. Starved for fuel, it swells to a red giant, likely swallowing its innermost planets, and begins burning scraps of leftover hydrogen to helium. Periodically, these helium ashes reignite, causing the star to once again burn brightly and throw off its outer layers into space.

This volatile phase of stellar life is called the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). With so much happening, it would seem like a terrible environment for the delicate process of forming planets. But over the past couple decades, astronomers have begun to suspect that under some circumstances, this stage could result in a new disk of material surrounding the star, giving rise to a second generation of planets.

Continue reading “Astronomers spot signs of planets forming around dying stars” »

Suspended Google engineer Blake Lemoine made some serious headlines earlier this month when he claimed that one of the company’s experimental AIs called LaMDA had achieved sentience — prompting the software giant to place him on administrative leave.

“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” he told the Washington Post at the time.

The subsequent news cycle swept up AI experts, philosophers, and Google itself into a fierce debate about the current and possible future capabilities of machine learning, other ethical concerns around the tech, and even the nature of consciousness and sentience. The general consensus, it’s worth noting, was that the AI is almost certainly not sentient.