Lifeboat Foundation

There’s a lot we still don’t know about dark matter – that mysterious, invisible mass that could make up as much as 85 percent of everything around us – but a new paper outlines a rather unusual hypothesis about the very creation of the stuff.

In short: dark matter creates dark matter. The idea is that at some point in the early stages of the Universe, dark matter particles were able to create more dark matter particles out of particles of regular matter, which would go some way to explaining why there’s now so much of the stuff about.

The new research builds on earlier proposals of a ‘thermal bath’, where regular matter in the form of plasma produced the first bits of dark matter – initial particles which could then have had the power to transform heat bath particles into more dark matter.

Trap based on electric fields alone boosts the search for a non-zero electron electric dipole moment and other phenomena beyond the Standard Model.

😀

Turning it into breathable air is the tricky part.

𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙨 𝙃𝙞𝙣𝙩 𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙊𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙉𝙚𝙪𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙊𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝘾𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙨

A new study of gene expression in sponges reveals the complex diversity of their cells as well as some possibly ancient connections between the nervous, immune and digestive systems.

Great video of vital biomolecular processes.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines deliver directions to make a protein that educates our immune system, so it will neutralize the virus in future encounters. The mRNA-containing lipid particles are taken up by specialized immune system cells. See more: COVIDVaccineAnswers.org

Continue reading “How COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Work — Vaccine Makers Project” »

With the recent COP talks in mind, is this the Eco alternative to rocketry? And are there perhaps others?

I talked about Spinlaunch a few years ago, they wanted to reduce space launch costs by throwing the launch vehicles out of a spinning launcher at hypersonic speeds. I was somewhat skeptical as to the chances of solving the engineering problems inherent in this, but recently they demonstrated a mach 1 launch using their 1/3 scale launcher, so they’re already making progress on developing a viable launch syste.

Continue reading “Can Spinlaunch Throw Rockets Into Space?” »

It’s more likely than you think.

When it comes to interstellar missions, however, there are no plans for crewed missions on the table. While there are proposals for sending robotic missions, sending astronauts to nearby stars and exoplanets simply isn’t feasible yet.

Continue reading “Tardigrades: Why water bears could be the first interstellar astronauts” »

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

In a neighboring star cluster called NGC 1,850, astronomers spotted a small black hole tugging on the orbit of a star — a discovery that could lead us to others.

Companies like Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet have all experienced major A.I. bias blunders, sometimes involving computer vision technology misidentifying Black people with primates. Numerous high-profile academic studies, articles in mainstream news outlets, and proposed regulations by lawmakers in the European Union and elsewhere continue to bring the issue to the forefront.

On a personal note, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to write variations of the phrase “facial recognition software that works better on white males than women and people of color” in articles about A.I. bias.