Latest News - Page 1251

In a new study published in the journal Chem, researchers have modified crystalline structures to make them stretchy.

Chenfeng Ke, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Dartmouth College, and his research team have designed carbon-based, porous crystals that can stretch to more than double their length.

NASA will be live-streaming the launch of two Japanese private citizens accompanied by a veteran Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS) on December 8th, 2021.

A Soyuz MS-20 will carry the Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and private citizens Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, launching at 12:38 p.m. local time (07:38 UTC). Maezawa is a billionaire entrepreneur joined by his production assistant Hirano, both going for an eleven-day visit to the ISS.

The flight will take six hours, with NASA's covering the launch and the docking sequence. On NASA TV, launch coverage begins at 2 a.m. EST, docking coverage at 8 a.m. EST, and hatch opening and welcoming remarks at 10:15 a.m. EST.

With the most powerful radio antenna on Earth, researchers from the University of Queensland have detected radio signals from distant stars.

Dr. Benjamin Pope of the University of Queensland and colleagues from the Dutch national observatory ASTRON have been using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands to observe radio waves emanating from distant stars. These waves suggest the existence of unknown planets orbiting these stars.

NASA has developed a new near-Earth asteroid impact monitoring algorithm dubbed Sentry-II to help defend Earth against future asteroid threats.

Survey telescopes have identified nearly 28,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) to date, with additional NEAs expected to be discovered and added at a rate of roughly 3,000 per year. With advances in survey telescope technology, this rate will likely increase. In response to the potential threat posed by these asteroids to Earth, NASA has developed Sentry-II, an asteroid impact monitoring algorithm that has just gone online.

The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, calculates the orbit of every known NEA, creating impact hazard assessments for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). To do so, CNEOS has used Sentry software developed by JPL in 2002.

After being put in safe mode to protect the scientific instruments aboard, the Hubble Space Telescope returns to full scientific operations.

On December 6th, NASA recovered the final instrument aboard Hubble, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The previous instrument to be recovered was the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on November 28th, and before that the Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys on November 22rd and November 7th respectively.

Hubble initially went into safe mode on October 25th in response to the loss of internal synchronization messages. As NASA has worked to bring the scientific instruments back online, no synchronization message issues have been detected since November 1st.

A startup company has emerged from the shadows with millions in funding to create what seems to be an imperative layer to the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem.

The startup company is called Mnemonic, and according to a report from Forbes, Mnemonic has raised a $4 million funding round to create what is essentially an archive of everything that has happened in the NFT space. While this data is already public, it isn't easily accessible to companies that are looking to navigate and track the NFT market - this is the problem Mnemonic is going to attempt to solve.

The startup intends for companies to be able to easily track and navigate the NFT market as well as build their own applications using Mnemonics Application Programming Interface (API). Mnemonic founders also say the application has more use cases than just tracking and navigating the market. One alternative use case is authenticating goods from expensive brands such as Louis Vuitton, integration into gaming ecosystems, and more.

The current director for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said the agency has already got projections in motion for cryptocurrency.

William Burns, the CIA director, answered a question regarding cryptocurrency at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit that was held on Monday, where Burns said that the agency already has projects that are focussed on gathering intelligence about cryptocurrency and that these projects were conceived by Burns' predecessor, David Cohen.

Australia is making legal moves to become one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Australia's Treasurer and deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Josh Frydenberg, detailed the country's plans for implementing an updated regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and the modernization of Australia's payment infrastrure.

Under the plan proposed by Frydenberg, the Australian government is in favor of six out of the nine proposed reforms, which includes a licensing regime for cryptocurrency exchanges, developing a common access regime for new payment platforms, and a policy review for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC).

A rover exploring the surface of the Moon has snapped an image of what appears to be a mysterious "house", or "hut" object.

The image comes from an affiliated Chinese media channel called "Our Space", that details the rover Yutu 2 that first landed on the far side of the Moon back in January 2019. According to the post, the Yutu 2 rover spotted the object on the horizon while it was driving across the Von Karman crater last month, and sent back images of the object to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Space.com reports that the name "mystery hut" or "house" is currently being used as a placeholder name until the rover can identify what the object is. Additionally, the publication also points out that the object is most likely not a hut of any kind, and is more likely to be a large boulder that has been created from an impact event such as an asteroid. Yutu 2 is only 262 feet away from the object and will make its way over to inspect it over the next two to three months.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said during an interview that global birthrates could threaten human civilization.

Musk, who is a father of six, spoke at Wall Street Journal's annual CEO Council and said brought up birthrates being a possible threat towards the existence of human civilization, saying that there is "not enough people" and called for people to have more children. The Tesla CEO went on to say that there is "smart people" who believe that there is too many people, and that Earth is overpopulated, but according to Musk this isn't the case, "It's completely the opposite".

NASA is currently gearing up for the launch of its new telescope that will be used to find the most violent objects in the universe.

The new telescope is called the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft and will be used by the agency and astrophysicists to observe the magnetic field of cosmic objects such as neutron stars and black holes. IXPE will be able to read the polarization between different X-rays that come from the environments of violent celestial objects (black holes, neutron stars). These readings will be able to teach researchers about the environment in the past and future of these objects.

NASA is planning on launching the IXPE spacecraft on the back of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday after 1 a.m. EDT. As always, the event will be live-streamed by NASA on its website and social media channels, with the livestream beginning on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. If you are interested in reading more about this new telescope, check out this link here.

Sophia, a famous humanoid artificial intelligence robot known for its impressive conversation skills, is becoming tokenized to be auctioned off as NFTs.

Hong Kong-based firm Hansen Robotics developed Sophia back in 2016 and shocked the world as the robot was able to hold reasonably steady conversations, even to the point where she spoke at the United Nations. Now, a virtual anime of Sophia is being tokenized and turned into 100 iNFTs, as a part of a perpetual license and co-branding partnership between "Sophia beingAI", the virtual anime version of Sophia, and intelligent nonfungible token (iNFT) production firm Alethea AI.

The "i" in iNFT stands for "intelligence" and means that each of the NFTs are embedded with an AI personality that is a part of the smart contract. These AI personalities can be interacted with in Alethea AI's decentralized Metaverse project called "Noah's Ark". According to Alethea AI, the Metaverse that it's creating will be "inhabited by interactive and intelligent NFTs."

The only solar eclipse to happen for 2021 recently occurred, but unfortunately, the totality was only visible in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

The extreme conditions of Antarctica didn't stop some photographers and scientists that were determined to see the total solar eclipse, and to everyone else's enjoyment, they have shared video footage of the event. The footage, which is about 1 minute in length, showcases a stunning time-lapse view of the Sun reappearing and disappearing, with only a few seconds of totality. If you find the video too fast, you can slow in down in the settings, which can be found in the bottom right-hand corner of the video.

The video was captured from Union Glacier on Saturday, December 4, by the JM Pasachoff Antarctic Expedition, who also live-streamed the event. The reason the total solar eclipse was only visible at certain locations on Earth is due to the Moon's shadow being very narrow. Antarctica was the best viewing angle of the total solar eclipse, while places such as Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa could only see a partial eclipse.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a fantastic vantage point for observing Earth, and recently astronauts aboard the station were left in awe at 2021's only total solar eclipse.

NASA has posted images to its "NASA Astronauts" Twitter account with a caption explaining that the Expedition 55 crew was able to view the total solar eclipse that happened on Saturday, December 4 at 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT). Seven astronauts squeezed into the cupola, a large glass panoramic viewing dome, to see the phenomenon. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron described the event as "an incredible sight to behold."

A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun from a viewer's perspective. The recent solar eclipse wasn't viewable for most people as the best angle to view its totality was in Antarctica, and while this didn't stop some photographers and scientists, it did mean most people missed it. The next total solar eclipse isn't expected to happen until April 20, 2023, and will be mostly viewable over Asia.

In the market for a wicked new RGB cooler for your iPhone? Razer has your back... well, the back of your smartphone at least, with its new "Razer Phone Cooler Chroma" for $60.

The new Razer Phone Cooler Chroma costs $60 for both of Apple's iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 smartphones, with a MagSafe version of the cooler, and another model called the "RGB Cooling Fan". Razer's new RGB Cooling Fan can be used on both the iPhone and Android (sans the MagSafe side of things).

Inside, Razer notes that its Phone Cooler Chroma for the iPhone packs 7 blades that run at up to 6400RPM, all inside of a 30dB noise profile so that you won't have something on the back of your phone that sounds like a rocket is taking off. There's a Bluetooth connection in the Phone Cooler Chroma so that you can tweak the fan to your personal needs, and plugs into a USB-C cable... so you will really want that performance on your phone (and to keep it cool enough to justify the bulk + $60 cost).

Palit has just unveiled its new GeForce RTX 2060 12GB Dual Series graphics cards, now that NVIDIA has made its new GeForce RTX 2060 12GB official.

The new Palit GeForce RTX 2060 12GB Dual Series graphics cards include the beefed-up 12GB of GDDR6, up from the 6GB of GDDR6 on the regular GeForce RTX 2060. Remember this is a last-gen Turing-based refresh, with the TU106-300 GPU and the 12GB of GDDR6 ramped up to 14Gbps of bandwidth.

Palit is using a regular dual-fan cooler with two 90mm smart fans, with an "optimized thermal solution to enhance the airflow and heat dissipation efficiency. The model offers cool temperature, minimum noise and maximum stability for gamers and creators to enjoy competitive performance".

AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA will be hosting their CES 2022 press conferences all on the same day and we've got all of the times and details below.

AMD will be hosting its CES 2022 press conference starting January 4 @ 7AM PST / 3PM GMT, where we should see the new AMD Ryzen 6000 "Rembrandt" CPUs, AMD Ryzen CPUs with their next-gen 3D V-Cache technology, "Upcoming Graphics Solutions" and the new Radeon RX 6500 XT and Radeon 6400 series desktop GPUs.

Intel will be hosting its CES 2022 press conference starting January 4 @ 10AM PST / 6PM GMT, where they'll introduce the new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-P" mobile CPUs, new 12th Gen Core non-K "Alder Lake-S" desktop CPUs, and the exciting new Intel Arc Alchemist Mobile GPU.

You might find it hard to buy a graphics card right now, but that doesn't mean AIB shipments haven't slowed down in the last 12 months... in the biggest GPU shortage in history (and no, it's not because of miners).

According to Jon Peddie Research, total AIB shipments were 25.7% higher in Q3 2021 than they were in Q2 2021 -- with 12.7 million graphics cards shipped, up from 11.47 million cards shipped in the previous quarter. The way AIB (add-in boards) work is that they use discrete GPUs (dGPU) with dedicated memory (a graphics card essentially).

AIBs are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, rendering and mining farms (see, but not all GPUs are pushed into mining farms like these companies really want you to believe), and scientific instruments. You as a consumer, or a company, would buy AIBs from a reseller (Amazon) or an OEM (ASUS for example).

AMD launched its interesting 4700S Desktop Kit not too long ago, packing an Ariel SoC that was used inside of the semi-custom SoC that Sony used in its next-gen PlayStation 5 console.

The AMD Ariel SoC is comprised of a Zen 2-based CPU and RDNA 2-based GPU, but now there's a new AMD 4800S Desktop Kit that has popped up and could use the beefier SoC that powers Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console.

We should expect the new AMD 4800S to pack PCIe 4.0 support for a discrete GPU -- a big upgrade over the AMD 4700S which only had PCIe 2.0 support. AMD's 4700S supported entry-level and mid-range discrete GPUs, but the AMD 4800S will reportedly support the RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6600 and is bundled with the AMD 4800S Desktop Kit.

It's finally here... the new trailer to The Matrix Resurrections, and seriously... the hype seems to be real... or not real, that depends on you. Take the red pill (or the blue pill) here:

The second trailer to The Matrix Resurrections is finally here, and while it provides more detail it still holds as much mystery as ever. We know that Neo (Thomas Anderson, played by Keanu Reeves) "still knows kung fu" and that Agent Smith is still somewhere in The Matrix, at least a version -- or a memory -- of him.

The Matrix Resurrections' new trailer really pushes into the Deja Vu side of things, emphasizing that "this isn't the story we think it is". I love that, and I think that The Matrix Resurrections is going to re-write the rule book on the original Matrix Trilogy, and if the hype is real -- cinema, and movies themselves.