Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 173

Approximately 85% of the known universe is dark matter, or at least that is what scientists believed until a new galaxy was discovered.

Previously it was difficult to believe that galaxies being conceived without any dark matter would be impossible, or at least incredible rare. But, the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to make a discovery of a galaxy that lacks dark matter, confusing scientists more about how galaxies are exactly born.

Zili Shen and Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and Shany Danieli, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, was the team behind the study, and according to the study, the team measured the distance of NGC1052-DF2 (DF2) and found that it was 22.1 +/-1.2 megaparsecs. The results indicated that the galaxy lacked dark matter. Additionally, results from another study published back in 2019 found that a neighboring galaxy called NGC1052-DF4 (DF4) also lacked dark matter.

The United States Postal Service are issuing a new collection of stamps that feature NASA imagery of our Sun.

The new collection that will be released on June 18 are called "Sun Science", and all of the ten stamps feature imagery from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The stamps were released in celebration of the study of heliophysics, and showcase the Sun at different wavelengths.

All of the stamps were designed by USPS art director Antonio Alcala, and the stamps showcase some of the most common events on the Sun such as solar flares, coronal magnetic ejections, sun spots and more. USPS explains on its website, "The Sun is the only star that humans are able to observe in great detail, making it a vital source of information about the universe. The Solar Dynamics Observatory lets us see the sun in wavelengths of ultraviolet light that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. Each black-and-white image is colorized to the bright hues seen here."

Many people expect a massive unclassified report on UFOs or UAP's as personal military calls them to be presented to the Senate in the coming days.

We have been covering this story extensively, and the first journalist to break the story in The New York Times was Ralph Blumenthal, who has recently appeared on the Fade to Black radio show with Jimmy Church ahead of the report. According to Blumenthal, "Congressional committees were briefed on the issue of materials recovery", and that the "Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee" were briefed with slides that referenced "off-planet vehicles."

Some members of the Congressional committees that have been a part of this briefing have said that the information contained in the report isn't very exciting but does raise big concerns for national security. As I have outlined in a previous post, it seems the report will heavily lean towards emphasizing that these sightings of UAP's are a national security risk and that government bodies more so consider them to be constructed by some other nation rather than confirming extraterrestrial life existence prematurely.

Amazon CEO and billionaire Jeff Bezos will be leaving Earth on July 20 in his New Shepard rocket, marking the first tourist trip with his spaceflight services company Blue Origin.

Bezos will be joined with his brother Mark Bezos and another person who bid $28 million to acquire the seat on the New Shepard rocket and has also kept their identity anonymous. While this launch will be a monumental achievement for Blue Origin, many people have signed petitions showing their support for Bezos to simply not return back to Earth.

One petition featured on Change.org has gathered more than 30,000 signatures and is still quickly growing. The petition's description reads as follows; "Billionaire's should not exist...on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there." Another petition that is basically the same as the first one that was created states has nearly reached 20,000 signatures and states, "Earth don't want people like Jeff, Bill [Gates], Elon [Musk] and other such billionaires."

The third-largest diamond in the world has just been discovered in Botswana, with the stone presented to President Mokgweetsi Masisi.

The diamond was found by Debswana -- a mining company that is jointly joined by the country's government and the De Beers Group -- with proceeds from the sale of the diamond to be used to "advance national development".

De Beers Group said in a statement: "Debswana will work with the Government of the Republic of Botswana and De Beers to value and sell the diamond to ensure it returns maximum benefit for the people of Botswana. And will communicate further plans to bring this unique treasure to market in due course".

Amazon founder and space enthusiast -- and soon space explorer -- Jeff Bezos and his startup have backed a pilot nuclear fusion power plant that will be built in the UK by 2025.

Canadian energy startup General Fusion has said it wants to smash atoms together at temperatures 10x hotter than the sun, whereas traditional fission will split atoms. This means that the nuclear fusion plant will generate great amounts of carbon-free energy, without the worry of nuclear waste.

Christofer Mowry, the chief executive of General Fusion, explains: "Coming to Culham gives us the opportunity to benefit from UKAEA's expertise. By locating at this campus, General Fusion expands our market presence beyond North America into Europe, broadening our global network of government, institutional, and industrial partners".

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope experienced a malfunction and shut down, according to a press release by the US space agency.

The press release found on the NASA website states that the issue has something to do with Hubble's payload computer, and on June 13, it shut down. NASA's team of researchers analyzed the data and are now investigating if the issue can be attributed to a "degrading memory module". Preparations are currently being made for a memory module switch to occur on June 16, and after the switch has been made and tests are run for around one day, the telescope will resume its normal duties.

NASA explains, "The purpose of the payload computer is to control and coordinate the science instruments onboard the spacecraft. After the halt occurred on Sunday, the main computer stopped receiving a "keep-alive" signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well."

Unidentified flying objects (UFO) have been a topic that has stigma attached to it for quite a long time, but now a new report headed for the US Senate may shine some light on the topic.

The US Senate will be receiving a detailed report on UFOs, or what the government calls them unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), on June 25, and it's expected that some unclassified information will be released that will explain some recently released videos. People have been waiting for this report for many months now, and before it's released, there are some videos/pieces of information you should know.

Politicians that have already been briefed on the report have said that the information the report contains isn't very exciting, but it did raise some serious concerns for national security. In a comment to the NY Post, D-NY Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney said that the main issue is the safety and security of US military personal, and knowing the capabilities of the object.

Anduril Industries has just raised $450 million in Series D funding, with founder Palmer Luckey tweeting out the news and teasing the future of warfighting technology.

The Oculus VR founder tweeted that his company raised $450 million in funding, and that it would be used to "turn American and allied warfighters into invincible technomancers who wield the power of autonomous systems to safely accomplish their mission. Our future roadmap is going to blow you away, stay tuned!"

Anduril's huge $450 million funding round was led by Elad Gil, who was an early investor in the company, with the $450 million injection of funding also coming from Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and D1 Capital Partners.

A group of scientists, for the very first time, has happened the gigantic protective bubble that is located near the edge of our solar system.

This gigantic protective bubble is called the heliosphere, and according to the new study published in the Astrophysics Journal, the researchers used data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite that is designed to observe and collect data regarding the interactions between solar winds from our Sun and interstellar wind.

The group of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory used the data from IBEX to create a map of the heliosphere. Dan Reisenfeld, the lead author on the paper, explained, "Just as bats send out sonar pulses in every direction and use the return signal to create a mental map of their surroundings, we used the Sun's solar wind, which goes out in all directions, to create a map of the heliosphere." The creation of the map marks the very first three-dimensional map of the heliosphere, which is the boundary of interstellar space.

A newly published study has claimed to have found evidence that life on Mars exists, but it's not in the form of a small green martian alien.

The study claims that the "evidence" of life that was discovered was actually mushroom-like life-forms growing on the surface of Mars. According to Space.com, these mushroom-like life-forms aren't life-forms at all but are actually small spherical-shaped pieces of the mineral called hematite.

Hematite is a combination of iron and oxygen, and scientists believe that the rocks could have formed from volcanic activity or accumulating in slowly evaporating water environments. The exact origin of the material is yet to be confirmed by scientists as it's still being debated. However, the suggestion that these "mushrooms" are life-forms is incorrect, as researchers have spotted them around Opportunity's landing site as well as underground, and even between rocks. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Back in late 2019 and early 2020, astronomers were puzzled at the star Betelgeuse mysteriously dimming, but now the answer has been uncovered.

The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse stumped the astronomy community for some time, with some researchers even saying that the star could go supernova relatively soon. However, as with most space phenomena, there is a logical and boring explanation that explains the occurrence, and in the instance of Betelgeuse's dimming, researchers found that a cloud of dust covered the star.

Miguel Montarges and his team used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) to examine Betelgeuse and found that the star had changed brightness. The team published a new study in Nature, which details that the Betelgeuse dimmed due to a veil of dust around the star that caused its temperature to drop. The team says that Betelgeuse released a large gas bubble from a patch of its surface that then floated away from it. That patch on its surface then cooled down, causing the gas bubble to condense into dust.

In an effort to stop Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos from ever putting two feet on the ground again, thousands have signed a petition to deny him entry back Earth.

For those that don't know, Bezos will be taking the first tourist flight on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket to the outer edges of Earth's atmosphere (62 miles above average sea level). Bezos announced on June 7 that he would be taking the flight with his brother Mark and one other person. Bezos also owns Blue Origin, and when the flight occurs on July 20, it will mark the first human space trip for the company.

The petition was created on Change.org by Jose Ortiz, who wrote, "Jeff Bezos is actually Lex Luthor, disguised as the supposed owner of a super successful online retail store. However, he's actually an evil overlord hellbent on global domination." The petition received nearly 7,000 signatures, with the target being 7,500. The other person that will be on the space flight with Bezos bid $28 million for the seat next to the Amazon billionaire. However, the identity of the individual is still a mystery.

Humans will soon be sending the world's first wooden satellite to space in an effort to test a special type of plywood.

A Finnish company called Arctic Astronautics is behind the project and will be sending the WISA Woodsat, a nanosatellite that only measures in at 4 by 4 by 4 inches, and only weighs 2.2lbs. The researchers behind the project plan on testing the durability of specially coated plywood panels in extreme space environments. The results of the mission will determine if these types of panels can be sustainable for future missions.

The tiny satellite will be equipped with two cameras, one will be attached to a selfie stick that will allow for researchers on the ground to observe the panels and their condition. Researchers behind the small satellite have coated the plywood with aluminum oxide, which Woodsat chief engineer Samuli Nymanm, who is also the Arctic Astronautics co-founder, said should stop the plywood from releasing any gas in space as well as protects it against corrosive atomic oxygen.

For quite some time now, conspiracy theorists believe there is already proof of alien life on the baron red planet we call Mars.

Now that talk of aliens is in the news again, with Congress expecting a detailed report on UFO sightings by US intelligence agencies before the end of the month, now is a good time to look at what the internet has previously considered as "evidence" of life extraterrestrial life. For many years NASA's probes have been exploring the surface of Mars and sending back images that have been published online for public viewing. Most of these images show a baron wasteland planet with large quantities of rocks.

Some onlookers of these images claimed that the pictures were actually revealing evidence of current/past life existing on Mars. However, NASA scientists have said that what we see in these images can be attributed to a phenomenon called pareidolia, which is basically when the human brain sees an object that is similar to an object it has previously recognized and thinks that it's there when it's not.

NASA has big plans for getting humans back onto the moon, but they aren't the only ones as a very ambitious roadmap has been released by Russia and China.

The joint announcement from Russia and China occurred on June 16 at the Global Space Exploration (GLEX), where both nations announced they would be constructing a joint lunar space station called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). The announcement by Russia and China rival that of the US's announcement of the Artemis program, which aims to put humans back on the moon in the coming years and construct a lunar base.

So, what is the roadmap? The first phase of the ILRS will be a data-gathering phase that will entail numerous soft-landing lunar missions with China and Russia's respective landers between 2021 and 2025. The second phase has two parts, the first is the construction of infrastructure for communications, energy needs, and more. The second part of the second phase includes cargo missions to the surface of the moon, sample return missions, and joint operations. The second phase will happen between 2026 and 2035.

I'm sure we've been communicating with other forms of life and civilizations than most would like to admit, but according to physicist Mark Buchanan -- contacting aliens could result in the "end of life on Earth".

Buchanan wrote a panic-fueled piece in the Washington Post, frightened that if we made contact with another civilization that they'd just end our existence on the spot. He goes back and forth between seemingly wanting it (alien disclosure) to happen and tinfoil hat fear that makes even the biggest "conspiracy theorist" seem calm in comparison.

Buchanan feels like Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where he was filled with pure hate and resentment for Superman. As he said: "if there's even a 1% chance that he (Superman) is our enemy, we have to take it with an absolute certainty".

The Chinese government has now chimed in on the situation going on outside of Hong Kong with a nuclear power plant suspected of leaking radiation -- you know, Chernobyl style -- but everything is OK says the CCP.

China's National Nuclear Safety Administration has said that regulators have reviewed, and approved limits on how much radioactive gas is allowed to accumulate in the water at the reactor. The statement from China's safety regulator explains: "At present, monitoring results of the radiation environment around the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant show that there is no abnormality in the radiation level around the nuclear power plant".

There are over 60,000 nuclear fuel rods inside of Reactor No.1 at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, which is located around 80 miles southwest of Hong Kong. This has obviously raised concerns not just for Hong Kong and China, but worldwide.

We've seen how SpaceX's Starlink satellite dish continues to work in super-cold ice-covered environments, but what about the heat? 122F+ and the satellite dish goes into thermal shutdown.

A post on Reddit is now providing some updates on the upper limits of what the Starlink satellite dish can handle thermally, where in hot environments the dish can hit 122F and it'll go into thermal shutdown. One of Starlink's customers in Arizona saw his satellite dish go into thermal shutdown when temperatures popped over 122F in Arizona recently.

Another user shared their experience about hot temperatures in Las Vegas, Nevada yesterday where they hit 111F -- but his Starlink internet service was fine. His terminal didn't shut down, and no service outages were reported -- this is a better result than SpaceX said last year.

If you haven't heard about the nuclear plant having issues in China, well the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant is having a "performance issue" but it is operating under safety parameters.

This is what the French joint operator -- Framatome -- said during a recent media conference, where Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said: "With regards to foreign media reports about a nuclear plant in Taishan, Guangzhou, the Hong Kong government is highly concerned".

The Taishan Nuclear Power Plant is jointly owned by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group and French multinational electric utility Electricite de France, which is the main owned of Framotome, which also helps operate the nuclear plant.