Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 133

In a new study published in Science, researchers have developed a new method for detecting infrared light by changing its frequency to a corresponding frequency in the range of visible light.

Electromagnetic waves have a characteristic frequency and wavelength that are inversely proportional; as one increases, the other decreases. Measured in Hertz (Hz), human eyes can perceive light frequencies between 400 and 750 trillion Hz, or terahertz (THz). Smartphone cameras can detect down to 300 THz, and other detectors used in fiber-optic cables can detect around 200 THz.

Lower frequency light does not have sufficient energy to be registered by the photoreceptors in our eyes, meaning we cannot see frequencies of light like infrared that fall below this threshold but contain a great deal of information. As everything with warmth radiates energy, temperature differences can be detected visually with infrared spectroscopy, remotely, and without contact.

Taking place on Saturday, December 4th, you may be able to see the year's only total solar eclipse if you live towards the south pole.

A solar eclipse occurs when a new moon moves in front of the Sun from a viewer's perspective on Earth. Total solar eclipses happen when the moon is close enough to Earth during its orbit that it blocks out the entirety of the Sun as it passes between the Earth and the Sun. The length of the totality and percent of Sun covered varies considerably based on the observer's location. It's not advised to look directly at the event without some form of protective eyewear.

In Antarctica, almost two minutes of totality is expected, and NASA will broadcast the event from Antarctica if the weather allows. The best views will be from there, but some eclipse will be partially viewable from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa.

The video has been posted by Engineered Arts to its YouTube channel and reveals the first look at the humanoid robot Ameca.

Developed by Engineered Arts, Ameca is the most advanced humanoid robot from the company and in a video recently posted to the Engineered Arts YouTube channel, Ameca's facial expressions have been demonstrated. Ameca can be seen slowly waking up by shrugging its shoulders and then quickly opening its eyes with a shock or surprised look on its face.

The facial expressions demonstrated here are truly mind-blowing, and I believe what has made this demonstration so impactful is Ameca's small facial movements such as a furrowed brow, blinking multiple times as if it was waking its eyes up, and looking down at its own hands as if it was inspecting what they are capable of.

One of the largest clothing and footwear design and manufacturers has announced it's being led into the Metaverse.

Adidas has announced that the Bored Ape Yacht Club and PUNKS Comic are now leading the company into the Metaverse, with Adidas teasing a Metaverse where people in "overlooked locations with updates values" are able to share their "most original ideas". Engadget reports that Adidas is being quite cryptic about what it's sharing with its audience about the announcement, but judging on who is involved, it can be assumed that the entry into the Metaverse will come with NFTs.

The extremely popular collection of Bored Ape NFTs that can be purchased on the Ethereum blockchain has a new entry, Adidas' "rebellious optimist" ape Indigo Herz. Adidas said that this is a "sign of what's to come", and pushes people who are interested in learning more about this announcement to download the Adidas' Confirmed app to "discover more". If you are interested in learning more about this story, or would like to download the app, check out the Adidas website here.

Researchers have identified an asteroid that is scheduled to make a relatively close approach to Earth very soon.

The asteroid is 4660 Nereus, and it measures in at a whopping 1,083 feet in diameter, which is just shy of the height of the Empire State Building. 4660 Nereus was first discovered back in 1982, and every 10 years or so, the massive asteroid flies relatively close by Earth which makes it a perfect candidate for asteroid missions. Next week on December 11, 4660, Nereus will pass by Earth at a safe distance of 2.44 million miles, which is a little over 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

4660 Nereus is officially classified as a "potentially hazardous" object, as is any asteroid that passes 4.65 million miles of Earth and has a diameter larger than 500 feet. Reports indicate that the next approach 4660 Nereus makes will be the closest it has made in decades, and the next time that it will come close to Earth will be on February 14, 2060. If you are interested in reading more about asteroids, or comets, check out this link here.

I've written over 25,000 articles in over 11 years at TweakTown, and never... never did I think I'd write the headline "Sperm used by scientists as an eco-friendly alternative to plastic". But hey, here we are... using fish cum as an alternative to plastic. Righty-o.

Anyway, a team of Chinese scientists has created a new raw, squishy material known as "hydrogel" because hydrogel sounds way better than "salmon semen" or "fish cum". The scientists used two small strands of DNA from the sperm of salmon -- yeah, fish cum -- and then combined them with vegetable oil that binds them together, creating hydrogel.

The gel is then molded into different shapes, freeze-dried in order to remove moisture, and already the scientists have turned it into cum cups, I mean plastic cups made from semen-based materials. Because I want my lips around a fish cum-based plastic, instead of real plastic, because I care about the environment that much. Uh, yuck.

At the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Kelly Benoit-Bird will discuss how sonar or active acoustics can identify biological hotspots in ocean life, revealing the answer to the food paradox in the sea.

Using active acoustics, researchers could analyze returning echoes from sound pulses to find small activity hotspots throughout the ocean. Conventional sampling often misses these, giving rise to the Lasker food paradox proposed in the 1970s, which found that laboratory animals fed the average concentration of ocean food did not survive, despite their ocean-dwelling counterparts doing fine.

The presence of concentrated pockets of ocean food and biota, varying by depth and location, suggests animals must find and capitalize on aggregated resources to survive. Higher concentrations of resources reduce the energy they must expend continuously hunting for a steady supply of food.

Using radar data from China's Chang'e 3 mission in 2013, researchers are learning more about the stratified layers of the lunar surface.

Volcanic activity on the moon has deposited lava rock on its surface throughout its history. With time, these rocks break down into dust and soil, called regolith, from space weathering and asteroid impacts. Layers of this material have been buried beneath the lunar surface over time as this cycle repeats.

Researchers identified from the first direct ground radar measurements made by the Chang'e 3 mission a layer of paleoregolith roughly 16 to 30 feet (4.8 to 9.1 meters) thick, between two layers of lava rock thought to be 2.3 and 3.6 billion years old. Scientists say this suggests that the paleoregolith formed significantly faster than the previous estimate of 6.5 feet (1.8 meters) per billion years.

The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine, along with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is seeking scientific proposals to counteract wear and tear on astronauts during spaceflight.

The NASA-funded Institute's Biomedical Research Advances for Space Health (BRASH) solicitation is investing in science to protect astronauts on future Artemis missions and more. Deep space exploration presents astronauts with many physiological stressors, such as increased radiation exposure and gravity changes, and psychological stressors from isolation, confinement, and the inherent danger in such an environment.

Consequently, astronaut health is impacted as tissues degrade, DNA is damaged, and more. The BRASH solicitation aims to reduce risks to crew member health through supporting the development of disruptive technologies, therapies, or novel approaches to enhancing pre-existing internal cellular repair functions, improving the body's endogenous repair and maintenance systems.

Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have shown the potential of a new radiation therapy technique to deliver effective, targeted doses to cancer patients.

In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) method selectively killed cancer cells while minimally damaging nearby healthy cells. FLASH-RT aims to provide rapid, targeted, high-dose radiation therapy as an alternative to weeks of low-dose radiation in other radiotherapy settings. Previously, FLASH-RT has required complex and enormous gymnasium-sized machines that are impractical for clinical use. However, LLNL has found linear induction accelerators (LIAs) to be powerful enough to deliver a sufficient dose while only three meters long, which LLNL previously used in its weapons program.

To ensure a high enough dose to kill cancer cells but short enough to limit damage to healthy cells, the LLNL researchers used an LIA that produces four beamlets placed symmetrically around the patient, as opposed to one large electron beam. The high doses exceed those conventional accelerators can make, and the researchers could steer and focus the FLASH-RT beam by controlling the magnets in the accelerators. Future research hopes to show LIA FLASH-RT's viability in distributed cancer settings, not just concentrated examples like tumors.

Long after it was theorized to exist, a new class of stars has been discovered by astronomers.

Using the Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory in California and data from multiple astronomical surveys, researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian made this discovery.

When a star dies, it will almost always become a typical white dwarf but may rarely become an extremely low mass (ELM) white dwarf. Standard stellar evolution calculations would take the mass of such a star and conclude that it must be older than itself, so these stars cannot have come to be on their own after burning away their fuel. Therefore, astronomers theorized ELM white dwarfs must result from an interaction with another star in a binary pair, which would siphon mass from it faster than it would lose otherwise.

The comet called Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) has just surprised researchers once again as it makes its way through to the edges of our solar system.

BB is a 62-mile wide comet that was first discovered back in 2014 and since then has been a focus point for researchers that want to understand the nature of comets and retrace their life-spans. Researchers analyzed data from the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) that was acquired between 2018 and 2020, what they found was that BB was "active" much earlier than anticipated.

A comet becomes "active" when light from the Sun heats up the comets surface, melting the icy crust and turning it into water vapor, causing the iconic "tail", or "coma" that defines a comet. The researchers found that BB was active when it was much farther away from the Sun than previously anticipated, which has now pushed the possible distance for active comets out much further than researchers have previously estimated.

Russia recently tested an anti-satellite weapon out on one of its decommissioned satellites, sparking global debate over the new space debris caused by the test.

The anti-satellite weapon test caused new 1,500 pieces of space debris to join the already thousands of pieces floating around low-Earth orbit. Some of these space debris are travelling at extremely high speeds and can be a hazard to satellites, the International Space Station (ISS), and astronauts. Shortly after the weapon test was conducted, astronauts aboard the ISS were told to take cover in escape vehicles by NASAas space debris from the satellite break up were in-bound.

Russia's Minister-general of the army, Sergei Shoigu, commented on the space debris having the potential to pose a threat to future space activities, saying "the resulting fragments do not pose any threat to space activities". Now, the Pentagon has called for all global halt to testing anti-satellite weaponry, which was further backed up with condemnation for Russia's recent actions.

The American Meteor Society (AMS) has tracked another fireball event across the United States, as more than 50 people have reported a sighting.

The new listing appears on the American Meteor Society website and states the AMS received 52 reports about a fireball appearing in the night sky over several US states. Reports came from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio, and Indianapolis. The AMS says that the sighting occurred on Wednesday, December 1st, 2021, around 03:14 UT.

Reports indicate that the fireball was visible for around 2.5 seconds before it disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere, seemingly disappearing in front of onlookers. For those that don't know, the AMS categorizes a meteor as a "fireball" if it is brighter than the planet Venus. There is two videos of the entry of the fireball, one above and one below. If you are interested in reading more about meteors, check out this link here.

Astronomers were trying to measure the dark matter profile for one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and discovered a massive black hole at the galaxy's center.

Astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory were inspecting a Milky Way dwarf galaxy called Leo I in an attempt to find out of dark matter density increases or decreases towards a galaxy's center. Leo I lacks dark matter, hence its selection as an inspection candidate. The astronomers compiled the data and implemented it, along with models, into a supercomputer and were shocked at the results.

A black hole almost the size of the one at the center of the Milky Way was discovered. This discovery may redefine astronomers' understanding of the evolution of galaxies. UT Austin doctoral graduate Maria Jose Bustamante, who led the team of astronomers, said, "there is no explanation for this kind of black hole in dwarf spheroidal galaxies."

A NASA expert has answered the following question in a new video posted to the NASA YouTube channel, "What's it Like Landing on Mars?"

Answering this week's question is NASA thermal engineer Alex Scammell, who explains that landing on Mars is a complicated process that is quite challenging, but after every attempt, the agency gains more knowledge on how to execute the landing process more effectively and efficiently. The latest rover to land on the surface of Mars is NASA's Perseverance rover that went from traveling 13,000 mph to a soft landing in just seven minutes. This process included using parachutes, thrusters, and a sky crane.

Scammell goes on to explain that majority of the decrease in speed can be attributed to the Martian atmosphere creating drag on the rover's heat shield. The NASA thermal engineer explains that understanding what the heat shield experienced while it was plummeting towards the surface of the Red Planet would allow for NASA engineers to improve upon future design iterations, which is why NASA engineers equipped instruments under Perseverance's heat shield that measure its conditions.

NASA 360 posted a video to its YouTube that's a part of its Planetary Defense series that is detailing asteroids that are close to Earth.

The video was posted to the channel back in October and was recently shared to the NASA 360 Twitter account, where NASA posed itself the question, "What do we know about the asteroids and comets in Earth's neighborhood?". The video showcases what NASA knows about near-Earth asteroids by the numbers, and explains that while the majority of the potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids have been found, there are still some thousands of undiscovered asteroids still out there in our neighborhood.

For those that don't know, Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that are orbiting the Sun and come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. The space agency explains in the description of the video that NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office was conceived to track, study NEOs, and if the situation presented itself, provide guidance into deflecting a potential threat to Earth. Below are the numbers outlined by NASA in the video.

Recently, the longest plant experiment in the history of the International Space Station (ISS) came to an end, breaking records for plants grown on the floating laboratory.

A new blog post on the NASA website details the achievements made and states that on November 26 Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei harvested some 26 chilie peppers that were grown from four plants grown aboard the ISS's Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) for 137 days. Hei, along with other crew members, sampled the harvested peppers, which broke the record for feeding the most astronauts from a crop grown in space.

The peppers were added to a special taco meal created by Expedition 65 flight engineer Megan McArthur. The tacos included fajita beef, rehydrated tomatoes, and artichokes. 12 of the peppers have been prepared for a return trip back to Earth, and the remainder was eaten by the crew, who then provided feedback about the peppers.

Ana Racoveanu is a scientist synthesizing energetic compounds with isotopic labels, a rare feat in the nuclear security enterprise.

Isotopic labeling uses various stable isotopes of given elements in the place of their most common isotope throughout a chemical reaction. The different properties of the non-standard isotope allow its progress through the reaction to be tracked, providing insight into the mechanics of the reaction itself. The goal of creating isotopically labeled energetic materials is to help make munitions safer to handle and use.

Previously, making stable isotopically labeled energetics has been rare due to the prohibitive expense of starting materials. Cheaper labeled ingredients and synthetic methods for energetic materials have helped make isoptically labeling energetics more available, but their quantity is still limited by expense.

These days, transistors in classical computers are measured on the nanometer scale, but superconducting qubits used in quantum are still measured in millimeters.

Qubits exist in an infinite gradation of binary states, and for quantum computers to excel, their qubits need to be on the same wavelength. Traditionally, this has been a size-constrained issue, leading to massive processors and quantum computers. Much like shrinking transistors in classical computers, a way to shrink qubits will be necessary to make quantum computing more viable in the future.

Wang Fong-Jen Professor James Hone's lab at Columbia Engineering has recently collaborated with Raytheon BBN Technologies to shrink qubits by shrinking the capacitors used to power them. Planar capacitors have been used previously, but stacking them to save space would result in interference from the metals used with the qubits.