Lifeboat Foundation

56 million people died in 2017.¹ What caused their death? How did the causes of death change over time and differ between different countries and world regions? And what are the risk factors that lead to early death? These are the big questions we are answering here.

Welp o.o if we got a global emp we could disable all nukes.

This nuclear war simulator predicts what would happen in the first few hours of a major conflict between Russia and the U.S.

Circa 2017

One of the options that the United States is looking at to counter North Korea’s nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles is an experimental weapon called CHAMP.

The research, which appears this week in Science, examined the electronic and magnetic behavior of a “strange metal” compound of ytterbium, rhodium and silicon as it both neared and passed through a critical transition at the boundary between two well-studied quantum phases.

The study at Rice University and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) provides the strongest direct evidence to date of entanglement’s role in bringing about quantum criticality, said study co-author Qimiao Si of Rice.

“When we think about quantum entanglement, we think about small things,” Si said. “We don’t associate it with macroscopic objects. But at a quantum critical point, things are so collective that we have this chance to see the effects of entanglement, even in a metallic film that contains billions of billions of quantum mechanical objects.”

Bringing together artificial intelligence and neuroscience promises to yield benefits for both fields.

SAN FRANCISCO – Startup Skylo emerged from stealth mode Jan. 21 with $116 million in the bank and plans to connect devices by transferring data over existing geostationary communications satellites.

“The key challenge we wanted to address was how data was going to be moved from machines and sensors outside of the areas where traditionally connectivity has existed,” Parthsarathi “Parth” Trivedi, Skylo co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “If we could lower the cost of providing ubiquitous, affordable and reliable connectivity, there would be a phenomenal number of applications.”

Skylo raised $13 million in a Series A investment round led by DCM Ventures and Innovation Endeavors with participation by Boeing HorizonX and Moore Strategic Ventures. In its latest Series B round led by SoftBank with participation by all the firm’s previous investors, Skylo raised $103 million, according to the firm’s Jan. 21 news release.

Updated at 9:50 p.m. Eastern.

WASHINGTON — A green propulsion startup with more than $1 million in sales says it is gaining traction in the smallsat market while funding its own small launch vehicle.

Dawn Aerospace, based in New Zealand and the Netherlands, has its first propulsion system launching in March on a D-Orbit cubesat aboard a Vega rocket. A second is scheduled to launch on an Indian PSLV in the second quarter of 2020 on a cubesat for Hiber, a Dutch Internet of Things startup. Dawn Aerospace also has contracts from the New Zealand Space Agency and the U.S. Air Force, Dawn Aerospace CEO Jeroen Wink said in an interview.

Scientists have discovered a form of natural selection that doesn’t rely on DNA.

Circa 2016

A team from the University of Leicester have examined the likely materials that would go into building Star Trek’s photon torpedoes, and they find that it might just be possible to create the tech.