Lifeboat Foundation

When spacecraft re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, friction heats them up and creates a plasma sheath that stops communications – but SpaceX thinks its Starlink satellites could solve the problem.

By Mark Harris

The Subaru Telescope has spotted the terminal ends of dark matter filaments in the Coma cluster stretching across millions of light years. This is the first time that strands of the cosmic web spanning the entire universe have been directly detected. This provides new evidence to test theories about the evolution of the universe.

In the solar system, we are used to seeing matter gathered into round objects like planets, moons, and the sun. But dark matter, which accounts for most of the mass in the universe, is believed to exist as a web of long thin strands. But like a spider web, these strands can be hard to see, so astronomers have typically drawn conclusions based on observations of galaxies and gas stuck in the web. This is similar to how if you see a dead leaf that appears to hang in midair, you know there is a spider web that you cannot see.

A team of researchers from Yonsei University used the Subaru Telescope to look for direct signs of dark matter filaments in the Coma cluster, located 321 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices. Their paper, “Weak-lensing detection of intracluster filaments in the Coma cluster” is published in Nature Astronomy.

SpaceX confirms to the FCC that it’s exploring using its sea-based drone ships to also act as ‘gateways’ for Starlink.

EV charging network Electrify America will soon offer the public an EV charging experience safe from the elements, where drivers can pull in, plug in, and chill out while their vehicle replenishes. This flagship indoor charging station kicks off a potential future in which you don’t have to wait in your car or outside while you charge… It also has complimentary Wi-Fi.

Electrify America is one of the largest open DC fast charging networks in the US that is investing billions into expanding EV infrastructure to support the growing number of zero-emissions vehicles hitting roads.

Outside of the Tesla Supercharger network, Electrify America is easily the most prominent and recognizable name in its respective space, expanding cleaner energy alternatives like solar farms to support its growing number of EV charging stations.

Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of single-#photon-level pulses stored in independent room-temperature #quantum #memories Quantum #repeater #networks require independent absorptive quantum memories capable of #storing and #retrieving indistinguishable photons to perform high-repetition entanglement…

Research with quantum computing and quantum networks is taking place around the world in the hopes of developing a quantum internet in the future. A quantum internet would be a network of quantum computers, sensors, and communication devices that will create, process, and transmit quantum states and entanglement and is anticipated to enhance society’s internet system and provide certain services and securities that the current internet does not have.

A team of Stony Brook University physicists and their collaborators have taken a significant step toward the building of a quantum internet testbed by demonstrating a foundational quantum network measurement that employs room-temperature quantum memories. Their findings are described in a paper published in npj Quantum Information.

Continue reading “Research team takes a fundamental step toward a functioning quantum internet” »

Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they’re hard to detect or remove.

The vulnerability resides in shim, which in the context of Linux is a small component that runs in the firmware early in the boot process before the operating system has started. More specifically, the shim accompanying virtually all Linux distributions plays a crucial role in secure boot, a protection built into most modern computing devices to ensure every link in the boot process comes from a verified, trusted supplier. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to neutralize this mechanism by executing malicious firmware at the earliest stages of the boot process before the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface firmware has loaded and handed off control to the operating system.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023–40547, is what’s known as a buffer overflow, a coding bug that allows attackers to execute code of their choice. It resides in a part of the shim that processes booting up from a central server on a network using the same HTTP that the Internet is based on. Attackers can exploit the code-execution vulnerability in various scenarios, virtually all following some form of successful compromise of either the targeted device or the server or network the device boots from.

Apple has always been known for its innovative products, but its latest creation might be its most ambitious. The Apple Vision Pro is a headset that promises to revolutionize how we interact with technology by seamlessly blending the digital and physical worlds.

The device, which costs a whopping $3,500, has already hit the stores and attracted much attention. Some people are eager to try out the new possibilities of spatial computing, while others are mocking the sight of people wearing the bulky and futuristic-looking gadget.

One of the first to test the Apple Vision Pro in the real world was Casey Neistat, a popular social media personality and filmmaker. In a video posted on Saturday, he showed how he used the device in its passthrough mode, allowing him to see his surroundings through cameras and screens while accessing various virtual features.

Photonic integrated circuits are an important next-wave technology. These sophisticated microchips hold the potential to substantially decrease costs and increase speed and efficiency for electronic devices across a wide range of application areas, including automotive technology, communications, health care, data storage, and computing for artificial intelligence.

Photonic circuits use photons, fundamental particles of light, to move, store, and access information in much the same way that conventional electronic circuits use electrons for this purpose. Photonic chips are already in use today in advanced fiber-optic communication systems, and they are being developed for implementation in a broad spectrum of near-future technologies, including light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, for autonomous vehicles; light-based sensors for medical devices; 5G and 6G communication networks; and optical and quantum computing.

Given the broad range of existing and future uses for photonic integrated circuits, access to equipment that can fabricate chip designs for study, research and industrial applications is also important. However, today’s nanofabrication facilities cost millions of dollars to construct and are well beyond the reach of many colleges, universities, and research labs.

Explore the latest breakthrough in photonics technology, propelling 6G wireless communication to unprecedented speeds.

Dive into the world of high data speeds with a photonics-based breakthrough. See how scientists achieved 240 gigabits per second in wireless communication.