Lifeboat Foundation

When searching for signs of life in the Universe, we tend to look for very specific things, based on what we know: a planet like Earth, in orbit around a star, and at a distance that allows liquid surface water. But there could, conceivably, be other forms of life out there that look like nothing that we have ever imagined before.

Just as we have extremophiles here on Earth — organisms that live in the most extreme and seemingly inhospitable environments the planet has to offer — so too could there be extremophiles out there in the wider Universe.

For instance, species that can form, evolve, and thrive in the interiors of stars. According to new research by physicists Luis Anchordoqui and Eugene Chudnovsky of The City University of New York, such a thing is indeed — hypothetically, at least — possible.

Black holes are celestial objects with such massive gravity that not even light can escape their clutches once it crosses the event horizon, or point-of-no-return. The event horizons of black holes lock secrets deep within them — secrets that could completely revolutionize our understanding of physics.

Unfortunately, for decades many scientists thought whatever information falls into a black hole might be lost forever. But new research suggests that ripples in space-time, or gravitational waves may carry a faint whisper of this hidden information by revealing the presence of wispy “hairs” on a black hole’s surface.

Hair may record the information swallowed by the gravitational monsters.

IAIFI will advance physics knowledge — from the smallest building blocks of nature to the largest structures in the universe — and galvanize AI research innovation.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced last week an investment of more than $100 million to establish five artificial intelligence (AI) institutes, each receiving roughly $20 million over five years. One of these, the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), will be led by MIT ’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS) and become the intellectual home of more than 25 physics and AI senior researchers at MIT and Harvard, Northeastern, and Tufts universities.

By merging research in physics and AI, the IAIFI seeks to tackle some of the most challenging problems in physics, including precision calculations of the structure of matter, gravitational-wave detection of merging black holes, and the extraction of new physical laws from noisy data.

For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record.

Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level.

That’s equivalent to the pressures found in the carbon-dominated envelopes of a rare type of white dwarf star — some of the densest objects in the known Universe. It could help us to better understand the effect those pressures have on changes in the stars’ brightness.

Abstract: Advances in high speed imaging techniques have opened new possibilities for capturing ultrafast phenomena such as light propagation in air or through media. Capturing light-in-flight in 3-dimensional xyt-space has been reported based on various types of imaging systems, whereas reconstruction of light-in-flight information in the fourth dimension z has been a challenge. We demonstrate the first 4-dimensional light-in-flight imaging based on the observation of a superluminal motion captured by a new time-gated megapixel single-photon avalanche diode camera. A high resolution light-in-flight video is generated with no laser scanning, camera translation, interpolation, nor dark noise subtraction. A machine learning technique is applied to analyze the measured spatio-temporal data set. A theoretical formula is introduced to perform least-square regression, and extra-dimensional information is recovered without prior knowledge. The algorithm relies on the mathematical formulation equivalent to the superluminal motion in astrophysics, which is scaled by a factor of a quadrillionth. The reconstructed light-in-flight trajectory shows a good agreement with the actual geometry of the light path. Our approach could potentially provide novel functionalities to high speed imaging applications such as non-line-of-sight imaging and time-resolved optical tomography.

Scientists at Princeton have good news for interstellar travel.

The pendulum didn’t tick right when they brought it here: the start of a fascinating story.

Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1706] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions.^[1] He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia’s first fire department,^[2] and the University of Pennsylvania.^[3]

Franklin earned the title of “The First American” for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation.^[4] Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, “In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.”^[5] To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin “the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.

If you’re a fan of science fiction, chances are you encountered a few franchises where humanity has spread throughout the known Universe. The ships that allow them to do this, maybe they use a warp drive, maybe they “fold space,” maybe have a faster-than-light (FTL) or “jump” drive.

It’s a cool idea, the thought of “going interstellar!” Unfortunately, the immutable laws of physics tell us that this is simply not possible.

Continue reading “This NASA Animation Shows What It’s Really Like to Travel Close to The Speed of Light” »