Lifeboat Foundation

On May 1st, 2017 VSS Unity’s “feather” re-entry system was activated in flight for the first time. In this video, VSS Unity Project Engineer Gabe Williams describes the vehicle’s unique feathering re-entry system.

VSS Unity was piloted by Mark Stucky and Mike Masucci, with pilots Nicola Pecile and CJ Sturckow as well as flight test engineer Dustin Mosher in carrier aircraft VMS Eve. This test flight was the fourth glide flight (and eighth flight overall) of VSS Unity.

Researchers have developed an artificial womb to sustain the life of premature babies. That womb just proved successful in animal testing for the first time. This advance could radically transform the lives of millions of premature infants around the world.

The wombs look like nothing too spectacular. They appear more like oversized plastic bags with tubes and fluids rather than the Huxleyan tube babies of science fiction. However, eight of these external womb Biobags held a fetal lamb. During the growth, the lambs developed as their brain, lungs, and other vital organs grew. They grew wool. They even moved about and twitched. A few of the lambs have now grown into adulthood.

Continue reading “This Artificial Womb Just Successfully Grew a Sheep, Humans Could Be Next” »

Tom Gruber says AI memory enhancement is inevitable.

It’s over for oil.

Every car sold in India will be powered by electricity by the year 2030, according to plans unveiled by the country’s energy minister.

The move is intended to lower the cost of importing fuel and lower costs for running vehicles.

Continue reading “India to make every single car electric by 2030 in bid to tackle pollution that kills millions” »

Maybe 10 years away instead of 20?

The UK’s newest fusion reactor, ST40, was switched on last week, and has already managed to achieve ‘first plasma’ — successfully generating a scorching blob of electrically-charged gas (or plasma) within its core.

The aim is for the tokamak reactor to heat plasma up to 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) by 2018 — seven times hotter than the centre of the Sun. That’s the ‘fusion’ threshold, at which hydrogen atoms can begin to fuse into helium, unleashing limitless, clean energy in the process.

Continue reading “The UK Just Switched on an Ambitious Fusion Reactor” »

After 17 weeks inactive, the Large Hadron Collider has started up again – and it’ll soon be performing better than ever.

While the LHC typically takes an annual ‘winter break’ so technicians can perform repairs and upgrades, this year’s stop was longer than usual.

Continue reading “Cern has SUPERCHARGED the Large Hadron Collider” »

AI vs aging the ultimate showdown is in the making.

There are several scientists that are now convinced upon the idea that while aging is a natural occurrence that happens in all creatures, it is, in fact, a disease that can be treated or cured. In that regards, there are some scientists out there looking to slow down the process of aging, while others are looking to stop it all together.

Continue reading “Could Artificial Intelligence Really Be Used to Attain Human Immortality?” »

Researchers are perfecting technology that sniffs out signs of disease in breath, blood and urine.

A nice new write-up on my governor run: https://humanityplus.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/this-transhuma…alifornia/ #transhumanism

It’s a good time to be a transhumanist politician. As faith in the political establishment declines, new technologies, from gene editing to artificial intelligence, are transforming our lives faster than ever. The transhumanist author and politician Zoltan Istvan agrees. He thinks the time is ripe for pro-science and technology governance, and for leaders who will embrace the technologies that could fundamentally transform our conceptions of what it means to be human.

Istvan is a maverick who appears to thrive in an ‘outsider’ role. He self-published a sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013, which became a surprise bestseller on Amazon. In 2016, he made an unlikely run for US president as the leader of the Transhumanist Party. Now, he’s making a bid for Governor of California in the 2018 election under a Libertarian Party ticket.

Continue reading “This Transhumanist Politician Wants to be Governor of California” »