Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 166

The United States has formally sized a $1.6 million ancient tablet that contains a portion of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

The NYPost reports that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) said that the 3,500-year-old tablet has inscribed on it a portion of the "Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the oldest works of literature ever. The DOJ goes on to explain that the tablet dubbed "Gilgamesh Dream Tablet" was illegally imported into the United States back in 2003, and in 2014 Hobby Lobby purchased the tablet so it could be displayed at the Washington, DC-based Museum of the Bible.

However, due to a complaint filed in May 202, prosecutors said that the tablet's rightful owner is the Iraqi government and that it should be returned to its homeland. The DOJ said that Hobby Lobby was willing to part with the tablet and that it cooperated with the agency's investigation into the matter. Acting Brooklyn US Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said, "This forfeiture represents an important milestone on the path to returning this rare and ancient masterpiece of world literature to its country of origin."

A new angle of the Apollo 12 moon landings has surfaced online, showing viewers a different interactive perspective.

The image is of Charles "Pete" Conrad climbing down the ladder onto the surface of the moon, and from looking at the image, you can see his Portable Life Support System backpack, which provides him with oxygen and communications. The image is quite famous since its release, along with probably the most famous image of the moon landing that features Buzz Aldrin.

Now, a Redditor has posted a new perspective of the image by using what is reflected in Conrad's visor and turning it into a 360-degree panorama. The Redditor goes on to explain that he made some color corrections and spent many hours in Photoshop making sure objects in the image lined up correctly with other images. After what can only be assumed as many hours of work, the Redditor posted the final product, which can be viewed here.

Following up on the story from a "time traveler" that was posted a few days ago, Javier, the "time traveler," has claimed that humans will get "superpowers" in 2021.

Since February, Javier has been posting videos to his TikTok account @unicosobreviviente, which translates to Lone Survivor, that claims he is a "time traveler" who has woken up in the year 2027. Since then, Javier has been posting updates about being in 2027, showing how there are no humans in his location, which is believed to be Spain. View video here.

Now, Javier has posted a new update stating, "Many of you still don't believe I am a real-time traveler, so remember these 5 dates". The video goes on to predict the following; NASA finds mirrored Earth, opposite gravity, physics, motion on 8/3/21, category six hurricane will hit South Carolina on 9/14/21, and will the worst in history, eight humans will receive superpowers from extreme energy of the Sun on 10/20/21, three teenagers will find a T-rex egg and a device to open a portal to an alternate universe on 12/14/21 and Atlantis is found in the Atlantic Ocean and is housing human-fish life on 2/2/22.

I think at this point a UFO could land on the White House lawn, Joe Biden could come out and say "Come on, man" and offer the aliens some ice cream and we wouldn't be surprised.

UFO hunter Scott C Waring who operates blog site UFO Sightings Daily, shared images and videos of what he proclaims to be alien spacecraft (UFOs or UAPs) hanging out around the sun. The "black triangle" spacecraft he saw, was picked up on the Helioviewer website.

Waring says that the black triangle UFO is around 1/5 the size of our planet, which would make it unfathomably freaking large, and has some form of next-gen heat-resistant material (duh: if it's next to the SUN, then it would have to be pretty heat resistant).

For anyone who has seen John Carpenter's "The Thing" you'll know that nothing good can come from the words aliens + Antarctica. Well, an "alien hunter" has reportedly found what he is referring to as an Alien base down in Antarctica, and it's huge.

The purported base is around 111 miles (180km) off the coast of Antarctica, where you can find it on Google Earth using the following coordinates: 63°59'56.79"S 118°43'44.48"E. The "alien base" is underwater, and is absolutely mammoth.

Behind the Scenes explains: "A huge underwater structure 180km off the coast of Antarctica shows, among other objects, huge walls. Suppose, this enormous structure are the remains of a huge ancient settlement or base that is now submerged underwater, then who built it thousands of years ago?"

In less than two years, a German-made space telescope has managed to discover more than 3 million "new" objects.

The space telescope is named eROSITA and is the very first X-ray telescope to be located in space. eROSITA is capable of imaging the entire sky, and due to it being an X-ray telescope, it can detect signals from objects that optical telescopes cannot see. For example, using eROSITA, researchers were able to construct the most detailed map of black hole and neutron star locations ever created.

Andrea Merloni, a senior scientist on the project, said, "For the first time, we have an X-ray telescope that can be used in very similar ways as the large field optical telescopes that we use today. With eROSITA, we cover the entire sky very efficiently and can study large-scale structures, such as the entire Milky Way."

A report published on Monday by The New York Times has revealed that China may be constructing more than 100 hundred nuclear silos in an effort to expand the country's nuclear arsenal.

According to scientists from the non-profit global think tank, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), China is currently constructing up to 110 nuclear silos near the city of Hami, located in the eastern part of the country's Xinjiang province. The report revealed that the discovery was made through satellite images of the area, and according to researchers, the construction site likely began around March.

This discovery has come after the US found that China was building 119 nuclear silos near Yumen last month. According to FAS researchers Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen, "The silo construction at Yumen and Hami constitutes the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever." Song Zhongping, a former People's Liberation Army instructor, told the South China Morning Post that nuclear silos were outdated and "these fixed silos" were discarded.

Reports have surfaced about an "unusually large" meteor turning the night sky from pitch black into daytime.

CNN has reported that the meteor caused the night sky over southern Scandinavia to become illuminated last Sunday. As the meteor entered Earth's atmosphere, the friction caused by it plummeting towards Earth causes it to burn up and break apart. The sound of the meteor entering the atmosphere could be heard over a large area of 62 miles, according to Steinar Midtskogen, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Meteor Network.

On top of the loud sound, Midtskogen said that door and hatches were blown open by an airblast caused by the meteor. The Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) said it "recorded the airblast hitting the ground as a seismic event," However, "No damage has been reported, though," Midtskogen said. Meteorologists are saying that the meteor most likely fell around 15 miles out from Oslo, the capital of Norway and that it "entered Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 15 km/s (9.3 miles per second) and it fragmented in a series of bright flashes between 35 and 25 km (22 and 15.5 miles) above ground".

A massive comet named Bernardinelli-Bernstein may now very well be the largest comet humans have ever discovered.

The team of astronomers from the University of Pennsylvania announced their discovery back in June, and according to the announcement, the comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, or C/2014 UN271, will make its closest approach to the sun in 2031. Astronomers believe the comet is anywhere between 62 to 124 miles in diameter, and at the moment, it's 1.8 billion miles away or around the same distance between Uranus and the sun.

Bernstein said in a statement, "We have the privilege of having discovered perhaps the largest comet ever seen - or at least larger than any well-studied one - and caught it early enough for people to watch it evolve as it approaches and warms up. It has not visited the planets in more than 3 million years." If you were planning on viewing the comet when it makes its approach to the sun in 2031, you will most likely need a large amateur telescope to see it,according to CNN.

There have been numerous reports of a thunderous sonic boom being heard, as well as a bright flash in the night sky followed by a streak of fire.

Several hundred witnesses in North Texas have reported seeing a fireball streak across the night sky at around 9:00 pm local time on Sunday. According to the American Meteor Society, there have so far been 213 reports of the fireball, with the majority of the witnesses being in northeastern Texas, but some coming from Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Most people who were lucky enough to witness the fireball streaking across the sky reported that it only lasted for 3 - 4 seconds before disappearing. So, what is it? For those who don't know, a fireball is a meteor as bright as the planet Venus, and according to NASA, fireballs are a common occurrence on Earth but usually pose no danger. Upon entering Earth's atmosphere, these meteors can measure more than 3 feet in diameter, but as it plummets to Earth's surface, the friction from the atmosphere causes it to burn up.

A Redditor has "unwrapped" the iconic image that was taken during the Apollo 11 moon landing with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

The image is of Buzz Aldrin after exiting the lander and, since its publishing, has become one of, if not the most famous image of an astronaut to date. Now, a Redditor has used the reflection seen in Aldrin's visor to create a 360-degree panorama that allows viewers to see what Aldrin saw when the image was taken. The panoramic image can be viewed here.

The editor used high-resolution images of the landings that can be seen here. With these images, the editor color corrected them and used the original images as a reference. Additionally, the editor says that "I started photoshopping the black lines out of it, and as I saw the tool start to put random, fake pixels in its place, I just couldn't do it. What makes this process exciting for me is the fact that this is real. If I get any inkling whatsoever that something like this is fake or false, my interest in it completely evaporates. This is great because it's real!."

We all know about Air Force One and that it will take the President up and into the clouds and secure, in the case of an attack on US soil -- or in the throws of a nuclear war.

Well, Russia has stepped up by reportedly making two next-gen Doomsday planes in preparation of a nuclear war. According to Russian government news agency RIA, the Russian Air Force and Space Forces will have two airborne commanding posts based on the Il-96-400M plane.

The new Il-96-400M is a revamped version of the Il-96 long-haul, wide-body civilian jetliner, with an Il-96 variant used by President Vladimir Putin, as his primary means of travel by air. The new Doomsday planes will be capable of flying for longer distances than their predecessors and would communicate with strategic nuclear forces at a distance of around 3700 miles (5955km).

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has said to NASA's administrator that his company will waiver $2 billion in payments from NASA.

According to an open letter sent to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has said that his company is willing to waiver $2 billion in payments from NASA for this financial year and the next two in return for a fixed price contract for the construction of a lunar lander. This offer from Bezos is a hail-mary attempt to get a reversal on NASA's decision to award a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

The letter reads, "This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments". Adding, "This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up." Blue Origin feels as if it was cut out from being an option for the $2.9 billion contract that was given to SpaceX and that NASA moved the goalposts at the last minute, according to a Blue Origin spokesperson that spoke to Engadget.

NASA has announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has located one of the biggest signs of life on a distant moon in our solar system.

NASA has announced via its website that the Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of one of Jupiter's moons. The moon is named Ganymede, and according to NASA, a team of scientists re-examined archived data on the moon and found that observations made back in 1998 weren't matching what scientists were expecting.

After examining all of the data, researchers found that when it reaches noon on Ganymede, the moon's ice surface becomes so "sufficiently warm that the ice surface releases (or sublimates) some small amounts of water molecules. In fact, the perceived differences in the UV images are directly correlated with where water would be expected in the moon's atmosphere", per NASA.

NASA's Martian helicopter has taken my flights during its time of the Red Planet, but how far has it traveled in total?

According to a post from the NASA JPL Twitter account, NASA's Mars helicopter named Ingenuity recently completed a flight that pushed its total distance traveled to the 1-mile mark. The flight that pushed Ingenuity to the new milestone was over an area called "Raised Ridges," and according to NASA, it's the most complex flight for the small helicopter yet.

Additionally, NASA says in the post that this flight to Raised Ridges will feature ten distinct waypoints and also a record altitude for Ingenuity at 40 feet. The goal of Ingenuity checking out Raised Ridges was to provide NASA with enough images of the terrain so the space agency can decide if the area is worth a visit from the Perseverance rover. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

NASA has announced that it will be choosing SpaceX to launch its new alien-hunting mission to a distant moon.

NASA has announced that it awarded SpaceX with a $178 million launch contract for its Europa Clipper satellite mission. The mission will send the Clipper satellite to Jupiter's ice-covered moon named Europa in search of alien life. NASA plans on flying past the distant moon 45 timers, and with each pass, the satellite will observe the moon and relay any data back to Earth.

Originally, NASA planned on using Boeing's Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle for the mission. However, due to scheduling problems, NASA has selected SpaceX to power the mission, and by choosing SpaceX, the space agency will save as much as $1.5 billion in total. SpaceX will be using its Falcon Heavy to launch Europa Clipper in 2024, and it will take six whole years for the satellite to reach the moon. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

An international research project will be exploring the cosmos in search of "extraterrestrial technological civilizations".

The project is called the Galileo Project and is led by Avi Loeb, a Professor of Science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. The objective of the project is to investigate and acquire any evidence of past or still active "extraterrestrial technological civilizations" or ETCs. The multi-institutional team of scientists will analyze data from astronomical surveys and telescope observations of the cosmos.

With the provided data, the research team will then craft new algorithms using artificial intelligence to establish if there is any evidence of interstellar travelers, alien-built satellites, and unidentified aerial phenomena. Loeb said in the statement, "Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. We now must 'dare to look through new telescopes,' both literally and figuratively."

If you haven't already seen it, there is a video of a creature walking across the Cass River in Michigan. That video went viral across all social media as people believed it was Bigfoot caught on film.

Now, the Rocky Mountain Sasquatch Organization, who are expert Bigfoot hunters, have analyzed the video and given their thoughts on its authenticity. The video is only four seconds long and shows a large human-like creature wadding through the river and seemingly holding something in its arms. Many people have claimed that the creature is actually Bigfoot. However, the experts don't seem very convinced.

According to the expert in the video above, there are many explanations for the creature. Examples include; a hunter wearing fishing gear carrying a dog, a person with a mosquito net or face covering, or a person wearing hip waders. However, the Rocky Mountain Sasquatch Organization voiceover says, "There's a side profile screenshot that plainly shows the nose exposed to the air and it's the same colour as the rest of it."

Between 2004 and 2021, there have been 144 incidents of what US intelligence agencies deem as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) or more commonly known as Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

The Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force has confirmed in its report that of these 144 incidents they 143 could be categorized into five separate categories; Airborne clutter, Natural atmospheric phenomena, classified US programs, Foreign adversary systems, and other. Of the 144 UAP reports, observers "logged 80 reports with multiple sensor observations, 11 reports of near misses, and 21 reports of "unusual flight characteristics", per usafacts.org.

Additionally, the report reveals that 18 of the 144 reports cited the UFOs having what was described as advanced aerospace capabilities. The report states that some of the objects reported were capable of producing radio signals, remaining completely still or moving suddenly without any "discernable means of propulsion." If you are interested in reading more about UFOs, check out some of the articles below.

Jeff Bezos and his crew recently took the first crewed trip aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, but if Bezos and the crew were hoping to get awarded their "astronaut" badge, they will be sorely disappointed.

Since the launch of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space trip and now Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launch, there has been public debate over whether or not Branson and Bezos actually went to "space", and if they are astronauts. Branson and his crew reached the 53 mile altitude mark, and Bezos flew 66.5 miles up. For context, the US recognizes space at the 50 mile mark, however, the international altitude for space is 62 miles - known as the Karman Line.

Since Bezos and his crew flew above the Karman Line, does that qualify them to be astronauts? Well, Virigin Galactic pilots who flew the VSS Unity to 53 miles were awarded with "astronaut wings" by the Federal Aviation Administration. However, Bezos and no one from Blue Origin qualified, despite reaching a higher altitude. Why?