Lifeboat Foundation

Nearly a century after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana laid the groundwork for the discovery that electrons could be divided into halves, researchers predict that split photons may also exist, according to a study from Dartmouth and SUNY Polytechnic Institute researchers.

The finding that the building blocks of light can exist in a previously-unimaginable split form advances the fundamental understanding of light and how it behaves.

The theoretical discovery of the split photon – known as a “Majorana boson” – was published in Physical Review Letters.

SEOUL, Dec 11 (Reuters) — Teen pilot Zara Rutherford landed in Seoul on Saturday from Russia, the first Asia stop on her attempt to become the youngest woman to fly around the world solo.

In August, the 19-year-old British-Belgian departed from Kortrijk-Wevelgem Airport in western Belgium on her 51,000-km (32,000-mile) journey, which is to span five continents and 52 countries, including the United States, Greenland, Russia and Colombia.

“It has been challenging,” Rutherford told reporters at Gimpo International Airport after arriving from Vladivostok in her bespoke Shark ultralight plane, the world’s fastest microlight.

Some of the world’s richest men are squaring off in what’s become a rivalry for the ages — the space race. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two richest men on the planet and the CEOs of SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively, have grand designs on the cosmos. They predict a universe where the internet is accessible from anywhere, humans are an interplanetary species, and rotating space stations host permanent residents.

But Bill Gates isn’t putting his wealth into these off-planet endeavors.

Gates, the fourth richest person alive, according to Forbes, has what he considers higher aspirations right here on Earth. While internet constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s proposed Project Kuiper aim to bring for-profit fixes to the world’s pressing connectivity issues, Gates told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Wednesday that more basic problems consume his time now.

Neoen has doubled the size of its proposed Capital big battery, and started construction, after eyeing emerging market opportunities.

French renewables and battery storage developer Neoen says it has begun construction of a 100MW/200MWh big battery in the Australian Capital Territory, after doubling the size of the project because of emerging market opportunities.

Neoen is Australia’s most successful investor in battery storage, having built the original “Tesla big battery” at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, which was then the world’s biggest, and then expanding that facility, adding another at Bulgana in Victoria, and last week opening the 300MW/450MWh Victorian Big Battery, now the country’s biggest.

Continue reading “Neoen doubles size of Canberra big battery, dumps Tesla for Doosan” »

Thousands of feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay off California, scientists recently captured footage of a fish with a bulbous, translucent head and green orb-like eyes that peer out through its forehead.

This bizarre creature, known as a barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma), is very rarely seen. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have only spotted the species nine times, despite having sent their remotely operated vehicles (ROV) on more than 5,600 dives in the fish’s habitat, MBARI tweeted on December 9.

Continue reading “Bizarre Transparent Fish That Sees Through Its Own Head Captured in Rare Footage” »

Scientists have made it possible to generate and control quantum states in different physical systems. This control allows scientists to develop powerful new quantum technologies. In addition, it offers a roadmap to test the foundations of quantum physics.

The main challenge is to create quantum states on a larger scale.

In collaboration with the University of Oxford, scientists at Imperial College London, the Niels Bohr Institute, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and Australian National University have generated and observed non-Gaussian states high-frequency sound waves comprising more than a trillion atoms. Certainly, they transformed a randomly fluctuating sound field in thermal equilibrium to a pattern thrumming with a more specific magnitude.

Hermeus, a Georgia-based aviation startup, has announced a contract with the U.S. Air Force to develop its idea for a hypersonic aircraft engine. The Air Force department funding the project is the Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate, the team that manages Air Force One. A Mach 5 aircraft could allow the president to fly from New York to London in 90 minutes, instead of the 7 hours it takes today.

✈ You like badass planes. We like badass planes. Let’s nerd out over them together.

By TASS Russian news agency

The source said:

“The flight development tests from an underwater carrier are planned to be resumed no sooner than in 2024. They will be carried out from the Project 885M submarine Perm that will differ from its predecessors by a slightly modified design. If the submarine is not be ready for the Tsirkon test-launches in 2024, they will be resumed in the first half of 2025,”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in collaboration with Lockheed Martin are developing the OpFires mobile medium-range hypersonic missile assembly to fit on the back of an U.S. Army’s Palletized Load System (PLS) 5-axle 10×10 truck. OpFires will provide the U.S. Army with a highly mobile vehicle for firing hypersonic missiles that is independent of the tractor and trailer combination for the longer-range (strategic) hypersonic missiles. The U.S. Marines may also be interested in OpFires as they use the similar Logistic Vehicle Replacement System (LVSR) 10×10 truck.

The OpFires Project will use throttleable rocket motors on hypersonic missiles to achieve varying ranges in flight; therefore, OpFires can hit targets within the range envelope up to 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers). At Mach 5+, the OpFires’ warhead can fly 1,000 miles in approximately 20 minutes.