Lifeboat Foundation

Using a novel laser method, scientists mimicked the extreme environments of stars and planets, enhancing our understanding of astrophysical phenomena and supporting nuclear fusion research.

Extreme conditions prevail inside stars and planets. The pressure reaches millions of bars, and it can be several million degrees hot. Sophisticated methods make it possible to create such states of matter in the laboratory – albeit only for the blink of an eye and in a tiny volume. So far, this has required the world’s most powerful lasers, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California. But there are only a few of these light giants, and the opportunities for experiments are correspondingly rare.

A research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), together with colleagues from the European XFEL, has now succeeded in creating and observing extreme conditions with a much smaller laser. At the heart of the new technology is a copper wire, finer than a human hair, as the group reports in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists have measured the magnetic moment of the muon to unprecedented precision, more than doubling the previous record.

Physicists from the Muon g-2 Collaboration cycled muons, known as “heavy electrons,” in a particle storage ring at Fermilab in the United States to nearly the speed of light. Applying a magnetic field about 30,000 times stronger than Earth’s, the muons precessed like tops around their spin axis due to their own magnetic moment.

As they circled a 7.1-meter diameter storage ring, the muon’s magnetic moment, influenced by virtual particles in the vacuum, interacted with the external magnetic field. By comparing this precession frequency with the cycling frequency around the ring, the collaboration was able to determine the muon’s “anomalous magnetic moment” to a precision of 0.2 parts per million.

Studies of gravity variations at Mars have revealed dense, large-scale structures hidden beneath the sediment layers of a lost ocean. The analysis, which combines models and data from multiple missions, also shows that active processes in the Martian mantle may be giving a boost to the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons. The findings have been presented this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) in Berlin by Bart Root of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

Extreme conditions prevail inside stars and planets. The pressure reaches millions of bars, and it can be several million degrees hot. Sophisticated methods make it possible to create such states of matter in the laboratory – albeit only for the blink of an eye and in a tiny volume.

So far, this has required the world’s most powerful lasers, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California. But there are only a few of these light giants, and the opportunities for experiments are correspondingly rare. A research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), together with colleagues from the European XFEL, has now succeeded in creating and observing extreme conditions with a much smaller laser.

At the heart of the new technology is a copper wire, finer than a human hair, as the group reports in the journal Nature Communications (“Cylindrical compression of thin wires by irradiation with a Joule-class short-pulse laser”).

Integrating diverse data sources with different formats and standards also presents considerable challenges. Promoting open-source platforms and standardizing data formats are critical for facilitating data exchange within the space industry.

Robbie Robertson, CEO of Sedaro, identifies the main barrier to integrating digital twin technology as a cultural shift rather than technical feasibility. “The most substantial limitation is the change involved in adopting this new approach,” he explains. Overcoming the inertia of legacy tools to build a future-proof system is crucial. Additionally, addressing the shortage of skilled professionals is vital. Collaborations with institutions like MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and robust educational initiatives are essential to developing the next generation of engineers and scientists equipped to manage digital twins.

Continue reading “The Transformative Power Of Digital Twin Technology In Space Exploration” »

If we don’t understand why we’re conscious, how come we’re so sure that extremely simple minds are not? I propose to think of consciousness as intrinsic to computation, although different types of computation may have very different types of consciousness – some so alien that we can’t imagine them. Since all physical processes are computations, this view amounts to a kind of panpsychism. How we conceptualize consciousness is always a sort of spiritual poetry, but I think this perspective better accounts for why we ourselves are conscious despite not being different in a discontinuous way from the rest of the universe. Introduction ‘don’t hold strong opinions about things you don’t understand’ —Derek Hess Susan Blackmore believes the way we typically […].

Captured by the James Webb, the Little Red Dots indicate galaxies we’ve never seen before, and what’s inside them is unclear.

The team successfully tracked the orbit of the close companion and measured changes in the size of the Cepheid as it pulsated. The orbital motion showed that Polaris has a mass five times larger than that of the Sun. The images of Polaris showed that it has a diameter 46 times the size of the Sun.

The biggest surprise was the appearance of Polaris in close-up images. The CHARA observations provided the first glimpse of what the surface of a Cepheid variable looks like.

CHARA Array false-color image of Polaris from April 2021 that reveals large bright and dark spots on the surface. Polaris appears about 600,000 times smaller than the Full Moon in the sky.

“Traditional measures of chirality have struggled to identify the concentration of right-and left-handed molecules in samples containing almost equal amounts of both,” says physicist Nicola Mayer, from the Max Born Institute.

“With our new method, a tiny excess in the concentration of either mirror twin can be detected, possibly enough to make a life-changing difference.”

We’re not sure how chirality first emerged, but it may have originated from deep space, before going on to play a profound role in so many different aspects of life on Earth. Having instruments that can better detect chiral molecules would be a major step forward.