Lifeboat Foundation

A new report from tech giant Samsung proposes that a fleet of roughly 4,600 micro-satellites orbiting Earth could solve our impending data crisis.

Predicting that by 2028, 5 billion Internet users around the world will be collectively chewing through at least 1 zettabyte per month — to put that in perspective, 1 zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes, 1 exabyte is 1,000 petabytes, and 1 petabyte is 1,000 terabytes — the report says we’re going to have to think seriously about how we can deliver that. A constellation of tiny Internet-beaming satellites could be a viable option, it says, and Samsung could be the one to build it.

The report, entitled Mobile Internet from the Heavens, describes an Internet satellite system that will avoid the latency issues of current communications satellites by being positioned much closer to Earth. “Most modern communications satellites live in geostationary orbit, roughly 35,000 kilometres above the surface, and this imposes a hard limit on speed due to travel time for the data transmissions,” Graham Templeton writes for ExtremeTech. “Samsung wants to position its constellation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and thus reduce this delay.”

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The most powerful laser beam ever created has been recently fired at Osaka University in Japan, where the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments (LFEX) has been boosted to produce a beam with a peak power of 2,000 trillion watts – two petawatts – for an incredibly short duration, approximately a trillionth of a second or one picosecond.

Values this large are difficult to grasp, but we can think of it as a billion times more powerful than a typical stadium floodlight or as the overall power of all of the sun’s solar energy that falls on London. Imagine focusing all that solar power onto a surface as wide as a human hair for the duration of a trillionth of a second: that’s essentially the LFEX laser.

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Cryptographers are working on new encryption methods able to protect today’s Internet communications from future quantum computers that can be able to break today’s cryptography techniques. The researchers have developed upgrades to the Internet’s core encryption protocol that will prevent quantum computer users from intercepting Internet communications.

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Study of census results in England and Wales since 1871 finds rise of machines has been a job creator rather than making working humans obsolete.

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Astronauts captured a red sprite from their vantage point on the International Space Station. The vibrant jellyfish is part of a thunderstorm that raged over Mexico in early August.

Red sprites are bright flashes that happen directly above thunderstorms with more mundane cloud-to-ground or intracloud lightning strikes. The sprites are brightest at an altitude of 65 to 75 kilometers (40 to 46 miles), but can extend as faint wisps as low as 30 kilometers and as high as 95 kilometers (18 to 59 miles). The sprites are red at the highest altitude, fading to blue at lower altitudes. The largest sprites cluster together in a clump of tendrils up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) across, looking vaguely like red glowing jellyfish.

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Long time ago I was wondering why not to use drones (• (named for that concrete application Extreme Access Flyers) to explore the space, to reach new planets, asteroids … it would be exciting … rovers are limited in action, so what if we make it airborne? Once in space, why not to send a drone or a swarm of them from the main spaceship to explore a new planet? They could interact, share capabilities, morph, etc.

While the economy looks more or less promising for civil and military, there is still a long path to walk …

“Teal Group’s 2015 market study estimates that UAV production will soar from current worldwide UAV production of $4 billion annually to $14 billion, totaling $93 billion in the next ten years. Military UAV research spending would add another $30 billion over the decade.”

Read more at http://www.suasnews.com/2015/08/37903/teal-group-predicts-wo…-forecast/

Continue reading “Using drones to explore space” »

How 3D printing is changing the way we manufacture and produce is already a fact, step by step, in different areas, from aerospace to the medical areas.

How will this impact the established processes, the economy, the patient …

Is this the dawn of personalized medicine? patients will be able to print their own pills at home? Will 3D printing represent an enhancement to distribution processes?

Continue reading “FDA approved the first 3D-printed prescription drug” »

Project Sunroof maps out how much sun and shade hit homes on any given day. Head here to See how much shine your home gets and if solar power is good for you.

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Videos of creepy robots trying their best to walk like humans (with absolutely no help from their abusive owners) are nothing new, but this new footage of the Atlas humanoid walking robot, developed by Google-owned company Boston Dynamics, is a game changer.

Usually these videos are shot in a lab, or on a treadmill — an artificial environment where the terrain that the robot is walking on can be controlled and maintained.

However, the latest video from the Boston Dynamics team, which gets funding from the US Defence budget, shows the Atlas robot running through a real forest.

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