Lifeboat Foundation

Groot, the walking, talking tree from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ seems bizarre. But real-life biology shows how plant and animal traits can blend.

If you throw a ball at a wall, it’s going to bounce back at you – that’s classical physics at work. But of course, the world of quantum physics is much spookier, so if you did the same with a particle, there’s a chance that it will suddenly appear on the other side. This is thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, and now a team of physicists has measured just how long that process takes.

Scientists at CERN have today announced that they’re 99.99% sure that they’ve found a new sub-atomic particle, and that it is likely to be the elusive Higgs boson – often referred to as the “God Particle”. That’s all well and good, but what does it all mean? Let’s break it down…

In what may be the most exciting news of the week, University of Texas at Austin researchers have engineered a solar-powered device that absorbs moisture from the air and turns it into clean water.

SEE ALSO: 5 WELL ENGINEERED WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEMS COMBATING THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS

Continue reading “Solar-Powered Moisture Harvester Produces Clean Water From The Air” »

The U.S. space program is developing gigabit-per-second deep-space comms. China is on the hunt too.

Outer space is a tough environment for living organisms: no atmosphere, no oxygen, no gravity, a ton of radiation, and extreme temperatures.

But the German Aerospace Center just made a bombshell discovery: as part of a project called the Biology and Mars Experiment, they found that samples of organisms including bacteria, algae, lichens and fungi survived on the exterior of the International Space Station for 533 days.

Time may be a human construct but that hasn’t stopped physicists from perfecting it.

JILA’s 3D Quantum Gas Atomic Clock Offers New Dimensions in Measurement
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/10/jilas-3-D-quan…easurement
“JILA physicists have created an entirely new design for an atomic clock, in which strontium atoms are packed into a tiny three-dimensional (3D) cube at 1,000 times the density of previous one-dimensional (1-D) clocks. In doing so, they are the first to harness the ultra-controlled behavior of a so-called “quantum gas” to make a practical measurement device.”

Continue reading “This 3D Quantum Gas Clock Could Redefine Time” »

About the Presenter:
After getting his Ph.D. in physics from UC San Diego, Garrett moved to Maui, seeking an optimum balance between surfing and his theoretical research. While pursuing an unanswered question at the heart of Quantum Field Theory, he began to develop what he called “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which proposed a unified field theory combining particle physics and Albert Einstein’s theory of gravitation. His story and work have been featured at TED, in Outside Magazine, The New Yorker, Surfer, and recently in Scientific American.

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Continue reading “The Geometry of Particle Physics: Garrett Lisi at TEDxMaui 2013” »

Berlin is becoming a “Sponge City” designed to tackle two issues — heat and flooding — by imitating nature.

Video by Gloria Kurnik

Continue reading “Berlin is Becoming a Sponge City” »