A SCIENTIST tabled an alternative theory on black holes during a documentary, building on Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory to claim it is possible to escape, “like a science fiction story”.
It’s hard living in a relativistic Universe, where even the nearest stars are so far away and the speed of light is absolute. It is little wonder then why science fiction franchises routinely employ FTL (Faster-than-Light) as a plot device.
Push a button, press a petal, and that fancy drive system – whose workings no one can explain – will send us to another location in space-time.
However, in recent years, the scientific community has become understandably excited and skeptical about claims that a particular concept – the Alcubierre Warp Drive – might actually be feasible.
Thanks to solar-powered propulsion and household (meaning no generators are required to run the lights, air conditioning, etc.), and with electric propulsion when needed, the 56-foot catamaran has unlimited range, no noise or fumes, minimal vibration and is virtually maintenance-free. It’s smooth and serene cruising at its best where both the environment and owner’s enjoyment come first. And operation costs are kept to a minimum, too.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated that exosomes harvested from human skin cells can repair sun-damaged skin cells in mice. The therapy also appears to be more effective than retinol and stem cell treatment, and best of all, delivery of the therapy is needle-free.
What are exosomes?
Exosomes are essentially membrane-wrapped packages that contain proteins and other molecules, are produced and released by cells, and deliver messages to other cells. When nearby cells intercept these packages, they change their behavior based on the information contained in these packages. You might think of exosomes being almost like messages in bottles traveling in the bloodstream between cells.
We’re continuing to release talks from Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019, our highly successful two-day conference that featured talks from leading researchers and investors, bringing them together to discuss the future of aging and rejuvenation biotechnology.
Dr. Kelsey Moody gave a detailed presentation on macular degeneration, discussing its origins in the lysosomes and how it progresses along with how his company, Ichor Therapeutics, is developing an exogenous enzyme treatment that may cure this crippling disease.
OpenAI have taught their AI agents to play hide and seek to show how they can develop their own complex and intelligent behaviours 🤖.
Tourists could fly from Britain to Australia in just four hours by the 2030s with a new hypersonic engine being developed by UK scientists, the head of the UK Space Agency has said.
Reaction Engines, who are based in Oxfordshire, are in the process of building a hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket that will allow a plane to fly at Mach 5.4 — more than twice the speed of Concorde — then speed up to to Mach 25 in space.
Not only would the new ‘Sabre’ engine allow speedier journeys — with a flight between London and New York slashed to just over an hour — but the hydrogen/oxygen engine would be far greener and cheaper than current air travel.
There is never a dull day for participants of the CAVES campaign, ESA’s field training adventure that hones the communication, problem solving and teamwork skills an international crew will need to explore the tough, uncharted terrain of the Moon and Mars.
This week six astronauts turned ‘cavenauts’ from five space agencies headed underground in Slovenia, where they are currently living and working for the week. To keep the element of exploration, astronauts themselves do not know the exact location.
The goal is to run scientific experiments while managing the psychological toll of being in an extreme environment with a multinational crew.
The ultimate way of building up space structures would be to use material sourced there, rather than launched from Earth. Once processed into finished composite material, the resin holds the carbon fibres together as a solid rather than a fabric. The beams can be used to construct more complex structures, antennae, or space station trusses. Image credit: All About Space/Adrian Mann.
The International Space Station is the largest structure in space so far. It has been painstakingly assembled from 32 launches over 19 years, and still only supports six crew in a little-under-a-thousand cubic metres of pressurised space. It’s a long way from the giant rotating space stations some expected by 2001. The problem is that the rigid aluminium modules all have to be launched individually, and assembled in space. Bigelow Aerospace will significantly improve on this with their inflatable modules that can be launched as a compressed bundle; but a British company has developed a system that could transform space flight, by building structures directly in space.
Magna Parva from Leicester are a space engineering consultancy, founded in 2005 by Andy Bowyer and Miles Ashcroft. Their team have worked on a range of space hardware, from methods to keep Martian solar panels clear of dust, to ultrasonic propellant sensors, to spacecraft windows. But their latest project is capable of 3D printing complete structures in space, using a process called pultrusion. Raw carbon fibres and epoxy resin are combined in a robotic tool to create carbon composite beams of unlimited length – like a spider creating a web much larger than itself. Building structures in space has a range of compounding virtues, it is more compact than even inflatables, as only bulk fibre and resin need to be launched. Any assembled hardware that has to go through a rocket launch has to be made much stronger than needed in space to survive the launch, printed structures can be designed solely for their in space application, using less material still.
