Lifeboat Foundation

Most energy-producing technologies used today are unsustainable, as they cause significant damage to our planet’s natural environment. In recent years, scientists worldwide have thus been trying to devise alternative energy solutions that take advantage of abundant and natural resources.

In addition to solar energy, wind energy and seawater energy solutions, some physicists and engineers have been exploring the possibility of sourcing energy from nuclear fusion reactions. This is the process through which two atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus and an energetic neutron.

Two research teams working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) demonstrated new approaches to increase nuclear energy production via a laser-driven fusion reaction. Their findings, published in recent Nature and Nature Physics papers, open new exciting possibilities for one day using self-heating plasmas as sustainable energy sources.

Researchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences examined the validity of the theory of relativity with the highest accuracy in a study entitled “Exploring Lorentz Invariance Violation from Ultrahigh-Energy γRays Observed by LHAASO,” which was published in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters.

According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the fastest speed of matter in the Universe is the speed of light. Whether that limit is breachable can be tested by examining Lorentz symmetry breaking or Lorentz invariance violation.

“Using the world’s highest energy gamma rays observed by the Large High Altitude Air-shower Observatory (LHAASO), a large-scale cosmic ray experiment in Daocheng, Sichuan province, China, we tested Lorentz symmetry. The result improves the breaking energy scale of Lorentz symmetry by dozens of times compared with the previous best result. This is the most rigorous test of a Lorentz symmetry breaking form, confirming once again the validity of Einstein’s relativistic space-time symmetry,” said Prof. Bi Xiaojun, one of the paper’s corresponding authors. Prof. BI is a scientist at the Institute of High Energy Physics and a member of the LHAASO collaboration.

Circa 2020

It was an old idea of Stephen Hawking’s: Unseen “primordial” black holes might be the hidden dark matter. A new series of studies has shown how the theory can work.

A study by the University of Bonn: Observations fit poorly with the Standard Model of Cosmology.

The Standard Model of Cosmology describes how the universe came into being according to the view of most physicists. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now studied the evolution of galaxies within this model, finding considerable discrepancies with actual observations. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Charles University in the Czech Republic were also involved in the study. The results have now been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Most galaxies visible from Earth resemble a flat disk with a thickened center. They are therefore similar to the sports equipment of a discus thrower. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, however, such disks should form rather rarely. This is because in the model, every galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter. This halo is invisible, but exerts a strong gravitational pull on nearby galaxies due to its mass. “That’s why we keep seeing galaxies merging with each other in the model universe,” explains Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than all previous versions. It contains carbon fiber that serves simultaneously as an electrode, conductor, and load-bearing material. Their latest research breakthrough paves the way for essentially ’massless’ energy storage in vehicles and other technology.

The batteries in today’s electric cars constitute a large part of the vehicles’ weight, without fulfilling any load-bearing function. A structural battery, on the other hand, is one that works as both a power source and as part of the structure – for example, in a car body. This is termed ‘massless’ energy storage, because in essence the battery’s weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. Calculations show that this type of multifunctional battery could greatly reduce the weight of an electric vehicle.

Continue reading “Big Breakthrough for ‘Massless’ Energy Storage: Structural Battery That Performs 10x Better Than All Previous Versions” »

It’s hard to spot a black hole.

There are two different approaches to such detection. In “X-ray binary stars” — in which a star and a black hole orbit a shared center while producing X-rays — a black hole’s gravitational field can pull material from its companion. The material circles the black hole, heating up by friction as it does so.

The hot material glows brightly in X-ray light, making the black hole visible, before being sucked into the black hole and disappearing. You can also detect pairs of black holes as they merge together, spiraling inwards and emitting a brief flash of gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime.

Continue reading “Scientists may have just found an invisible black hole — should you be worried?” »

We can’t make transistors any smaller, is this the end of Moore’s Law?

There has been a lot of talk about the end of Moore’s Law for at least a decade now and what kind of implications this will have on modern society. Since the invention of the computer transistor in 1947, the number of transistors packed onto the silicon chips that power the modern world has steadily grown in density, leading to the exponential growth of computing power over the last 70 years. A transistor is a physical object, however, and being purely physical it is governed by laws of physics like every other physical object. That means there is a physical limit to how small a transistor can be. Back when Gordon Moore made his famous prediction about the pace of growth in computing power, no one was really thinking about transistors at nanometer scales. But as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, our reliance on packing more transistors into the same amount of silicon is brushing up against the very boundaries of what is physically possible, leading many to worry that the pace of innovation we’ve become accustomed to might come to a screeching end in the very near future.

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Continue reading “No more transistors: The end of Moore’s law” »

Stephen Hawking made terrifying predictions of the future. Based on science, the late British physicists predicted several things that could happen on Earth, from the rise of powerful Artificial intelligence to fearful robots poised to destroy humankind. Hawking also spoke about how it was dangerous to search for aliens and how global warming could destroy Earth as we know it.

However, Stephen Hawking also spoke about how abrupt advances in genetic science could lead to creating a future generation of superhumans that could eventually destroy humanity as we know it.

In recently published papers, Prof. Hawking predicted that an elite class of physically altered, intellectually powerful humans could come into existence from rich people choosing to edit their existing DNA and manipulate future generations’ genetic markup.

Fundamental constants like e and π are ubiquitous in diverse fields of science, including physics, biology, chemistry, geometry, and abstract mathematics. Nevertheless, for centuries new mathematical formulas relating fundamental constants are scarce and are usually discovered sporadically by mathematical intuition or ingenuity.

Our algorithms search for new mathematical formulas. The community can suggest proofs for the conjectures or even propose or develop new algorithms. Any new conjecture, proof, or algorithm suggested will be named after you.