Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists like Dan Carlson are in high demand, thanks to recently discovered tools that enable them to tweak the DNA of all kinds of organisms.

Robot bartenders are mostly novelties today. But a group of startups is hoping to bring automation to your neighborhood watering hole—and even your home bar.

An over looked planet. After the Moon, Mars and Venus, the last other planet to realistically debate building colonies on in the Solar System.

Our previous view of Titan was shrouded by its thick atmosphere, making it difficult to put together a clear global picture.

Now infrared imaging, which is similar to the technology used in night vision goggles, has provided a window through the moon’s clouds to the rugged surface and methane lakes below.

Continue reading “NASA has released some of the clearest ‘global’ images of Saturn’s moon Titan” »

The company’s autonomous vehicles just drove 8 million miles on public roads. What’s more, it took the company just one month to go from 7 million miles to 8 million miles driven.

“We’re driving now at the rate of 25,000 miles every day on public roads,” CEO John Krafcik said Friday while addressing the National Governors Association.

Waymo’s acceleration in logging miles with self-driving cars has picked up in the last year. In November 2017, it crossed 4 million miles. Less than a year later it’s doubled that figure.

Continue reading “Waymo’s self-driving cars log 1 million miles on public roads in a month” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORB92BU7zk

Human-led AI development, the importance of analogies, predictive capabilities and strategy thoughts, for your thoughts too;

Most likely, this is the best-known picture of a flag ever taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first U.S. flag planted on the Moon. For those who knew their world history, it also rang some alarm bells. Only less than a century ago, back on Earth, planting a national flag in another part of the world still amounted to claiming that territory for the fatherland. Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer practicing and teaching something called “space law,” the question they ask most frequently, often with a big smile or a twinkle in the eye, is: “So tell me, who owns the moon?”

Of course, claiming new national territories had been very much a European habit, applied to non-European parts of the world. In particular the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English created huge colonial empires. But while their attitude was very Europe-centric, the legal notion that planting a flag was an act of establishing sovereignty quickly stuck and became accepted worldwide as part and parcel of the law of nations.

This wristband lets you control machines with your mind.

The Block 5 is the only Falcon 9 the company will fly from now on.

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX is slated to launch its second Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket — the final and most powerful version of the vehicle the company plans to make. After launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the vehicle on one of its autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic. And landings should become fairly routine now, as all of SpaceX’s missions will utilize the Block 5 from now on.

Continue reading “Starting this weekend, SpaceX is about to land a whole lot more rockets” »

Up to 79 moons now.

Ten more moons have been confirmed to orbit around Jupiter, bringing the planet’s total known satellite count to 79. That’s the highest number of moons of any planet in the Solar System. And these newly discovered space rocks are giving astronomers insight as to why the Jupiter system looks like it does today.

Astronomers at Carnegie Institution for Science first found these moons in March 2017, along with two others that were already confirmed in June of last year. The team initially found all 12 moons using the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile, though finding these objects wasn’t their main goal. Instead, they were searching for incredibly distant small objects — or even planets — that might be lurking in our Solar System beyond Pluto. But as they searched for these fringe space rocks, they decided to take a peek at what might be lurking around Jupiter at the same time. Now, the moons they found have been observed multiple times, and their exact orbits have been submitted for approval from the International Astronomical Union, which officially recognizes celestial bodies.

Continue reading “Astronomers have found a new crop of moons around Jupiter, and one of them is a weirdo” »