Lifeboat Foundation

Sometimes, while waiting for quantum computers to become a thing, or complaining that your stupid laptop keeps dying on 5 percent battery, it’s easy to forget just how far technology has come over the past 50 years.

Sure, we can all list off a whole bunch of innovations that have changed the way the world works — the Internet, smartphones, radio telescopes — but it’s hard to really put that kind of change into perspective.

Thankfully, pictures often speak louder than words, and so below are nine photos that’ll make you stop and raise your *praise hand* emojis to the sky in honour of the scientists and engineers that have got us where we are today.

Continue reading “These 9 Incredible Images Are a Mind-Boggling Remind of How Far Technology Has Come” »

Hopefully in the future, when somebody tells you they will be making an appointment with a surgeon for an augment, they will come back smarter. The world will be a better place for it.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

Continue reading “A Case for Neural Augmentation” »

After a long search, a cosmic mystery has an answer. Astronomers have made the very first unambiguous detection of a radioactive molecule in space — an isotope of aluminium, found in the heart of a rare nova.

Scientists have long been searching for ²⁶ AlF — or Aluminium monofluoride — containing ²⁶ Al, but a direct observation has been exceptionally illusive.

We’ve known about the presence of ²⁶ Al in space for decades. In 1984, NASA’s HEAO 3 satellite data was used to identify gamma-ray radiation originating from the beta decay of the isotope. According to these observations, there’s roughly two solar masses of ²⁶ Al in the Milky Way.

Continue reading “Astronomers Have Made The First Detection of a Radioactive Molecule in Space” »

Taking public transportation to the next level.

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This discovery and its method will now pave the way for the discovery of other galaxies that have been cannibalized by other larger galaxies.

The researcher discovers conclusive proof of a galaxy that was cannibalized by neighbouring Andromeda.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made a silicon chip that distributes optical signals precisely across a miniature brain-like grid, showcasing a potential new design for neural networks.

These cells pack together tightly. To accommodate the curving that occurs during embryonic development, it has been assumed that epithelial cells adopt either columnar or bottle-like shapes.

However, a group of scientists dug deeper into this phenomenon and discovered a new geometric shape in the process.

They uncovered that, during tissue bending, epithelial cells adopt a previously undescribed shape that enables the cells to minimize energy use and maximize packing stability. The team’s results will be published in Nature Communications in a paper called “Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia.”

Continue reading “New geometric shape used by nature to pack cells efficiently” »

This is the next generation of robotic prosthetics. Here’s how they work.

Watch the full TED Talk here: http://bit.ly/2LQErPg