Lifeboat Foundation

“Scientists and philosophers… had always assumed that the world worked by physical laws, and if you could measure initial conditions accurately enough, those laws would let you predict the future indefinitely. As James Gleick described it in his book Chaos: Making a New Science, this view was very wrong.”

“There was always one small compromise, so small that working scientists usually forgot it was there, lurking in a corner of their philosophies like an unpaid bill. Measurements could never be perfect,” he wrote. “Scientists marching under Newton’s banner actually waved another flag that said something like this: Given an approximate knowledge of a system’s initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behaviour of the system. This assumption lay at the philosophical heart of science.”

“Today we know how wrong this assumption was. The Three Body Problem is now recognized as a classic example of a chaotic system. Like the butterfly that causes a hurricane by flapping its wings, it is exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. The tiniest tweak can have massive consequences down the line.”

Continue reading “How Chinese scientists used a supercomputer to solve the ancient puzzle called the Three Body Problem” »

For the first time, scientists have witnessed the cataclysmic crash of two ultra-dense neutron stars in a galaxy far away, and concluded that such impacts forged at least half the gold in the Universe.

Shockwaves and light flashes from the collision travelled some 130 million light-years to be captured by Earthly detectors on August 17, excited teams revealed at press conferences held around the globe on Monday as a dozen related science papers were published in top academic journals.

“We witnessed history unfolding in front of our eyes: two neutron stars drawing closer, closer… turning faster and faster around each other, then colliding and scattering debris all over the place,” co-discoverer Benoit Mours of France’s CNRS research institute told AFP.

Continue reading “Neutron star smashup seen for first time, ‘transforms’ understanding of Universe” »

The fifth observation of gravitational waves (GW) marks the beginning of a new era in astronomy. On August 17, 2017, the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations detected neutron stars merging for the first time and immediately alerted observatories around the world. In a matter of minutes the event had been located, another first for GW astronomy, and telescopes around the world begun studying it almost immediately.

The event observed, called GW170817, was produced in galaxy NGC 4993, located 130 million light-years from Earth. The gravitational signal was the strongest ever observed, lasting over 100 seconds, and it emitted a gamma-ray burst (GRBs), providing the first piece of evidence that GRBs are produced by neutron star collisions. It also provided the strongest evidence yet that neutron star mergers are responsible for the creation of the heaviest elements in the universe, like gold and platinum.

The importance of this observation cannot be understated. We are witnessing Galileo pointing the telescope up, or Henrietta Swann Leavitt working out the relation that will be used to measure cosmic distances. This observation brings a completely new dimension to astronomy. The seven papers published in Nature, Nature Astronomy, and Astrophysical Journal Letter are also record-breakers. They have over 45,000 authors – around 35 percent of all active astronomers in the world – who worked at the over 70 observatories that helped to make this discovery.

Continue reading “In A Historic Discovery, A Neutron Star Merger Has Been Observed For The Very First Time” »

Offering more details on the happenings in space, astronomers have revealed an unexpected discovery surrounding a certain dwarf planet that goes by the name of Haumea.

The planet, which sits on the edge of the solar system, has a ring roughly 70 kilometers wide, with a radius of 2,287 kilometers.

Continue reading “Getting in With the Big Guys: Scientists Find Kuiper Belt Object With Ring” »

Scientists have designed a way to clean up space trash. Yep, space trash…

Scientists working at the observatory have witnessed an astronomical phenomenon that has never been seen before. The details will be released next week.

After one year of trial operations, China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), a 30-football-field-large radio telescope that is currently the world’s largest, recently discovered two pulsars 16,000 and 4,100 light years from Earth, respectively.

Pulsars are magnetized and rotating collapsed stars that emit electromagnetic beams. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) confirmed Tuesday that the new pulsars J1859-01 and J1931-01 were discovered on August 22 and 25 while the telescope was scanning the southern galactic plane. Australia’s Parkes radio telescope confirmed the discovery in September, state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

Continue reading “Massive Chinese Telescope Discovers Two Pulsars While Still in Trial Stage” »

Planetary Resources’ Exploration Mission.

Planetary Resources is embarking on the world’s first commercial deep space exploration mission. The purpose is to identify and unlock the critical water resources necessary for human expansion in space.

Continue reading “Planetary Resources’ Exploration Program” »

Astronomers re-examined data from NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft and found evidence of water from a region in the Martian equator. While the discovery is surprising, it’s definitely a welcome one. Water on Mars can help future exploration missions.

It’s long been known that Mars had large bodies of water some millions of years ago. Traces of these ancient Martian lakes and oceans have been found in recent years, thanks to information provided by probes and landers, like NASA’s Curiosity rover and the Odyssey spacecraft that currently orbits the red planet. Now, a team of astronomers from the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University found large deposits of what could be permafrost ice in the most unlikeliest of places on the Martian surface.