Lifeboat Foundation

If you’re frustrated with slow wi-fi, you might be one of the many people eagerly awaiting the commercialisation of li-fi (or light-based wi-fi), which promises to be up to 100 times faster than the connections we use today.

Most li-fi systems rely on transmitting data via LED bulbs, which means there are some limitations to how easily the technology could be applied to systems outside the lab. But researchers have come up with a new type of li-fi that uses infrared light instead, and it’s reportedly already cracked 40 gigabits per second (gbps) in early testing.

For those who missed the li-fi hype, the communications system was first invented in 2011, based on the idea of transmitting data via the imperceptible flickering of LED light — think morse code happening so fast, it’s invisible to the human eye.

Continue reading “A New Type of Li-Fi Has Reportedly Cracked 40 Gbps, 100 Times Faster Than the Best Wi-Fi” »

Estonia will receive a 100th birthday gift next year that will be truly out of this world – as part of the country’s centenary celebrations in 2018, ESTCube will unveil its second satellite while its team embarks on a mission across Estonia to educate young people about opportunities within the space industry.

ESTCube-2 will be three times larger and far more complex than its predecessor, ESTCube-1, which turned Estonia into an unlikely space nation when it entered orbit in 2013.

ESTCube-2 is planned to blast off in 2019 and will operate at approximately 680 kilometres (423 miles) above Earth, which is almost twice as high as the International Space Station. However, the satellite is being designed to boldly go much further.

Continue reading “Estonia’s mission to the moon could revolutionise space travel” »

Cosmic radiation poses one of the biggest health risks for astronauts on long space missions, but clay extracted from space rocks could protect them.

More applications are requiring ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 functional safety certification—such as ADAS and self-driving cars—and software tools are following suit.

Ultimately, Hawking has long been an advocate of commercial spaceflight, and to this end, he notes that he greatly admires Virgin Galactic’s role in democratizing space, specifically, he clarified his “respect for enabling more of humanity to experience the true wonder of space.”

I have said in the past ‘Look up at the stars and not down at your feet’, but I believe that ‘looking up’ will no longer be a requirement to see the universe in all its glory.

Stephen Hawking is going to go to space.

The cosmologist and physicist will leave the Earth on board Richard Branson’s spaceship, he has said.

Professor Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he’d never dreamed he’d be able to head into space. But “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately”, he said.

Continue reading “Stephen Hawking will travel to space on board Richard Branson’s ship, professor says” »

“Yep, transforming health care and telepathy, those are the items on her to-do list. Jepsen plans to achieve both goals with a cheap wearable device that her engineers are now tinkering with in the lab. And then there’s the side benefit of reinvigorating the tired consumer electronics industry, which Jepsen thinks is due for the next big thing.

Jepsen was at SXSW to give a talk about Openwater, her new startup. While the company is still conducting R&D to decide on its first products, Jepsen feels the need to speak out now about what she’s building and how she thinks her technology could radically change society. She wants to give people fair warning and time to think about what’s coming. “I know it seems outlandish to be talking about telepathy, but it’s completely solid physics and mathematical principles—it’s in reach in the next three years,” she says.

Plus, she’s sick of stealth mode. “I haven’t been able to to talk about what I’ve been doing for five and half years while I was at Google and Facebook, and I don’t think secrecy is useful,” she says. She left Facebook in August, and in September she filed patents for her Openwater technology, which she expects to be issued any day now.

Continue reading “Why Mary Lou Jepsen Left Facebook: To Transform Health Care and Invent Consumer Telepathy” »

In a world without ageing, our idea of family will likely change—for the better.

So it would, and I’m looking forward to it.

As things stand, this is what happens to a human family in a nutshell. Two people start dating. If things go well, they may want to live together and have kids. The kids grow up and do the same, eventually, and the original parents become grandparents, generally around the time they start being elderly. Unfortunately, this means they are less and less able to take care of themselves (let alone their grandchildren), and thus are more of a burden than a helping hand. (Talk to people who are around 60 and have kids, and you’ll find out their worst concern is being a burden to their families the moment they’re no longer able to take care of themselves.)

Grandparents eventually die. Repeat the process for enough generations, and eventually the members of the original family will all have died—the family is dismantled. Maybe other families originated from it, but it is irrelevant. The people are what matters to us, not their genes. Genes will be passed on, but all the people in the process will die, and become just a carrier for the genes. Looks like we really should have read the fine print before signing up for life, eh?

Continue reading “Rejuvenation would change our concept of family” »