Lifeboat Foundation

Plasma is the 4th state of matter and it comes in many flavors. You probably know it from it’s greatest hits, fire and lightning, but there is a lot more to plasma than most people are aware of. Cold plasma is my personal favorite as it has the same beautiful glow that all plasma have, but it’s no warmer than room temp and feels cold to the touch. In this video we go through my year long journey to harness this weird state of matter into a torch that can be used for future experiments and in the lab.

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Continue reading “Cold Fire You Can Touch — DIY Cold Plasma Torch” »

Seems odd o.,o probably something there o.o

Strong thunderstorms are possible throughout the evening hours.

The National Weather Service in Melbourne has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for southeastern St. Lucie County and northeastern Martin County until 10 p.m.

At 9:18 p.m., a severe thunderstorm was located 7 miles north of Indiantown, moving northeast at 15 mph.

Locations impacted include Port Saint Lucie, Walton, Stuart, Palm City and Saint Lucie Nuclear Power Plant.

Continue reading “Severe thunderstorm warning issued for parts of St. Lucie and Martin counties” »

The weather forecast appears to be trending slightly toward favorable conditions for the Space Coast’s next launch from Kennedy Space Center.

If schedules hold, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will likely encounter 60% “go” conditions for its 5:22 p.m. Tuesday liftoff from pad 39A, the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron said Saturday. The 230-foot rocket will carry about 60 Starlink satellites for the company’s tenth internet constellation mission.

Showers and thunderstorms are expected Tuesday but should move mostly inland just before the launch time.

Continue reading “Weather looks OK for next SpaceX Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral” »

Exclusive: project will store renewable energy and reduce climate-heating emissions.

Administrator Jim Bridenstine, leadership and a panel of scientists and engineers will preview the upcoming mission at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, June 17. Submit your questions during the briefing using #AskNASA!

Perseverance is a robotic scientist that will search for signs of past microbial life on Mars and characterize the planet’s climate and geology. It will also collect rock and soil samples for future return to Earth and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. The mission is scheduled to launch from Space Launch Complex 41 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:15 a.m. EDT July 20. It will land at Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. #CountdownToMars

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A re-energized Tropical Storm Cristobal advanced toward the U.S. Gulf Coast on Saturday, spawning a tornado in Florida and bringing the heavy rains that already caused flooding and mudslides in Mexico and Central America.

After weakening to a tropical depression while moving over land in Mexico’s Gulf coast, Cristobal headed back into the southern Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday and powered back up into a tropical storm. Forecasters said it would arrive on U.S. soil late Sunday but was not expected to grow into a hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm was expected to slowly strengthen until making landfall Sunday night along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Plant biologists have long sought a deeper understanding of foundational processes involving kinases, enzymes that catalyze key biological activities in proteins. Analyzing the processes underlying kinases in plants takes on greater urgency in today’s environment increasingly altered by climate warming.

Certain “SnRK2” kinases (sucrose-non-fermenting-1-related protein kinase-2s) are essential since they are known to be activated in response to drought conditions, triggering the protective closure of small pores on leaf surfaces known as stoma. These pores allow carbon dioxide to enter leaves, but plants also lose more than 90 percent of their water by evaporation through them. Pore opening and closing functions help optimize growth and drought tolerance in response to changes in the environment.

Now, plant biologists at the University of California San Diego have developed a new nanosensor that allows researchers to monitor SnRK2 protein kinase activity in live plant cells. The SnRK2 activity sensor, or “SNACS,” is described in the journal eLife.

In some cases, limited scientific drilling for research can help us understand magmatic and hydrothermal (hot water) systems; however, drilling to mitigate a volcanic threat is a much different subject with unknown consequences, high costs, and severe environmental impacts. In addition to the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect on whatever magma is stored beneath Yellowstone. At near-magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths.

Additionally, Yellowstone National Park is protected from geothermal resource development. World-famous features like Old Faithful Geyser and Grand Prismatic Spring depend on heat provided by the magma chamber deep below Yellowstone’s surface. Any allowed geothermal extraction would lower the pressure on the existing geysers and hot springs, altering their behavior and, in many cases, causing them to disappear.

Concerns about volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone typically involve a cataclysmic, caldera-forming event, but it’s unknown whether any such eruption will ever occur there again. Current seismic imaging of the magma reservoir reveals a system that is too crystalline to erupt on a grand scale.

Continue reading “Can we drill into Yellowstone to stop it from erupting?” »