Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 1

The first film crew to ever shoot footage that will be used in a feature film has safely returned back down to Earth, marking a milestone moment in the world film industry.

After training for just four months, filmmaker Klim Shipenko, actress Yulia Peresild, and cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station for twelve days. The space film crew shot scenes for an upcoming movie about a doctor that is sent into orbit to perform surgery on a cosmonaut that is in need of medical attention.

The space film crew safely touched down in the Kazakhstan steppes, and right after leaving the capsule, the landing site quickly became a film set for one of the film's closing scenes. Actress Yulia Peresild is the first actress in space and described her experience to RT, saying, "While you're in low gravity, you feel like a feather, so everything's very heavy now - my head's very heavy, my arms, my legs... Everything's a little dizzy." The mission was a joint effort between Russia's television Channel 1 and the Russian Space Agency.

For the first time, researchers have captured the sounds of a solar storm from the Sun impacting Earth's magnetic field.

The sounds were released by the European Space Agency (ESA) back in 2019, and according to the press release, the song comes from waves that are generated in Earth's magnetic field when charged particles from the Sun slammed into it. Lucile Turc, a former ESA research fellow, led a team on the research and used data from the Cluster Science Archive, which consists of four spacecrafts that orbit Earth-observing our planet's magnetic field.

The orbit of these spacecrafts takes them through what is known as "foreshock", which is the first layer of Earth's magnetic field. Between 2001 and 2005, the spacecrafts flew through six solar storm collisions and recorded the waves of the impact. Researchers then converted these frequencies to audio, and the result is somewhat eerie sci-fi sound that is commonly used in movies. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

NASA's asteroid trackers are indicating that multiple asteroids will approach Earth in the next few weeks, some close to the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza located in Egypt.

For reference, the Great Pyramid of Giza has a diameter of 756 feet, and according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, Asteroid 2021 SM3 with a diameter of 525 feet passed by Earth just this Friday at a distance of 3.5 million miles. This asteroid was only first discovered a few weeks ago, according to CBS News. For those that don't know, a near-Earth object (NEO) are comets and asteroids that have been pushed into Earth's neighborhood by the gravity of other large-mass celestial body's such as nearby planets.

NASA researchers believe that NEOs hold the secrets for the evolution of our solar system as they formed from untouched debris when the solar system was first developing 4.6 billion years ago. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies said, "If we wish to know the composition of the primordial mixture from which the planets formed, then we must determine the chemical constituents of the leftover debris from this formation process - the comets and asteroids."

NASA has released a new image captured by its Mars rover named Perseverance, showing off an incredible view of an area in the Jezero Crater.

The image is a brand new panorama of the South Seitah area located in the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance is currently exploring. Researchers selected the Jezero Crater for its potential to contain evidence of past life on the planet as well as its geological potential as it contains some of the oldest rocks that will allow researchers to understand more about Mars' past when studied.

The image is a mosaic piece that is comprised of 84 separate images that were taken with Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument. According to NASA, the images were taken on September 12 when Perseverance was parked on an elevated overlook that is located just outside of its entry point into South Seitah. To view a full resolution version of the panoramic image, check out this link here.

Astronomers have been observing Jupiter and its most notable attraction - the Great Red Spot for hundreds of years.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the solar system, stretching at one point 25,000 miles in diameter, or three times the diameter of Earth. The storm is located 22 degrees south of Jupiter's equator and is producing wind speeds of up to 268 miles per hour. Astronomers have been using NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope to observe Jupiter's main attraction for more than a decade and have discovered that the wind speed on the outer edges of the Great Red Spot is increasing.

Between 2009 and 2020, the wind speed of the outer edges, described by researchers as the high-speed ring, has increased its speed by eight percent. According to Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the analysis, "When I initially saw the results, I asked, 'Does this make sense?' No one has ever seen this before. But this is something only Hubble can do. Hubble's longevity and ongoing observations make this revelation possible."

A volcano on one of Spain's islands is spewing rivers of lava out in all directions. Shocking footage has captured the lava coating the surface of the island.

The volcano is Spain's Cumbre Vieja volcano located on La Palma island. The volcano began erupting on September 19 and has continued erupting for four weeks. NBC News reports that authorities expect the lava flow to advance northwest beyond the designated evacuation zone. Authorities have stated that the temperature of the lava can reach up to 2,264 degrees Fahrenheit and that there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

Residents in the area have evacuated the affected area, but the lava is moving very quickly, covering between 1,640 to 2,300 feet per hour. So far, the eruption and the rivers of lava have destroyed more than 1,186 buildings in the area and have covered around two square miles of land. Many videos of the rivers of lava have been captured by the press, researchers, and residents in the area. If you are interested in watching a video for yourself, check out this link here.

Astronomers back in 1974 decided to sketch what they thought the lunar mountain named Mons "Pico" would look like if they were standing in front of it.

Mons Pico is a solitary lunar mountain that is located in the northern part of the Mare Imbrium basin. The mountain is very reflective and is known as a bright lunar object. The peak comes in at the height of 7,874 feet, and when blasted with sunlight, it can cause massive shadows across the lunar surface. Astronomers in 1874 were able to view the mountain but weren't able to get an idea of what it looked like if they were standing on the lunar surface looking at it.

So, they decided to draw it. Above is a sketch of Pico, with the caption stating, "An ideal sketch of "Pico," an isolated lunar mountain 8,000 feet high, as it would probably appear if seen by a spectator located on the Moon." Unfortunately, to the astronomers/artists that drew this sketch, their assumptions about the mountain weren't accurate. Below is an image of what Pico looks like today, and as you can see, the two images are very different. While the sketch from 1874 isn't accurate, the measurement for the height of the mountain is, which is certainly something to commend for the times it was estimated.

Last week, a large amount of solar material erupted from our star's surface, which then traveled through space, reaching Earth a few days later.

For those that are unaware of this event, the eruption happened on October 9, 2021, causing a coronal mass ejection (CME) blast to hit Earth on October 12. So, what does this mean exactly? Researchers measure the disturbance in Earth's magnetic field by solar wind using the Kp index metric. The levels range from 0, which is considered "quiet," to 9, which is regarded as "intense". The CME that arrived last week elevated the Kp index to a 6, which is considered mild-moderate.

The CME blast was associated with a solar flare that happened from Active Region 2882 that peaked on October 9 at 6:38 UTC. The solar flare was categorized as an M-class, and much like the Richter scale used to measure earthquakes, M-class solar flares are a tenth the size and intensity of the X-class flares. For example, M2 flares are twice as powerful as an M1. NASA's space instruments measured the speed of the solar wind from the eruption to be 610 miles per second, according to NASA's Moon to Mars Space Weather Operations Office.

A distinguished Harvard professor has speculated that the Milky Way universe could have been created in a lab by an advanced alien species.

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is a best-selling author and former head of Harvard's astronomy department and is known for theories such as alien civilizations not being able to reply to our messages for 3,000 years and Oumuamua possibly being an alien spacecraft. Loeb is more than qualified to speculate these wild theories, and recently he published an op-ed in Scientific American that explores the possibility of the universe merely being a lab experiment by an "advanced technological civilization."

According to Loeb, "Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling." Adding, "This possible origin story unifies the religious notion of a creator with the secular notion of quantum gravity. We do not possess a predictive theory that combines the two pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and gravity. But a more advanced civilization might have accomplished this feat and mastered the technology of creating baby universes."

A new study has detailed the possible discovery of four new alien worlds located 160 light-years from Earth.

The new study explains that researchers detected shimmering radio flashes of auroras in each of those planets' atmospheres. So what is an aurora? An aurora occurs when solar wind, which is charged particles from the Sun, collides with a planet's magnetic shield. Earth experiences auroras at its poles and in other locations when it's blasted with solar wind.

The researchers behind the study detected bright flashes of radio signals from the auroras on the supposed planets' atmospheres, which could confirm the existence of four new planets with more research. The astronomers discovered these radio signals using the Low Frequency Array radio telescope located in the Netherlands while observing Red Dwarf stars. Out of the nineteen Red Dwarf stars that were observed, four of them seemed strange as they shined bright with radio signals.