Lifeboat Foundation

Humanity is slowly losing access to the night sky, and astronomers have invented a new term to describe the pain associated with this loss: “noctalgia,” meaning “sky grief.”

Along with our propensity for polluting air and water and the massive amounts of carbon we’re dumping into the atmosphere to trigger climate change, we have created another kind of pollution: light pollution.

The US has embarked on a program to develop electronic-warfare drone swarms, the latest in its multiple projects to master what could potentially be war-winning AI and drone technology, though with significant operational and strategic implications and risks.

This month, Breaking Defense reported that the US Navy is seeking industry and government agencies to participate in a July 2024 exercise called Silent Swarm 2024, which aims to demonstrate early-stage unmanned systems’ capabilities to fight on the electromagnetic battlefield.

Breaking Defense notes that the event, hosted by Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, will showcase “swarming, small, attritable” unmanned systems capable of distributed electromagnetic attack, deception, and digital payload delivery, with the tech must be within readiness levels (TRL) two to five, with higher numbers indicating more advanced systems.

Living things act with purpose. But where does purpose come from? How do humans make sense of their relation to the world and realize their ability to effect change? These fundamental questions of agency – acting with purpose – have perplexed some of the greatest minds in history including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr.

New research from Florida Atlantic University reveals groundbreaking insight into the origins of agency using an unusual and largely untapped source – human babies. Since goal-directed action appears in the first months of human life, the FAU research team used young infants as a test field to understand how spontaneous movement transforms into purposeful action.

For the study, infants began the experiment as disconnected observers. However, when researchers tethered one of the infants’ feet to a crib-mounted baby mobile, infants discovered they could make the mobile move. To catch this moment of realization like lightning in a bottle, researchers measured infant and mobile movement in 3D space using cutting-edge motion capture technology to uncover dynamic and coordinative features marking the “birth of agency.”

The 2022 eruption of a partially submerged volcano near Tonga produced ejecta that hurtled at 122 kilometers per hour—as determined by timing the ensuing rupture of a seafloor cable.

On January 15, 2022, Earth experienced its most explosive volcanic eruption in 140 years at Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, a partially submerged volcano in the Pacific Ocean near the Kingdom of Tonga’s main island. Now Michael Clare and Isobel Yeo of the UK’s National Oceanography Centre and their colleagues have determined the maximum speed of the underwater rock flows associated with this event [1]. Their study constitutes the most detailed investigation into the underwater aftermath of a powerful volcanic eruption and opens a new window onto a broad class of particle-laden flows.

The eruption at Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai hurled more than 6 km³ of debris up to a height of 57 km. When that ejecta plunged back to Earth, some of it struck the volcano’s steep underwater slopes, launching torrents of water-entrained sediment outward across the seafloor. Seven minutes after the initial eruption, Tonga lost its internet connection to the rest of the world, an event that Clare, Yeo, and their colleagues used to deduce the speed at which the entrained material moved.

The system could be used for battery-free underwater communication across kilometer-scale distances, to aid monitoring of climate and coastal change.

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.

‘Antarctica could transform from Earth’s refrigerator to a radiator’ as Earth is losing sea-ice that helps maintain balance in the planet’s temperature.

Recently, satellite data depicted that the sea ice in and around the Antarctica region reached record-low levels during winter.

This is a concerning development, given Antarctica’s historical resistance to global warming, BBC reported on Sunday (September 17). Scientists caution against unstable consequences of climate change in the polar regions.

Living things act with purpose. But where does purpose come from? How do humans make sense of their relation to the world and realize their ability to effect change? These fundamental questions of “agency”—acting with purpose—have perplexed some of the greatest minds in history including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr.

A Florida Atlantic University (FAU) study reveals groundbreaking insight into the origins of agency using an unusual and largely untapped source— human babies. Since goal-directed action appears in the first months of human life, the FAU research team used young infants as a test field to understand how spontaneous movement transforms into purposeful action.

Continue reading “New study uncovers origin of ‘conscious awareness’” »

We’ve highlighted a lot of bright innovators over the years, usually before they become household names. Sergey Brin of Google was on the list in 2002. JB Straubel was honored in 2008 when he was CTO of Tesla. That year also saw Andrew Ng make the list (he’s one of the biggest names in AI right now, and he came back this year to write an intro essay, which I highly recommend.)

As I looked through the folks who made the list in the climate and energy category in 2023, I noticed a few trends. In particular, there was a concentration in two areas I think a lot about: batteries and fuels. So let’s take a closer look at a few of this year’s innovators and consider what their work could mean for the future of climate action.

Continue reading “Meet the climate innovators of tomorrow” »

The problem of space debris would worsen even if we sent nothing else into orbit.

ESA’s Space Environment report 2023 was published last August and highlighted a key problem: space debris. “Our planet is surrounded by spacecraft carrying out important work to study our changing climate, deliver global communication and navigation services and help us answer important scientific questions,” noted the report.

“But some of their orbits are getting crowded and increasingly churning with deadly, fast-moving pieces of defunct satellites and rockets that threaten our future in space.”

Continue reading “Stop crowding earth’s orbital environment: ESA report” »