Lifeboat Foundation

Mind-blowing experiments are bringing ancient cosmic conditions into modern labs.

A team of astronomers has identified a temperate exoplanet as a promising super-Earth ice or water world.

The findings, led by Université de Montréal, show that the habitable zone exoplanet, LHS 1,140 b, is not likely a mini-Neptune, a small so-called gas giant—large planets composed mostly of gas—with a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere. The planet, located about 48 light-years away in the constellation Cetus, emerges as one of the most promising habitable zone exoplanet candidates known, potentially harboring an atmosphere and even a liquid water ocean.

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were collected in December 2023 and added to previous data from other space telescopes Spitzer, Hubble, and TESS to solidify this result, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters this week and currently available on the arXiv preprint server.

The night sky has a visiting comet flaunting its faint tail for stargazers this summer.

The comet 13P/Olbers will make its closest approach to Earth later this month, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The comet orbits the sun every 25,400 days. That’s about every 70 years – 69.54 to be exact. It was last be seen from Earth in 1956.

It’s a crucial step forward in the quest for clean energy.

Mechanical systems are highly suitable for realizing applications such as quantum information processing, quantum sensing and bosonic quantum simulation. The effective use of these systems for these applications, however, relies on the ability to manipulate them in unique ways, specifically by ‘squeezing’ their states and introducing nonlinear effects in the quantum regime.

A research team at ETH Zurich led by Dr. Matteo Fadel recently introduced a new approach to realize quantum squeezing in a nonlinear mechanical oscillator. This approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Physics, could have interesting implications for the development of quantum metrology and sensing technologies.

“Initially, our goal was to prepare a mechanical squeezed state, namely a quantum state of motion with reduced quantum fluctuations along one phase-space direction,” Fadel told Phys.org. “Such states are important for quantum sensing and quantum simulation applications. They are one of the gates in the universal gate set for quantum computing with continuous-variable systems—meaning mechanical degrees of freedom, electromagnetic fields, etc., as opposed to qubits that are discrete-variable systems.”

This 2D cooling system can deliver 100mK temperatures.

The structure and function of the kidneys is altered by space flight, with galactic radiation causing permanent damage that would jeopardise any mission to Mars, according to a new study led by researchers from UCL.

The study, published in Nature Communications, is the largest analysis of kidney health in space flight to date and includes the first health dataset for commercial astronauts. It is published as part of a Nature special collection of papers on space and health.

Researchers have known that space flight causes certain health issues since the 1970s, in the years after humans first travelled beyond Earth’s magnetic field, most famously during the first moon landing in 1969. These issues include loss of bone mass, weakening of the heart and eyesight, and development of kidney stones.

There was a time when futurists were predicting that the advent of 3D printing was going to change our lives…

A Texas company — driven by a mission to create faster, better and more affordable housing — is 3D printing homes. It’s also working with NASA to 3D print on the Moon. Lesley Stahl reports.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists observed the region above Jupiter ’s iconic Great Red Spot to discover a range of previously unseen features. The region, previously believed to be unremarkable in nature, hosts a variety of intricate structures and activity.

Recent observations by Webb’s NIRSpec revealed surprising details about Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, particularly above the Great Red Spot, showing complex structures influenced by gravity waves. These findings, captured using Webb’s high-resolution capabilities, could support the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission, enhancing our understanding of Jupiter and its moons.

Unveiling Jupiter’s Atmosphere