Lifeboat Foundation

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Fifty years ago this month, NASA’s Apollo 11 mission transformed the idea of putting people on the moon from science fiction to historical fact. Not much has changed on the moon since Apollo, but if the visions floated by leading space scientists from the U.S., Europe, Russia and China come to pass, your grandchildren might be firing up lunar barbecues in 2069.

“Definitely in 50 years, there will be more tourism on the moon,” Anatoli Petrukovich, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute, said here today during the World Conference of Science Journalists. “The moon will just look like a resort, as a backyard for grilling some meat or whatever else.”

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Exact specifications are classified—range, maximum crosswinds and how slow a target must be moving. However, DARPA did reveal that it’s looking for a bullet that has the same energy and momentum as current M33 .50-caliber rounds at all ranges greater than 300 meters.

By Michael Peck

In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics.

The focus of their worry was what Schrödinger later dubbed entanglement: the inability to describe two quantum systems or particles independently, after they have interacted.

Until his death, Einstein remained convinced that entanglement showed how quantum mechanics was incomplete. Schrödinger thought that entanglement was the defining feature of the new physics, but this didn’t mean that he accepted it lightly.

Instead of trying to fix stroke-damaged nerve cells, Stanford scientists took aim at a set of first-responder immune cells that live outside the brain but rush to the site of a stroke. It worked.

Enhanced electric fields at curved carbon structures makes them better catalysts.

A unique find of two boat burials from the Viking Age have been discovered in Sweden. One of the two graves was intact with remains of a man, a horse and a dog.

The two boat burials were found during an excavation at the vicarage in Gamla Uppsala last autumn. A medieval cellar and a well were excavated and then one of the boats was observed beneath the more modern structures. The two boat burials have been excavated during the last month and the results are sensational. “This is a unique excavation, the last burial ship here was excavated 50 years ago,” says archaeologist Anton Seiler.

A ship burial was a specific funeral practice in which the dead person was placed in a ship or boat often along with rich gifts like jewellery or sets of weapons and other objects. This kind of grave typically dates back to the Vendel Period (around 550–800 AD) or the Viking Age (800‑1050 AD), when it otherwise was common to cremate the dead. The graves can therefore be very well preserved. This custom was probably reserved for people of a higher social standing in society.

Elon Musk is a lot of things to a lot of people, but there’s something very interesting about him that drives most others: If he thinks something is worth improving, there’s more than a coin’s toss of a chance he’s going to make a go of it.

Now, Musk is a fantastically creative guy and all, but I’m not here to shower him with accolades (today anyhow). I’m setting the stage to discuss the next so-called improbable thing he might take on in the near future.

Wildlife: ⬇️ Biodiversity: ⬇️ Human population: ⬆️.

There are other reasons to return to the moon, however. For many space enthusiasts, its exploration and exploitation is necessary if we are to make the next giant step in space: sending people to Mars. “That is the real goal for humanity,” says Parker. “However, getting humans there safely is going to be an incredibly difficult undertaking. We will have to learn first how to conquer the moon.”

As the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo landing approaches, a host of countries are undertaking lunar missions. What’s behind the new space race?