Commercial space companies are cropping up left and right in China.
Two Chinese launch startups have successfully tested and demonstrated rockets that set the groundwork for future reusable launch vehicle technology, SpaceNews reports.
China decided to open up the launch of small satellites to private companies in 2014 and at least 15 SpaceX-like startups, according to Reuters, have emerged as a result.
Orbit and Beyond
A new way to store information in molecules could preserve the contents of the New York Public Library in a teaspoon of protein, without energy, for millions of years.
Books can burn. Computers get hacked. DVDs degrade. Technologies to store information–ink on paper, computers, CDs and DVDs, and even DNA–continue to improve. And yet, threats as simple as water and as complex as cyber-attacks can still corrupt our records.
As the data boom continues to boom, more and more information gets filed in less and less space. Even the cloud–whose name promises opaque, endless space–will eventually run out of space, can’t thwart all hackers, and gobbles up energy. Now, a new way to store information could stably house data for millions of years, lives outside the hackable internet, and, once written, uses no energy. All you need is a chemist, some cheap molecules, and your precious information.
undoing-aging.org/…/judy-campisi-presenting-at-undoing-agin…
More info on Forever Healthy: forever-healthy.org
The pioneering work of Benjamin Libet showed that our brain begins preparing for movement even before we consciously decide to move. One wonders if someone were to monitor my brain, would they know, even before I do, what action I’m going to take?
It seems an unlikely place to find a discussion on free will, but neuroscientists often grapple with the question of who is making your life choices: Your brain or your consciousness? More importantly, what’s the difference?
A classic experiment from the 1970s and early 1980s that is referenced frequently in these discussions is the work of Benjamin Libet, which showed that the brain begins preparing for movement even before we consciously decide to move. In Libet’s experiment, people were asked to move a finger whenever they were ready. When they had the urge to move, all they had to do was check where the second hand was on the clock. Meanwhile, Libet measured the activity in his subjects’ brains and found that while the conscious decision to move the hand happened on average 200 milliseconds before the person moved their hand, the brain had already begun preparing for this movement a whole second in advance.
The experiment contradicted everything we had believed so far about decision-making. Until then, scientists thought that a person makes a conscious decision to act, and then the brain sends signals to the body that enables us to take that action. But this sequence of events was now under question. Do we really make our decisions, or are they made for us? And, if so, are we still responsible for them? Additionally, if someone were to monitor my brain, could he or she know, even before I do, what action I’m going to take?
Posted in nuclear energy, physics
Scientists discover source of clean, unlimited energy! In March 1989, the news rocked the world. Two respected chemists from the University of Utah: Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, told a receptive media they had solved the biggest physics problem of the atomic age. Their compelling claims of room-temperature nuclear fusion in a jar were cast as the solution to the world’s colliding environmental and energy crises.
The meltdown hit just weeks later when the claim was nuked by mainstream scientists who couldn’t reproduce their results and were unsatisfied with the team’s explanations. The cold fusion field has been on ice ever since. Whether considered a scandal, a screw-up, or a scientific character assassination by hot fusion advocates, the cold fusion episode is a case study for those who caution against the “science of wishful thinking.”
On the 25th anniversary of the rise and fall of cold fusion, its close cousin, low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) science, is still on the fringe but simmering anew. Here’s a look back and a look ahead at a field that always gets a reaction.
