Lifeboat Foundation

Space Force and SpaceX announced that they’ve reached a deal for a brand-new military capability: Starshield. Is it a new laser defense shield against nuclear missiles? An Ultron for our time to destroy alien armadas? Or Starlink, but with new branding and (probably) a new fleet of satellites?

Yup, the last one. But with how clutch Starlink is in Ukraine, a military-controlled version of the network could change operations there. And it would dramatically improve U.S. and allied military communications in future conflicts. Now, the American military will lead military space-based communications with the start of Starshield. But expect allies to clamor aboard and other nations to try developing rival platforms.

Space Force has one of the most descriptive, succinct names in the modern military, but it appears to be even worse at naming its programs than the other branches. Still, its Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Program, or “PLEOP,” for acronym addicts who want to hear the sound of a dump every time they discuss the program, is promising.

The European Space Agency.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration and study of space. ESA was established in 1975 and has 22 member states, with its headquarters located in Paris, France. ESA is responsible for the development and coordination of Europe’s space activities, including the design, construction, and launch of spacecraft and satellites for scientific research and Earth observation. Some of ESA’s flagship missions have included the Rosetta mission to study a comet, the Gaia mission to create a 3D map of the Milky Way, and the ExoMars mission to search for evidence of past or present life on Mars.

You can now register.ing domains as part of an early access program. Some aren’t cheap: th.ing, for example, will cost you $38,999.99 per year from GoDaddy.

You can now register.ing domains as part of Google’s early access period, though you’ll have to pay “an additional one-time fee,” Google’s Christina Yeh wrote in a blog post. That fee will go down daily through December 5th. At 16:00 UTC (noon ET) on that date,.ing domains will officially be publicly available.

A few of us at The Verge have had some fun plugging different words into GoDaddy’s domain search to see what.ing domains are up for grabs. Some common words with-ing endings are really expensive; think.ing and buy.ing cost $38,999.99 and $129,999.99, respectively, per year to register. But I’ve found a few good ones that are pretty affordable — good luck on the hunt!

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Search for Extraterrestrial Life on Mars and other Planets and Moons.

Posted on Big Think, link at:

The astrophysicists, from Trinity and the Breakthrough Listen team and Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden, are scanning the universe for “technosignatures” emanating from distant planets that would provide support for the existence of intelligent, alien life.

Using the Irish LOFAR telescope and its counterpart in Onsala, Sweden, the team—led by Professor Evan Keane, Associate Professor of Radio Astronomy in Trinity’s School of Physics, and Head of the Irish LOFAR Telescope—plans to monitor millions of star systems.

Scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial radio signals for well over 60 years. Many of these have been carried out using single observatories which limits the ability to identify signals from the haze of terrestrial interference on Earth. Much of the effort has focused on frequencies above 1 GHz because the single-dish telescopes employed operate at these frequencies.

New research on information entropy may offer evidence for the theory that our universe is a sophisticated simulation, with deep implications for various fields, from biology to cosmology.

The simulated universe theory implies that our universe, with all its galaxies, planets and life forms, is a meticulously programmed computer simulation. In this scenario, the physical laws governing our reality are simply algorithms. The experiences we have are generated by the computational processes of an immensely advanced system.

While inherently speculative, the simulated universe theory has gained attention from scientists and philosophers due to its intriguing implications. The idea has made its mark in popular culture, across movies, TV shows, and books – including the 1999 film The Matrix.

The simulated universe theory implies that our universe, with all its galaxies, planets and life forms, is a meticulously programmed computer simulation. In this scenario, the physical laws governing our reality are simply algorithms. The experiences we have are generated by the computational processes of an immensely advanced system.

While inherently speculative, the simulated universe theory has gained attention from scientists and philosophers due to its intriguing implications. The idea has made its mark in popular culture, across movies, TV shows and books—including the 1999 film “The Matrix.”

The earliest records of the concept that reality is an illusion are from ancient Greece. There, the question “What is the nature of our reality?” posed by Plato (427 BC) and others, gave birth to idealism. Idealist ancient thinkers such as Plato considered mind and spirit as the abiding reality. Matter, they argued, was just a manifestation or illusion.

The molecular synthesizer once thought to be impossible to make is now quite a possibility due to this discovery with electron beams that can heal crystalline structures and also build objects from electron beams this could one day be amplified to create even food with light into matter electron beams. Also this could create even life or even rebirth a universe or planet or sun really eventually anything that is matter. Really it is a molecular assembler with nearly limitless applications.

Electron beams can be used to heal nano-fractures in crystals instead of causing further damage to them, as initially expected by researchers who now report their surprise findings. Used to power microscopes that examine the smallest materials in the universe, electron beams may also be able to be used to create novel microstructures one atom at a time.

A feat once thought impossible, researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) behind the discovery said it had been assumed that using electron beams to study nanostructures carried the additional risk of exacerbating microscopic cracks and flaws already in the material.

Continue reading “Electron Beams Magically Heal Microscopic Fractures, May Also Enable Creation of Objects One Atom at a Time” »

The idea of the multiverse has at least two conceptually distinct sources in theoretical physics: quantum mechanics and cosmology. The many worlds of quantum mechanics are very different in terms of their nature and origin from cosmology’s multiverse. However, physicists have reason to believe that ultimately, these two distinct multiverses are in fact one and the same, writes David Wallace.

In big budget science-fiction and fantasy franchises, the “multiverse” is a collection of universes – some quite like our own, some differing from ours only in the way some historical event played out or some person’s life unfolded, some vastly different and filled with strange wonders. But in the drier and more disciplined world of modern physics, “multiverse” means… well, pretty much the same, only without the prospect of easily moving from one universe to the next. The multiverse of physics is revealed more subtly, by hints hidden in our observations and our theories.

Or rather: the multiverses of physics are revealed more subtly. For remarkably, physics gives us not one but three different multiverses, and reasons to accept all three.