Lifeboat Foundation

Imagine if we could use strong electromagnetic fields to manipulate the local properties of spacetime—this could have important ramifications in terms of science and engineering.

Electromagnetism has always been a subtle phenomenon. In the 19th century, scholars thought that electromagnetic waves must propagate in some sort of elusive medium, which was called aether. Later, the aether hypothesis was abandoned, and to this day, the classical theory of electromagnetism does not provide us with a clear answer to the question in which medium electric and magnetic fields propagate in vacuum. On the other hand, the theory of gravitation is rather well understood. General relativity explains that energy and mass tell the spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells masses how to move. Many eminent mathematical physicists have tried to understand electromagnetism directly as a consequence of general relativity. The brilliant mathematician Hermann Weyl had especially interesting theories in this regard. The Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla thought that electromagnetism contains essentially everything in our universe.

In the 1960s, American physicist Robert W. Bussard proposed a radical idea for interstellar travel: a spacecraft that relied on powerful magnetic fields to harvest hydrogen directly from the interstellar medium.

As it’s come to be known, the Bussard Ramjet has since been popularized by hard science fiction writers like Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, and science communicators like Carl Sagan. Unfortunately, a team of physicists recently analyzed the concept in more detail and concluded that Bussard’s idea is not practical. At a time when interstellar travel looks destined to become a real possibility, this analysis might seem like a wet blanket but is more of a reality check.

Continue reading “New research debunks a popular method for interstellar travel” »

For the first time, scientists were able to create ultrashort dark and bright light pulses that are linked together in tiny glass rings called microresonators. Each of the flashes consist of many different, precisely defined colors: a frequency comb. The combination of the pulses increases the color range of the emitted light from the microresonators. This new light source helps to make more precise sensors to trace for example lowest quantities of explosives at an airport or for distance sensors in autonomous cars to detect obstacles on a street.

It sounds like magic: Laser light of only one color produce a rainbow of many different colors. Scientists are able to produce this strange effect in microresonators, small disks made of glass. If they send a pulsed laser beam into these structures, ultrashort packets of light waves are running in its interior in circles. And start to send out light of different, evenly spaced frequencies like the teeth of a comb. The invention of the optical frequency comb was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005.

Now, researcher from the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen and the Imperial College London were able to produce for the first time an even stranger effect: By directing two Laser beams of slightly different infrared light at the outer rim of the microresonator they got two wave packets, called solitons: one bright and one dark, which run in circles. A dark pulse means having a constant light signal that goes dark for a very short time. Both dark and bright light pulses only last for 1/10¹³ th of a second.

Humans experience the world in three dimensions, but a collaboration in Japan has developed a way to create synthetic dimensions to better understand the fundamental laws of the Universe and possibly apply them to advanced technologies.

They published their results today (January 28, 2022) in Science Advances.

“The concept of dimensionality has become a central fixture in diverse fields of contemporary physics and technology in past years,” said paper author Toshihiko Baba, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University. “While inquiries into lower-dimensional materials and structures have been fruitful, rapid advances in topology have uncovered a further abundance of potentially useful phenomena depending on the dimensionality of the system, even going beyond the three spatial dimensions available in the world around us.”

Humans experience the world in three dimensions, but a collaboration in Japan has developed a way to create synthetic dimensions to better understand the fundamental laws of the universe and possibly apply them to advanced technologies.

They published their results on January 28, 2022 in Science Advances.

“The concept of dimensionality has become a central fixture in diverse fields of contemporary physics and technology in past years,” said paper author Toshihiko Baba, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University. “While inquiries into lower-dimensional materials and structures have been fruitful, rapid advances in topology have uncovered a further abundance of potentially useful phenomena depending on the dimensionality of the system, even going beyond the three spatial dimensions available in the world around us.”

Topics include the prospects of technological acceleration, Metaverse development and immersive computing, transcendence and cybernetic immortality, neurotechnologies and mind uploading, outer and inner space exploration, Global Mind and phase transition of humanity, physics of time and information, consciousness, evolutionary cybernetics, Chrysalis conjecture and Transcension hypothesis, Artificial General Intelligence and cyberhumanity, transhumanism and singularity, Fermi Paradox, Omega Point cosmology, Cybernetic Theory of Mind, and more. https://www.ecstadelic.net/e_news/metaverse-news-network-liv…x-vikoulov #Metaverse #Singularity #Transhumanism #Transcension #Futurism #Cybernetics #SyntellectHypothesis #AlexVikoulov

Scientists from the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe and the University of Minnesota, Tomotake Matsumura and Shaul Hanany, and their collaborators have made a new type of optical element that will improve the performance of telescopes studying radiation from the Big Bang.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relic radiation remnant from the big bang. It reaches our telescopes after traveling 14 billion years since the birth of the Universe. Studying the properties of this radiation, scientists infer the physics of the big bang, how clusters of galaxies form, and the matter and energy content in the Universe. Four Nobel prizes have been awarded for past studies of the CMB.

To study the CMB, telescopes must be tuned to wavelengths in which it is most intense, about 1–3 mm, and they must separate out shorter wavelength radiation that the atmosphere and Milky Way emit. Among the most effective optical elements that absorbs the short wavelength radiation but lets the CMB pass through is alumina, a material made of aluminum and oxygen and that is second in hardness only to diamond. One challenge with using alumina is that it also reflects almost 50% of the radiation impinging on it. Matsumura and Hanany have now come up with a new way to fabricate anti-reflective structures that reduce reflections fifty-fold.

The amazing thing about radio transients is that if you have enough frequency coverage, you can work out how far away they are. This is because lower radio frequencies arrive slightly later than higher ones depending on how much space they’ve traveled through.

Our new discovery lies about 4,000 light years away—very distant, but still in our galactic backyard.

We also found the radio pulses were almost completely polarized. In astrophysics this usually means their source is a strong magnetic field. The pulses were also changing shape in just half a second, so the source has to be less than half a light second across, much smaller than our sun.

The Concorde’s successor might be quieter.

NASA has completed the first test of the works on lowering the volume of supersonic flights in an effort to lift the ban on commercial supersonic flights, NASA’s Glenn Research Center announced.

The sonic booms happen when the merge of shock waves, created by breaking the sound barrier at the speed of 767 mph (1,235 kph). The huge amount of sound energy, approximately 110 decibels, generated by sonic booms sounds like thunderclaps or explosions and can be heard from 30 miles (48 km) away, which is why supersonic commercial flights are banned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). physicists confirm that they have achieved a stage in nuclear fusion called “burning plasma”.