Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 170

A man has purchased a mummified human skull from a yard sale for just over $100, and now he's getting offers for $2,500.

High Point man Trevor Hines was at a yard sale around three months ago when he came across a very peculiar item. It appeared to be a mummified human skull, and according to Hines, the family was already spooked out by the skull and was looking to get rid of it. Hines purchased the skull and two other items for just over $100 and has already received offers for $2,500.

However, Hines says that the skull is "priceless", and that "I want to get him back home because I think that's the right thing to do - send him back to the motherland," which he believes is Egypt. Hines sent the skull to Duke University, where researchers performed CT scans on the head. The researchers told him that the skull was a real male at one time and that inside the teeth are tiny metal pins. "He deserves to go home. So he can have an eternal resting place and be at peace," said Hines.

Multiple companies are looking into the future to see how they are going to be able to harvest water on the Moon and if it's even possible.

Lunar Outpost, Honeybee Robotics, and Masten Space Systems are currently developing a new system for mining water on the surface of the Moon. The device is designed to heat up water ice through the use of rockets. Having a consistent supply of water will be paramount for the human species to ever create a sustainable settlement on the lunar surface.

Not only will having a steady supply of water on the Moon keep astronauts hydrated, it will also allow for rocket fuel to be created as the water ice can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen. More simply put, humans being able to harvest the moons polar regions, which are believed to have an abundance of water ice, to turn it into rocket fuel, will be a massive milestone towards building a spaceport that can easily refuel incoming/outgoing spaceships.

Astronomers have found evidence that proves a 40-year-old supernova theory correct and a mysterious sky event that occurred in 1054 AD.

A new study has been published in Nature Astronomy and outlines researchers finding evidence of a new type of supernova. When stars die, they go supernova, and for some time, astronomers believed that there were only two types of supernova. Type Ia, is when a white dwarf star explodes in an uncontrolled fusion reaction. Type II supernova - when a star 10 times the mass of the Sun exhausts its fuel resulting in its core collapsing into either a black hole or a neutron star.

Now, astronomers have located a new type of supernova called electron capture (type III) supernova. This type of supernova happens when the a star eight to ten times the Sun's mass burns up all of its fuel, resulting in gravity causing immense pressure on the core's electrons that are then forced into their atomic nuclei. The end result is a core that collapsed in on itself.

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have gained recently popularity lately after videos of UFOs, or as the military call them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), were released by the US Navy.

Since then many videos/photos have surfaced online of people claiming to have spotted a UFO, and with most of these videos there is an insinuation that the object that is being observed is otherworldly. Unfortunately, majority of the video proof is also captured with a camera that lacks quality, which can lead to viewers believing that the object is otherworldly, and that what they are witnessing cannot be explained by something much simpler.

One UFO sighting that recently went viral came from Matthew Evans, a student living in Devon. Evans lives in a block of units on the top level and looked out his kitchen window to see what was described as object that had four bright lights that were orientated in a triangular formation. Matthew Blythe, a local photographer took an image of the same view as Evans, but Blythe's image was taken with a much better and showed that the object was just the Moon.

After 20 years of delays, the International Space Station (ISS) will finally get its long-awaited "walking" robotic arm.

On July 15, the European Robotic Arm (ERA) will launch from Earth towards the ISS on board a Russian Proton rocket that will also be carrying the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module. The European Space Agency has explained that the robotic arm measures in at 36 feet and will be smart enough to anchor itself to locations outside of the Russian segment of the ISS as well as move between certain points.

The purpose of the arm is to assist astronauts that are out on spacewalks by carrying payloads, transporting crew members, using its cameras to inspect areas out of the station. Essentially, the arm will free up time for astronauts that can now concentrate on other matters. Astronauts have the ability to control the robot from inside the Space Station or from the outside. Additionally, the robot can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions or can be used free-hand.

Astronomers have located four planets near the center of the Milky Way galaxy that are close to the mass of Earth.

The new study has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and presents evidence of four planets that are "rogue" or "free-floating", meaning they aren't bound to the gravitation pull of a star. The team of researchers used data from a 2016 mission conducted by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that observed a field of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way.

Interestingly, Kepler isn't designed to find new planets, which means that the researchers needed to create new data extracting techniques to extrapolate the evidence from Kepler's dataset. Co-author Eamonn Kerins of the University of Manchester said, "Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets. Now it passes the baton on to other missions that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed."

Hubble is at it again with another breathtaking image that shows off a great comparison between two different light waves of a spiral galaxy.

As NASA explains, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured two extremely different images of the spiral galaxy M51 called the Whirlpool Galaxy. The image located on the left is an image captured in visible light, or the light that humans would see it in if they were floating around in space looking at the galaxy. The visible-light image shows off the galaxy's long arms and the pink star-forming regions littered with blue strands of star clusters.

The image on the right is shot in infrared light, light that humans are unable to see. The infrared image has stripped all of the starlight away from the image and leaves viewers with what NASA describes as "Whirlpool's skeletal dust structure". If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here. If you would like to check out more images released by Hubble, visit this link here.

Chimpanzees are our closest known relatives, and a distinct difference between us is that chimpanzees are unable to talk.

But what if they could talk? What would they sound like? Back in 2016, researchers posed that very question to themselves and decided to create a simulation of a monkey talking. The researchers did this by using x-ray videos to map out vocal tracts in living macaques and found that macaques were able to produce an "adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language". So, why is this important?

The study outlines that for forty years, researchers have believed that the monkeys being unable to speak stems from "limitations in their vocal tract anatomy". This study has disproved that, and has instead found that the limitation doesn't lay in the vocal anatomy but instead with the brain as it's unable to control the vocal tract. If you have never heard what a monkey would sound like if it spoke, the 1-second video can be watched above. The stimulated monkey says, "will you marry me?" - in a not-so-romantic voice.

The Pentagon has just pulled the plug on its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing deal with Microsoft, and now the entire JEDI program is up in the air.

JEDI -- or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure -- had originally caused issues for Amazon that had been one of the players in the $10 billion cloud deal. Microsoft eventually won, but now they've lost their grip on the JEDI contract with the Pentagon explaining in a statement: "Due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs".

Toni Townes Whitley, Microsoft's president of U.S. regulated industries, said in a blog post: "One contract has never, and will never, define our relationship with the DoD or any customer. Our decades-long partnership with the DoD will continue - and we stand ready to support our nation's men and women in uniform as they address our national security needs".

The world of space billboards and major cities having billboards in the sky are about to become a reality, with Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) announcing it will be offering advertising in space very soon.

GEC announced on April 1, 2021 that it would be sending up Geometric-1 with the 12 x 6U CubeSat adapter plate into low Earth orbit. Geometric-1 will ride the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rideshare mission, announced as DOGE-1 which is completely paid for in cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Well, now GEC has provided more details on what it will be doing with its CubeSat and that's offering billboards in space that would be available above major cities, at a major cost. We're looking at around $974,000 per month for an advertisement on one of the new space billboards above Tokyo, Japan -- while it would cost an average of around $932,000 above a major city.

Reports are indicating that Chinese researchers have announced a new species of human after DNA analysis was performed on a skull.

Paleoanthropologists have been performing studies on a skull that a bridge construction worker found in Harbin, a city in Northeastern China, in 1933. The researchers have published their findings in three separate studies in the peer-reviewed journal The Innovation on June 25, 2021, and according to the studies, the researchers discovered a new species of human that has now been named Homo Longi, or Dragon Man.

The skull that was discovered back in 1933 and handed into paleoanthropologists for studies to be performed on it three years was found to be from a male that lived 146,000 years ago during the Central Pleistocene geological period. The Harbin skull is the largest Homo skull that has been discovered, and according to Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology at Hebei GEO University, "The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world. This fossil preserved many morphological details that are critical for understanding the evolution of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens".

Researchers have discovered what is currently believed to be a Christian community's remains that date back to the 6th century.

A team of researchers from the Dyfed Archaeological Trust partnered with the University of Sheffield unearthed more than 200 skeletons that the University of Sheffield said were a mix of children, women, and men. The skeleton remains were found in more than 100 graves at a popular beach in Pembrokeshire. The researchers found that the bodies were positioned so their heads for pointing west and that they weren't buried with any possessions.

Due to the bones being completely submerged in sand, the quality of the bones was found to be very high. Jenna Smith at Dyfed Archaeological Trust, who led the excavation, said the bone preservation is "absolutely incredible". The Dyfed Archaeological Trust said there's "still a significant amount of evidence left to excavate". Adding, there is an "intriguing stone structure which pre-dates the burials" that still needs to be excavated from the site. The bones are being stored in the National Museum of Wales.

The 58-page document outlines several interesting pieces of information surroundings Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), such as old reports that are relevant today and the United States' involvement with conducting research.

Page 24 features an introduction that states a list of three "weapon systems" that were extracted from data analysis of 1,000 reports of UFO landings or near-UFO landings. The report states that the creatures or objects outlined in the cases possess "a device to interfere with electrical circuits," "a device to induce paralysis," and a "heat ray."

Under the "Stalled Engines," it reads on page 27 that a vehicle stalled within the vicinity of a transparent mushroom-shaped object that had occupants inside with "cat-like" faces. Page 32 features Case 144, France, which states that two individuals came into contact with two "dwarfs" who used an object to paralyze one of the individuals. The paralyzed individual was unable to move or talk until the light was shut off.

An old U.F.O. released by the Australian government has resurfaced online and is currently being used as a reference to compare to the recent U.F.O. report from the Pentagon.

The report can be found on the National Archives of Australia website and is titled "Scientific Intelligence - General - Unidentified Flying Objects" with its contents ranging from 1957 - 1971. Reports have indicated that these documents were originally released back in 2008, and while definitely being dated, they are still being used as a reference point to compared against the recent U.F.O. report released by the Pentagon.

The 2008 report features chronological documentation on what is described as "U.S. Official Attitude To U.F.O.'s" (now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, or U.A.P.). Page 9 is the beginning of the section, and it outlines the events that took place between the late 1940s to mid 1950s. According to the report, U.F.O. investigations in the U.S. began in June 1947 under the project code name SIGN. The report outlines several events in the following years, but a few to especially note are:

An old Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) report from Australia is causing a stir online. Many Redditors are using it to compare against the recently released Pentagon report on UFOs that was widely considered online as "lacking" information.

The UFO report from Australia can be found on the National Archives of Australia website and is titled "Scientific Intelligence - General - Unidentified Flying Objects". The report is free to view publicly, and its contents range between 1957 - 1971.

One section of the report on page 11 under the "U.S. Official Attitude To U.F.O.'s", it's stated that Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency that was created by the National Security Act of 1947 publicly stated that the US government knew the UFO were extra-terrestrial beings but were withholding the information from the public. Full quote can be found below.

SKA is building out the world's largest telescope, with the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO) costing $2.2 billion and will have 197 dishes (50 feet/15 meters in diameter) installed in Karoo, South Africa's Northern Cape, and then 131,072 antennas (6.5 feet/2 meters tall) in Murchison, in Western Australia.

Professor Philip Diamond, Director-General of SKAO said during at SKAO's global HQ in the UK this week: "I am ecstatic-this moment has been 30 years in the making. Humankind is taking another giant leap by committing to build what will be the largest science facility of its kind on the planet".

SKA's new radio telescopes will study the "detailed properties of the first luminous objects in the universe, and be able to take snapshots of the 21cm emission at many different epochs, before, during and after reionisation, yielding detailed information about the formation of the first structures in the universe. It will provide the best measurements available of the characteristics of the first light sources in the universe" according to the SKA Telescope website.

After over 30 years of planning and preparing, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) observatory is being built and will be the largest radio telescope on the planet.

SKA will be building two new sites with the first in Australia and the second in South Africa, after representatives of the SKA Organization (SKAO) met at the annual European Astronomical Society (EAS) on June 29, 2021. The news is gigantic for not just the science world, but all of us -- the new telescopes will also be listening out for extraterrestrial radio signals with much more power than ever before.

SKA is spending $2.2 billion on the project, and will have 197 dishes (50 feet/15 meters in diameter) installed in Karoo, South Africa's Northern Cape, and then 131,072 antennas (6.5 feet/2 meters tall) in Murchison, in Western Australia.

A student in Teignmouth, Devon saw a gigantic UFO hovering over the ocean -- right from his kitchen window, before it blasted off into the distance.

Matthew Evans lives in a block of units on the top level and when in his kitchen could see the UFO over the horizon, he explains: "I couldn't help but see it. My kitchen window gives a great view of the sea so when it came across the horizon".

Evans added: "It wasn't moving like a plane would. It was moving a lot slower and went up and down for a bit before hovering a good ten seconds. It stayed in one spot long enough for me to pull out my phone and get those snaps. Then it quickly zoomed off at some speed and I couldn't see it anymore".

A declassified Australian report on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) mentions several encounters with alien life that are unexplainable.

The declassified report is located on the National Archives of Australia website and features 58 pages of compelling information on UFO sightings and strange encounters with alien creatures between 1957 and 1971. Page 32 of the report states, "50m from object, witness paralyzed (also birds and cows). Four handsome men with brown skin emerge with translucent helmets." The report also shows the United States has been involved in UFOs and conducting investigations into them since 1947.

Page 7 of the report reads as follows: "The early analyses of UFO reports by USAF Intelligence indicated that real phenomena were being reported which had flight characteristics so far in advance of US aircraft that only an extraterrestrial origin could be envisaged." Additionally, the report lists many cases where extraterrestrials were using paralysis as a way of subduing witnesses.

The space race to get paying tourists to space has officially begun, and according to recent announcements, Richard Branson will beat Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to space.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic are in a race to be the first viable company that can provide space tourism flights. Paying customers will be able to see Earth like they have never seen it before, as well as experience weightlessness for several minutes. Bezos positioned himself to beat other billionaires that are behind competing tourism companies by announcing that he was going to space on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

However, the Federal Aviation Administration recently gave Virgin Galactic the all-clear to fly passengers on its next test flight. Now, Branson has announced that he will be a passenger on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity rocketplane when it launches to perform an up-and-down test on July 11. Branson tweeted the following, "I've always been a dreamer. My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars. On July 11, it's time to turn that dream into a reality."