Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 167

NASA has announced that the change in the Moon's orbit may cause a dramatic increase in the number of floods across the United States.

According to the space agency, over the next decade, it's expected that the Moon's change in orbit will cause an "increase in the number of floods On almost all continental beaches USA, Hawaii and Guam". The "wobble" from the Moon is expected. However, combined with climate change, the space agency says, "coastal cities all around the U.S. to begin a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers".

The lead author on the study, Phil Thompson, who is an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, said that it's the accumulated effect over time that will be what impacts the U.S. Thompson points out that it's hard to see small increases in high tide flood levels as a problem due to how little water it is when compared to something like a hurricane. However, "But if it floods 10 or 15 times a month, a business can't keep operating with its parking lot under water. People lose their jobs because they can't get to work. Seeping cesspools become a public health issue." said Thompson.

NASA landed its new Mars rover named Perseverance in the Jezero Crater on February 18, and since then, the space agency has been preparing the rover to collect its first sample.

The first phase of the rover's mission began on June 1 when it explored a 1.5-square-mile patch of the Martian crater surface. NASA researchers believe this 1.5-square-mile patch may contain the craters' most ancient layers of bedrock. Recovering samples of bedrock from this area will happen within the next two weeks. With the samples, researchers will have the opportunity to learn more about Mars, how it came to be as it is today, and if life was ever present on the Red Planet.

NASA researchers understand that not every sample Perseverance collects will be done with the intention of trying to discover past life on the Red Planet. However, the geological knowledge that will be gained when the martian rocks are studied will assist researchers in developing a thorough understanding of the region, which are things "we'll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars", according to Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of Caltech.

Creating an accurate map of Earth is quite a difficult task, but in 1999 a Japanese architect claimed to achieve what was thought to be impossible.

The Japanese architect is named Hajime Narukawa, and in 1999 he created what he claims to be the most accurate map of Earth ever created. The map, which is framed in a 2D rectangle, depicts all of the world's physical components and their relative sizes as accurately as possible. The map shows each of the continents around the world and the oceans separating them as true to their sizes as physically possible.

How was it created? Narukawa divided Earth in 96 triangles to create a tetrahedron, and as a result, the map was awarded the Good Design grand award back in 2016 from the Japanese ministry of international trade and industry that was founded in 1957. If you are interested in purchasing the map for yourself, it's currently available for purchase from Alexcious. If you are interested in reading more on this story, check out this link here.

Jeff Bezos and the crew aboard Blue Origins New Shepard rocket have successfully completed their visit to space.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket took off from Blue Origin's Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas, at 09:14, am EDT. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was joined by his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer, and 18-year-old student Oliver Daemen. The flight has won Blue Origin a few achievements as the company can now say it has put the oldest and youngest person in space.

Blue Origin is very particular with its marketing as the company makes sure to prominently highlight that its space tourist trips pass the Karman line, something that Virgin founder and billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic is unable to with its VSS Unity. Blue Origin made several reminders that its capsule passes the Karman line, which is an "internationally recognized" line that separates Earth's atmosphere from space. The Karman line resides at an altitude of 62 miles.

NASA's rovers are scouring the surface of Mars for any signs of past life, but according to NASA scientists, signs of life have been "erased".

NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring the Gale Crater for quite some time now in an attempt to gain knowledge on the history of the planet's environmental conditions. Researchers know that the crater has been dried out for billions of years, but recently Curiosity compared samples from two areas that are 400 meters apart. The researchers were surprised to find one of the samples had half the amount of clay minerals than the other, and instead held mudstones rich with iron oxides (Mars' red color).

Tom Bristow, CheMin principal investigator at Nasa's Ames Research Center, said, "We used to think that once these layers of clay minerals formed at the bottom of the lake in Gale Crater, they stayed that way, preserving the moment in time they formed for billions of years. But later brines [very salty water] broke down these clay minerals in some places - essentially resetting the rock record."

A 39-year-old man has recently received the first completely artificial heart transplant after experiencing sudden heart failure.

This artificial heart isn't like other artificial hearts as it is able to mirror a human heartbeat, according to the Duke University Hospital. CARMAT developed the artificial heart, and its design is very close to how a human heart is designed with two ventricular chambers and four biological valves.

As for the heartbeat, the patient carries a bag outside of the body to calculates the beats depending on what the sensors inside of the heart are picking up. The patient who received the totally artificial heart was diagnosed with sudden heart failure and a deteriorating condition, making it impossible to have a tranditional heart transplant. However, the Duke Center is a trial location for CARMAT's total artificial heart, which was seemingly used.

China has been working on a secret project that was funded by the Chinese military, and partly declassified last week, of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) over 10 years ago.

A robotic shark... yeah, a robotic shark that is capable of recognizing, following, and then attacking an enemy submarine, all without human intervention. A lot has changed in the world of AI and robotics in those 10 years, with technological upgrades offering next-gen features to the ROBO SHARK.

We have China threatening to continuously drop nuclear bombs on Japan if it defends Taiwan, Russia unveiling next-gen S-500 missile defense systems, and even a new F-35 killer fighter jet. But China has to go one up and have a robotic, AI-controlled shark.

Ever sat there and wondered "gee, I wonder how long it would take me to fly between San Francisco and London in a UFO". I know, me too... and now we know just how long thanks to a handy UFO Travel Calculator.

The UFO Travel Calculator was born out of the massively renewed interest in all-things UFOs, UAPs, aliens, off-world vehicles not made on this earth, and everything in-between. A team of scientists then devised a tool that would calculate the speeds of these purported UFOs.

This calculator works out the speed in which UFOs could travel, with the scientists using engineering and aeronautical principles in order to work out the "advanced technology" inside of these next-gen spacecraft that are probably slow course disclosure, i.e. the military teasing their aircraft while saying "gee guys, we have no idea what that is".

Russia has just unveiled its next-gen S-500 surface-to-air missile system, known as Prometheus, which succeeds the S-400 missile defense system and comes at a time when the smell of war hasn't been stronger.

The new S-500 system can blow ballistic and cruise missiles out of the sky, as well as aircraft like planes and helicopters. Russia has a 600km (373 miles) interception radius, with Russia's state RIA news agency reporting that it was the first time that Russia had tested its new S-500 system in a live-fire test.

It can also take out stealth warplanes, and hypersonic weapons and satellites that are in near-space. Yeah, you read that right.

NASA has announced that the United States' "window to the universe" is back online and operational after being offline for more than a month.

NASA has announced the news with a new video posted to its NASA Goddard YouTube channel and also a tweet on the Hubble Space Telescope Twitter account. The tweet from NASA states that the Hubble team has successfully been able to turn on the backup hardware on the telescope after failing to fix the problem with the payload computer.

Now, Hubble is back online after the team successfully switched the telescope over to its backup hardware, and to celebrate life being breathed back into the 32-year-old telescope, NASA has released a new image. The image shows a large spiral galaxy that has elongated spiral arms that are described as "unusual" as "disk galaxies have an even number of spiral arms, this one has three", explains NASA.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has enjoyed a laugh at the internets purported friendly rivalry between Musk and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.

Over the weekend, Musk spent some time replying to many tweets from his followers, some regarding the Tesla FSD Beta that was just released and others simple memes that are relevant to the time. One of those memes included Musk and Bezos poorly edited onto a scene of Anakin and Padme in Star Wars.

The meme is referencing that Bezos' Blue Origin New Shepard rocket will take him to 100 km altitude (62.1371 miles), which is orbital, and not suborbital, which starts when a vehicle reaches altitudes of higher than 100 km and something that SpaceX has achieved multiple times with cargo trips to the International Space Station (ISS). Musk replied to the meme with a simple "haha", and then commented on another tweet that showed an image of Bezos and Musk at a dinner back in 2008.

Tic Tac has finally embraced the recent reports surrounding "Tic Tac" shaped unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings.

It's surprising that the company took so long to lean into the reporting that was coming out of US military personnel, which later turned into a full report from the Pentagon. A Reddit user spotted an advertisement by the TicTac USA Instagram account, and it features an image of a tic tac-shaped UFO beaming light down onto a box of tic tac freshmints.

The advertisement also features a caption that reads, "We Believe. When the Tic Tac UFO comes, you will want to be fresh and ready." Reddit users have already begun backing the decision for tic tac to adapt UFOs into their marketing strategy, with some users even giving the company free slogans to use. Slogans Reddit user SatanMeekAndMild suggested; "Tic Tac: Freshness that's out of this world", "Tic Tac: So fresh, you'll say UFOmg", "Tic Tac: Close encounters of the fresh kind", and "Tic Tac: So good, they had to cover it up".

Astronomers have obtained new images of a supermassive black hole emitting a powerful jet in detail that wasn't possible until now.

The images were captured by the Event Horizon Telescope which was pointed at the center of the Centaurus A galaxy. The telescope managed to capture images of a powerful jet that came out of the black hole with ten times more accuracy and sixteen times higher resolution than was previously possible.

According to astronomer Michael Janssen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and Radboud University in the Netherlands, "This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day. We see up close and personal how a monstrously gigantic jet launched by a supermassive black hole is being born."

A Reddit user has taken to the /r/IUFOs subreddit to post a video of the user on a flight recording what the individual claims to be "light balls" hovering in the sky.

The video has since gone viral on Reddit and has made its way over to other platforms such as TikTok. The Reddit user claims that the video was shot during a Red-Eye flight over the Pacific and that there were no buildings or ships below the "light balls". Additionally, the user goes on to claim that there were "14-16" distinct light balls and that there was a "pattern".

While the video certainly is interesting, many users on the UFO subreddit questioned its legitimacy as the user who posted the video wouldn't provide the thread with the details of the flight. It should also be noted that some users are suggesting that the lights may be oil rigs or light reflecting off the front of the camera lens. As always, the evidence is very minimal to officially conclude UFOs with these types of videos, which ultimately leaves the question up to you.

A British police officer claims he had an encounter with an extraterrestrial and that he was abducted for examination.

The police officer is named Philip Spencer, and the incident occurred on December 1, 1987, in Ilkley Moor when Spencer left his home to venture down one of the many walking trails. Spencer intended to capture images of the Moor but spotted a creature that had large black eyes, pointy ears, long arms, and feet that were hoof-shaped. Spencer captured the above image of the creature and then claimed that he followed it only to eventually lose it and then see a "saucer" shaped object fly up into the sky and disappear.

Wharfedale UFO expert Nigel Mortimer examined the image and said, "I have been trying to do this analysis for years. We are also trying to get other people involved and will look at the evidence properly. It isn't just this photo - there have been reports of other phenomena in that area for years. I was talking to some Americans last week and they told me that they regard this Ilkley case as second only to the Roswell case in the US as evidence of aliens."

Back in 1963, two researchers named Penzias and Wilson discovered what is called the cosmic microwave background.

This discovery is the best evidence humans have towards tracing the expansion of our universe back to a single point or explosion - the Big Bang Theory. Since this is considered the "beginning" of the universe, will there be an end? According to Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist and Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, the universe will have an end, and we are already transitioning into it.

Mack explains in an article on The Big Issue that star formation across the universe has been slowing for billions of years and that the space between galaxies is becoming further and further apart after the effects of the Big Bang fade. Mack says, "if you judge by comparing the number of stars that have already been born in the cosmos to the number that will form in the future, our universe is at least 90 percent finished. In 100 billion years, other galaxies will be so far away we won't be able to see them, and most of the stars in the Milky Way will have already burned out."

A new eco-friendly school is being constructed to battle worsening air quality in a populated city, and the school with have an infinity cyclist track on the roof.

The architecture firm named Nudes will build the school in the Indian city of Pune after it won a competition for the construction of an eco-friendly school to be made in the city. Pune has seen a rise in population in the last decade, which has caused air quality to drop below World Health Organization guidelines, thus the competition for an eco-friendly school to be constructed in the densely populated region.

Nudes have proposed a very ambitious design for the school. It features a vertical garden that is designed to improve the air quality around it. Nudes has dubbed the design "Forest School", and on the roof of the Forest School will be a cyclist track that students of the school can use to exercise. The cyclist track is in the shape of an infinity symbol. The images below have been sourced from Nudes.

A new study that has been published in the journal Science Advances has revealed some information about how homo sapiens came to be.

The researchers behind the study used publicly available genome data on the modern human, Neanderthals, and Denisovans to construct an evolutionary family tree for homo sapiens. Using the ancestral recombination graph, the researchers discovered the shared regions in the human genome and the ones that were unique to each group.

Speaking to Inverse, Nathan Schaefer, a bioinformatician at the University of California, San Francisco, and the paper's lead author said, "If you sequence a bunch of people, you could make a tree that would show how everyone's related, on average, across the whole genome." It was discovered that between 1.5% and 7% of the modern human genome is unique to our species. "In other words, at least 93 percent of the modern human genome is shared between our species and the two other ancient hominins," explains Inverse.

China's space agency has released some more images taken by its Mars rover named Zhurong, and this time we can see that the rover is visiting some old "friends".

The images were released by the China National Space Agency (CNSA) and show off close-up shots of rock formations on the surface of Mars, landscapes, and tracks left by the rover. Additionally, the CNSA released more images that show off the parachute and the backshell that assisted the rover landing on the Red Planet back on May 15.

The black and white images seen above show off the rover departing the back cover and the chute. As for the fourth image, it shows the parachute deployed during the rover's descent down to where it landed in the Utopia Planitia. China became the first nation to ever successfully get to Mars with a lander, orbiter, and rover in the same mission. Until now, space agencies have had separate missions for each of those elements, usually in this order; orbiters, followed by surface missions - landers first, then landers with rovers, according to Universe Today.

The universe is constantly expanding, and at the moment, researchers believe that the observable universe has stretched 46 billion light-years from its beginning 13.8 billion years ago.

By measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation, researchers are able to quantify how fast the universe is expanding and thus its size, which are both key factors in figuring out how many atoms are in the observable universe. According to Space.com, there are a few assumptions to be made before the calculation can be made; all atoms are contained within stars (they aren't, but the majority of them are), and all of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen atoms (they aren't, but hydrogen atoms account for 90% of the total atoms in the universe).

Calculation: 10^11 to 10^12 galaxies in the observable universe, and each galaxy contains between 10^11 and 10^12 stars. That answer puts the total number of stars in the observable universe to be between 10^22 and 10^24. Now for weight. The average star weighs 2.2x10^32 pounds, which calculates the average mass of the universe to be around 2.2x10^55 pounds. Now that the mass of the universe has been found, we need to figure out how many atoms can fit inside of it. Each gram of matter contains around 10^24 protons, putting the average number of atoms in the observable universe to be 10^82.