I’m 55 years old. I’m shooting for a multihundred-year lifespan. That’s my goal. If you don’t shoot for it, you’re not going to hit it, right?”
I guess he’ll want to speak to George Church.
The author of this titles it “to 150” yet Peter here says multi hundred, and included a pic of Venter who has said he doesn’t think people should live past 120.
Physicists have just published new calculations that suggest the controversial EM drive — or electromagnetic drive — could actually work, and doesn’t defy Newton’s third law after all.
In case you’ve missed the hype, here’s a quick catch-up: a lot of space lovers are freaking out about the EM drive because of claims it could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, but just as many are sick of hearing about it, because, on paper at least, it doesn’t work within the laws of physics.
Despite that not-insignificant setback, the EM drive shows no signs of quitting, and test after test — including trials by NASA scientists at the Eagleworks lab, and an independent researcher in Germany — has conceded that the propulsion system, somehow, does produce thrust.
Continue reading “New paper claims that the EM Drive doesn’t defy Newton’s 3rd law after all” »
In a lovely demonstration of light’s quantum effects, physicists in the UK have just mixed a molecule with light at room temperature for the first time ever.
Light and matter are usually separate, with totally distinct properties, but now scientists have trapped a particle of light — called a photon — with a molecule in a tiny, golden cage of mirrors.
That’s a big deal, because it creates a whole new way to manipulate the physical and chemical properties of matter, and could change the way we process quantum information.
Continue reading “Physicists have mixed matter and light at room temperature for the first time” »
When an astronomical observatory detected two black holes colliding in deep space, scientists celebrated confirmation of Einstein’s prediction of gravitational waves. A team of astrophysicists wondered something else: Had the experiment found the “dark matter” that makes up most of the mass of the universe?
The eight scientists from the Johns Hopkins Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy had already started making calculations when the discovery by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was announced in February. Their results, published recently in Physical Review Letters, unfold as a hypothesis suggesting a solution for an abiding mystery in astrophysics.
“We consider the possibility that the black hole binary detected by LIGO may be a signature of dark matter,” wrote the scientists in their summary, referring to the black hole pair as a “binary.” What follows are five pages of annotated mathematical equations showing how the researchers considered the mass of the two objects LIGO detected as a point of departure, suggesting that these objects could be part of the mysterious substance known to make up about 85 percent of the mass of the universe.
Scientists have seen two black holes crash into each other and merge for the second time, proving Albert Einstein was right and showing the first observation was no fluke.
Ultra-sensitive instruments called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected the ripple in gravitational waves that came across space and time to Earth last December, the team reported Wednesday.
