Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 162

The largest planet in our solar system will appear as a bright light in the night sky this week, and you'll be able to see it with or without a telescope.

The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter, and this week you will be able to see the planet reach opposition in its orbit. The term "opposition" means that Jupiter is opposite the sun from the perspective of Earth, and officially the planet will reach opposition on August 19. However, this space event isn't just for one night, as Jupiter will be clearly visible in the night sky for the remainder of August.

It's recommended that if you have an old telescope to laying around to take this opportunity to check out the largest planet in our solar system. As AccuWeather reports, most telescopes are powerful enough to be able to show Jupiters four largest moons; Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. If you are interested in reading more about space news, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope recently captured an image of a space "furnace", check that out here.

Around 2 billion years ago, a massive meteor struck South Africa, causing what is now known as the Vredefort impact crater, the largest impact structure on Earth.

Researchers who are interested in discovering more about the impact crater and the meteor that caused it have found impact ejecta, which are sediments that were launched from the impact zone, around 120 miles to the west of the crater. The researchers managed to find sediments dated between 1.9 billion to 2.2 billion years old. The sediments had telltale signs of experiencing either a volcanic eruption or a meteorite impact.

Elmar Buchner, a geologist at the Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Neu-Ulm, Germany, who wasn't involved in the study, said "There's no doubt that it is impact ejecta" and that the features found in the sample are "unequivocal evidence" of impact material. Matthew S. Huber, a geologist at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and lead researcher on the study, said, "These grains were subjected to a shock wave."

Astronomers have managed to capture some of the highest detailed images of galaxies, which could allow researchers to develop a deeper understanding of how galaxies work.

The team of astronomers used more than 70,000 small antennae across nine European counties to drastically increase the resolution of the images. Additionally, over six years the team created a completely new way of collecting the signals from each of the antennas, interpreting the data, and then combining it together to eventually form the image.

Dr Leah Morabito from Durham University, the UK, who spearheaded the achievement, spoke to BBC and said, "To work on the data for so long, and then to finally get such images and be able be the first person to see what it looks like is just incredible. I walked around with a huge smile on my face for the rest of the day, because I felt so proud that I was able to make these images and be able to see something nobody had ever seen before".

In a new study, researchers have reported findings on a massive lair that contains bones from at least fourteen different kinds of animals and humans.

The cave is located in a volcanic field in Saudi Arabia called Harrat Khaybar. The cave is called Umm Jirsan, and according to researchers, it is more accurately referred to as a lava tube rather than a cave. According to zooarchaeologist Mathew Stewart from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany, "This 1.5 km long lava tube is chock-a-block with hundreds of thousands of beautifully preserved animal remains".

What brought all of these bones here? Researchers believe that the cave was home to a pack of striped hyenas, as the remains of striped hyenas were also found in the cave. Additionally, the researchers explained that striped hyenas are avid collectors of bones, and it's not unusual to find a horde of bones in a hyena den. However, this lava tube discovery is different as the horde has been accumulated over the last 7,000 years.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope still manages to shock onlookers with its images of the cosmos 31 years after its launch.

This time around, the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to peer at a glorious spiral universe 68 million light-years away from Earth officially named NGC 1385. The spiral galaxy resides in the constellation Fornax, which is the Latin term for furnace. The constellation's name was coined by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, a French astronomer born in 1713, who was also responsible for the names of fourteen other constellations out of the total 88.

Researchers used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to capture the image, which is one of the main cameras that is used on Hubble. Considering its age, Hubble's WFC3 can still produce absolutely incredible images of the cosmos, which really makes you think how mind-blowing the images will be of the coming James Webb Space Telescope that is slated to be Hubble's replacement. More on that coming telescope launch can be found here.

Unfortunately, NASA has said that due to delays, the space agency won't be able to land humans on the moon by 2024.

The news comes from an audit from NASA's Inspector General, who said that due to delays caused by the dispute with the lunar lander between Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and space suit development, the launch will now be delayed. The audit states, "These delays - attributable to funding shortfalls, COVID-19 impacts, and technical challenges - have left no schedule margin for delivery of the two flight-ready xEMUs. Given the integration requirements, the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest".

In response to the news posted to CNBC's Space Reporter Michael Sheetz's Twitter account, Elon Musk said that he has a solution to the problem, stating that "SpaceX could do it if need be", referring to the spacesuit development. Additionally, Musk was asked if SpaceX would have Starship ready to land humans on the moon by 2024 (despite other delays), Musk said, "Probably sooner".

According to a new paper released by Microsoft's research department, Microsoft has made a move towards adopting cryptocurrencies.

According to the paper, Microsoft and researchers from Alibaba and Carnegie Mellon University have studied what is described as "a blockchain-based incentive system to bolster anti-piracy campaigns", per Cointelegraph. The new paper explored what this new system would be like on the Ethereum blockchain, with the project's main goal to create a system that ensures privacy but is also fully transparent.

The paper states the following about the research titled "Argus: A Fully Transparent Incentive System for Anti-Piracy Campaigns"; "We see this as a distributed system problem. In the implementation, we overcome a set of unavoidable obstacles to ensure security despite full transparency." Detailed in the paper is Argus and a watermark algorithm named "proof of leakage", which enables backtracing of pirated content all the way back to the source. If you are interested in reading more about how this system works, check out this link here.

According to Fox News, a new report regarding UFOs will be released in the coming days, and it will contain the "most compelling" UFO evidence.

This year we saw US Intelligence Officials confirm in a report that they are unable to identify several encounters with UFOs, or as officials refer to them, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Additionally, we also know that several pieces of contents from the report that was given to Congress were classified and not revealed to the public.

Since then, UFOs have been quite the hot topic, and now Fox News' Tucker Carlson will be revealing what is described as the "most compelling UFO evidence from Pentagon". Carlson will sit down with air and space experts as well as witnesses on the coming episode of Fox Nation's "Tucker Carlson Originals - The UFO Files: Chasing the Truth." The episode will be available to stream on August 19. For more information, check out this link here.

Our solar system features eight planets, and each of these planets is very distinguishable as they are all quite different.

During the time that humans have been exploring our solar system and the space beyond it, NASA has captured some incredible images of our local planets. Most of the images can be attributed to NASA's Voyager 1/2 missions which are still currently traveling through the dark void of interstellar space.

The images that you will find below show off some of the most noticeable aspects of the planets in very high detail. As humans advance and our technology becomes more powerful to view the cosmos, we will develop a deeper understanding of these planets in our solar system, as well as the billions of other planets in our systems. For now, though, let's admire what we have achieved so far.

Two pilots of two separate aircrafts reported spotting a UFO flying through the sky before mysteriously vanishing out of sight.

One of the planes that have reported spotting the UFO was a Canadian military aircraft that was en route towards Cologne, Germany, from Ontario. According to Steffan Watkins, an aviation and shipping researcher who looked at the flight records from the military plane saw that the plane climbed 1,000 feet in altitude during the reported time of the sighting.

The other plane was a commercial plane from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flying from Boston to Amsterdam, and according to the report, the pilot spotted a green UFO flying through the sky before vanishing over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the Atlantic coast of Canada. It should be noted that these sightings by two separate pilots come during the Perseid meteor showering, which could mean the "UFO" was actually a meteor. However, this isn't confirmed.

One satellite has experienced a strange "anomaly" that has caused it to begin plummeting down towards the surface of Earth.

The satellite named Measat-3 has been in orbit for nearly 15 years, but unfortunately, on June 15, it experienced an issue that researchers are yet to understand. The issue has caused the communications satellite to be knocked out of service, and now Measat said, "Further testing and recovery efforts found that the satellite could not re-enter service. The satellite will be de-orbited in the following weeks."

According to ExoAnalytic Solutions, a space tracking company, the satellite began tumbling in its own orbit since July 1, and according to Bill Therien, ExoAnalytic Solutions executive vice president of engineering, "It's rare to see one come back from this stage". It should be noted that when the satellite begins to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, it will burn up before reaching the surface, not endangering any lives. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Astronomers have seen something they have never seen before, two dancing ghosts out in the deep void of space having a boogie.

In an article published in The Conversation, Ray Norris, a Professor of Applied Data Science in Astrophysics at Western Sydney University, explains that the two dancing ghosts were found when a team of researchers were scanning through fresh data from CSIRO's new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.

Norris explains that the researchers were able to discover that the data they were interpreting was showing them evidence of two radio galaxies located around a billion light-years away. At the center of each of these galaxies resides a supermassive black hole that is propelling out long jets of electrons that are then bent into strange shapes by intergalactic wind. These two galaxies and their respective black holes are believed to be responsible for the "dancing ghosts". However, this and other aspects of the discovery are yet to be confirmed.

The latest cargo trip to the International Space Station contains a piece of technology that may very well pave the road for future colonists of our moon and other planets.

NASA is currently in preparation of constructing some sort of base on the moon that humans will be able to operate in. However, before construction gets underway, there are many tests that the space agency needs to do to gather the best and most efficient understanding of how to begin. One of the pieces of technology that needs to be tested is a 3D printer on the International Space Station.

This isn't any normal 3D printer, though, as it's designed to print regolith, (loose soil or rock) from the moon or other planets. The idea behind the printer is to reduce the amount of materials that will need to be transported to the moon or another planet. If the printing is successful, we could see colonists on the moon or Mars printing out structures using the loose soil or rock around them. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Earth's closest neighbor has had its photo taken by NASA and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager telescope.

According to a new post on NASA's website, NASA and ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft flew past Venus 4,967 miles from the planet's surface. During the days leading up to its approach, the Solar Orbiter snapped several images of it, which can be seen above. Looking at the image, we can see Venus' nightside, which is the large blacked-out semi-circle, and the Sun behind it.

Phillip Hess, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C, said, "Ideally, we would have been able to resolve some features on the nightside of the planet, but there was just too much signal from the dayside. Only a sliver of the dayside appears in the images, but it reflects enough sunlight to cause the bright crescent and the diffracted rays that seem to come from the surface." NASA also mentions that there are two bright stars in the background of the time. The star furthermost to the right is Omicron Tauri, and above it to the left is Xi Tauri.

NASA will be sending a new space probe to a distant moon that is believed to have water in search of ancient signs of life.

NASA plans to launch a rotorcraft named Dragonfly to Saturn's largest and the solar system's second-largest moon, Titan, in 2027. Researchers believe that Titan possibly has liquid water beneath its icy surface and that within that water could be chemical biosignatures that indicate life is/was present. Alex Hayes, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Dragonfly co-investigator, said, "Titan represents an explorer's utopia."

He continued, "The science questions we have for Titan are very broad because we don't know much about what is actually going on at the surface yet. For every question we answered during the Cassini mission's exploration of Titan from Saturn orbit, we gained 10 new ones." In addition to looking for signs of life, Dragonfly will also be inspecting the moon's methane cycle as well as the chemical make-up of Titan's strange atmosphere.

Humans of the future will be very different from what we are today. They will possess much more advanced technology and will most likely have a deeper understanding of the universe.

However, humans of the future will probably still be interested in the history of our species, which is why NASA is sending a message to us of the future. This isn't the first time NASA has created a time capsule that contains what humans have understood so far and sent it out into the void of space. In the 1970s, NASA's first four spacecrafts to leave our solar system contained time capsules plaques that have messages to alien life.

Now, NASA is doing it again, but this time the space agency isn't planning on sending a message to aliens but to human astro-archeologists of the future. The mission is called "Lucy," named after the fossilized human ancestor discovered in 1974. NASA will launch the Lucy in 2033, and its destination will be six asteroids that are on six separate orbits of the sun. Once Lucy has passed those asteroids, it will reside among the Trojan asteroids for possibly millions of years, or until it's discovered by someone or something.

An individual has claimed that he is a "real-life time traveler from 2714" and that aliens will soon be arriving to begin an intergalactic war.

As you have probably already guessed, the time traveler claims have been posted on TikTok and has gone viral despite its obvious lack of scientific evidence to back up the claims. The time traveler claims that invasion will come with a meteor shower, as "one of the meteors" will look different than the others - this will be a "spaceship landing on Earth starting preparations for the Nozic War".

The time traveler claims that the meteor shower will begin on August 11, 2021, and will continue for two weeks. This isn't the first time the TikTok account has claimed to be a time traveler, only a few weeks ago the user claimed that humans would get superpowers in 2021. These videos going as viral as they do show that even baseless claims without any scientific evidence to back them up can still get traction online. Whether that traction is deserved is another question entirely.

Billionaires such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are paying millions for certain metals, but why?

One word, electric vehicles. A mineral company that is financially backed by billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates has agreed in a joint venture with mining firm Bluejay. The mineral mining company KoBold Metals will be spending $15 million to search for nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum at the Disko-Nuussuaq project in Central West Greenland.

Blujay said in a statement that in return for spending the $15 million, KoBold Metals will have a 51% stake in the project. For those that don't know, KoBold Metals is a privately-owned company that has been "recognized in 2021 as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and as one of the 100 most promising private artificial intelligence companies in the world by CB Insights." Additionally, KoBold Metals is the only mining company using artificial intelligence.

Diamonds are renowned as some of the hardest gems people can get their hands-on, but what if glass could be harder than a diamond?

Researchers from Yanshan University have created that glass, and according to test results, the glass is actually twice as hard as a diamond. The team of Chinese researchers only recently published a study in the National Science Review that states the new material is made entirely out of carbon and is a yellow-colored glass called AM-III.

With the material, the team of researchers tested it with the Vickers hardness test, which scores diamonds between 50 and 70 gigapascals. As for the researcher's material, the yellow-tinted glass scored 113 gigapascals, making its strength "comparable in strength to diamond and superior to the other known strongest materials", noted led author Professor Tian Yongjun of Yanshan University in the study.

A new study published in the scientific journal Icarus has found that one of the asteroids that are likely to hit Earth has a higher chance than previously thought.

According to researchers who used data from NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, the asteroid named Bennu was found to have a 1-in-750 chance of hitting Earth within the next 300 years. The team of researchers, led by Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that has successfully been able to pinpoint the distance between Bennu and Earth within about seven feet, which proves his estimations for trajectory are ultraprecise.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx's principal investigator, and the study's senior author, said, "Bennu is by far the best characterized asteroid in the solar system. We know where it's going to be over 100 years into the future, within meters. No other object in the solar system has that level of fidelity to its orbital solution-even Earth!"