Lifeboat Foundation

(A fanciful illustration of small black holes passing through EarthPhoto by NASA/Illustration by Dave Mosher)

First, the good news: You have not been killed by a black hole.

The strange news is that it’s possible the universe is teeming with microscopic black holes that formed at the dawn of time, all of them hurtling through space like cosmic bullets.

Continue reading “Miniature black holes may be hitting Earth once every 1,000 years” »

A few weeks ago, up to 40 people from the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia were hospitalized after a heatwave thawed permafrost, releasing a “zombie outbreak” of anthrax. Now, the Siberian Times reports that experts fear the thawing could spell the return of the eradicated smallpox virus.

During the 1800s, there were repeated outbreaks of smallpox in a small Siberian town, with hundreds of bodies buried near the banks of the Kolyma River. Some 120 years later, this summer’s heatwave has been melting the permafrost surrounding the town at a rate three times faster than usual. This has increased water levels in the river and is subsequently eroding away its banks where the bodies are buried.

While the risk at the moment is low, and with scientists aware of the issue for some time now, the current troubles of permafrost around the site and the Kolyma River are ringing alarms.

Continue reading “Melting Permafrost Could Thaw A Smallpox Graveyard In Siberia” »

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers. Volvo Cars has so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year. The two companies signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to develop a fully autonomous car that will be ready for the road by 2021.

The Volvo deal isn’t exclusive; Uber plans to partner with other automakers as it races to recruit more engineers. In July the company reached an agreement to buy Otto, a 91-employee driverless truck startup that was founded earlier this year and includes engineers from a number of high-profile tech companies attempting to bring driverless cars to market, including Google, Apple, and Tesla. Uber declined to disclose the terms of the arrangement, but a person familiar with the deal says that if targets are met, it would be worth 1 percent of Uber’s most recent valuation. That would imply a price of about $680 million. Otto’s current employees will also collectively receive 20 percent of any profits Uber earns from building an autonomous trucking business.

Continue reading “Uber Debuts Its First Fleet of Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh” »

Can China reboot its manufacturing industry—and the global economy—by replacing millions of workers with machines?

Baidu is a fixture of online life in China, but it wants to become a global power. Can one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence researchers help it challenge Silicon Valley’s biggest companies?

How will we interact with the intelligent machines of the future? If you’re asking Bryan Johnson, founder of startup Kernel, he’ll tell you those machines should be implanted inside our brains.

His team is working with top neuroscientists to build a tiny brain chip—also known as a neuroprosthetic —to help people with disease-related brain damage. In the long term, though, Johnson sees the product applicable to anyone who wants a bit of a brain boost.

Yes, some might flag this technology as yet another invention leading us toward a future where technology just helps the privileged get further in life.

Continue reading “The Tiny Brain Chip That May Supercharge Your Mind” »

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Cientistas descobrem um segredo para a longevidade nos Latinos ’, com a esperança de retardar o envelhecimento para todos.

A pesquisa também ajuda a responder a perguntas sobre por que algumas pessoas morrem jovens, enquanto outros vivem até a velhice, e que doenças crônicas têm a ver com o envelhecimento.