Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 125

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have published a new study that explores why only comet heads appear green and not their tails.

Comets are frozen masses of gas, rock, and dust leftover from the formation of a solar system. When approaching the sun, their ice sublimates from solid form directly into a gas, contributing to a bright green glow in some comets, but not all.

The researchers used a vacuum chamber and lasers to recreate the chemical reaction between ultraviolet radiation from the sun and diatomic carbon (dicarbon). The process, known as photodissociation, breaks apart the two carbon atoms and gives the comets their green appearance.

A recent study published in Developmental Cell has shown how cell membranes curve to consume material in their environment.

Cells can use their membrane to envelope material in their extracellular environment, then bring it into the cell, in a process known as endocytosis. After encircling a given substance, the membrane buds off into a vesicle, a tiny sac that carries substances around and in and out of the cell.

The cell membrane first needs to form a highly curved basket-like structure before closing around its target. Scientists previously believed the structure began as a flat lattice, but the mechanics of the membrane forming a pocket to move the substances it encounters has eluded scientists for almost forty years.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to operate for a lot longer than the mission engineers most hopeful estimate before launch.

The JWST was designed with a mission length of at least five years, with those working on the project hoping for closer to ten. NASA now expects that the JWST should have enough propellant to support continued science operations for "significantly more" than ten years.

This revelation comes after analysis of the JWST's current progress toward the second Lagrange point, L2, and the two mid-course corrections undertaken so far to keep it on track. The rocket propellant onboard the JWST not only has to carry it toward this point but will contribute to keeping it in orbit around it throughout its mission, firing its thrusters in what is known as "station keeping" maneuvers.

As NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) makes its way to the second Lagrange point, L2, you can keep an eye on its progress.

The JWST has already made it more than a third of the way to its final destination, orbiting around L2. In addition to the recent instrument deployments to help unfold its sunshield, the JWST has finished deploying its temperature sensors, measuring both the hot side of the observatory facing the sun and the cold side shaded by the sunshield.

NASA's website allows you to see the JWST's flight time elapsed since launch, distance traveled from Earth, distance until orbit around L2 is reached, the cruising speed, and the temperature readings from each of the four temperature sensors. The site also provides information on the deployments of other instruments aboard the observatory.

A new study has been published in Nature Microbiology examining the link.

Studies in previous years have correlated diets with high red and processed meat consumption with increased risk of heart disease and strokes, but scientists don't fully understand the mechanisms causing this. The new research has found that a particular bacteria in the gut microbiome is responsible for turning carnitine into a harmful chemical known as TMAO, which promotes blood clotting and clogged arteries. The bacteria are found in larger quantities in individuals who consume more red meat.

Previously, scientists suspected that the saturated fats found in these foods contributed to the higher risks of heart disease and strokes. Saturated fats can boost LDL cholesterol, which contributes to cardiovascular disease. However, Stanley Hazen of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Microbiome and Human Health, co-author of the study, says the research on saturated fats shows its adverse effects are not enough to explain the increased risks associated with red meat consumption.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) recently announced that its uncrewed station on the moon will be completed around 2027.

The station will be built in partnership with Russia and is now expected to be completed eight years ahead of the previous schedule. The Chang'e 8 scheduled for 2027 was set to conduct science operations such as 3D printing using lunar dust but has now been expanded to include the construction of the uncrewed lunar station.

Wu Yanhua, the Deputy Director of CNSA, made the announcement, stating the mission is to "build a solid foundation for the peaceful use of lunar resources." The updated timeline could be in response to the proposed Artemis Accords put forward by the U.S. government and NASA, which would allow governments and private companies to cordon off their facilities and certain zones on the moon, forbidding entry by others.

SpaceX's Starship's first orbital test flight has been delayed, but work is still underway.

Starship's first orbital test flight hinges upon SpaceX's South Texas launch site, Starbase, passing a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This assessment was to be completed by December 31st, 2021; however, this has been pushed back. The FAA announced on December 28th that the assessment is now due to be completed by February 28th, 2022.

The test flight was targeted for January or February but now will occur no earlier than March. In the meantime, Starship testing will continue, with the latest testing taking place on December 29th. The Starship SN20 (Serial Number 20) prototype has fired its engines in a "static fire" test at Starbase. The spacecraft remained anchored to the ground while its Raptor engines were ignited briefly.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just took another step closer to deploying its sunshield.

On December 29th, the Deployable Tower Assembly (DTA) was successfully deployed aboard the observatory. It extends 1.22 meters (4 feet) and connects the two halves of the telescope. The DTA's movement allows for the separation between the telescope and the rest of the spacecraft, necessary for there to be room for the sunshield membranes to unfold.

The extra distance also allows for better thermal isolation for the upper section of the observatory, which houses the mirrors and scientific instruments. They need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to detect the infrared light that the JWST will be observing.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has completed its second mid-course correction burn.

The burn lasted 9 minutes and 27 seconds and is the second of three course corrections that the telescope will undergo to take it to the second Lagrange point, L2. The first course correction, designated MCC-1a, began twelve and a half hours after launch, as the sooner the course correction occurs, the less propellant is required.

The second course correction, designated MCC-1b, was completed 60 hours after launch. The third course correction, designated MCC-2, will occur near the end of the JWST's journey toward the second Lagrange point, known as L2, about twenty-nine days after launching.

The tail of Comet Leonard is starting to break up.

In this picture taken by Gerald Rhemann on December 25th, you can see the tail of Comet Leonard experiencing a disconnection event. Partway down the tail from the comet itself, where it begins to swirl, the tail is being pinched off and separated away from the rest of the tail streaming off the comet.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can disrupt comet tails, sometimes disconnecting them completely, though Comet Leonard has not yet had a known CME impact. Solar winds streams can still produce a similar effect, two of which have hit the comet in recent weeks.

Two weeks after launch, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has returned its first images from space.

Components of the DART spacecraft's telescopic instrument are sensitive to movements as small as five-millionths of a meter. The violent vibrations experienced during launch and extreme reduction in temperature to minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit) could easily cause severe disruptions to the instrument.

Now, after opening its circular door covering the DRACO (short for Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) telescopic camera's aperture on December 7th, the DART spacecraft has returned the images it took to Earth. They were taken about two million miles from Earth, showing about a dozen stars in the otherwise empty backdrop of space.

China is unhappy with the United States over recent close encounters between SpaceX satellites and the Chinese space station.

China's space station, named Tiangong, had to make evasive maneuvers to avoid collisions with Starlink satellites owned by SpaceX on two separate occasions. According to a note submitted to the United Nations space agency by Beijing, the first occurred in July 2021, and the second in October 2021.

China asserts in its note that members of the United Nations' Outer Space Treaty are also responsible for the actions of their non-government entities. SpaceX is a private company that operates independently of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and so far has not responded to a request to comment.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have launched, but there's still a lot of preparation to go before it is ready to fulfill its mission.

On December 28th, the first of two structures containing the JWST's sunshield was deployed. The Forward and Aft Unitized Pallet Structures are the two structures, which contain five folded sunshield membranes, cables, pulleys, and release mechanisms. The deployment of the forward pallet was completed at 1:21 p.m. EST (18:21 UTC), approximately four hours after it began.

The deployment required dozens of steps by the mission operations teams, with only one being the actual motor-driven movement to take the pallet from its stowed position to its deployed state. The event also marks the first time this structure has conducted this movement since its final deployment test at Northrop Grumman Space Park in Redondo Beach, California, in December 2020.

The AI-based Amazon Alexa smart speaker told the 10-year-old girl: "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs". This was only after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do", where the smart speaker discovered the "penny challenge" on the internet -- mostly through TikTok and other social networks.

The 10-year-old girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl, said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one".

Just as her daughter heard the speaker tell her to do something that could've killed her, she jumped in and said "No, Alexa, no!"... I guess like it was a dog or something. But don't worry, the mother said her daughter was "too smart to do something like that". As for Amazon... well, I think Bezos turns a blind eye to most of this.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide have published a new study in Disease Models and Mechanisms examining the link between energy production in the brain and Alzheimer's disease.

The research team studied the brains of young adult zebrafish, which had genetic mutations associated with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Zebrafish were the ideal candidate for the study, as they produce large families in which subtle effects can be more easily detected.

The Alzheimer's disease mutations affected brain cell function in various ways but notably impacted the cells' ability to use oxygen to produce energy. Energy production is the most fundamentally important process within a cell, a necessary prerequisite for the rest of its functions. In highly active organs like the brain, impacts on energy availability have serious consequences.

Much like the black box found on aircraft to keep a safe record of its functions in the event of a disaster, a new black box will keep a record of the Earth in case of a calamity.

The new project, dubbed Earth's Black Box, is a collaboration between the University of Tasmania, Clemenger BBDO, and The Glue Society. Construction is expected to begin in early 2022 and intends to record all of the relevant data that could contribute to the world's collapse, keeping it safe in that event.

The box will be located in the remote landscape of Tasmania, an Australian island state. It will be approximately 33 feet (10 meters) long, with an exterior of 3-inch thick (7.6 centimeters) steel. Full of hard drives, it will store and record climate-related information, including temperature measurements, data on ocean acidification, and land use. The box will also house many other data sets relating to military spending, energy consumption, human population growth, and even news headlines, social media posts, and climate change conferences.

New research has demonstrated an increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders with increased sugar intake in mice models.

Simple sugars like sucrose and corn syrup are found in higher concentrations than ever before in modern diets. Yet, higher intake contributing to the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders in susceptible individuals hasn't been proven. There has been some evidence thus far that supports a correlation, with patients diagnosed with mental disorders on average consuming approximately two times as much sugar compared to healthy, age-matched individuals.

Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science selected the Glyoxylase-1 and Disrupted-in-schizophrenia-1 genes, susceptibility genes for psychiatric disorders, to make their mouse model deficient in the proteins encoded by those genes. By exposing the mice to excessive sugar intakes at the age of puberty, the researchers found increases in mental disorder-like symptoms, including decreased working memory, hyperactivity, and cerebral microvascular angiopathy.

Researchers from the Spanish Astrobiology Centre in Madrid have detected ethanolamine in space and published their findings in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper.

Ethanolamine forms part of the phospholipid molecules that comprise cell membranes. It forms the hydrophilic head of the PE class of phospholipids, which are found in all living cells, making up 25% of all phospholipids. In nervous system components of human physiology, they comprise 45% of all phospholipids.

The research team studied Sagittarius B2, a massive molecular cloud of gas and dust located 390 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. In search of ethanolamine, they simulated the expected spectrum produced by the chemical and looked for this in the light coming from the galaxy and found clear evidence for its presence.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally made it off Earth and into space, but there's a lot more to be done before its mission is deemed a complete success.

After more than a decade of delays and almost thirty years and $10 billion of development, the Ariane 5 rocket carrying the JWST launched from French Guiana at the opening of its launch window on December 25th at 7:20 a.m. EST (12:20 UTC). The rocket's upper stage separated from its lower stages to carry the folded-up JWST payload to the beginning of its trajectory toward the Lagrange Point 2 (L2), taking 16 minutes and 6 seconds. The JWST separated from the upper stage 27 minutes and 7 seconds after the rocket's launch.

L2 is a stable point in space nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, where it will stay in the same position relative to the Earth as they both orbit the Sun. Since launch, the JWST has fired its rocket thrusters to help direct it on its course toward this point. It has also successfully deployed an antenna on December 26th, capable of relaying 28.6 gigabytes of data to scientists on Earth, twice a day, at a speed of 3.5 megabytes per second. More mid-course correction burns will be necessary for JWST to reach L2 over its scheduled 29-day journey.

I don't know about you, but I'd have some issues with an alien being in my room... I've listened to enough Blink-182 that I know they exist. But in Northern Ireland, they're dealing with not just the ongoing pandemic but a huge uptick in UFO sightings.

Northern Ireland's police department has been dealing with 8 separate "weird" UFO sightings in the last year alone, a 30% increase over the 6 sightings of UFOs in 2020 and double the 4 reports of UFO sightings in 2019. A few months ago, Northern Ireland police were called to a locals house about "aliens in bedroom" but no further reporting happened locally, or internationally.

But it gets more interesting: the police department actually detailed a Northern Ireland local who claimed they were abducted by aliens. Another incident had police checking out "strange images" on CCTV footage of a house in the Newtownabbey area, while another sighting of a "dome-shaped" object with 8 bright lights spotted in the Saintfield area.