Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 111

The National Security Agency's (NSA) declassified document is entitled "Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence."

The document begins by citing that even the National Academy of Sciences believes that extraterrestrial communication "is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur in the lifetime of many of us." Sir Bernard Lovell, a renowned astronomer, has calculated that at least 100 million stars in our galaxy can support organic evolution.

According to Dr. Su-Shu Huang of NASA, our solar system's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, houses planets too young for life to have emerged. Potential candidates would likely be Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, about 11 light-years away from us, compared to Alpha Centauri's 4.3 light-years.

A study published in the new non-alcoholic alternative has been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A common complaint about non-alcoholic beer that prevents people from changing to the healthier alternative is that the taste isn't the same. According to Sotirios Kampranis, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen, the complaint that they taste flat and watery is due to the lack of hops.

Kampranis and his colleague Simon Dusseaux have founded the biotech company EvodiaBio, and since found a way to replicate what was lacking in non-alcoholic beer (aside from alcohol, of course). Bypassing the needs for hops, their method for making their non-alcoholic beer is much more sustainable than previous techniques, as hops require a great deal of water to grow and typically are transported long distances from where they are produced to where they are used to brew beverages.

The nonprofit organization Space for Humanity might be able to help you out.

Space for Humanity is accepting applications for its Citizen Astronaut Program, but the deadline to be accepted is only a few days away, on Tuesday, February 15th. The program will cover the expense of training and flying you on a suborbital spaceflight. The program hopes to spread the "overview effect," a phenomenon experienced by astronauts shifting their perspective about life and our planet when viewing Earth from space.

Space for Humanity seeks individuals with a strong passion, but not necessarily one that has to be directly related to space. The organization hopes that the overview effect will spur action on those passions, as it has done for others in the past. Leadership qualities and a level of influence also contribute to the selection criteria.

A study on the new material has been published in the journal Cellulose.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have engineered a new composite material made from cellulose and synthetic polymer. Cellulose fibers give all plant cells their structural rigidity and comprise cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs). On a nanoscale, these CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar.

The CNCs make up 60 to 90 percent of the composite, the highest fraction achieved to date, with the rest made up of synthetic polymer. The microscale structure of the composite is similar to a brick-and-mortar structure. The researchers say the composite is stronger and tougher than some types of bone and harder than typical aluminum alloys.

The study uncovering canine's ability to detect COVID-19 was published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to only a measly 6 million scent receptors in humans. Forty percent more brain space in dogs is devoted to analyzing odors than humans, allowing them to detect compounds with even greater sensitivity than some analytical instruments. They detect smells from volatile organic compounds associated with a given source.

Certain volatile organic compounds, known as biomarkers, are created and exhaled by human patients afflicted with diseases like cancer or diabetes and can be detected by trained dogs. Researchers from the Florida International University confirmed that dogs could be trained to detect COVID-19.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Health on the toxic chemical's prevalence.

The chemical 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is one of the two ingredients used in making Agent Orange, which the United States military used during the Vietnam War to destroy forests and crops, but that inadvertently caused illnesses for millions of people. Used worldwide as a herbicide and defoliant, researchers from the George Washington University (GWU) have found that for 14,395 study participants, nearly 33 percent of their urine samples contained detectable amounts of 2,4-D.

2,4-D is an endocrine disruptor, affecting natural hormone production. It has been classified as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Seventeen percent of study participants had detectable levels of 2,4-D in 2001-2002 at the start of the study, which rose to a peak of forty percent nearly a decade later.

The new coating is described in a study recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) developed the coating, which is inexpensive and non-toxic, able to be applied to virtually any fabric. It decreases the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 disease, by up to 90 percent. The coating is also able to kill Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

To create the coating, the researchers soaked fabrics in a solution of a polymer with bactericidal properties, which releases sterilizing forms of oxygen when light is shone on it. Researchers then used ultraviolet light to fix the coating on the fabric by turning the solution solid. The fabric's integrity is not compromised, and it becomes hydrophobic, making it more difficult for bacteria to stick to it. Their method is highly versatile, requiring only a beaker and light, and can be used with cotton, polyester, denim, or silk fabrics.

A new paper on the curious fish has been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from Harvard University and Emory University have developed a fully autonomous biohybrid fish using cardiac muscle cells derived from human stem cells. The cells can recreate the muscular contractions of a beating heart, allowing the fish to swim and bringing scientists closer to developing artificial cardiac muscle pumps to treat heart disease.

The fish's tail fin has two layers of muscle cells, one for each side. When one side's muscle layer contracts, the other stretches, which triggers a mechanosensitive protein channel to open, leading to a contraction. Consequently, the initial side is stretched, and a closed-loop system is created that propels the fish for more than a hundred days.

A new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics details the discovery of a new planet orbiting one of the Sun's neighboring stars.

The Sun's closest star is called Proxima Centauri, and the planet that was recently discovered orbiting this star is called Proxima Centauri d. The new planet was found using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope based in Chile, and what makes this new planet so interesting to researchers is that it resides in what is called the "habitable zone" of the star, meaning may potentially harbor liquid water and perhaps life.

Researchers found that the new planet orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of around four million kilometers, taking the planet just five days to complete one orbit of the star. Proxima d isn't the first planet discovered orbiting the Sun's closest neighbor, as in 2016, researchers found a planet that has a mass close to Earth's, now dubbed Proxima b. This planet takes 11 days to complete an orbit around its host star. Additionally, another planet called Proxima c was found to be the smallest out of the three with a mass that's a quarter of Earth's.

A report filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) states that Elon Musk's Neuralink caused "extreme suffering" in monkeys it was tested on.

The complaint was filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and details experiments carried out on monkeys at the University of California at Davis from 2017 to 2020. The group behind the complaint has accused Neuralink and the university behind the experiments of nine violations of the US Federal Animal Welfare Act.

The complaint claimed that Neuralink caused "many, if not all, of the monkeys, experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive head implants during the experiments". Adding the Neuralink implant "produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research."

The Ukrainian military has started conducting military exercises within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The soldiers have taken to Pripyat, the city nearest the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, to conduct drills such as clearing buildings, targeted mortar fire, staged evacuations, and more. Before beginning the training exercises, workers with Geiger counters assessed the area to ensure there were no radioactive hotspots, with one soldier saying, "it has all been checked and it doesn't present a danger."

The reactor responsible for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is still encased in its concrete and metal sarcophagus to contain most of the radiation. The Exclusion Zone, which spans 1,000 miles² (2,600 kilometers²) of area, includes more and less concentrated areas of radiation, with some barely above baseline compared to other parts of the world. Pripyat is supposedly safe enough to host thousands of visitors per year, ranging from those on state-sanctioned tours to illegal urban explorers.

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology describes the association.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used 356,649 participants from 53 countries across six continents to assess correlations between musical preference and personality traits. Certain personality traits were correlated to certain musical tastes, and those correlation patterns were largely unchanged across the world.

They used the MUSIC model to assess musical preferences, where musical styles are broken up into Mellow, Unpretentious, Sophisticated, Intense, and Contemporary categories. Positive correlations were identified "between extroversion and contemporary music; between conscientiousness and unpretentious music, between agreeableness and mellow and unpretentious music; and between openness and mellow, contemporary, intense and sophisticated music." Additionally, a negative correlation was identified between conscientiousness and intense music.

European researchers set the record at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Culham near Oxford, United Kingdom.

The fusion project produced stable plasmas with an energy output of 59 megajoules using deuterium-tritium fuel during a five-second discharge, equivalent to 11 megawatts. The experiments conducted were the first of their kind in over twenty years, as the JET facility is the only power plant currently capable of operating using this fuel.

The facility's goal is to replicate fusion as it occurs in the Sun, where deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, fuse together and release massive amounts of energy in the process. Tritium is rare and difficult to handle, so most plasma experiments usually involve hydrogen or deuterium.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, captured the latest images.

The Parker Solar Probe has captured the first images of the Venusian surface using visible light. Normally the planet's surface is obscured by thick cloud cover, but recently the probe was able to use its Wide-Field Imager (WISPR) to image the nightside of Venus in the same wavelengths that the human eye can perceive.

The Parker Solar Probe took the first of these images in July 2020, as it made its third flyby past Venus to bend its orbit closer toward the Sun. With the capability of resolving fine detail in the solar atmosphere, scientists decided to examine the Venusian clouds but were surprised to see the planet's entire nightside as well. The camera observed a faint glow coming from the planet, as WISPR also captures some infrared wavelengths, which the planet radiates due to its extremely hot surface, about 860 degrees Fahrenheit even on its nightside.

Researchers from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii operate ATLAS, NASA's asteroid monitoring system, and it has recently been given some upgrades.

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) originally consisted of two telescopes located in Hawaii but has now doubled the number of operating telescopes to four, with the two new telescopes being located in Chile and South Africa. With two new telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, ATLAS is now able to see the entire sky and scan it every 24 hours for any potentially hazardous objects.

Space.com reports that the image that ATLAS is able to obtain in a single exposure is 100 times larger than the full moon from the perspective of standing on Earth's surface, adding that this increase in observational capabilities will give Earth greater protection in being able to spot any potentially hazardous objects preemptively. At the moment, NASA knows of around 28,000 asteroids, and since operations began in 2017, ATLAS has spotted 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets.

A blog post from a UFO expert has recently gained traction online as he claims that NASA's Perseverance rover has captured an image of life on the surface of Mars.

The photograph of the alleged "life" comes from a panorama image that NASA's Perseverance rover snapped by in April 2021. According to Scott Waring of the blog UFO Sightings Daily, the photograph is a "person laying down watching the NASA Mars rover from a safe distance away", adding that the person is "1 foot tall and is laying down, pinkish upper chest, neck and face, radish hair, wearing a dark suit, but has a grey object over one shoulder...looks like a backpack of some sort. There are even footprints behind the person leading up to the location they chose to lay down at."

Despite a complete lack of evidence for the claims, the post from Waring gained traction online and was shared around bunch. So, did NASA's Perseverance rover accidentally capture a still image of life on Mars? The short answer is no, and there are a few simple reasons why. The surface of Mars is inhospitable to life as it contains no water and only traces of oxygen, meaning that no life can exist on its surface, not even microscopic life.

NASA has recently brought up some concerns regarding SpaceX's plan to put 30,000 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.

At the moment, SpaceX has been approved by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 12,000 of its Starlink satellites, with the company pushing for approval on its "Gen2" expansion that would increase the number of Starlink satellites in orbit from 12,000 to 30,000. Recently study's have been published outlining the exponential growth of Starlink satellites photo-bombing astronomers' images, and how the number of photobombs will only increase as SpaceX continues launching more satellites.

Now, NASA has said in a statement to the FCC that it "has concerns with the potential for a significant increase in the frequency of conjunction events and possible impacts to Nasa's science and human spaceflight missions". The space agency cited that there are around 25,000 objects being tracked on-orbit, and 6,100 of those are below 372 miles. If SpaceX were to go ahead with the Gen2 rollout, it "would more than double the number of tracked objects in orbit and increase the number of objects below 600km over five-fold".

SpaceX recently announced that the majority of the batch of Starlink satellites launched on February 3 will die in fiery death as they reenter Earth's atmosphere.

According to Elon Musk's company, 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites that were launched on February 3 were interrupted by a geomagnetic storm in Earth's upper atmosphere on February 4 that caused unexpected atmospheric density that resulted in "atmospheric drag" on the satellites. This "atmospheric drag" caused the satellites to fail to reach their intended altitude and plummet back down to Earth for fiery deaths.

The event was caught on video by the Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe, and it shows the satellite debris burning up in the atmosphere upon reentry over Puerto Rico on February 7. As SpaceX has previously stated, Starlink satellites are designed to burn up completely upon reentry, meaning none of the debris would reach Earth's surface.

A team of researchers have devised a plan that includes using lasers to power up a spacecraft that could be used to resupply Mars colonists.

There are many challenges the human race faces when it comes to colonizing Mars, and one of them is how Earth is going to resupply colonists in a short time frame. At the moment, it will take around seven months to reach Mars, but a newly proposed idea from a team at McGill University may be able to reduce that time to just 45 days. The researchers suggest using a 10-meter wide laser array located on the surface of Earth to heat up hydrogen plasma on an orbiting spacecraft.

The lasers would heat up the hydrogen plasma until there is enough superheated hydrogen gas to propel the spacecraft all the way to Mars. This form of propulsion is called "laser-thermal propulsion". The researchers detail in their paper that the supply ship could use Mars' thin atmosphere as a way of slowing the spacecraft down through a maneuver called an "aerobrake". If this can be achieved, it would mean that the craft wouldn't need any chemical fuel onboard to slow down as a traditional spacecraft would.

Researchers have found unexpected elements in the atmosphere of a neighboring white dwarf star and have suggested that they could have come from a recently consumed dead planet.

The new study published in the journal Nature details a white dwarf star called G29-38 that's located 50 light-years away from Earth within the constellation Pisces. White dwarf stars are the cores of once-living once stars such as the Sun. These celestial bodies are extremely dense, with a surface gravity about 100,000 times stronger than Earth's.

Due to the extreme gravity, any heavy elements, such as iron, calcium, and magnesium, sink beneath the surface of the star relatively quickly, meaning that detecting any would suggests an event occurred recently. Researchers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to hone in on G29-28, isolating the white dwarf's X-ray signature and detecting approximately 1,800 tons of matter being sucked into the white dwarf every second. This observation marks the first time researchers have isolated X-rays emitted by a white dwarf.