Lifeboat Foundation

With sound extinguishers we can basically use no water would be good for space stations.

A self-assembling space habitat, a deep sleep chamber to shuttle astronauts on long journeys, and a protective magnetic force field are the latest projects NASA is embarking on.

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) Program is responsible for funding futuristic space concepts that could, as NASA puts it, “change the possible.” It’s not enough to merely be a cool concept, though—projects are also screened for technical plausibility. In its latest round of funding, NIAC’s Phase II program has selected eight projects to move ahead. Among the most promising ones are three focusing on how to build livable future habitats in space.

Physicists have demonstrated a new way to obtain the essential details that describe an isolated quantum system, such as a gas of atoms, through direct observation. The new method gives information about the likelihood of finding atoms at specific locations in the system with unprecedented spatial resolution. With this technique, scientists can obtain details on a scale of tens of nanometers—smaller than the width of a virus.

Experiments performed at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a research partnership between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, use an optical lattice—a web of laser light that suspends thousands of individual atoms—to determine the probability that an atom might be at any given location. Because each individual atom in the lattice behaves like all the others, a measurement on the entire group of atoms reveals the likelihood of an individual atom to be in a particular point in space.

Published in the journal Physical Review X, the JQI technique (and a similar technique published simultaneously by a group at the University of Chicago) can yield the likelihood of the atoms’ locations at well below the wavelength of the light used to illuminate the atoms—50 times better than the limit of what optical microscopy can normally resolve.

Continue reading “Researchers shed new light on atomic ‘wave function’” »

Astronomers are puzzling over a paucity of planets in the galaxy measuring between 1.5 and two times Earth’s size.

The billionaire tycoon’s ideas draw from the vision of physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, who pioneered concepts for space settlements in the 1970s.

Physicist Gerard K. O’Neill proposed a space settlement design based on giant cylinders. Rick Guidice / NASA.

A new study wants to protect the solar system from runaway human industry by making 85% of extraterrestrial resources off-limits.

Right now Chandra is gazing at a galaxy cluster in Draco. Nearby is the famous Tadpole Galaxy, seen here with thousands of galaxies in the background! The Tadpole’s tail of stars is over 280,000 light years long, stretched by gravity during a previous close encounter with another galaxy!

As we look forward to #Moon2024 mission, we’re sharing these highlights of our favorite neighbor taken from the International Space Station and Earth:

Photographs of the moon taken by astronauts in space and individuals on Earth.

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Continue reading “Moon: Exploration is in our DNA and our closest celestial friend, the Moon, is a treasure chest of science!” »

NASA finally seems serious about a crewed lunar return; this time with the first female astronaut to walk on the Moon’s surface.