Lifeboat Foundation

Payback time.

DART is a test of the kinetic impactor technique, a potential method to deflect an asteroid on course to impact the Earth. Kinetic impactors are one of only a small number of approaches we think are mature enough to deploy in the near future if they are needed (though we hope they won’t be). The most powerful asteroid-deflection technique is the use of a nuclear device. While such a device makes for good (and bad) sci-fi movies, there is widespread desire to develop alternate techniques.

The kinetic impactor concept is rather straightforward: ram the threatening object with a spacecraft and change its orbit so that it misses our planet. In theory, we could heave ever-larger masses at ever-faster speeds to deflect ever-larger objects. However, we think there is a practical limit — we don’t want to break up an incoming object into several pieces, lest we replace one big impact with multiple, only-slightly-smaller impacts. Exactly where that tradeoff lies is still uncertain, but we believe we can keep an object intact if we change its speed by less than the object’s own escape speed. In other words, since we think a lot of these objects are loose aggregates of gravel held together by gravity, we don’t want to shove so hard that we accidentally overcome that weak gravity and disperse the gravel.

Continue reading “Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for billions of years. In 2022, we hit back” »

Scientists are trying to create human sperm and eggs in a dish. They’ve already done it in mice, and one scientist says it is only a matter of time before there’s “a game changer like no other” for human reproduction.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of feet underwater, the Greek goddess of love lives on—in the form of a dazzling reef fish.

In a new study published on Tuesday in ZooKeys, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences describe a new species of anthias, a common type of reef fish, named Tosanoides aphrodite or the Aphrodite anthias. The pink and yellow creature so transfixed researchers when they discovered it during a deep-water dive that they didn’t notice a large sixgill shark swimming directly above them.

“This one is without a doubt the most spectacularly colored fish I’ve ever described,” says Luiz Rocha, an ichthyologist with the California Academy of Sciences, in an email.

Continue reading “New, Ultra-Colorful Neon Fish Species Discovered” »

BATANGAS, Philippines (Reuters) — A Philippine inventor has unveiled what he calls a flying sports car that represents the future of transport, riding it out of a warehouse toward a cheering crowd, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

Do you know how an ice sheet can move? You’ll find out below.

Babies notice more than we think they do, and the things they notice can tell us a lot about the kind of people they’ll grow up to be. Previously, scientists determined that toddlers younger than two years old exhibit signs of altruism — selfless concern for the well-being of others — that in turn predicted what they’d be like in the future. Now, new research in the journal PLOS Biology suggests that these signs emerge even earlier than we thought. The way a baby acts before it even turns one year old can reliably predict whether it will display altruistic behavior by the time it’s 14 months old.

Research in this field is an attempt to understand whether it’s really in our nature to be altruistic, and why. Acting selflessly, after all, is not immediately beneficial, at least from a purely evolutionary standpoint. And yet even our non-human primate relatives will sacrifice themselves for their neighbors, leading to the understanding that the behavior is somehow conserved.

In the new paper, published Tuesday, a team of psychologists and cognitive scientists show that a 7-month-old baby that pays close attention to the face of someone who is afraid is more likely to display prosocial behavior by the time they’re 14 months old.

Continue reading “Babies Show Signs of Altruism Earlier Than Scientists Ever Thought” »

Improvements have ground to a halt for the first time since records began, in 1982, ONS data shows.

Could this be the future of travel? It beats your usual bus journey!