Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 101

An announcement regarding the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program will drop on Wednesday, March 30th.

NASA has promised that the "exciting new observation" by Hubble will be "one for the record books," but hasn't suggested what it could be related to other than to tease a collaboration between the nearly 32-year-old HST and the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The study on alcohol consumption titled "Association of Habitual Alcohol Intake With Risk of Cardiovascular Disease" has been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Broad Institute of MIT, and Harvard have determined that alcohol intake of any level is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Their findings contradict the supposed benefits of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption on heart health that previously may have been conflated with other positive lifestyle factors in individuals with such consumption.

The study examines 371,463 participants in the UK Biobank, with an average age of 57 years old and average alcohol consumption of 9.2 drinks per week. Those with the lowest levels of alcohol consumption had the lowest risk of heart disease, followed by those who abstained, seemingly suggesting a positive influence from alcohol consumption. However, they found this was likely due to healthier lifestyles in the lower-level consumers, such as greater physical activity and vegetable intake and less smoking.

The capsule's contents were collected by astronauts on the moon 50 years ago and sealed for later opening on Earth.

The lunar core sample 73001 was collected from the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and has been slowly unsealed over March 21st and 22nd. The sample was stored inside a special tube originally sealed in the vacuum of space surrounding the moon, thus requiring specialized tools to open carefully and keep all of the pieces organized.

Deputy Apollo sample curator Juliane Gross conducted a dry run of the process with mock lunar rocks at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the original lunar sample has been kept. The sample has now been opened, ready for analysis, after originally being collected by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt from the Taurus-Littrow Valley within Mare Serenitatis.

A study the microplastics titled "Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood" has been published in the journal Environmental International.

Scientists have detected microplastic particles in human blood in almost eighty percent of tested participants. They took blood samples from 22 anonymous, healthy adults, of which 17 contained plastic particles. PET plastic, which is typically used in drink bottles, was detected in half of the samples taken, and the researchers found polystyrene in a third of the participants' samples.

One of Russia's top diplomats has warned that Russia holds the right to press the nuclear button if it feels threatened by NATO.

In a new report from SkyNews, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, explained Russia's President Vladimir Putin may push the nuclear button if he feels as if Russia is facing an "existential" threat. Polyanskiy was asked if he believes it is the right thing for Putin to threaten nuclear war if Russia was provoked, and he said, "I don't think it's the right thing to be saying. But it's not the right thing to threaten Russia and to try to interfere."

One of the first sites captured by Russia during of its invasion of Ukraine was the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and other nuclear sites have since been targeted.

The laboratory was located near the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant and used to monitor radiation levels from nuclear waste. The European Union-funded lab was an attempt to handle radioactive waste more effectively, allowing for on-site analysis of waste samples and the packaging used to dispose of the radioactive waste.

The lab also contained radionuclides, unstable atoms that can emit large amounts of radiation, which Russian forces have reportedly taken. The State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management reported that "highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilized world."

A study on the breakthrough titled "Spelling interface using intracortical signals in a completely locked-in patient enabled via auditory neurofeedback training" has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from the University of Tubingen in Germany developed a brain-computer interface to allow a man fully paralyzed from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to communicate verbally. The 37-year-old man, known as patient K1, had a microelectrode device implanted into his brain, which used custom computer software to translate his brain signals.

Assistive communication devices for ALS typically involve eye-tracking or facial muscles that are still functional. Stephen Hawking, who also suffered from ALS, moved his cheek muscle to control the device that allowed him to communicate once his condition worsened to the state of almost complete paralysis.

Stan went to an undisclosed location after being sold previously but has since been found.

Stan is the name of the most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex remains ever sold, fetching $31.8 million at auction in October 2020. The remains have now made their way to Abu Dhabi, the second-most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) behind Dubai, where they will be featured at the 2025 grand opening of a Natural History Museum, according to the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.

Stan is nearly 40-foot-long (12 meters), and its whereabouts were unknown to even the Black Hills Institute (BHI) in South Dakota, the previous owner, for the past two years following the sale. Pete Larson, the president and founder of BHI, says he is "super, super happy" to know Stan is going on public display, and that "it couldn't be any better. Stan's going to be in a museum and millions of people will see Stan and researchers will have access to Stan's skeleton."

America's "doomsday plane" isn't the only one able to take to the skies in the event of nuclear war.

Both the U.S. and Russia can keep their heads of state and important military officials safe and capable of issuing commands in case of nuclear war with their respective "doomsday planes." The U.S. has a modified Boeing 747, a Boeing E-4B with the callsign Nightwatch, while Russia has the Russian-made Ilyushin II-80 aircraft. Also known by the callsign Maxdome, or sometimes Camber, the Ilyushin II-80 builds off the Ilyushin II-86 model with some key differences.

Some differences include the lack of cabin windows and a baffle blocking the cockpit windows to protect the plane's occupants from electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) or nuclear explosions. Other additions include various SATCOM and very-low frequency (VLF) antennae and sensors mounted atop the fuselage for increased communication ability and has two large electrical generator pods to accompany its engines.

A woman claims to have participated in a Coors experiment involving "targeted dream incubation."

Bobbi Gould says she responded to a Craiglist advertisement where "willing sleepers" would be paid $1,000 by a "big brand." Both Gould and her boyfriend responded to the ad. They were directed to a Los Angeles warehouse alongside over a dozen other volunteers to be hooked up to brain monitoring equipment.

From there, the participants were made to watch videos featuring Coors products and then instructed to try and fall asleep while listening to audio from those same videos. Gould reported having a series of "weird Coors dreams" over the next eight hours.

Ukraine has announced its forces have captured a "bizarre container" that has turned out to be a potential jackpot for foreign intelligence.

Russian forces are experiencing an unexpected level of Ukrainian resistance as they advance closer to Ukraine's capital Kyiv. Recently the Twitter account that is dedicated to posting updates on weapons has revealed that Ukrainian forces have captured a bizarre "container" that was later discovered to be a "potent Russian EW system" called "1RL257 Krasukha-4".

The Krasukha-4 is constructed by Concern Radio-Electronics Technologies which is owned by Russian state group Rostec. The EW system is designed to be a command post module that interrupts airborne systems, missile systems, and satellites/drones within 186 miles of where its stationed. The Krasukha-4 was found near Kyiv, which is understandable from a strategic perspective as it would provide Russia with cover for its advancement of troops.

OneWeb is partnering with SpaceX to launch its satellites after being banned from using Russian rockets following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Despite being competitors in the satellite broadband market, OneWeb, which the U.K. government partly owns, and SpaceX are teaming up to launch OneWeb's satellites on SpaceX rockets. OneWeb's low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation currently includes 428 satellites, with a planned total of 648 satellites. By comparison, SpaceX plans to launch 42,000 satellites into orbit for Starlink.

OneWeb previously intended to launch a batch of 36 satellites to space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. However, this plan was derailed when Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, demanded that the British government divest its $500 million stake from OneWeb and for OneWeb to provide a guarantee that its satellites would not be used for military purposes. These requests were denied, and the launch was scrapped.

NASA's massive Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft are almost ready to take flight.

The SLS rolled out onto the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launchpad across March 17th and 18th, topped by the Orion spacecraft. The rocket stands at 365.0 feet (111.25 meters) tall and is an imposing presence in person. Its vast size has been captured on the ground as it rolled out and by the Pleiades Neo satellite owned by European aerospace company Airbus Space.

The satellite captured the images from 385 miles (620 kilometers) above the KSC. The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is visible in the images, where the SLS and Orion were assembled and stacked, and Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B), where the rocket has since arrived. To transport the rocket assembly to the pad, NASA's crawler-transporter 2 vehicle, dubbed "the crawler," carried the millions of pounds of technology at only 0.8 miles per hour (1.3 kilometers per hour) toward its destination.

A paper on the experiment titled "Experimental protocol for testing the mass-energy-information equivalence principle" has been published in the journal AIP Advances.

Dr. Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth has devised an experiment which could demonstrate information as a fifth state of matter, alongside solids, liquids, gases and plasma. Dr. Vopson has previously published research which suggests that information has mass, and that all elementary particles store information in a similar way to DNA in humans.

A paper on the objects titled "MeerKAT uncovers the physics of an Odd Radio Circle" has been accepted for publication into the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The mysterious glowing rings were discovered in 2019 using the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia. Dubbed odd radio circles (ORCs), they are likely to be enormous clouds of hot gas, spanning roughly a million light-years and originating around a central galaxy.

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa has captured one of these ORCs in great detail. In the center of the ORC is a small spot of radio emission coinciding with a distant galaxy, which is believed to have generated the ORC. This video shows an artist impression of an ORC exploding from its central galaxy.

China's Tiangong space station aims to become a space tourism destination within a decade.

The space station is yet to be completed, but once finished will seek to accommodate visitors without formal astronaut training. China plans to launch six missions to complete the space station's construction this year, comprising two new module launches, two cargo supply missions, and two crewed missions.

Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut to reach space, told Chinese media that the general public's ability to tour Tiangong "is not a matter of technology but of demand" and that the space tourism ambitions "can be realized within a decade as long as there is such demand."

SpaceX is developing Earth's most powerful and tallest rocket, which is expected to be the transportation to the moon and eventually, Mars.

The next-generation rocket is called Starship and when fully equipped with the Super Heavy Booster that is comprised of 33 raptor engines it will stand at nearly 400 feet tall, making it largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Recently, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed on Twitter that SpaceX should have 39 flight ready Raptor 2 engines built by next month, which will be followed by another month of integrating them into Starship and finally an orbital test flight "hopefully" in May.

The SpaceX Twitter account recently published the above photos that showcase Starship fully stacked with Super Heavy docked at Starbase in its South Texas facility located near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica. While SpaceX are waiting on Raptor 2 engine development it is also waiting on the results from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) environmental review which is expected to be released no earlier than March 28.

Only a year after its discovery, Comet Leonard has made its perihelion, or its closest approach with the Sun, as of January 3, 2022.

Comet Leonard or C/2021 A1 was discovered by Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. According to Leonard, who spoke to EarthSky, the comet's main feature is the long tail that is comprised of charged particles that researchers call ions.

Since Leonard is mainly composed of ice as it was approaching the Sun, "the comet's tail began to show some complicated structure, possibly due to pieces breaking off the nucleus, revealing new areas that the sun would then heat," wrote EarthSky. The first confirmation about Leonard breaking up as it journeyed closer to the Sun came from Martin Masek and was then backed up by images released by the SLOOH telescope in Chile that showcased a streak across the sky of what once was Comet Leonard.

Earlier in March, UFO researcher Scott Waring shared his alleged discovery of a UFO hiding beneath the surface of the ocean.

Waring posted his "discovery" on UFOSightingsDaily.com, where he claimed to have discovered the UFO while he was "exploring" the Pacific Ocean on Google Earth. The researcher claims that the object is a 4.3 mile-wide UFO sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Nazca, Peru. Waring connects the underwater UFO with the Nazca Lines in Peru, which are a group of geoglyphs etched in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru somewhere between 400 BC to 500 AD.

Researchers believe that the Nazca Lines were attempts at early civilizations communicating with gods, while other scientists believe they are physical representations of ancient astronomy. Waring believes the lines were used by ancient civilizations to contact alien life, but there is no solid proof to confirm that suggestion. As with most things "UFO," there is very little solid evidence to confirm anything, and Waring's latest update of an underwater UFO is no different.

On Monday, a flight carrying 132 people nose-dived towards the surface of Earth in Tengxian county in southwestern China.

The flight was identified as China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, and the nose-dive was captured on video by a CCTV camera and a car dash-cam. The crash has marked the worst air disaster for China in nearly 30 decades as authorities were unable to identify any survivors at the wreckage. Now, Chinese authorities are saying that investigators are facing "a very high level of difficulty" in figuring out what caused the plane to nose-dive.

Zhu Tao, director of aviation safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), said on Tuesday, "The jet was seriously damaged during the crash, and investigations will face a very high level of difficulty." Adding, "Given the information currently available, we still do not have a clear assessment of the cause for the crash." Tao also added that the plane met all "airworthiness standards before taking off", and that during its descent, the pilots didn't respond to calls from air controllers.