Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, astronomers have captured images that show a star consuming one of its planets. The star, named ZTF SLRN-2020, is located in the Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Aquila. As the star swallowed its planet, the star brightened to 100 times its normal level, allowing the 26-person team of astronomers I worked with to detect this event as it happened.

I am a theoretical astrophysicist, and I developed the computer models that our team uses to interpret the data we collect from telescopes. Although we only see the effects on the star, not the planet directly, our team is confident that the event we witnessed was a star swallowing its planet. Witnessing such an event for the first time has confirmed the long-standing assumption that stars swallow their planets and has illuminated how this fascinating process plays out.

Continue reading “Astronomers just saw a star eat a planet—an astrophysicist on the team explains the first-of-its-kind discovery” »

Three university teams will explore and take initial steps to mitigate risks associated with manufacturing capabilities that rely on biological processes in space. The DARPA Biomanufacturing: Survival, Utility, and Reliability beyond Earth (B-SURE) program aims to address foundational scientific questions to determine how well industrial bio-manufacturing microorganisms perform in space conditions.

A team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is testing EELS on various terrains.

Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to research a distant mini-Neptune exoplanet that has a thick atmosphere, and may have once hosted oceans.

A new experiment uses superconducting qubits to demonstrate that quantum mechanics violates what’s called local realism by allowing two objects to behave as a single quantum system no matter how large the separation between them. The experiment wasn’t the first to show that local realism isn’t how the Universe works—it’s not even the first to do so with qubits.

But it’s the first to separate the qubits by enough distance to ensure that light isn’t fast enough to travel between them while measurements are made. And it did so by cooling a 30-meter-long aluminum wire to just a few milliKelvin. Because the qubits are so easy to control, the experiment provides a new precision to these sorts of measurements. And the hardware setup may be essential for future quantum computing efforts.

The silicon microchips of future quantum computers will be packed with millions, if not billions of qubits—the basic units of quantum information—to solve the greatest problems facing humanity. And with millions of qubits needing millions of wires in the microchip circuitry, it was always going to get cramped in there.

But now engineers at UNSW Sydney have made an important step toward solving a long-standing problem about giving their qubits more breathing space—and it all revolves around jellybeans.

Continue reading “Jellybeans: A sweet solution for overcrowded circuitry in quantum computer chips” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fAIIzWOEvk

The Hydromea Exray wireless drone is an underwater drone that uses optics instead of cables for many effortless applications.

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Chandra X-ray Observatory Helps Astronomers Discover a Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy There is a surprisingly lonely galaxy about 9.2 billion light-years from Earth.

Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, the birthplace of modern astrophysics, announced on May 10 the appointment of Dr. Amy Steele as its new Director of Astronomy and Research.

Coming to Yerkes from the Trottier Space Institute in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, Steele studies the building blocks of planets living around stars like our sun that have reached the final phase of their lives. She will begin her role in June, reporting to Yerkes’ Montgomery Foundation Deputy Director and Head of Science and Education Dr. Amanda Bauer.

“The opportunity to lead the direction of astronomy and research at Yerkes is a dream come true for me as an astronomer,” Steele said. “It is an honor to be able to work alongside an adventurous and passionate team who share the same love for this observatory and communion with the night sky. I am truly excited to collaborate with my colleagues and the Yerkes Future Foundation to inspire astronomers young and old, near and far, to follow their curiosity and chase their dreams.”