Lifeboat Foundation

Moderator: Michael Wall.
Panelists: Kennda Lynch, Abigail Fraeman, Morgan Cable.

Part of the Earth at the Crossroads conference held on Nov. 18, 2021.

Continue reading “Habitability in the Solar System” »

The Artificial Intelligence industry should create a global community of hackers and “threat modelers” dedicated to stress-testing the harm potential of new AI products in order to earn the trust of governments and the public before it’s too late.

This is one of the recommendations made by an international team of risk and machine-learning experts, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), who have authored a new “call to action” published today in the journal Science.

They say that companies building intelligent technologies should harness techniques such as “red team” hacking, audit trails and “bias bounties”—paying out rewards for revealing ethical flaws—to prove their integrity before releasing AI for use on the wider public.

According to a news release by The University of Manchester, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Scientific Reports provides new evidence that helps us to understand the asteroid impact that brought an end to 75 percent of life on Earth, including non-avian dinosaurs, at the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition 66 million years ago.

This project has been a huge undertaking but well worth it. For so many years we’ve collected and processed the data, and now we have compelling evidence that changes how we think of the KPg event, but can simultaneously help us better prepare for future ecological and environmental hazards.

Time of year plays an important role in many biological functions— reproduction, available food sources, feeding strategies, host-parasite interactions, seasonal dormancy, breeding patterns, to name a few. It is hence no surprise that the time of year for a global-scale disaster can play a big role in how harshly it impacts life. The seasonal timing of the Chicxulub impact has therefore been a critical question for the story of the end-Cretaceous extinction. Until now the answer to that question has remained unclear.

A huge asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower is approaching our planet. The asteroid is named 4,660 Nereus and has been flagged ‘Potentially Hazardous’ by NASA. Nereus is 330 meters long and will break into Earth’s orbit on Saturday, December 11. The colossal asteroid is traveling at 23,700 km/h towards our planet.

On December 11, the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth. It will come within 3.86 million km, about ten times the distance between Earth and the Moon. Although it sounds like an enormous gap on cosmic scales, it is actually a stone’s throw away.

Continue reading “A Stadium Sized Asteroid Is Approaching Us This Weekend | Everything You Need To Know | Nereus” »

This is the same type of double double DOUBLE down on hyperbolic and aggressive anti expert BS that has pushed a not insignificant portion of the population of the US to throw a violent tantrum against covid19 vaccines and wearing a piece of cloth on their face to keep from DYING. Similarly, ultra environmentalists on the far left have ceased to try to protect the environment FOR future generations. Now they want to protect the environment FROM future generations. They’ve become ANTIHUMAN, often to a disturbingly horrific — if hilariously stupid — extent. LITERALLY. Unless you think we shouldn’t build anything on the sterile, irradiated and dead surface of the moon by polluting it — or any other moon, asteroid, or planet by stepping on it’s surface with our filthy monkey feet. Or throwing trash into the SUN because we’d be…

👉😏🙄POLLUTING IT!🙄🤪👈

Continue reading “Helen Caldicott — ‘Th’ Thorium Documentary” »

There’s a big difference between the notions of ‘false vacuum’ and ‘true vacuum’ states. Here’s why we don’t want to live in the former.

Circa 2013 o.o

Earth dodged a gigantic space bullet Friday when the 143,000-ton asteroid known as 2012 DA14 came within 17,200 miles of the Indian Ocean. Scientists and engineers are looking for ways to head off such close calls by targeting potentially dangerous asteroids well before they’re in a position to do us any harm.

A group called the B612 Foundation (a reference to the home asteroid of the Little Prince in the classic French novella) recently announced a mission to build a spacecraft that would track dangerous midsize asteroids, and a fledgling company called Deep Space Industries has floated a plan to build swarms of robots that could mine — and even destroy — space rocks.

Continue reading “Laser system could vaporize dangerous asteroids” »

An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower is heading towards Earth this month and it’s considered an especially unique piece of rock by scientists.

The asteroid 4,660 Nereus is classified as a “potentially hazardous” piece of rock because of its proximity to Earth. On Dec. 11, NASA expects it to be at its closest point to Earth over a 20-year period. The asteroid was discovered back in 1982.

NASA on Tuesday night successfully launched its experimental asteroid deflecting spacecraft which is set to smash into an asteroid at 15,000 miles per hour and serve as a test run for countering any future doomsday scenario where a large space rock could end up on a collision course with the Earth.

KEY FACTS The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), developed by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at around 10.20 a.m. local time Tuesday, aboard SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

Sometime in 2022, the DART spacecraft is expected to smash into the asteroid Dimorphos which orbits a larger satellite called Didymos—neither of which pose a threat to Earth at the moment—with the hope of deflecting its course.