Lifeboat Foundation

In an ongoing game of cosmic hide and seek, scientists have a new tool that may give them an edge. Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a computer program incorporating machine learning that could help identify blobs of plasma in outer space known as plasmoids. In a novel twist, the program has been trained using simulated data.

The program will sift through reams of data gathered by spacecraft in the magnetosphere, the region of outer space strongly affected by Earth’s magnetic field, and flag telltale signs of the elusive blobs. Using this technique, scientists hope to learn more about the processes governing magnetic reconnection, a process that occurs in the magnetosphere and throughout the universe that can damage communications satellites and the electrical grid.

Scientists believe that machine learning could improve plasmoid-finding capability, aid the basic understanding of magnetic reconnection and allow researchers to better prepare for the aftermath of reconnection-caused disturbances.

As bristling with volcanoes as a porcupine with quills, Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System. At any given time, around 150 of the 400 or so active volcanoes on Io are erupting. It’s constantly spewing out lava and gas; a veritable factory of volcanic excretions.

And, thanks to the Juno probe’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) imaging Jupiter and its surrounding environment, we now know a lot more about what a gloriously hot mess Io is.

Continue reading “The Whole Surface of This Hellish Moon Is Covered in Lakes of Lava” »

Little more than a handful of corroded bronze wheels and heavily encrusted gears now remains of the ancient artifact called the Antikythera mechanism, leaving archaeologists to speculate over its functionality and purpose.

After decades of study, it’s largely agreed that the millennia-old device was something of an analog computer capable of keeping track of celestial movements. Yet with only fractured fragments to go by, researchers can only guess at the more intricate methods of its operation.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow in the UK have now used statistical modeling techniques borrowed from the study of gravitational waves to extrapolate missing details of a critical dial on Antikythera mechanism.

Shortform link: https://shortform.com/artemIn this video we will explore the concept of Hopfield networks – a foundational model of associative memory that u…

Patreon: https://bit.ly/3v8OhY7Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Insti…

Dr. Georg Northoff is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and philosopher holding doctorates in all three disciplines. In this episode, we begin by discussing the self, and consciousness. We then enter into a dialogue about what he terms the world-brain problem, in contrast to the mind-body problem. He shares what he means by the neuroecological approach, why space and time are central to understanding the mind, and how it has foundational implications to diagnosis, treatment and research. We then talk about the practical implications of his viewpoint, for laymen and professionals alike. We follow by pivoting to cover topics such as the importance of philosophy in science, his stance on free will, and a series of rapid fire bonus questions that you don’t want to miss out on. We end on a review of his journey into becoming an MD, Ph.D, his future projects and words of wisdom for anyone listening. I invite you to skip around if you find any of these topics of particular interest to you.

Website: drchancnc.com.
Instagram: @draldrichan.
Guest website: http://www.georgnorthoff.com/

Continue reading “CNC Dialogues — Georg Northoff & Aldrich Chan: Space, Time, Self & Consciousness” »

What if we could find a way to make electric currents flow, without energy loss? A promising approach for this involves using materials known as topological insulators. They are known to exist in one (wire), two (sheet) and three (cube) dimensions; all with different possible applications in electronic devices.

Theoretical physicists at Utrecht University, together with experimentalists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, have discovered that topological insulators may also exist at 1.58 dimensions, and that these could be used for energy-efficient information processing. Their study was published in Nature Physics.

Classical bits, the units of computer operation, are based on electric currents: electrons running means 1, no electrons running means 0. With a combination of 0’s and 1’s, one can build all the devices that you use in your daily life, from cellphones to computers. However, while running, these electrons meet defects and impurities in the material, and lose energy. This is what happens when your device gets warm: the energy is converted into heat, and so your battery is drained faster.

Daedalus could have learned a thing or two from a team of physicists in the UK and Switzerland.

Taking principles from fractal geometry and the strategic game of chess, they have created what they say is the most fiendishly difficult maze ever devised.

Led by physicist Felix Flicker of the University of Bristol in the UK, the group has generated routes called Hamiltonian cycles in patterns known as Ammann-Beenker tilings, producing complex fractal mazes that, they say, describe an exotic form of matter known as quasicrystals.

The ATLAS Experiment at CERN has made two years’ worth of scientific data available to the public for research purposes. The data include recordings of proton–proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a collision energy of 13 TeV.

This is the first time that ATLAS has released data on this scale, and it marks a significant milestone in terms of public access and utilization of LHC data.

Continue reading “CERN’s ATLAS experiment releases 65 TB of open data for research” »