Lifeboat Foundation

Uranus’s upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades—and now scientists have shown why. Observations from Earth have shown Uranus’ upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, with no clear explanation.

Now, a team led by Imperial College London scientists has determined that unpredictable long-term changes in the solar wind —the stream of particles and energy coming from the sun—are behind the drop.

The team predict Uranus’ upper atmosphere should continue to get colder or reverse the trend and become hotter again depending on how the solar wind changes over the coming years.

Water, a molecule essential for life, exhibits unusual properties—referred to as anomalies—that define its behavior. Despite extensive study, many mysteries remain about the molecular mechanisms underlying these anomalies that make water unique. Deciphering and replicating this distinctive behavior across various temperature ranges remains a significant challenge for the scientific community.

Now, a study presents a new theoretical model capable of overcoming the limitations of previous methodologies to understand how water behaves in extreme conditions. The paper, featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics, is led by Giancarlo Franzese and Luis Enrique Coronas, from the Faculty of Physics and the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of the University of Barcelona (IN2UB).

The study not only broadens our understanding of the physics of water, but also has implications for technology, biology and biomedicine, in particular for addressing the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and the development of advanced biotechnologies.

Entanglement in hybrid quantum systems comprised of fundamentally different degrees of freedom, such as light and mechanics, is of interest for a wide range of applications in quantum technologies. Here, we propose to engineer bipartite entanglement between traveling acoustic phonons in a Brillouin active solid state system and the accompanying light wave. The effect is achieved by applying optical pump pulses to state-of-the-art waveguides, exciting a Brillouin Stokes process. This pulsed approach, in a system operating in a regime orthogonal to standard optomechanical setups, allows for the generation of entangled photon-phonon pairs, resilient to thermal fluctuations. We propose an experimental platform where readout of the optoacoustics entanglement is done by the simultaneous detection of Stokes and anti-Stokes photons in a two-pump configuration.

The rigid structures of language we once clung to with certainty are cracking. Take gender, nationality or religion: these concepts no longer sit comfortably in the stiff linguistic boxes of the last century. Simultaneously, the rise of AI presses upon us the need to understand how words relate to meaning and reasoning.

A global group of philosophers, mathematicians and computer scientists have come up with a new understanding of logic that addresses these concerns, dubbed “inferentialism”

One standard intuition of logic, dating back at least to Aristotle, is that a logical consequence ought to hold by virtue of the content of the propositions involved, not simply by virtue of being “true” or “false”. Recently, the Swedish logician Dag Prawitz observed that, perhaps surprisingly, the traditional treatment of logic entirely fails to capture this intuition.

A new quantum entanglement approach by Max-Planck-Institute scientists uses Brillouin scattering to link photons with acoustic phonons, enhancing stability and operating at higher temperatures.

Quantum entanglement is essential for many cutting-edge quantum technologies, including secure quantum communication and quantum computing. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have developed an efficient new method to entangle photons with acoustic phonons. Their approach overcomes one of the most significant challenges in quantum technology—vulnerability to external noise. This groundbreaking research, published on November 13 in Physical Review Letters, opens new possibilities for robust quantum systems.

Exploring Optoacoustic Entanglement

Researchers are developing atomically precise memristors for advanced neuromorphic computing systems.

The University of Kansas and University of Houston, backed by $1.8 million from the National Science Foundation’s Future of Semiconductor program (FuSe2), are collaborating to develop atomically tunable memory resistors, known as “memristors.” These advanced components are designed for brain-inspired computing applications and will support workforce development in the semiconductor industry.

Launched in 2023, the FuSe2 program addresses key challenges in semiconductor research and development, with industry partners including Micron, Intel, and Samsung.

Recent investments could position Massachusetts as a leader in this transformative technology, according to Northeastern Global News.

The excessive use of computers or the fact of being detrimentally influenced by computers.

computeritis, n. meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A release today of the Department of Defense annual report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) comes one day after a witness-based Congressional hearing on the topic.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena is required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, as amended by the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2023.

“Analyzing and understanding the potential threats posed by UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” said a DoD statement.