Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 167

NASA has created a new type of balloon that could be a cheap alternative to launching new space telescopes.

The project is being headed by a team of researchers from Durham, Toronto, and Princeton Universities and is named the Superpressure Balloon-born Imaging telescope or SuperBIT for short. So, what is this balloon, and why is it impactful? The SuperBIT balloon is the size of a football field, and when filled with helium, it raises the equipped .5m telescope to 24 miles altitude, where it then will be above 99.5% of Earth's atmosphere.

It's important that the telescope is above the majority of Earth's atmosphere as clouds and other weather patterns can interfere with pictures and general observations. NASA recently created a "superpressure" balloon that can contain helium for months, which would allow the space telescope to maintain altitude for an extended period of time and thus enable astronomers to snap delicious images of the cosmos.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is showcasing an astronomical phenomenon in a new image that causes the appearance of galaxies to warp, magnify and even duplicate.

The image above was taken by NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope and shows what NASA describes as "tell-tale" arcs caused by gravitation lensing. So, what is this astronomical phenomenon? Gravitation lensing happens when the light from a distant galaxy gets warped or distorted by the gravitational pull of an astronomical object.

For instance, the image above shows a galaxy cluster named MACSJ0138.0-2155, and according to NASA, MACSJ0138.0-2155 has "lensed" the galaxy MRG-M0138, which is located 10 billion light-years away and has run out of the gas required to create new stars. NASA describes this distant galaxy as a "slumbering giant".

NASA has announced that a relatively large asteroid will be making a "close" fly-by with Earth over the weekend.

NASA has said that the asteroid is around the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza tall and that it will pass by Earth safely on Sunday. NASA named the asteroid 2008 GO20, and it will fly 2.8 million miles from Earth at the speed of 18,000 mph. Reports are indicating that the asteroid could be anywhere between 318 and 720 feet in diameter.

For reference, the Great Pyramid of Giza is 450 feet tall, and if a space object that is larger than 490 feet in diameter comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth, it's labeled as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). As LiveScience reports, NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies monitors all known PHAs and to put the distance of how far away 4.6 million miles, its 19.6 times the distance between Earth and the moon. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

NASA's Europa Clipper mission objective is to find sources of life on a distant moon within our solar system, and SpaceX will be the one to launch it.

On Friday, NASA announced that it has confirmed the launch date for its upcoming Europa Clipper mission and that SpaceX has been awarded the $178 million launch contract. NASA's objective is to fly past a Jupiter moon named Europa 45 times, and with each pass, observe it for any signs of alien life. NASA will get as far down as 16 miles from the moon's surface as NASA researchers believe that the moon could have a global ocean that may host alien life.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $178 million launch contract, and in October 2024, Europa Clipper will be carried off Earth aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA plans to capture high-resolution images of the surface of the moon in hopes of being able to figure out the composition of its thick icy crust. Europa Clipper's objective is to gather data on the oceans so researchers can find out how salty it is and its depth. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Joe Rogan, the host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, has poked some fun at Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over the design of Blue Origin's rocket.

For those that don't know, Bezos recently took Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket to space along with three other crew members. The trip was a success and marked Blue Origin's first crewed trip to space. However, the achievement doesn't come without any jokes, and what better comedian to make the jokes than Joe Rogan.

Rogan posted an image of the Moon onto his Instagram, saying the following, "If you look close you can see the spot where Jeff Bezos plans to land his giant robot space dick and become the first man to jack off on the moon." Rogan is clearly poking some friendly fun at the "phallic" design choice of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. If you are interested in learning more about Blue Origin's trip to space with Bezos, check out this link here.

Researchers have announced that they have discovered multiple ancient viruses after testing a sample from a 15,000-year-old glacier.

According to the study, researchers took samples from the Guliya ice cap, a 15,000-year-old glacier located in China's Tibetan Plateau. The researchers found genetic codes for 33 different viruses, and of those 33 viruses, 28 of them have never been seen before.

Matthew Sullivan, a co-author of the study and a professor of microbiology at Ohio State, as well as the director of Ohio State's Center of Microbiome Science, said, "These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments - just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions."

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.