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A new survey of planetary defense experts by the Apollo Academic Surveys and Carrie Nugent of the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts has sought to gauge how much of an issue satellite overcrowding could become.

The survey covered topics relating to near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and their detection. All 34 experts rated themselves as at least slightly concerned about the potential for satellite overcrowding to impact astronomers' ability to detect asteroids. Twenty-four percent of respondents reported being extremely concerned. One respondent cited an early-2022 study, which found that "LEO [Low Earth Orbit] satellites can severely affect observations taken during twilight, and that is an important parameter space for NEO [Near-Earth Object] search."

A significant culprit in the growing issue of satellite overcrowding is SpaceX, which since launching its Starlink satellite constellation, has added over 3,200 satellites into orbit around Earth, contributing the most individual satellites to orbit of any corporation or country. However, a few hundred of this number are now inactive. Still, like many inactive satellites produced by other manufacturers, they often continue to orbit Earth long after they become defunct, with a handful falling back to Earth or burning up in the atmosphere.

Justin Maki, an Imaging Scientist and the Mastcam-Z Deputy Principal Investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has collated the various bits of human-made debris the space agency's rovers have found on Mars.

Much of the recently found debris has been from the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware that NASA used to carry its Perseverance rover to Mars' surface. The rover landed on the planet on February 18th, 2021, and the EDL hardware was jettisoned a safe distance away during the rover's descent. Since then, Perseverance and the accompanying Ingenuity helicopter have imaged EDL debris.

On Sol 414 (April 19th, 2022), or the 414th Martian day, of Perseverance's mission, the Ingenuity helicopter spotted the discarded parachute and rover's backshell one kilometer (0.62 miles) from the mission's landing site. As of Sol 508 (July 24th, 2022), the Perseverance rover has found about six suspected pieces of EDL debris in the Hogwallow Flats region, located about 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) northwest of where the EDL initially crashed.

A Chinese nuclear reactor under ongoing development and intended for use in space applications has passed a comprehensive performance evaluation by China's Ministry of Science and Technology on August 25th, 2022.

Multiple state media outlets reported on the reactor passing its evaluation, but they have since been deleted, despite not containing any technical details regarding the reactor. The Chinese Academy of Sciences designed the reactor, with the project beginning in 2019. It can produce one megawatt (MW) of electricity, though specific applications for the technology have yet to be revealed. This number dwarfs the energy required to run the International Space Station (ISS), which requires between 84 and 120 kilowatts.

Wu Weiren, the director of China's recently-established Tiandu deep space exploration laboratory, called for space-based nuclear power innovations to support future missions. The nation could use the new technology to support China's currently-in-development space station, Tiangong. The space station has an expected lifetime of at least ten years, but this could be extended with a nuclear power upgrade, or additional future space stations may benefit from the technology.

Free-speech champion Andrew Tate that was recently declared excommunicado by most social media platforms, has filed a cease and desist against H3H3 Productions YouTuber Ethan Klein.

Andrew Tate was recently removed from all major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, with the internet superstar being removed for violations of various community guidelines and standards. Many of the social media platforms found Tate's content and reuploaded Tate-centered content in violation of hate speech, citing misogynistic views.

In response to this banning, Tate created a "final message" video that was posted to his website. The 1-hour+ video delved deep into the topic of his banning and why Tate believes it's unjustified, and how he will continue in the future. Tate goes in his childhood, his relationship with women, the "false internet image" that has been created of him, his true intentions behind his content, how this is a violation of freedom of speech, and more.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has explained on his radio show StarTalk just how big numbers can get, including a physical representation of $100 billion.

Posted to deGrasse Tyson's personal TikTok account, the famed astrophysicist began with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' net worth, which is currently about $130 billion. deGrasse Tyson rounded down to $100 billion and explained that if each of the bills in the $100 billion was placed end-to-end, it would wrap around the Earth two hundred times. Additionally, with the leftover money, deGrasse Tyson explained that if the notes were placed vertically, the stack would reach the moon and back ten times over.

Using the same framework outlined by deGrasse Tyson, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has an estimated net worth of $230 billion (rounded down to $200 billion), would be able to achieve all of the aforementioned feats twice over. The astrophysicist continued to higher numbers and said that humans experience 1 billion in seconds, with most occurring during their 31 years alive as it takes 31 years to count to 1 billion. To illustrate 1 trillion, deGrasse Tyson, it would mean it would take 31 years times 1,000 - equaling 1 trillion.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition graphics card just turned up in some fresh leaks, with a gander at its newly-minted font and RTX 3090-class chunky cooler. But now... now it's time for some color.

COLORFUL's next-gen iGame GeForce RTX 4080 Ultra OC graphics card is now in the wild, after an anonymous source provided me with this image. This of course could be fake, but if it's real then COLORFUL has a real nice-looking design on its new iGame GeForce RTX 4080 Ultra OC graphics card.

The card itself features a single 16-pin power connector, with provisions for two more on what I'm assured to see as some monster custom GeForce RTX 4080 or GeForce RTX 4090 from COLORFUL. COLORFUL's design is very similar (except its switched white to black) from its iGame GeForce RTX 3050 Ultra W DUO OC 8G, that I reviewed earlier this year. I loved the design then, and even said I'd love to see a higher-end graphics card with that design and here we have the iGame GeForce RTX 4080 Ultra OC. Yep, love that style.

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card is in the headlines in a big way today, where the purported GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition smiles for the camera.

The new picture is coming from leaker "KittyYukko" with a single picture to Twitter, teasing the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition with a chunky cooler that looks like the bigger GeForce RTX 3090 series Founders Edition cooler. We could be looking at a dual-slot design since the photo is from the top, and it could be fake, but we're just reporting what we're seeing.

NVIDIA is expected to use the AD103-300 GPU inside of the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, with 9728 CUDA cores, or 76 SMs enabled in total (out of the possible 84 SMs). Previously, the GeForce RTX 4080 was expected to have 10,240 CUDA cores, or 80 SMs. Fresh rumors also suggested it will feature 16GB of GDDR6X memory clocked at 23Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus that would feed out up to 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth on a 340W TDP.

If you are a sneaker collector or know of a sneaker collector in your life that wants a totally next-gen way of showing off your sneaker collections? Then LG has your back, it wants to make Life Good with your sneaker collection with the introduction of its new Styler ShoeCase.

LG's new Styler ShoeCase is a new-look shoebox that has a window to show off your shoes, but better yet: the enclosure protects your shoes from moisture, with LG using filters to protect your kicks from UV light. You can even stack four of them up if you've got the sneakers to display, but it gets even better... if the Styler ShoeCase wasn't already cool enough.

Inside, there's a built-in Lazy Susan that lets you rotate your kicks for the absolute ultimate in showing off your shoes with LG's new Styler ShoeCase. I mean, imagine four pairs of sneakers all rotating with RGB lighting for the ultimate in atmosphere (while displaying your shoes in a totally new way).

Apple is expected to launch its iPhone 14 on September 7 at its 'Far Out' event, but after that is released the next-gen iPhone 15 Pro will arrive next year and will be the "most powerful 2023 phone" thanks to its next-gen 3nm chip inside made by TSMC.

Right now we have a limitation of 5nm and 4nm chips inside of smartphones, with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen2 being made on TSMC's 4nm process node, and Apple's new A16 being made on TSMC's 5nm process node. But in 2023, Apple is waiting for the stars to align for TSMC to have its N3 enhanced "N3E" mode ready for its nextr-gen A17 chipset to be made on TSMC's wicked new 3nm process node.

TSMC's new 3nm process node + Apple A17 + iPhone 15 Pro = most powerful smartphone of 2023? I guess we'll have to wait and see, but TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) held its Q2 earnings call recently, with TSMC CEO C. C. Wei said: "N3E will further extend our N3 family with enhanced performance, power and yield. We observed a high level of customer engagement at N3E, and volume production is scheduled for around one year after N3".

The founder of Turkish crypto currency exchange, Thodex, has been arrested in Albania after fleeing the country in 2021 with $2 billion with of cryptocurrency and now he faces 40,564 years in jail.

Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder Thodex, is one of the most infamous crypto scammers after screwing around 400,000 customers of Thodex, running away with around $2 billion in various cryptocurrencies. Özer was arrested in Albania after fleeing authorities for over a year, where Interpol identified him using biometric results.

Thodex staff were detailed when Özer went missing, with executives of the company as well as founding members of Thodex each looking at 40,564 years in jail. That's a lot of time. I wonder if you could play every single game ever made, and watch every single TV series and movie in that time. Anyway, in 2017 the company had 700,000+ clients from Turkey that allowed them to protect their money through investing into cryptocurrency -- in exchanges like Thodex -- against the decline in their national currency: Lira.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X processor has now been detailed, but there are things we don't know yet and one of those is thermals... especially under load.

But weeks before release, Enthusiast Citizen wrote on Bilibili from people who have both Zen 4 and Raptor Lake CPUs in their hands with some early thermal results. AMD's new Zen 4-powered Ryzen 9 7950X is running at a toasty 95C at 230W, which is needed for AMD to maintain 5GHz+ clock speeds. Meanwhile, Intel's new "Raptor Lake" powered Core i9-13900K runs at a cooler 82C with the same cooler.

Wccftech also reports from their sources that the new Ryzen 9 7000 series CPUs are running at 92-94C, even when it's being cooled with a high-end 360mm AIO cooler. This is without any overclocking applied but remember: this is an engineering/qualifying sample and not in final retail form so thermal performance should be different.

AMD's next-gen EPYC 9004 "Genoa-X" and "Bergamo" CPUs have been leaked, with details on all the new Zen 4 V-Cache and Zen 4C cores that will be arriving in 2023 and beyond.

We've been slowly fed leaks of the regular Zen 4-based EPYC processors, but with leaks on AMD's second-gen 3D V-Cache for the Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs arriving over the last couple of days, now it's time for some EPYC processors and that sweet, sweet second-gen 3D V-Cache.

The leak includes a stack of EPYC processors, which will be broken up into three families: the standard Zen 4 for EPYC "Genoa", the Compute Density-Optimized Zen 4c for EPYC "Bergamo", while the Cache-Optimized Zen 4 V-Cache in the upcoming EPYC "Genoa-X" family of CPUs. "Genoa-X" will have up to 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 4 cores on 5nm, with 1GB+ of L3 cache per CPU socket.

Valve recently confirmed a new Steam Deck is in development, and that the system is multi-generational hardware. But it's not giving up on games any time soon either.

Valve is an interesting jack of all trades. The company not only runs the most popular PC gaming platform on the market, but it has released multiple iterations of new hardware including the innovative (but failed) PC-console Steam Machine hybrid, the innovative Index VR headset, controllers, and the PC-handheld Steam Deck hybrid. It also released Half-Life Alyx, it's first new game in many years. But Alyx won't be its last game; new projects are currently in development.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, Valve's Greg Coomer confirms that more Half-Life games are on the way and that new mystery titles are currently in the works behind Valve's steamy corridors. "We're not stopping making games at all. Valve has a lot of games in development. We will continue to release games," Coomer said.

Microsoft has once again talked down Call of Duty being removed from PlayStation or being exclusive to the Xbox platform amid public scrutiny from regulators.

Today the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA, basically the UK's version of the FTC) publicly aired its concerns on Microsoft's proposed buyout of Activision-Blizzard. The CMA says it believes the deal has a "realistic prospect of significant lessening of competition" in key gaming markets because of Microsoft's existing cloud framework, its games console platform and services like Xbox Game Pass, and that Call of Duty and Candy Crush are so powerful that their acquisition could affect competitors and rivals.

Now Microsoft has responded to this report with a public blog post of its own, affirming that Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation consoles. Spencer cites how Microsoft has been so open with Minecraft, however Minecraft hasn't released 8 separate premium games since 2014.

Following months of leaks and speculation, Ubisoft has officially announced the next Assassin's Creed game.

The reports were right: The next Assassin's Creed game is called Mirage. Ubisoft announced the game in a recent Tweet and also released a bit of concept/key art for Assassin's Creed Mirage. While no other details were outlined, the game will be revealed during its delayed Ubisoft Forward stream event on September 10 at 12PM PST/3PM EST.

Ubisoft's confirmation goes a long way, but the publisher isn't ready to announce other details about Assassin's Creed Mirage. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who broke the news months back, the recent report got a few details wrong.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has confirmed that major Activision-Blizzard franchises will cross over to Xbox Game Pass if the company's $68.7 billion buyout goes through.

We had previously said that Call of Duty, a $30 billion franchise, was the main reason Microsoft wanted to buy Activision-Blizzard. Then Phil Spencer indicated that mobile was a major reason for the buyout; Microsoft wants to make a larger splash in mobile, and Activision has done well with Call of Duty Mobile ($1.5 billion to date), Blizzard's latest Diablo Immortal (achieved $100 million faster than Fortnite), and the mega billion dollar sensation Candy Crush ($2.58 billion in 2021).

Microsoft's entire rationale is to acquire as much content as possible to bolster its services platform. Xbox is now a service-based ecosystem that bridges consoles, PCs, and mobile devices, but Microsoft wants to secure more franchises for consistent live expansion. With Game Pass being the most transformational subscription service for Xbox with multiple years of growth, it's no surprise that Microsoft wants to fortify Game Pass as much as possible. Hence why big Activision-Blizzard franchises would jump right onto Game Pass if the merger deal goes through.

Regulators in the UK haven't been convinced that Microsoft's buyout of Activision-Blizzard is good for competition, and require more information in order to make an informed decision.

The United Kingdom's Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), which is basically the UK's version of the FTC, has requested more information on Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard. The CMA has publicly said that it has concerns that the deal could affect competition in the video games sphere, namely with gaming subscriptions, gaming consoles, and the emerging and fast-growing cloud market.

The CMA says that it has "identified a realistic prospect of significant lessening of competition in the UK, including gaming consoles, multi-game subscription services, and cloud gaming services."

NASA is working on a viable way to create oxygen on Mars, and it's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is showing its worth by successfully converting Mars' toxic atmosphere into breathable oxygen.

MOXIE is a relatively small instrument attached to NASA's Perseverance rover that is currently exploring the Jezero Crater in search of signs of ancient life. Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater in February 2021, and since then, the MOXIE instrument has been converting Mars' carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into breathable oxygen, with the small instrument creating as much as 0.2 ounces of oxygen per hour, which is about the same as a small tree.

The MOXIE instrument is run by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and according to members of the MOXIE team, they have already learned a large amount from the small amount of oxygen that the instrument has produced and that this new information will inform engineering in creating large-scale MOXIE's. Since Mars' atmosphere is about 96% carbon dioxide, MOXIE's will be essential to providing oxygen to colonists living on Mars' surface.

There is growing concern within the US government about space-based weapons development by Russia and China.

Pentagon officials have scheduled a meeting for September 6 and September 7 to discuss how China and Russia's potential development of space-to-ground and fractional orbital bombardment systems could influence the United States. According to the meeting agenda per DefenseNews, the meeting will also be used to conduct US response options to these newly developed weapons systems.

The meeting will feature many top US officials, such as the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, along with the Defense Policy Board and national security members. The US has reason to be concerned with other nations' space-based weapons development as China and Russia have both demonstrated new space-based weaponry and anti-satellite systems. It was only in October of last year that China demonstrated it was capable of creating a spacecraft that can grapple to satellites, as well as ground-to-space weapons systems that deployed missiles and laser weapons.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently been very vocal about his position on the biggest risks to civilization, which has now caused experts in fields that Musk has mentioned to fire back at the CEO.

It was only a few days ago that Musk took to his personal Twitter account to inform his 100+ million followers that population collapse due to low birthrates was a much larger risk to civilization than global warming. This isn't the first time Musk has rung the bell on population collapse, as the billionaire has previously stated in multiple interviews that he is gravely concerned with declining birth rates.

According to the United Nations projections, Earth is expected to reach 8 billion people by the end of November this year, with further projections estimating an additional 500 million people in the following 8 years. Even further projections estimate that in 2080 the world's population will peak at approximately 10.4 billion, with a 50% that population growth will half and essentially plateau by 2100.