Lifeboat Foundation

In our experience the past is the past and the future is the future, but sometimes the two can cross over.

Physicists from New Zealand’s University of Otago have used steerable ‘optical tweezers’ to split minute clouds of ultracold atoms and slowly smash them together to directly observe a key theoretical principle of quantum mechanics.

The principle, known as Pauli Exclusion, places fundamental constraints on the behavior of groups of identical particles and underpins the structure and stability of atoms as well as the mechanical, electrical, magnetic and chemical properties of almost all materials.

Otago Physics researcher Associate Professor Niels Kjærgaard led the research, which is newly published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications (“Multiple scattering dynamics of fermions at an isolated p-wave resonance”).

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Citing increasing U.S. launch costs and the “fleeing” of commercial customers to foreign launch service providers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing to push a bold strategy tied to a new, reusable spaceplane that the Agency envisions flying 10 times in 10 days for a cost of less than $5 million USD per flight.

NSF’s mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country.

It could be lighter, thinner, more flexible and tougher than steel.

When we look at the huge tech and industrial revolution that is just on the verge of happening due to QC and Medical technologies; synthetic diamonds will be a central piece of this story. I hope Intel, Nvidia, HP, Xerox, Apple, etc. all are assessing how they can either produce or partner with producers of synthetic diamonds. Printer companies could be big players in the mass production story of Synthetic Diamonds; and partnerships between Intel and HP or Intel and Xerox could prove to be fruitful.

COULD synthetic diamonds be key to developing the advanced electronics of tomorrow? A company crowd-funding on Cambridge’s SyndicateRoom thinks so.

Evince is looking to raise £650,000 to develop a working prototype of its new semi-conductor, which it says has the potential to perform 100 times better than silicon.

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The Allen Brain Observatory is open for business, revealing what’s running through the mind of a mouse as it sees patterns of light and dark, pictures of butterflies and tigers – or even the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1958 classic film, “Touch of Evil.”

The online repository of 30 trillion bytes’ worth of brain-cell readings represents the latest scientific offering from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It follows through on a $300 million pledge that Allen made more than four years ago.

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Our best theory of reality says things only become real when we look at them. Understanding how the universe came to be requires a better explanation.

By Jon Cartwright

WHERE, when you aren’t looking at it, is a subatomic particle? A quantum physicist would probably answer: sort of all over the place. An unobserved particle is a wisp of reality, a shimmer of existence – there isn’t a good metaphor for it, because it is vague both by definition and by nature. Until you do have a peek. Then it becomes a particle proper, it can be put into words, it is a thing with a place.

Continue reading “Collapse: Has quantum theory’s greatest mystery been solved?” »

Enhancing astronomers’ ability to peer ever more deeply into the cosmos may hinge on developing larger space-based telescopes. A new concept in space telescope design makes use of a modular structure and an assembly robot to build an extremely large telescope in space, performing tasks in which astronaut fatigue would be a problem.

The robotically assembled modular space telescope (RAMST) design is described by Nicolas Lee and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an article published this week by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS).

Ground-based telescopes are limited by atmospheric effects and by their fixed location on the Earth.

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