Lifeboat Foundation

Slight variations in the moon’s gravitational tug have hinted that kilometers-wide caverns lurk beneath the lunar surface. Like the lava tubes of Hawaii and Iceland, these structures probably formed when underground rivers of molten rock ran dry, leaving behind a cylindrical channel. On Earth, such structures max out at around 30 meters across, but the gravitational data suggest that the moon’s tubes are vastly wider.

Other satellites had found the openings of large lunar lava tubes and caves.

• The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now imaged over 200 pits that show the signature of being skylights into subsurface voids or caverns, ranging in diameter from about 16 feet (5 meters) to more than 2,950 feet (900 m), although some of these are likely to be post-flow features rather than volcanic skylights.

Happy Holidays! The Transhumanist Future of #Christmas! http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-transhumanist-future-of-christmas #Future

Kids might be disappointed.

Salk Institute scientists have extended the average lifespan of live mice by 30 percent, according to a study published December 15 in Cell. They did that by rolling back the “aging clock” to younger years, using cellular reprogramming.

Continue reading “Cellular reprogramming turns back the aging clock in mice” »

Aging as a disease or Uber-disease is gaining traction and pressure is mounting on the WHO to include it as it fits their definition of a disease state.

Failing to classify aging as a disease is slowing progress and costing lives. We need to change the paradigm.

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Even the robots are getting involved in science smile

It looks like the folks at CellAge are using robots to help them with their research and you can get one of these awesome “Marty” robots too when you support their project at Lifespan.io.

Continue reading “CellAge Campaign: Marty the Robot Reward” »

Waymo, the newly-minted Alphabet company that was previously Google’s self-driving car project, has a new addition to its vehicle fleet: 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans, which were produced by Fiat Chrysler specifically for the purpose of making them fully autonomous using Waymo’s tech, onboard computer power, sensors and telematics. The 100 new cars will join Waymo’s other self-driving vehicles in active service on public roads for more testing starting early next year.

These vehicles were created through a close partnership between Waymo and FCA that actually saw engineering teams from both companies co-located at a Michigan engineering site, and testing of tech through the development process happened both in Chelsea, Michigan, and Yucca, Arizona on the FCA side, and at Waymo’s own test facilities in California.

While the Chrysler Pacificas used are based on the 2017 production model that consumers can buy, changes were made to the vehicles’ electrical, powertrain and structural systems, as well as to the vehicle chassis itself, in order to make them better suited for using Waymo’s tech. This results in a much tighter integration than if the Alphabet company had just purchased Chrysler vehicles off the line and done their own aftermarket modifications on stock vehicles. Still, from project outset to these being ready to enter service took only six months, according to FCA.

Continue reading “Here’s our first look at Waymo’s new self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans” »

Verlinde’s emergent gravity theory makes one very important implication: dark matter does not exist. His research makes sense of the behavior of gravity without the need for the existence of a dark matter particle.

Researchers from the Leiden Observatory have studied more than 33,000 galaxies to see if Verlinde’s theory checks out—and the results show that it is, in fact, more accurate at confirming the universe’s gravity distribution than Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Continue reading “A New Theory of Gravity Just Passed its First Test. Here’s What This Means for Physics” »

Millennium Space Systems have reached a major development milestone for their ALTAIR satellite ahead of a proposed launch in March 2017. They have announced that the first satellite has completed development and been shipped. The satellite was enabled by additive manufacturing and has now gained flight qualification.

Paul Swanson, Millennium Space’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations program manager, explained the importance of reaching this target,

This flight qualification of our ALTAIR™ spacecraft represents a key milestone in providing low-risk and very high-platform performance coupled with affordability as the company transitions to full-scale manufacturing of our ALTAIR™ product line and anticipated ALTAIR™ constellations.

Continue reading “3D printing enabled ALTAIR satellite ready to launch in 2017” »