Latest News - Page 1258

Scientists speculate that underground fungal networks are a critical but largely overlooked component of global climate change and are looking to change that.

Researchers aim to collect ten thousand DNA samples from fungi by working with local communities worldwide, hoping to determine how their networks are being affected by human activity like global warming. With this, the researchers want to construct a global map of the networks.

On November 30th, during the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Angeles Salles of Johns Hopkins University will discuss how bats use echolocation to find prey and track and predict its trajectory.

Bats use echolocation to create echo snapshots of their environment, capturing it in discrete stages. They generate the sounds used for echolocation from their larynx or by clicking their tongues and process the echoes that return after sending out those noises. These noises are typically ultrasonic, so humans are unable to hear them.

Unlike predators that rely on visual cues, this allows bats to hunt in total darkness. Because they cannot track prey continuously as a predator would visually, the echo snapshots provide staggered sensory information on the prey as it moves through space. The bat's brain creates a predictive model that allows it to extrapolate the prey's trajectory based on its movement through the snapshots it receives.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to revolutionize in-space astronomy, picking up where Hubble will leave off with a host of new technologies.

One of the instruments about the JWST is the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), which requires special cooling down to 6 Kelvin, something that engineers cannot fully test here on Earth. Hubble observes the universe in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, up to about 1.8-micrometer wavelengths. MIRI, as the name implies, sees into the mid-infrared part of the spectrum and beyond. MIRI will be able to see between 5 and 28-micron wavelength light.

Following an internal SpaceX email obtained by Space Explored that revealed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk saying SpaceX could face bankruptcy in the future, a leaked video of the interior of Starship has surfaced.

The leaked email purportedly from Elon Musk states that Starship, the biggest rocket ever, is needed to get V2 Starlink internet satellites into orbit, and to get Starship operational, the production of Raptor engines needs to increase drastically. Musk describes the Raptor engine production situation as a "crisis", and writes, "What it comes down to, is that we face a genuine risk of bankruptcy if we can't achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year."

Now, a leaked video also obtained by Space Explored showcases a rare look inside of the Starship launch vehicle. According to the publication, the video showcases a SpaceX employee recording the interior of the nosecone and that the interior is recognizable from exploded Starship prototypes. It should be noted that at the time of writing this SpaceX, nor Elon Musk has denied or confirmed the leaked stories are legitimate. If you are interested in reading more on this story, check out this link here.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the production of SpaceX's Raptor engines that will be equipped to its upcoming launch vehicle called Starship may cause SpaceX to face bankruptcy.

In an email obtained by Space Explored that was sent out to SpaceX staff over the Thanksgiving weekend by Musk, the CEO explains that the lack of Raptor engine product has caused a situation that has turned into something much worse than it was a few weeks ago. Musk describes the situation as a "crisis", and says he will be working on the Raptor production over the Thanksgiving weekend and requests any SpaceX staff that have free time to assist him.

"Unless you have critical family matters or cannot physically return to Hawthorne, we will need all hands-on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster", reads the email. The email continues and mentions that the Raptor engines required to launch Starship is needed to launch V2 Starlink internet satellites as V2 Starlink satellites cannot be attached to SpaceX's current launch vehicle workhorse the Falcon 9. Starlink is needed to get V2 Starlinks into orbit, which SpaceX is relying on as cash inflow.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has chimed in on the recent controversy surrounding space debris caused by a Russian anti-satellite missile test.

On November 15, Russia tested an anti-satellite missile on one of its own satellites, which caused thousands of new space debris to emerge in Earth's orbit. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) can be heard being told by NASA Headquarters to prepare to launch back down to Earth and take shelter in spaceships such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon. NASA condemned the actions by Russia, to which the country responded by defending its actions with the minister-general Sergei Shoigu saying that the debris "don't pose any threat to space activities."

Currently, 1,500 pieces of space debris are being tracked. However, they all haven't been found and may take some time to be found. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks satellites and debris objects, spoke to Insider and said, "If [a satellite] gets hit by one of the bigger pieces of debris... it could completely destroy the satellite into thousands of more pieces. You could see debris hitting the satellites, causing more debris that then hits more satellites."

NASA announced the cancellation of a scheduled spacewalk for astronauts aboard the International Space Station out of fear of space debris.

The space agency announced via its Twitter account that the spacewalk was canceled as there was a potential threat of space debris being a danger for astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron. The ISS astronauts were going on a spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna system. NASA has provided updates to its blog post on its website, where it writes that it received a "debris notification" before the spacewalk was meant to take place and decided to postpone the walk until further assessment of the situation has been done.

A new release from the European Space Agency (ESA) has detailed the discovery of the closest pair of merging supermassive black holes to Earth.

The team of researchers behind the study that's been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics state that they have never found a pair of merging supermassive black holes as close as the pair that reside in the center of the galaxy NGC 7727. The galaxy resides in the constellation Aquarius and is around 89 million light-years away from Earth. Research indicates that the two supermassive black holes will become one in around 250 million years.

The lead author on the new study, Karina Voggel, an astronomer at the Strasbourg Observatory in France, says that merging black holes within NGC 7727 has broken the record for the closest pair of merging black holes to Earth by more than half the previous record holder. The record that was just broken was held by a pair of merging black holes 470 million light-years away from Earth, which is more than five times the distance than the two that were recently discovered.

A team of researchers have analyzed samples from an asteroid and found evidence that suggests Earth's earliest water came from space rocks and the Sun.

The team of researchers published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, and it outlines an isotopic analysis of samples from the asteroid Itokawa. This asteroid orbits the Sun every eighteen months, and researchers were interested in its isotopic composition to answer the question about how Earth's surface became 70% water.

For some time, scientists have thought that carbon-rich asteroids brought water to Earth, but the chemical fingerprint of the asteroids didn't quite match Earth's, hence why researchers are looking into different asteroids. The researchers in the recently published study found that the interaction between solar wind that's constantly produced by the Sun and dust particles from the asteroid samples caused the earliest water to begin forming on Earth.

A new Twitter leak has revealed that the social media platform may be about to add Ethereum (ETH) to its available options of tipping.

Back in September 2021, Twitter debuted the Bitcoin (BTC) tipping feature that joined other methods of payment such as PayPal and Venmo. Currently, Twitter users who wish to tip a content creator with cryptocurrency can do so through a BTC address, but they may soon be able to tip with Ethereum. A new leak from Mr. Whale suggests that Twitter is looking to incorporate ETH tokens. While this may be exciting, it should be noted that nothing has officially been confirmed as of when this article was written.

If Twitter does incorporate ETH into its tip jar feature, it would undoubtedly be a welcomed update from the cryptocurrency community. However, the question is 'what coin is next?'. According to AltCoin Buzz, many crypto enthusiasts are suggesting coins such as DOGE, XRP, ADA, NANO, BSV, SHIB, NEO, and more. This rumor has come after Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO, stepped down from his position as head of the company, as an effort for Twitter to separate itself from its founders and "stand on its own, free of its founder's influence or direction".

A merger between Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp, and Bitcoin mining company Griid will result in Griid being listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp has announced that it will be merging with Griid at a $3.3 billion enterprise valuation and after the deal has been processed, Griid will be listed on the NYSE under the ticker symbol GRDI. Griid's investor presentation revealed some interesting projections from the mining company, as this year Griid anticipates it will mine 637 Bitcoin with a total hash rate of 187 petahash per second (PH/s).

Additionally, Griid expects that by 2024 it can mine 24,348 and exceed its total hash rate to 26,180 PH/s. To understand how insanely large that number is, you should know that the entire Bitcoin network as of Tu is about 156,000 PH/s. Trey Kelly, CEO of GRIID, said, "We are building an American infrastructure company with the largest pipeline of committed, carbon-free power among public bitcoin miners at the lowest cost of scaled production." For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Qualcomm is hosting a bunch of influencers, analysts, and tech press at its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021 in Maui, Hawaii where the company has formally announced its new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC.

The new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC drops the "Qualcomm" branding from the name, and while we don't have totally next-generation performance from the CPU and GPU side of things, we do have a lot of new goodies and world-firsts with the Snapdragon 8 Gen1.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 has the 4th gen Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System, enabling the new Snapdragon 8 to be the most advanced 5G mobile platform in the world -- and not only that -- but also the world's first 5G modem-RF solution that breaches 10Gbps download speeds. Crazy stuff for the future of mobile connectivity. The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will make it into devices from the following companies: Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.

Razer will be unveiling a new family of Razer Blade gaming laptops in 2022, with both AMD and Intel introducing new mobile CPU architectures which will allow Razer to build next-gen gaming laptops... and they're going to be even more expensive.

In a new tweet from Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, he explained that after meeting with the team and discussing "significant increases in component costs" that next-gen Razer Blade gaming laptops will have to cost more. Min-Liang Tan explained: "Just had a long meeting to review our gaming laptops line for next year - looks like there are significant increases in component costs etc and we'll be seeing price increases for next gen gaming laptops across the board (including the Razer Blade) next year."

AMD will be launching its new Zen 3+ architecture in the form of the Ryzen 6000 series codenamed "Rembrandt", while Intel has its new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-P" series of mobile CPUs coming soon.

SAPPHIRE has just introduced its new GearBox 500 Thunderbolt GPU enclosure, which can transform any PC or Mac with a Thunderbolt 3/4 connection into a desktop-class PC.

Inside, the new external GPU solution from SAPPHIRE packs their own PULSE Radeon RX 6600 XT 8GB graphics card which offers plenty of performance for the desktop, and some sneaky 1080p 60FPS+ gaming on the side.

SAPPHIRE has updated the chassis design inside of the new GearBox 500 Thunderbolt 3 eGFX enclosure, with improved airflow that keeps the GPU inside of it cooler than before. SAPPHIRE says you can run some pretty powerful GPUs inside of the enclosure, from something as the Radeon RX 570 through to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, and from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

We all know how hot the PlayStation 5 console is, with Sony's next-gen consoles virtually sold out across the world. You can find them at times during flash sales, or pay scalpers fees... or you can try to sell your console and get shot for it.

A 19-year-old met someone who he thought was someone interested in buying a PlayStation 5 console, in Harris County, Texas. The PS5 robbery took place at around 1:30PM in the 8300 block of Gros Ventre Lane, where the suspect then pulled a gun and committed an armed robbery of the PlayStation 5 console.

The suspect ran away with the PS5 console after shooting the owner in his side, with authorities saying the man was rushed to hospital in a "stable condition". It's "unclear if any arrests were made" it seems, so someone is in the wild is enjoying a PlayStation 5 and doesn't mind going to prison for it.

NVIDIA is preparing its partners in Taiwan for a "major" GeForce RTX 40 series "Ada Lovelace" GPU launch in 2022, with next-gen gaming GPUs tapping TSMC's new 5nm process node.

DigiTimes has a new article behind a paywall that RetiredEngineer shed a light on in a tweet: "NVIDIA gaming GPUs getting major refresh next year, Taiwan factories all-out to support 5nm RTX40 generation. NVIDIA's biennial GPU refresh coming in 2022, riding on metaverse and gaming. Following H100, based on Hopper architecture, using TSMC's 5nm + CoWoS, aimed at datacenter/AI, gaming GPU RTX40 series, based on Ada Lovelace architecture, will also tap TSMC's 5nm....".

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture is expected to deliver some truly gigantic performance improvements, as well as a shift away from Samsung's 8nm node process and back into the warm fuzzy fabricating arms of TSMC and its new 5nm process node for the next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.

Qualcomm and Razer have been working together behind the scenes on a next-gen mobile gaming device, something that's powered by Snapdragon G3x silicon.

The news is coming from our friends over at VideoCardz, which have some sneaky leaked slides on Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon SoCs for 2022 and beyond. The new Snapdragon G3x is teased here, designed specifically for next-gen handheld gaming.

Razer collaborated with Qualcomm on the Snapdragon G3x, with the mobile device teased packing what should be a gorgeous 120Hz HDR OLED display. Inside, there's a large 6000mAh battery feeding the system and display. The device is advertised here as a game streaming product that supports Xbox Game Cloud, streaming from a console or even a PC... very, very nice.

Cyber Monday deals are here, and right now, you can get up to a whopping 60% off Samsung SSDs on Amazon.

Included in the sales are both internal and external Samsung SSDs. External offerings include the portable T7 1TB with speeds up to 1050MB/S over a USB 3.2 connection, or the T5 2TB with up to 540 MB/S speeds over a USB 3.1 connection, both in a 2.5" drive enclosure.

The internal SSDs on offer are of the 2.5" SATA and M.2 NVMe drives. A 4TB 870 QVO and 1TB 870 EVO are available for the 2.5" options. For the M.2 drives, the 980 PRO is available in three configurations, a 2TB, 1TB, and 1TB with a heat sink. The 970 EVO Plus is also available in 1TB and 2TB capacities.

Black Friday is over, but Cyber Monday is here instead! Snag some sweet deals on Beats headphones while you can on Amazon.

The Beats Studio Buds, Beats Flex Wireless Earbuds, and Powerbeats Pro Wireless Earbuds are available for in-ear offerings. The Beats Studio Buds and Powerbeats Pro Wireless Earbuds are truly wireless and come with a charging case, and have IPX4 sweat and water resistance. The Beats Flex Wireless Earbuds are a more budget option, still using BlueTooth to connect to your device, but each earbud is wired to the other.

The lone on-ear offering is the Beats Solo3 Wireless, down to $99.99 from $199.95, a massive 50% off. Available in black, red, rose gold, and satin gold, they claim up to 40 hours of battery life and 3 hours of battery within 5 minutes of charging when the battery is low.

Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) is the largest comet ever observed, and a new study from the University of Maryland shows it may have been active a lot longer than previously thought.

Comets are conglomerations of ice and dust left over from the formation of a solar system, and as one approaches a star, it will warm and begin to vaporize. A comet is active when the ice vaporizes, creating an envelope of dust and vapor around it known as the coma. The ice within the comet could be frozen water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, or several other compounds, all requiring different conditions to vaporize.

BB is massive, at 100 kilometers across, and exists in our solar system further from the Sun than Uranus. Using the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to examine previous observations of BB, researchers determined from its distance from the Sun and its size, BB's coma is made primarily from carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide can begin to vaporize up to five times farther from the Sun than where BB was first observed, suggesting BB has been active for significantly longer.