Lifeboat Foundation

In 2024, we’ll have much to look at in our wonderful solar system.

Astronomers have captured a new snapshot of the ancient spiral galaxy BRI 1335–0417. The research is providing valuable insights into the formation of early galaxies and shedding light on the origins of our own Milky Way.

Dating back more than 12 billion years, BRI 1335–0417 is the oldest and farthest known spiral galaxy in our universe.

According to study lead author Dr. Takafumi Tsukui, a state-of-the-art telescope called ALMA allowed the experts to look at this ancient galaxy in much greater detail.

Officially, there are only two exascale supercomputers in the world: Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. However, it is widely suspected that China has at least two secret exascale machines that have not been tested and ranked by the industry’s 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

JUPITER, which stands for Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research, will be built at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), a collaboration between the European Union and private businesses.

Researchers at Peking University in China have successfully observed the elusive 0₂⁺ state of ⁸ He, revealing a novel cluster structure with two strongly correlated neutron pairs. This finding provides insights into exotic nuclear structures and their potential implications for understanding neutron stars. The findings are published in Physical Review Letters.

The conventional nuclear model in physics posits a single-particle picture where nucleons, protons, and neutrons move independently within a nucleus, forming a well-defined shell structure. Governed by a mean potential created by nuclear forces, nucleons fill distinct energy levels or shells, leading to increased stability associated with magic numbers.

This model, rooted in quantum mechanics, successfully explains nuclear structure and stability but encounters limitations when addressing exotic nuclei, particularly those that are neutron-rich and unstable.

If you were exposed to the harsh depths of space, you’d lose consciousness in 15 seconds, and be dead within 30 seconds to 1 minute.

But what if you’re wearing an advanced powerful spacesuit? Well, that would buy you about 6 hours before your oxygen runs out, and then you’d still be dead.

Continue reading “What If You Died in Space?” »

From the article: Sometime in the coming year, a spacecraft from AstroForge, an American asteroid-mining firm, may be launched on a mission to a rocky object near Earth’s orbit.

AstroForge, a private company, wants to mine a space rock, but it doesn’t want the competition to find out which one.

Canva has crafted a wildly successful business model on the idea that graphic design should be accessible to everyone.

Adams told TechCrunch+ he’s not worried about valuation drops, anyway. “This year has been one of our best years for growth. We’ve almost doubled on most of our metrics. We’ve had 80 million more active users join since this time last year, so it’s just been up and to the right for us,” he said. “That’s what we focus on: more users, better product, revenue growth.”

Over the last 12 months, Canva has released a slew of generative AI products that Adams said gives both the company and its users a new ability to build features and design work that might not have even been considered five years ago. “For us, AI is going to bring human creativity to the next level,” Adams said, noting that AI will enable Canva to “take great visual communication to a billion people around the world.”

Continue reading “From graphic design to visual workflows, Canva’s new AI core is changing its business” »

Gen DT Thompson ought to be proud of United States Space Force accomplishments during his tenure. Also, I remember his forward-leaning thoughts on establishing a new service as a guest speaking at my Space 300 Course in early 2019. At the time, the rank and file response was to maintain the status quo and not create a Space Force.

The James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features—including a seasonal polar cap. The image expands upon a two-color version released earlier this year, adding additional wavelength coverage for a more detailed look.

With its exquisite sensitivity, Webb captured the dim inner and outer rings of Uranus, including the elusive Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. It also imaged many of the planet’s 27 known moons, even seeing some small moons within the rings.

In visible wavelengths as seen by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, Uranus appeared as a placid, solid blue ball. In infrared wavelengths, Webb is revealing a strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting atmospheric features.