Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists see cislunar outpost as critical to advancing future Mars missions.

NASA researchers based in Colorado are devising efforts to build a human outpost in cislunar space — the region around the moon. Unfortunately for fans of space tourism, these outposts are not designed to be the Airbnb of tomorrow. Rather, the habitats are to be used as in-between points to facilitate travel to near-Earth asteroids or Mars.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Projects are researching life-support needs, updating astronaut radiation protection, and rethinking communication systems, to enhance the habitability of orbital communities parked in cislunar space.

Continue reading “Vacation Rentals on the Moon? NASA Plans Human Outpost in Space” »

Google Fiber is heading close to home for its next location: San Francisco. Google announced this morning that it intends to bring its fast gigabit internet to “a portion of San Francisco,” specifically to apartments, condos, and affordable housing units. Details on exactly where and when are nonexistent for now, and Google suggests that we may be waiting a while to hear more.

What Google Fiber does say is that it won’t be building out its own network in San Francisco, as it’s done in many other cities. Instead, it’ll rely on existing fiber networks to provide its service. That may limit what Google can do and where it can go, but it also means a much faster path to launch. “To date, we’ve focused mostly on building fiber-optic networks from scratch,” Michael Slinger, Google Fiber’s business operations director, writes in a blog post. “Now, as Google Fiber grows, we’re looking for more ways to serve cities of different shapes and sizes.” Google Fiber is already taking this approach in a couple other markets, including Huntsville, Alabama, where earlier this week it announced plans to launch using the city’s municipal network.

As it’s done elsewhere, Google Fiber plans to provide free gigabit internet service to “some public and affordable housing properties” in San Francisco. It’s also working with a nonprofit to teach people basic internet skills, like setting up an email account and applying for jobs.

Continue reading “Google Fiber is coming to San Francisco” »

Guessing the location of a randomly chosen Street View image is hard, even for well-traveled humans. But Google’s latest artificial-intelligence machine manages it with relative ease.

Audience viewing “Seeking Home: Life Inside the Calais Migrant Camp,” a VR experience placing viewers at the center of the migrant camp via Samsung Gear VR. (AP Photo)

I am not an astronomer or astrophysicist. I have never worked for NASA or JPL. But, during my graduate year at Cornell University, I was short on cross-discipline credits, and so I signed up for Carl Sagan’s popular introductory course, Astronomy 101. I was also an amateur photographer, occasionally freelancing for local media—and so the photos shown here, are my own.

Carl Sagan is aware of my camera as he talks to a student in the front row of Uris Hall

By the end of the 70’s, Sagan’s star was high and continuing to rise. He was a staple on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, producer and host of the PBS TV series, Cosmos, and he had just written Dragons of Eden, which won him a Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote Contact, which became a blockbuster movie, starring Jodie Foster.

Sagan died in 1996, after three bone marrow transplants to compensate for an inability to produce blood cells. Two years earlier, Sagan wrote a book and narrated a film based on a photo taken from space.

Continue reading “What has changed since ‘Pale Blue Dot’?” »

“Suppose you want to travel from Helsinki to New York and you have to change your flight in London,” explains Sorin Paraoanu. “Normally you would first fly on a plane from Helsinki to London, then wait for some time in the airport in London, then board the flight London-New York. But in the quantum world, you would be better off boarding a plane from Helsinki to London sometime after the flight London-New York took off. You will not spend any time in London and you will arrive in New York right at the time when the plane from Hesinki lands in London.” This is mind-boggling but the experiment shows that it is indeed happening.

Besides the relevance for quantum computing, the result also has deep conceptual implications. Much of our understanding of the reality is based on the so-called continuity principle: the idea that influences propagate from here to there by going through all the places in-between. Real objects don’t just appear somewhere from nothing. But the experiment seems to defy this. Like in a great show of magic, quantum physics allows things to materialize here and there, apparently out of nowhere.

The team would like to acknowledge the excellent scientific environment created in the Low Temperature Laboratory (part of OtaNano) at the Department of Applied Physics.

Continue reading “Quantum physicists turn to the dark state” »

For now he remains hands off; however, once China rolls out their Quantum infrastructure; then what?

NORTH Korea’s bid to wreak havoc in the West with an army of computer nerds has been dealt a crushing blow.

Ireland has real opportunity to benefit from increased global investment and establish itself as a world-class hub for cyber security practices, solutions and investment, according to a new report from Deloitte. Conducted in association with the International Sustainability and Investment Centre, the report found that Ireland has proven itself to be an innovative centre for technology and has the potential to become a world leader in cyber security.

Respondents to a survey for this report identified increased regulation on data privacy (73%), more sophisticated scamming and phishing (59%), and growth in identity theft (53%) as the major trends in the cyber area over the next five years. This will force businesses to change how they organise and manage their data security.

More than one third (36%) of respondents believe there will a trend towards outsourcing cyber management to third party organisations, and 27 percent think that businesses will establish global/regional centres of excellence for managing this function. The implication of this will be that a small number of locations will be preferred for basing these centres of excellence.

Continue reading “Ireland can become global cyber security hub — study” »

Law Firms are prime targets for hackers.

Law firms are considered by many hackers to be soft targets with a wealth of valuable information. Data from social security numbers, credit cards, and client confidences is enough to make the criminal mind salivate with malicious intent. Between 31–45% and 10–20% of firms have been infected by spyware or experienced security breaches respectively. But what can a private practitioner or law firm do to prevent these trespasses on their networks?

Continue reading “Cyber Security: How to Protect Your Firm and its Clients” »