Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 121

NASA recently announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team has successfully deployed the observatory's 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror.

Now that the gold mirror has been deployed and the observatory has completed all major deployments, the team can move into preparing the telescope for science operations, which means snapping pictures of the vast universe. Researchers have already expressed their excitement for the data that Webb will be able to acquire, and with this data, scientists may be able to answer some of the biggest questions in the universe.

According to a new update on NASA's website, the Webb team will be breathing a little easier now that the major deployments are completed and will shift their focus onto aligning Webb's 18 primary mirror segments, a process that will take five months to complete. Simultaneously the Webb team will be preparing the observatory's instruments for science operations. NASA writes that Webb will deliver its first images sometime this summer.

The future of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and the Metaverse has been discussed on a recent episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience".

Comedian and commentator Joe Rogan sat down with Adam Curry, the host of the "No Agenda" podcast and referred to as the "podfather", for 3 hours to discuss a variety of different topics. One of the topics that were brought up was cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and the Metaverse, where Rogan said, "It's either going to fall apart completely, or we're going to use this as an opportunity to right the ship and come up with a better way to live our lives."

As seen in the above video, Curry explained that many young people are not participating in the traditional financial system and deciding to "opt-out" while simultaneously adopting or building "parallel systems and parallel networks." Additionally, Curry went on to explain that the current monetary system is "broken," referencing aspects such as "inflation" and it being "linked to oil." If you are interested in getting the full conversation, check out the above video.

Elon Musk has taken to his official Twitter account to share a teaser video of the highly anticipated Starship launch and catch tower.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a video showcasing the "launch & catch tower" located at the Starbase facility located in Texas. The launch and catch tower will be used for launching the massive Starship rocket that's expected to be able to send 100 tons of weight into space and then catching it with its chopstick prongs when it returns back down for Earth. Musk has called the entire large structure "Mechazilla".

The tower is necessary for SpaceX to place the 160-foot-tall ship on top of the next-generation booster dubbed Super Heavy, combined the entire structure stands at around 400 feet tall. Super Heavy will be a big step in the space exploration and transportation industry as it will be the first project that may allow humans to walk on the surface of Mars. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is moving into a new period of its unfolding process that will gear it up for operations, but what if it gets hit with a piece of space debris?

The James Webb Telescope will be orbiting the Sun the same as Earth does, and as Earth experiences shooting stars or meteorites, the James Webb Space Telescope will likely encounter micrometeorites that may damage the observatory. During a livestream over the weekend, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Michelle Thaller explained that the agency took into account the likelihood of the observatory being impacted by space debris, and said that these impacts might damage the large mirrors.

Julie Van Campen, a NASA engineer, explained that if a micrometeorite was to damage and break one of Webb's large mirrors, there isn't much that can be done about it, saying, "What you see is what you get". However, if the observatory's large protective sunshield was hit with a micrometeorite, tearing the first layer, there would still be four more layers of protection in space.

The fossilized remains of a giant "sea dragon" that once walked the surface of Earth were discovered by a conservationist in February 2021 while doing routine landscaping at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in England.

Over the course of several weeks, the fossilized remains of the were excavated by paleontologists who were later able to identify that the remains were of an ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile that swam and occasionally walked on land during the Triassic period around 250 million years ago. The specimen was found to be almost completely intact and is now the biggest complete Ichthyosaur ever found in Britain.

A team of paleontologists, conservationists, and volunteers safely removed the fossil that ended up having a backbone that stretched 32 feet and included more than 150 individual vertebrae. The fossil was able to remain in almost perfect condition due to it being embedded in clay. Researchers believe that Ichthyosaur would have ranged in size from around 3.3 feet to more than 85 feet in length, and are believed to look similar to a dolphin of today but much larger in size.

A NASA researcher has explained how the agency is constantly looking for intelligent alien life and that this life could be detected through what is called "alien megastructures".

In a new interview with Vice, Ann Marie Cody, a research scientist at NASA Ames and the SETI Institute, explains that SETI is the "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" and encompasses a range of micro-fields and that her field concentrates on the search for "techno signatures", which is the hunt for advanced civilizations that have created megastructures that give off a detectable signal.

Cody explains that her colleagues take observe thousands of stars every day, and during the observation, images are taken and then organized into a sequence that showcases the star's brightness of a period of time. If an object has passed in front of its host star, it will cause a dip in brightness that will be seen in the previously recorded sequence. From this, researchers can infer that an object has passed in front of the host star.

Researchers are on a quest to link quantum gravity with the world we live in, and have suggested the universe, or spacetime, consists of individual "pixels".

A new press blurb outlines a team of researchers coming together to conduct a new experiment that will attempt to link the conventional laws of general relativity established by Albert Einstein with the world of quantum physics. These two realms of physics are yet to be unified in one cohesive theory, and Rana Adhikari, professor of physics at Caltech, and fellow colleagues believe that the universe is made of incredible small units described as a "spacetime pixel".

"A spacetime pixel is so small that if you were to enlarge things so that it becomes the size of a grain of sand, then atoms would be as large as galaxies," explains Adhikari. The researchers believe that discovering these "pixels" would allow for the unification of the two theories and answer the big question of whether gravity and spacetime can be broken down into individual components when observed on the smallest scales.

A team of researchers has captured the most comprehensive image of an erupting black hole yet, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.

The team of researchers pointed the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Western Australia at the galaxy Centaurus A, which contains the closest actively feeding supermassive black hole to Earth. The black hole located at the center of Centaurus A is currently engulfing large amounts of gas, which results in material being ejected out at high speeds.

This process and ejection of material cause what is described as "radio bubbles" that are then detected by MWA and interpreted by researchers. The researchers estimated the observed black hole has the mass of about 55 million suns and that the jets of material ejected out of it stretch as far as 1.8 million light-years. Due to Centaurs A's close proximity to Earth, researchers can accurately observe the black hole, leading them to believe that much can be learned from its near presence.

A study that looked at the urban air pollution levels for 2.5 billion people found that 86% of people living in cities around the world are exposed to unhealthy levels of pollution that can contribute to death.

The new study was published in The Lancet Planetary Health and looked at the levels of PM2.5, a particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less. Researchers behind the study wrote in their background notes that inhaling PM2.5 can lead to death from cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer, and respiratory infection.

The study included 13,000 cities from around the world and looked at the PM2.5 concentrations of each from 2000 to 2019. The researchers found that the average population-weighted PM2.5 concentration globally was 35 micrograms per cubic meter in 2019, which is seven times the World Health Organization's 2021 guidelines. Additionally, the team estimated that in 2019, 61 in every 100,000 deaths can be attributed to an unhealthy consumption of PM2.5.

Reports have surfaced regarding an announcement from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, which stated that water has been detected under the Moon's surface.

According to a new study published in Science Advances on Friday, data acquired by China's Chang'e 5 lunar lander indicates the presence of water under the surface of the Moon. The rover used its mineralogical spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of rocks and soil at the landing site.

The analysis resulted in the detection of water molecules at a concentration of less than 120 parts per million, or around 120 grams of water in one tonne of lunar soil. Additionally, the study looked at the water concentration in rocks and found it was 180 parts per million and wrote that the discrepancy between the water concentration in the soil and rock is due to the rock likely originating from deeper in the lunar surface.

In December 2021, an affiliated Chinese media channel called "Our Space" reported on China's Yutu 2 rover spotting what was described as a "house" or "hut" on the far side of the moon.

China's Yutu 2 rover landed on the far side of the moon back in January 2019, and since then, it has been exploring the surface of the Von Karman crater, which is where it spotted the strange object on the horizon. The image seen above was sent back to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), and since then, the small Yutu 2 rover has been driving towards the object.

Now, reports indicate that the mysterious object has been renamed to the "moon cube" and that the CNSA has driven the rover 262 feet to reach the object. Initial reports indicated that it would take two or three months to reach the cube, but only after a few weeks, the rover was in range to identify the object. According to an update from Our Space, the object is a rock shaped like a rabbit, hence the new name for the object "Jade Rabbit".

NASA has announced that its Perseverance rover and operating team are facing a challenge that they have never faced before.

The space agency took to its blog and social channels to announce that Perseverance recently captured its sixth Mars sample, but during the "Coring Bit Dropoff", the transferring period of the bit that contains the sample to the rover's storage section, the rover sensors detected an anomaly. According to NASA's blog post, as soon as the rover detected the anomaly, it halted all proceeding until further instructions from its team were provided.

After acquiring all relevant data on the anomaly, NASA's Perseverance team identified the problem by taking images of inside the rover's carousel. The images showed a few pieces of pebble-sized debris that the Perseverance team is confident came the most recently sampled Mars rock sample. NASA writes that these debris fell out of the sample tube at the time of the Coring Bit Dropoff, which is now preventing the sample from being correctly placed in the carousel.

NASA has been rolling out the public updates for the development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and now the space agency has released another.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to announce that at 1:17 on EST, January 8, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope completed all of its large-scale deployments. The space agency writes that the primary mirror, secondary mirror tripod, and both primary mirror wings for the space observatory have successfully been deployed, meaning that the space telescope is "structurally fully deployed".

NASA's official James Webb Space Telescope Twitter account states that the Webb team has successfully completed 50 major deployments of the observatory, bringing 20+ years of painstaking work to fruition. So, now that the observatory's structure has been fully deployed, what's next for the Webb team? NASA writes that it will be beginning the three-month process of aligning all of Webb's telescope optics into a "precise system".

The team that found the fossils published their findings in the Science Advances journal.

Led by Dr. Matthew McCurry and Dr. Michael Frese, the team identified a new fossil site in New South Wales, Australia, named McGraths Flat. It is located in the Central Tablelands, NSW, near the town of Gulong. The site joins a limited group of fossil sites across Australia classified as a 'Lagerstatte' (a site that contains exceptionally well-preserved fossils).

In the last three years, researchers have excavated thousands of specimens that likely formed between 11 and 16 million years ago, including those of rainforest plants, insects, spiders, fish, and a bird feather. The fossils indicate the area was once a temperate, mesic rainforest. Many of the fossils are so well preserved that they can see some of the individual cells and subcellular structures. Examples of species' interaction can be seen in fish fossils with their stomach contents preserved or pollen on the bodies of some insects.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow reported their findings in a new study published in the Computers in Human Behaviour journal.

They found that celebrities and famous individuals are considered more "attractive," which, compared to ordinary people, elicits a more protective response from others when they experience abuse online. The public perception of increased attractiveness meant that any abuse they received was perceived as more socially unacceptable. The researchers suggest this "protective 'halo'" bestowed upon celebrities online is due to the "'what is beautiful is good' phenomenon."

The study highlights key points such as celebrities being victim-blamed less often than a layperson in instances of cyber abuse, incidents involving celebrity targets were considered more severe than layperson targets, and celebrities are seen as more socially, physically, and task-attractive than laypersons. The researchers found victim attractiveness and status predicted victim-blaming and perceptions of severity.

Researchers from Ajou University in South Korea have created an amazing new robotic hand.

A new article published in Nature Communications describes the device, named the ILDA hand, which weighs just under 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms) and measures almost 8.6 inches (21.8 centimeters). The hand is made from steel and aluminum and has twenty joints, a fingertip force of 34 newtons, and can complete various everyday tasks when mounted on a commercial robotic arm.

The team says the hand can hold eggs without crushing them, lift dumbbells, crush cans and pour drinks. The hand was able to grasp various objects, adjusting its fingers accordingly. It demonstrated its ability to use tools with precision, handling scissors to cut paper and manipulating tweezers to pick up and place a microchip on a circuit board.

Researchers from Paragraf and the Queen Mary University of London have published a new study in the journal Advanced Optical Materials on the potential replacement.

The researchers successfully fabricated an Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED), where the indium tin oxide (ITO) anode normally used was replaced with a mono-layer graphene anode. Indium is a rare earth metal, one of the nine rarest elements in the Earth's crust, making the European Union's list of critical raw materials. Many smartphone and television screens now come with OLED technology, but indium is also found in a large number of other consumer electronics.

The new technology demonstrates graphene's potential to serve as a viable replacement. Graphene is made from carbon atoms alone and can be sustainably produced, whereas indium's comparative scarcity makes it more expensive and unsustainable. Until now, graphene has had big expectations but hasn't been able to have them fully realized.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco have published a new study in the Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association which examines the link between exercise and brain health.

Their study found that more active older adults had higher quantities of a class of proteins that enhance connections between neurons to maintain healthy cognition. The protective impact of these proteins was observed even in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases when their brains, which have higher concentrations of toxic proteins like amyloid and tau, were studied after death.

The researchers followed the activity levels of elderly subjects who agreed to donate their brains after death. They found higher concentrations of proteins that facilitate information exchange between neurons, allowing the subjects to retain better cognition later in their lives. The beneficial effects extended beyond the hippocampus, responsible for memory functions, to other areas of the brain associated with cognitive function.

As NASA continues the unfolding process of the James Webb Space Telescope that was launched on Christmas Day, many members of the public are wondering why the observatory doesn't have its own cameras.

NASA recently took to its blog and social media channels to explain why the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) isn't equipped with its own cameras. According to the space agency, there were several problems engineers faced when drawing up JWST designs that included cameras, such as harnessing problems, combating the extreme glare the camera would experience if it was positioned on the Sun-facing side, and the lack of lighting the camera would have on the side shrouded in darkness.

In a series of tweets by NASA's official James Webb Telescope Twitter account, the space agency outlines more problems engineers faced, such as power, temperature, and complexity. Ultimately, Webb's engineers decided that "deployment surveillance cameras would not add significant information of value for engineering teams commanding the spacecraft from the ground." If you are interested in reading more about the James Webb Space Telescope, check out the below links!

Astronomers observing asteroids can predict their orbits around the Sun and therefore predict when the observed asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth.

One asteroid, in particular, will be making a close approach with Earth in the future, and when it was first discovered back in 2004, astronomers briefly believed that it might pose a risk to Earth. However, in 2021 researchers ruled out any possibility for asteroid 99942 Apophis being a danger to Earth, but it will pass close to our planet, and that's a good thing.

A new study from Brazilian astronomers details an opportunity for researchers to learn more about the surface of the asteroid when it makes it closest approach. The researchers write that asteroid 99942 Apophis is estimated to be around 1115 feet wide, and after performing a simulation with the acquired data, the researchers discovered the asteroid's shape isn't circular and is irregular.