Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space

Can AI build a machine that draws a heart? What automated mechanism design could mean for mechanical engineering

Can you design a mechanism that will trace out the shape of a heart? How about the shape of a moon, or a star? Mechanism design—the art of assembling linkages and joints to create machines with prescribed motion—is one of the quintessential activities of mechanical engineers, but has resisted automation for almost two centuries.

In his seminal 1841 book Principles of Mechanisms, Oxford professor Robert Willis famously noted, “When the mind of a mechanician is occupied with the contrivance of a machine, he must wait until, in the midst of his meditations, some happy combination presents itself to his mind which may answer his purpose.”

Almost 200 years later, we still teach machine design mostly by apprenticeship. While we can simulate machines of almost any complexity, systematic methods for design are known only for the most trivial contraptions.

The Genius of Computing with Light

Check out shortform and get a FREE trial and $50 OFF the annual plan! at https://www.shortform.com/DrBen.

PsiQuantum are world leaders in the race to utility-scale quantum computing, but they have been shrouded in mystery for over a decade…until now.

Thanks to some good fortune and incredible generosity from the PsiQuantum team I was able to get behind the scenes and see what makes their ground-breaking quantum computer ‘click’

You can see their public paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08820-7

0:00 Silicon Valley’s Most Secretive Quantum Computer.
1:38 A Quantum Computer that runs on Light.
6:03 How to Create a Single Photon.
9:00 How to Build a Quantum Clock.
10:48 Ad Read.
11:54 Detecting Single Photons.
15:00 Creating the Perfect Material.
18:19 How to do math with light.
21:45 How to Build a Scalable Quantum Computer.
24:27 Converting Space to Time.
27:25 The First Photonic Quantum Computer Demonstrator.

PATREON:👨‍🔬 🚀 http://patreon.com/DrBenMiles.

Continue reading “The Genius of Computing with Light” | >

Outer rocky world challenges planet-forming theory

Dr. Ryan Cloutier: “We’ve seen this pattern: rocky inside, gaseous outside, across hundreds of planetary systems. But now, the discovery of a rocky planet in the outer part of a system forces us to rethink the timing and conditions under which rocky planets can form.”

What can rocky planets orbiting in the outer parts of a solar system teach scientists about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in Science hopes to address as a team of scientists have discovered a rocky planet orbiting in the outer reaches of an exoplanetary system. This study has the potential to challenge longstanding hypotheses regarding the solar system architecture, specifically regarding rocky planets orbiting closer to their star and larger gas giants orbiting farther away.

For the study, the researchers analyzed four exoplanets in the LHS 1903 system orbiting a red dwarf star, the latter of which is smaller and cooler than our Sun. Due to the planets orbiting closer to their star than our planets orbiting our Sun, the researchers estimated the orbital periods for the four exoplanets were between 2.2 and 29.3 days. However, the researchers were surprised to discover that while the innermost planet was rocky and the second the third planets were gaseous, the outermost planet was also rocky. As a result, this finding contradicts longstanding notions about solar system architecture, specifically regarding our own solar system that rocky planets orbit closer to the star while outer planets are gaseous.

Moon’s Hidden Ridges Reveal Recent Tectonic Activity

“Since the Apollo era, we’ve known about the prevalence of lobate scarps throughout the lunar highlands, but this is the first time scientists have documented the widespread prevalence of similar features throughout the lunar mare,” said Dr. Cole Nypaver.

Does our Moon exhibit recent tectonic activity? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the potential for our Moon to have exhibited recent tectonic activity despite its interior not being geologically active. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the processes responsible for tectonic activity on planetary bodies and what this could mean for the formation and evolution of planets and moons throughout the cosmos.

For the study, the researchers created the first global map of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the Moon, which are small, narrow tectonic ridges located within the lava plains on the Moon and are similar to lobate scarps, another frequently observed geologic formation on the Moon. They have been hypothesized to result from the Moon shrinking as it’s cooled over billions of years, with the top crust bucking under the pressure of compression.

Using a combination of lunar global mosaics and images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs), the researchers successfully identified and mapped more than 1,100 new SMRs across the nearside of the Moon. Through this, the researchers demonstrated these SMRs are geologically young compared to the surrounding regions and are widely distributed among the lunar volcanic plains.

Jupiter’s clouds are hiding something big

Jupiter’s swirling storms have concealed its true makeup for centuries, but a new model is finally peeling back the clouds. Researchers found the planet likely holds significantly more oxygen than the Sun, a key clue to how Jupiter—and the rest of the solar system—came together. The study also reveals that gases move through Jupiter’s atmosphere much more slowly than scientists once thought. Together, the findings reshape our understanding of the solar system’s largest planet.

Towering clouds ripple across Jupiter’s surface in dramatic patterns. Like Earth’s clouds, they contain water, but on Jupiter they are far denser and far deeper. These layers are so thick that no spacecraft has been able to directly observe what lies below them.

Now, scientists have taken a major step toward solving that mystery. A new study led by researchers at the University of Chicago and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has produced the most detailed model of Jupiter’s atmosphere ever created. The work provides a deeper look into the planet’s interior without needing to physically descend into its crushing depths.

Long-term radio observations probe a relativistic binary pulsar system

Astronomers have analyzed the data from long-term radio observations of a binary pulsar known as PSR J1906+0746. Results of the new study, published February 5 on the arXiv pre-print server, deliver important information regarding the nature of this system.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. They are usually detected in the form of short bursts of radio emission; however, some of them are also observed via optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray telescopes.

A possible ice-cold Earth discovered in the archives of the retired Kepler Space Telescope

Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a sun-like star about 146 light-years away. The candidate planet, HD 137010b, might be remarkably similar to Earth, but it has one potentially big difference: It could be colder than perpetually frozen Mars.

A promising Earth-sized exoplanet emerges An international science team published a paper on the discovery, “A Cool Earth-sized Planet Candidate Transiting a Tenth Magnitude K-dwarf From K2,” in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Jan. 27, 2026. The team was led by astrophysics Ph.D. student Alexander Venner of the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany.

The orbital period of the planet—listed as a “candidate” pending further confirmation—is likely to be similar to Earth’s, around one year. Planet HD 137,010 b also might fall just within the outer edge of its star’s “habitable zone,” the orbital distance that could allow liquid water to form on the planet’s surface under a suitable atmosphere.

Scientists Continue to Trace the Origin of the Mysterious “Amaterasu” Cosmic Ray Particle

When the Amaterasu particle entered Earth’s atmosphere, the TAP array in Utah recorded an energy level of more than 240 exa-electronvolts (EeV). Such particles are exceedingly rare and are thought to originate in some of the most extreme cosmic environments. At the time of its detection, scientists were not sure if it was a proton, a light atomic nucleus, or a heavy (iron) atomic nucleus. Research into its origin pointed toward the Local Void, a vast region of space adjacent to the Local Group that has few known galaxies or objects.

This posed a mystery for astronomers, as the region is largely devoid of sources capable of producing such energetic particles. Reconstructing the energy of cosmic-ray particles is already difficult, making the search for their sources using statistical models particularly challenging. Capel and Bourriche addressed this by combining advanced simulations with modern statistical methods (Approximate Bayesian Computation) to generate three-dimensional maps of cosmic-ray propagation and their interactions with magnetic fields in the Milky Way.

Cognitive scientist explains how we ‘see’ what isn’t real

Imagine this: A person walks into a room and knocks a ball off a table.

Did you imagine the gender of the person? The color of the ball? The position of the person relative to the ball?

Yes and no, says cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman, the Morris Kahn Associate Professor of Psychology, who with Halely Balaban recently published a paper titled “The Capacity Limits of Moving Objects in the Imagination.” If you’re like most people, you probably thought about some of these things, but not others. People build mental imagery hierarchically, starting with the ideas of “person,” “room,” “ball,” and “table,” then placing them in relation to one another in space, and only later filling in details like color.

“Our imaginations are actually patchwork and fuzzy and not filled in,” he said. His theory: Your mind’s eye might be lazier than you think. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “You leave things out until you need them.”

For the latest installment of “One Word Answer,” we asked Ullman to elaborate further on the current scientific thinking behind “imagination.”

Less like a picture, more like a video game? “Our imaginations are actually patchwork and fuzzy and not filled in,” says Tomer Ullman.

Continue reading “Cognitive scientist explains how we ‘see’ what isn’t real” | >

/* */