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SpaceX made its first orbital launch of 2022 with a new group of Starlink satellites.

The launch was dubbed the Starlink Group 4-5 mission and contained 49 Starlink v1.5 satellites, taking off from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). The Falcon 9 launch vehicle carrying the Starlink payload was launched southeastward from the pad to a 210 x 339 km low-Earth orbit (LEO) with a 53.22-degree inclination.

Using the southeast launch corridor, which follows the coast of the Bahamas, breaks decades of the precedent set by launches that typically follow the northeast launch corridor along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada. This trajectory meant the rocket would perform a dogleg maneuver and was the reason for fewer Starlink satellites being launched in this batch than previous launches with the v1.5 satellites.

A new article examining the correlation was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

A correlation was found between the fraction of organic matter found buried in sediments across Earth with changes in the occurrence of nearby exploding stars, known as supernovae. The article, authored by senior researcher Dr. Henrik Svensmark of DTU Space, explains a potential cause for the observed correlation is the influence of supernovae on Earth's climate.

More supernovae result in cold climates with significant temperature differences between the poles and the equator, leading to strong winds and ocean mixing, which helps increase nutrient concentrations in biological systems, increasing their productivity and leaving more biological material in sediment with time. Fewer supernovae result in warmer climates with weaker winds and less ocean mixing, decreasing nutrient supplies, lower bioproductivity, and, therefore, less organic matter found in sediment.

A study regarding the monumental discovery was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Astronomers used two Hawaiian telescopes, based at the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on Haleakala, Maui and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai'i Island, to observe the last 130 days of a red supergiant's life.

The research team observed the star's collapse into a Type II supernova while conducting the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey, the first observation of its kind. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) detected the star in mid-2020, and a few months later, a supernova had taken its place, designated supernova 2020tlf, or SN 2020tlf.

ASUS has already unleashed its new ROG Thor PSU family, but there's a new ASUS ROG Loki SFX-L PSU that will be ready for next-gen SFF gaming PSUs with 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connectors ready to handle 600W GPUs.

The new ROG Loki PSUs use the same high-quality components that power the inside of the higher-end ROG Thor PSUs, but crams them all into an SFX-L form factor, ready to power new Mini-ITX gaming PCs. The new ASUS ROG Loki PSUs will be available in 750W, 850W, 1000W, and 1200W versions, with 80 PLUS Titanium certification, and more.

ASUS ROG engineers worked night and day on maintaining the heat inside of the ROG Loki PSUs, finding a solution that dissipated the heat generated inside of the super-dense PSU. The team eventually revamped the PCB design and cooling system, which ensured stable, reliable power into the ROG Loki PSU and all of your PC components.

NVIDIA has announced that there are 10 games in the pipeline that will soon be receiving either DLSS or Reflex technologies when they launch this year.

The Day Before is a new open-world survival MMO from Fntastic, launching later this year and will pack NVIDIA DLSS support as well as 3 ray-traced effects: ambient occlusion, reflections, and global illumination. NVIDIA's injection of RTXGI will add performant infinite-bounce global illumination light from not only the sun, but from the moon and other natural light sources in the game.

Rainbow Six: Extraction is up next, from Ubisoft and will be launching with both NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex technologies -- but Rainbow Six: Siege runs on the same engine as Extraction -- so it should come as no surprise that the new game supports DLSS and Reflex tech.

Acer revealed a slew of new products at CES 2022 this week, with multiple gaming monitors -- a new 43-inch 4K 138Hz OLED gaming monitor -- and the new Predator X32 FP and X32 gaming monitors.

The new Acer Predator X32 FP gaming monitor rocks a 32-inch Mini-LED display with a native 4K resolution and up to 165Hz refresh rate over DisplayPort 1.4 in OC mode, while in stock mode the Predator X32 FP runs at 4K 160Hz. We have VESA DisplayHDR 1000 support, 1ms response time (G-t-G), 4 x HDMI 2.1 ports, 1 x DP 1.4, a USB 3.0 hub (4 ports), and 3.5mm audio jacks.

There's VESA wall mounting on the Acer Predator X32 FP gaming monitor, as well as dual 7W speakers. There's also the non-FP model, with the Acer Predator X32 being absolutely identical -- sans the HDMI 2.1 connector -- I don't know why there are two separate monitors... but whatevs.

NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope has passed an incredible milestone that only further engraves its place in the space telescope hall of fame.

Phys.org reports that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has officially passed the 1 billion second mark over the 31 years it has been operating. During that time, the famous telescope, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, has been serviced by astronauts five times and is the only space telescope that is designed to be serviced by astronauts. The servicing missions include astronauts replacing core components that have malfunctioned over prolonged use.

For context of this "use", Hubble has made more than 1.5 million scientific observations over its operational time, and that number is still growing today. During its operation time, researchers have used Hubble to unlock deeper understandings of the universe and how it works, with its instruments leading to breakthroughs in astrophysics such as a more precise estimation of the expansion of the universe, black holes, and more.

Following yesterday's report confirming that a failed Russian rocket piece was hurdling uncontrollably back down to Earth, new reports state that the rocket piece has entered Earth's atmosphere.

The rocket part that has crashed back down to Earth is the upper stage of the Russian Angara A5 rocket tested on December 2021. The rocket was uncrewed and was also carrying a satellite. NBC reported that its engine malfunctioned shortly after the rocket was launched, causing it to remain stuck in low-Earth orbit before eventually falling back down to the surface.

On Wednesday, the four tons of material plummeted back down to Earth, entering Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and landing in an unknown area. Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer, warned that four tons of material entering the atmosphere could pose a risk as not all of the material will burn up, some pieces may make it to the surface. However, McDowell noted that the majority of the planet is covered in ocean and that it's more likely that it would hit the sea than land, which it seems to have done.

NASA's next-generation space telescope dubbed the James Webb Space Telescope departed from Earth on Christmas Day, and the below video is probably the last time humanity will ever see the observatory ever again.

NASA has taken to its blog to explain why the James Webb Space Telescope isn't equipped with a series of cameras that can relay footage of the unfolding process back to headquarters for engineers and public viewing. The space agency explains that there are a plethora of problems that arise if Webb was equipped with cameras, the first being that the space telescope is very shiny, so any cameras directed at Webb's sun-facing side would be subject to extreme glare.

Cameras equipped to the side of the observatory that's in the shade would require a light source. NASA notes that infrared cameras could have solved the lighting problem, but would present "harnessing disadvantages". The space agency writes that engineers considered adding cameras and proceeded to draw up mock designs with cameras equipped, but ultimately decided that "that deployment surveillance cameras would not add significant information of value for engineering teams commanding the spacecraft from the ground."

On January 5, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dove by around 7%, and now reports indicate that the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange has bought the dip.

Back in 2019, Binance took to its official Twitter account to announce a new wallet initially intended to be used to issue new crypto-pegged tokens onto the Binance Smart Chain, beginning with BTCB and BEP2 pegged to Bitcoin. However, it seems that the wallet address has turned into one of Binance's cold storage wallets as all it does is continue to accumulate Bitcoin around the $40,000 mark.

On Tuesday this week, the above wallet address purchased 43,000 BTC at the average price of $46,553.68, which has raised the total number of BTC contained in the wallet to 121,396 BTC, worth about $5 billion. CoinTelegraph reports that the wallet address is referred to as "Binance BTC reserve wallet address", and has never sold any Bitcoin since its creation.

Acer unveiled its new Predator CG48 gaming monitor at CES 2022, with a huge 48-inch 4K OLED panel with an interesting refresh rate of up to 138Hz -- not 120Hz, not 144Hz, but 138Hz.

The new Acer Predator CG48 gaming monitor has HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, which means you can hook up your gaming PC or next-gen Sony PlayStation 5 or Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles up to the Predator CG48. There's also AMD FreeSync Premium Pro technology here, with a response time of just 0.1ms.

We've got 135,000:1 contrast ratio, HDR10 support, and 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut -- all of this comes in a sleek design, better than the previous large Predator gaming monitors. Acer will have its huge, and I'm sure very beautiful new OLED-based Predator CG48 gaming monitor in Q3 2022 starting at $2499.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has taken a sharp dive after reports surfaced about the Kazakh government shutting down the country's internet access.

A new report from CoinTelegraph states that Kazakhstan, the second-largest country in the world in Bitcoin mining hashrate has recently switched off its internet access following political unrest in the country. Kazakhstan's previous cabinet exited office, but before leaving, the state-owned Kazakhtelecom turned off the internet access to the country, which then caused BTC network activity to fall to 2% of daily highs.

According to data acquired by YCharts.com, in the following hours after the shutdown, the total Bitcoin mining hashrate across the country dove 13.4%, taking the hashrate from around 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. In total, Kazakhstan accounts for 18% of the total Bitcoin mining hashrate. So, what sparked the internet shutdown? According to CoinTelegraph, in the days before the shutdown, the previous Kazakh cabinet removed the price caps on liquid petroleum, and as a result, the price doubled in 24 hours, which caused protesters to hit the streets.

Half-Life: Alyx is the very best VR experience I've ever had, and one of the best gaming experiences that I've ever had, too -- but now that Sony has announced its next-gen PlayStation VR 2 headset, new rumors of Half-Life: Alyx emerge.

A new rumor teases that Valve's VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx could appear on Sony's new PlayStation VR 2 headset, with XboxEra co-founder @Shpeshal_Nick tweeting: "From what I've been told, they have. Not sure when it's happening though. I thought this was one of those open secrets?"

This would be a huge deal for Sony as it would instantly deliver them one of, if not the very best VR experience possible, all ready for their PSVR 2 headset release. On the PC you require a dedicated VR headset to play Half-Life: Alyx, but if you've already got the PS5 and then buy the PSVR 2 -- you're ready to rock and roll, and hold a crowbar -- in Half-Life: Alyx on PlayStationVR 2.

HTC announced a new product at CES that will bring the capabilities of its Vive Tracker pucks to its standalone Vive Focus 3 headset. The new Vive Wrist Trackers will be available soon.

HTC loves to bring out accessories for its VR hardware. Last year, the company launched the Vive Focus 3, the first US-bound 6-DoF standalone headset from Vive. The Focus 3 is a competent device that was well received by reviewers. Standalone headsets are shaping up to be the future of the VR medium but switching away from the PC platform meant losing accessory support. The Vive Wrist Trackers should solve many of those problems.

The new Vive Wrist Trackers attach to your wrist and allow your headset to keep better track of your arm motion, especially when using hand-tracking over the included controllers. The Vive Wrist Trackers have LED lights just like the controllers, which allows the headset to track their position with its tracking cameras. The trackers also have a high-frequency IMU, so you don't lose wrist tracking when the cameras lose sight of the trackers.

AMD's next-gen AM5 socket will be here later this year, with the new AM5 socket taking AMD's next-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs made on TSMC's new 5nm process node.

In a recent interview with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said that the company has plans to keep the new AM5 platform around for a very long time, just like its AM4 socket has now -- which then had new technologies like faster DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 standards -- AM5 will be the same.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su explains: "Well, we've been extremely pleased with how AM4 has evolved....we said we would keep that socket for a long time and we have. We continue to believe that it has been good for the community and frankly, it's been good for us as well. As we bring things along, it was time to do a socket transition for the new I/O in the new technology, but I think strategy-wise, it should be similar".

Intel told the world that its new Arc GPUs were shipping to OEMs and that they were "coming in Q1 2022" -- all said at CES 2022 -- and now, as CES 2022 is wrapping up Intel has removed any mention of "Q1 2022" from the Intel Arc website.

In its place, Intel now says that its Arc GPUs are "coming 2022" and any mention of Q1 has been wiped. This isn't a traditional mistake as it clearly said "Q1 2022" on the website, and has been clearly changed. There is a photo of Intel at CES 2022 with "Intel ARC" and then drum roll place "Coming Q1 2022".

Curtains down, edits to the website, and voila -- we have the mess that is the Intel Arc GPU launch. Intel could've -- no, should've -- been much clearer with the press and customers about Arc, not like this. We might see a trickle of mobile-focused Arc GPUs debuting inside of laptops in a few months time, but it looks like the Arc can is being kicked down the road a little further.

AMD's next-gen EPYC "Genoa" CPU has been spotted in the flesh, and the handful-of-CPU rocks AMD's next-gen Zen 4 CPU cores -- and up to a huge 96 cores and 192 threads of it -- on the new LGA 6096 socket.

The new CPU will rock up to 96 cores in its first form, with up to 12 CCDs on a single package -- AMD will have support for a huge 12-channel DDR5 memory that will support up to 12TB of DDR5 in total. We're also going to have PCIe 5.0 support, with AMD EPYC "Genoa" CPUs supported with up to 400W TDP.

The new SP5 socket is a big deal, but man the AMD EPYC "Genoa" CPU is a big boi CPU... the next-gen LGA 6096 socket will handle the huge 6096 pins that the new EPYC "Genoa" CPUs will have. TSMC will handle fabbing the new EPYC "Genoa" CPUs on their new 5nm process node, while the new Zen 4 CPU architecture will be spinning around inside of the next-gen silicon.

Samsung had something truly different to show off at CES 2022 this year, with its new 55-inch Odyssey Ark monitor capable of being rotated into a giant portrait display. Check it out:

The new Samsung 55-inch Odyssey Ark monitor can be used in its regular 16:9 form in landscape, but the monitor can be rotated 90 degrees into portrait mode and be used for the ultimate in ultra-multitasking. You can have your web browser, a Zoom call, your emails, and even a game of chess on the side when it's in portrait mode.

Inside, Samsung is using a Quantum Dot Mini-LED display with the height-adjustable stand cable of pivot and tilt adjustment as well, while Samsung says that its multiview options "allow users to adjust Odyssey Ark exactly how they want it with a totally adaptable screen size to fit the game or the program without compromising its 4K display and bright, colorful images. The monitor also features a wireless, dial controller to manage lighting and the interface".

ASRock has teamed with Razer for yet another PC component collaboration, with the companies introducing the new Z690 Taichi Razer Edition motherboard.

The new ASRock Z690 Taichi Razer Edition motherboard has Razer Chroma RGB integrated into the motherboard -- but to a whole new level -- with the heart of the system taking Intel's latest and greatest 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs. There's 10 phase power design on the new motherboard, with the latest SPS (Smart Power Stage) technology and 8-layer-2-oz PCB which ensures the best VRM design and heat dissipation for that flagship Core i9-12900K.

ASRock also uses reinforced SMD-type (surface-mount device) DDR5 DIMMs and Low-Loss PCB material so that its new Z690 Taichi Razer Edition motherboard can be used to break DDR5 memory OC records.

CES 2022 is the start of the flood of high-end Mini-LED gaming monitors, with ViewSonic entering the ring with its new ELITE XG321UG gaming monitor.

ViewSonic's new ELITE XG321UG gaming monitor has a 32-inch Mini-LED panel with a native 4K resolution and super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate, with NVIDIA G-SYNC ULTIMATE and NVIDIA Reflex technologies. You've also got VESA DisplayHDR 1400 certification, which means you're going to get an eye-bleeding-bright display as well as beautiful colors and blacks as well.

Jeff Muto, business line director at ViewSonic said: "With the ViewSonic ELITE XG321UG, we're adding one of the best high-end monitors to our ELITE gaming series. Featuring a mini-LED panel, advanced ergonomics and customizable RGB lighting, this monitor is packed with features that give users the gaming setup they've always wanted. What's more, with super-smooth gameplay, incredible responsiveness, and amazing color accuracy, the XG321UG delivers an immersive experience".