Lifeboat Foundation

The future of space-based UV/optical/IR astronomy requires ever larger telescopes. The highest priority astrophysics targets, including Earth-like exoplanets, first generation stars, and early galaxies, are all extremely faint, which presents an ongoing challenge for current missions and is the opportunity space for next generation telescopes: larger telescopes are the primary way to address this issue.

With mission costs depending strongly on aperture diameter, scaling current space telescope technologies to aperture sizes beyond 10 m does not appear economically viable. Without a breakthrough in scalable technologies for large telescopes, future advances in astrophysics may slow down or even completely stall. Thus, there is a need for cost-effective solutions to scale space telescopes to larger sizes.

The FLUTE project aims to overcome the limitations of current approaches by paving a path towards space observatories with large aperture, unsegmented liquid primary mirrors, suitable for a variety of astronomical applications. Such mirrors would be created in space via a novel approach based on fluidic shaping in microgravity, which has already been successfully demonstrated in a laboratory neutral buoyancy environment, in parabolic microgravity flights, and aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Learn science on Brilliant — it’s fast and easy. First 30 days are free and 20% off the annual premium subscription when you use our link ➜ https://brilliant.org/sabine.

I’ve spent too much time thinking about how portals could work in the real world and, yes, I guess that is somewhat weird, but well. From energy conservation to momentum conservation to moving portals, I have it all sorted out for you. And the cake is not a lie.

Continue reading “The Physics of Portals (Made With Love)” »

By Morgan Sherburne, University of Michigan

University of Michigan physicists have devised a way to manipulate active fluids, a type of fluid composed of individual units that can propel themselves independently, by taking advantage of topological defects in the fluids.

Black holes are intriguing astronomical objects that have a gravitational pull so strong that it prevents any object and even light from escaping. While black holes have been the topic of numerous astrophysical studies, their origins and underlying physics remain largely a mystery.

Chat gpt 4 is really excellent in physics work aiding the user very well much like wolfram alpha has done.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been consistently influencing the progress of education for an extended period, with its impact becoming more significant especially after the launch of ChatGPT-3.5 at the end of November 2022. In the field of physics education, recent research regarding the performance of ChatGPT-3.5 in solving physics problems discovered that its problem-solving abilities were only at the level of novice students, insufficient to cause outstanding alarm in the field of physics education. However, the release of ChatGPT-4 presented substantial improvements in reasoning and conciseness. How does this translate to performance in solving physics problems, and what kind of impact might it have on education?

Apologies for the (hopefully now somewhat less) clickbait-y title. Now, of course, I know that the Big Bang did not happen at any point connected to a single point in our current $3$-dimensional observable universe by a one-dimensional causal curve. I also know that at any point in the universe, all other points seem to be moving away from that point. However, according to our current understanding of physics, the universe is (at least) $4$-dimensional. Just like how in the classical “balloon” analogy for an expanding universe, the points do in fact all move away from a common point on the interior of the balloon, all spacetime points do move away from the Big Bang, or at least some kind of cosmological horizon which surrounds it — this is how I understand going forward in time, at least. Does it make sense to think of this as a sort of “center” for the full, $4$-dimensional spacetime? Or are there further subtleties to this situation?

Learn more by actively engaging in your favourite topics with Brilliant! First 30 days are free and 20% off the annual premium subscription when you use our link ➜ https://brilliant.org/sabine.

Einstein completed his theory of general relativity in 1915 when he was 37 years old. What did he do for the remaining 40 years of his life? He continued developing his masterwork of course! Feeling that his theory was incomplete, Einstein pursued a unified field theory. Though he ultimately failed, the ideas he came up with were quite interesting. I have read a lot of old Einstein papers in the past weeks and here is my summary of what I believe he tried to do.

Continue reading “Einstein’s Other Theory of Everything” »

Black hole singularities defy the laws of physics. New research presents a bold solution to this puzzle: Black holes may actually be a theoretical type of star called a ‘gravastar,’ filled with universe-expanding dark energy.

Photo : siqi zhao & huirong yan.

Astrophysicists from the University of Potsdam have made a significant step toward solving the last puzzle in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence theory by observing the weak to strong transition in the space plasma turbulence surrounding Earth with newly developed multi-spacecraft analysis methods. Their pioneering discovery was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature. It exists everywhere, from our daily lives to the distant universe, while being labelled as “the last great unsolved problem of classical physics” by Richard Feynman.