Lifeboat Foundation

During the mid-twentieth century, managing the household was transformed by the mainstreaming of technological innovations such as washing machines, dishwashers, and vacuum cleaners.

Perhaps in three decades from now, technology will have evolved to a level to allow humanoid robots, such as Andrew played by the late Robin Williams in the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, to take over the household chores entirely.

Whether or not this represents a flight of fancy, what we know is that technological advancement rarely happens in great leaps but rather, through incremental steps.

Last week, China launched what was seen as its most ambitious manned space mission. Shortly after this, the communist country has announced another breakthrough in its rocket engine technology.

On October 16 China launched a spacecraft with three astronauts (taikonauts) on board, including a woman, into the core module of what is believed to be China’s own future space station in the Earth’s orbit. The astronauts are expected to stay in space for six months, which is the longest duration for a Chinese manned space mission so far.

An attempt to evade missile defenses threatens to worsen a costly arms race.

The Co-founder of Formic Ventures, Michael Antonov, is using logic and innovation to drive the longevity sector forward.

https://youtu.be/Z4SXarl6i1k The James Webb Space Telescope will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Webb’s flight into orbit will take place on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Webb is the next great space science observatory, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb will see farther into our origins – from the formation of stars and planets, to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe.

Circa 2019 o.o

After raising almost $3 billion, Ginkgo Bioworks has built the world’s largest DNA factory in a bid to alter the code behind life and replace traditional manufacturing with biology.

#Science #HelloWorld #BloombergQuicktake.
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The CEO of SES says consolidation of the satellite industry is more likely than ever to improve its overall return on investment.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The chief executive of satellite operator SES says consolidation of the satellite industry is more likely than ever to improve its overall return on investment, but that the structure of the industry might hinder such deals.

Speaking at the Satellite Innovation conference here Oct. 5 Steve Collar addressed growing perceptions that the industry is ready for a wave of deals like the unsolicited proposal by telecom magnate Patrick Drahi last week to acquire Eutelsat for $3.2 billion. While Eutelsat rejected the deal, it appeared to leave the door open for a revised, higher offer.

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It’s not often that messing around in the lab has produced a fundamental breakthrough, à la Michael Faraday with his magnets and prisms. Even more uncommon is the discovery of the same thing by two research teams at the same time: Newton and Leibniz come to mind. But every so often, even the rarest of events does happen. The summer of 2021 has been a banner season for condensed-matter physics. Three separate teams of researchers have created a crystal made entirely of electrons — and one of them actually did it by accident.

The researchers were working with single-atom-thick semiconductors, cooled to ultra-low temperatures. One team, led by Hongkun Park along with Eugene Demler, both of Harvard, discovered that when very specific numbers of electrons were present in the layers of these slivers of semiconductor, the electrons stopped in their tracks and stood “mysteriously still.” Eventually colleagues recalled an old idea having to do with Wigner crystals, which were one of those things that exist on paper and in theory but had never been verified in life. Wigner had calculated that because of mutual electrostatic repulsion, electrons in a monolayer would assume a tri-grid pattern.

Continue reading “Straight Out of Science Fiction: Scientists Create a Crystal Made Solely of Electrons” »