Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of planetary scientists led by astronomers at AOP have found an asteroid trailing behind Mars with a composition very similar to the moon’s. The asteroid could be an ancient piece of debris, dating back to the gigantic impacts that formed the moon and the other rocky planets in our solar system like Mars and the Earth. The research, which was published in the journal Icarus, also has implications for finding such primordial objects associated with our own planet.

Trojans are a class of asteroid that follows the planets in their orbits as a flock of sheep might follow a shepherd, trapped within gravitational “safe havens” 60 degrees in front of, and behind, the planet (Figure 1). They are of great interest to scientists as they represent leftover material from the formation and early evolution of the solar system. Several thousands of those Trojans exist along the orbit of the giant planet Jupiter. Closer to the Sun, astronomers have so far discovered only a handful of Trojans of Mars, the planet next door to Earth.

A team including scientists from Italy, Bulgaria and the US and led by the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) in Northern Ireland has been studying the Trojans of Mars to understand what they tell us about the early history of the inner worlds of our solar system—the so-called terrestrial planets—but also to inform searches for Trojans of the Earth. Ironically, it is much easier to find Trojans of Mars than for our own planet because these Earth Trojans, if they exist, sit always close to the Sun in the sky where it is difficult to point a telescope. An Earth Trojan, named 2010 TK7, was found a decade ago by NASA’s WISE space telescope, but computer modeling showed it is a temporary visitor from the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter rather than a relic planetesimal from the Earth’s formation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJQcvGALwZY&feature=youtu.be

A closer look at Stentrode, the Brain Computer Interface that interacts with the brain via blood vessels. Recent paper demonstrating it working in 2 ALS patients.

Han from WrySci HX goes through the very interesting brain computer interface called Stentrode that can let you tweet with your mind. As a BCI, it’s a rival to Neuralink, Kernal, and Openwater. Find out about its background, how it works, why it’s the most unique BCI, and some results from its clinical trials. More below ↓↓↓

Continue reading “Tweeting with your MIND? Meet Stentrode: The Neuralink Rival ALREADY in Clinical Trials” »

When atoms get extremely close, they develop intriguing interactions that could be harnessed to create new generations of computing and other technologies. These interactions in the realm of quantum physics have proven difficult to study experimentally due the basic limitations of optical microscopes.

Now a team of Princeton researchers, led by Jeff Thompson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, has developed a new way to control and measure atoms that are so close together no optical lens can distinguish them.

Described in an article published Oct. 30 in the journal Science, their method excites closely-spaced erbium atoms in a crystal using a finely tuned laser in a nanometer-scale optical circuit. The researchers take advantage of the fact that each atom responds to slightly different frequencies, or colors, of laser light, allowing the researchers to resolve and control multiple atoms, without relying on their spatial information.

FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of laptop users are seen next to a screen projection of binary code are seen in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Reuters.

Researchers from Sorbonne University in Paris have achieved a highly efficient transfer of quantum entanglement into and out of two quantum memory devices. This achievement brings a key ingredient for the scalability of a future quantum internet.

A quantum internet that connects multiple locations is a key step in quantum technology roadmaps worldwide. In this context, the European Quantum Flagship Programme launched the Quantum Internet Alliance in 2018. This consortium coordinated by Stephanie Wehner (QuTech-Delft) consists of 12 leading research groups at universities from eight European countries, in close cooperation with over 20 companies and institutes. They combined their resources and areas of expertise to develop a blueprint for a future quantum internet and the required technologies.

A quantum internet uses an intriguing quantum phenomenon to connect different nodes in a network together. In a normal network connection, nodes exchange information by sending electrons or photons back and forth, making them vulnerable to eavesdropping. In a quantum network, the nodes are connected by entanglement, Einstein’s famous “spooky action at a distance.” These non-classical correlations at large distances would allow not only secure communications beyond direct transmission but also distributed quantum computing or enhanced sensing.

Spintronic devices are attractive alternatives to conventional computer chips, providing digital information storage that is highly energy efficient and also relatively easy to manufacture on a large scale. However, these devices, which rely on magnetic memory, are still hindered by their relatively slow speeds, compared to conventional electronic chips.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Electronics, an international team of researchers has reported a new technique for magnetization switching—the process used to “write” information into magnetic memory—that is nearly 100 times faster than state-of-the-art spintronic devices. The advance could lead to the development of ultrafast magnetic memory for computer chips that would retain data even when there is no power.

In the study, the researchers report using extremely short, 6-picosecond electrical pulses to switch the magnetization of a thin film in a magnetic device with great energy efficiency. A picosecond is one-trillionth of a second.

Article. I guess having implants directly on the brain isn’t the only way to have a brain to machine interface. The scientists involved in the study found an alternative by picking up signals through the blood vessels.

It’s not as information packed as a direct brain connection, but it’s not as invasive.

I think it would be a good alternative or even complementary to direct brain implants. Interesting. 😃

Continue reading “A New Way to Plug a Human Brain Into a Computer: via Veins” »

Hackers can now reverse engineer updates or write their own custom firmware.

Dr. Lisa Su is set to unveil the first Big Navi GPUs today at 12pm ET (9am PT, 4pm UK).