Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 177

Alright, it seems our Russian robotic overlords aren't too far away from total and utter enslavement of the human race... yet... with Russia developing autonomous weapons and AI-powered technologies for the future of war.

In a new report published by CNA nonprofit research and analysis group in Arlington, Virginia -- titled "Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy in Russia" the authors report: "the first major piece of US research that articulates contemporary Russia's main initiatives, achievements, and accomplishments in AI and autonomy efforts and places those initiatives within the broader technological landscape in Russia".

"Russian military strategists have placed a premium on establishing what they refer to as 'information dominance on the battlefield and AI-enhanced technologies promise to take advantage of the data available on the modern battlefield to protect Russia's own forces and deny that advantage to the adversary".

Astronomers have no discovered the oldest spiral galaxy yet, which has helped them answer a burning question in astronomy - "How and when did spiral galaxies form?".

Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and located a galaxy that had a spiral that dated to 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery of this galaxy has broken all previous records before it and is now the most ancient spiral galaxy humans have ever observed. For those that don't know, 70% of galaxies are spiral galaxies, and one of those galaxies is ours - The Milky Way Galaxy.

However, looking back in time at the history of the universe, astronomers found that the proportion of spiral galaxies began to decrease, which suggests that there was a time when spiral galaxies began to form. Leading from that question is "why and how".

SpaceX will be using its Falcon 9 rocket to transport Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander that's carrying NASA payloads to the moon.

SpaceX has been awarded a new between Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based aerospace firm, and NASA. SpaceX will be using its Falcon 9 rocket to transport the Blue Ghost lunar lander, which was named after a rare species of firefly. Blue Ghost will be transporting 10 payloads for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which is a part of a $93.3 million task order that NASA gave to Firefly Aerospace.

Shea Ferring, Firefly's SVP of spacecraft, said, "Firefly is excited to fly our Blue Ghost spacecraft on the highly reliable Falcon 9, which will deliver NASA instruments and technology demonstration payloads that support NASA science goals and NASA's Artemis program." Adding, "The high performance of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle permits a lunar transit using minimal Blue Ghost propulsion resources, thereby allowing the lander to deliver more than 150 kg of payload to the lunar surface."

A report from Russian state news agency Sputnik has revealed that Russia is planning on launching a nuclear-powered spacecraft towards Jupiter.

According to the report, Russia is scheduled to launch a nuclear-powered spacecraft that has been dubbed "Zeus". The spacecraft is designed to transport heavy cargo deep space, and is essentially a small-scale nuclear power plant. Currently, spacecrafts use solar power or gravity to accelerate in space, but according to NASA, nuclear-powered spacecrafts could speed up the return trips for astronauts.

With current means of acceleration, it would take three years for a return trip to Mars, but NASA says a nuclear-powered spacecraft could reduce that return trip time down to two years. Russia has launched more than thirty nuclear reactors into space, while the US has only ever put one nuclear reactor to space back in 1965. Zeus is powered by a 500-kilowatt nuclear reactor that it will use to propel itself.

We all know that the Milky Way galaxy is a large place, but to put things into the right perspective of how big the universe is, we need to look at a recent image from Hubble.

NASA has released a brand new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and according to NASA, what we are looking at in the above image is the galaxy cluster called ACO S 295. NASA says that the above image is a galactic menagerie, and it shows off a bunch of different galaxies of all shapes and sizes.

The galaxy cluster in the center is probably what catches your eye first, and here's why, "The galaxy cluster dominates the center of this image, both visually and physically. The cluster's huge mass has gravitationally lensed the light from background galaxies, distorting and smearing their shapes. In addition to providing astronomers with a natural magnifying glass with which to study distant galaxies, gravitational lensing has subtly framed the center of this image, producing a visually striking scene."

Water is an imperative component of life itself, but have you ever considered that too much water could be dangerous to your health?

A new video posted to BusinessInsider has explained how excess consumption of water can lead to health complications. According to the video, drinking more water than your kidneys can process can lead to water intoxication, which ruins the correct balance of your sodium levels. Water intoxication can lead to, in extreme cases, brain damage, comas, and even death.

The video states that your kidneys can only process between 800 - 1,000 mL of water an hour, and if you can somehow drink more than that amount without throwing it up, you could have some health complications as a result. Why does this happen? When you consume a healthy amount of water, your cells are protected by a balanced solution of sodium and water, but when you consume excess water, that solution becomes diluted. As a result, the water enters the cell and begins to swell up, causing these health complications.

Researchers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to find the Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) source, which was, until now, unknown.

Recent reports have indicated that researchers from the University of California have performed a survey on eight detected FRBs and, using Hubble, was able to locate the origins of five. Astronomers usually have a very difficult time locating FRBs due to how short-lived the bursts are. But in this instance, the astronomers traced five of the FRBs back to a spiral arm in their host galaxies.

So far, there have been around 1,000 FRBs detected, and only 15 of them have their source identified. At the moment, astronomers believe through their observations that FRBs are created by a type of neutron star called magnetars. In 2020, an FRB was traced back to a magnetar, which provided astronomers some evidence to support their hypothesis. For more information on Fast Radio Bursts, check out this link here.

Researchers have detected what is now the most energetic light that has ever been found by humans.

Astrophysicists have been trying to work out why and how the universe produces this energetic light or gamma rays for many years now. In the past, astrophysicists have detected gamma rays, but recently the most the highest-gamma ray was detected, blowing the previously recorded figures out of the water. The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) detected more than 530 gamma rays with energies above 0.1 quadrillion electron volts, with the highest coming in at 1.4 quadrillion electron volts.

To make an easy-to-understand comparison, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, reaches trillions of electron volts, not quadrillions. Researchers now believe that that the Milky Way has these powerful cosmic particle accelerators scattered around, dubbed "hotspots". As for how and why these "hotspots" occur is still a mystery. Current theories suggest two possibilities; turbulent remains of an exploded star, or a region in space where a massive star is forming.

Tardigrades are microscopic creatures that are believed to be close to indestructible, as they can survive quite extreme environments.

Scientists have previously found tardigrades can survive in the vacuum of space, inside a volcano, and even in a lake one mile beneath the surface in the Antarctic. Tardigrades have also been frozen and returned back to normal functionality thirty years later. Now, a recent study that has been published in the journal Astrobiology has pushed the limits of tardigrades by finding out if they can survive being fired out of a gun.

The researchers put tardigrades in some canisters and fired them out of a high-speed gun at different speeds. After many tests, the researchers found that tardigrades could survive at the speed of 900 meters per second, but any faster than that resulted in the tardigrades turning into mush. According to Alejandra Traspas, an astrochemist at Queen Mary University in London, "They just mush".

Reports are indicating that the Congo's Mount Nyiragongo has officially erupted last Saturday night on May 22.

The 11,385-foot-tall volcano has a huge lava crater located at its peak. The crater measures in at 1.3 miles wide and 820 feet tall. The eruption from the volcano caused orange and red smoke to pour out into the sky and lava to flow out towards the area's major transit hub Goma. The lava managed to stop just before Goma, but out of fear, thousands of residents fled across the border to Rwanda.

Back in 2002, Mount Nyiragongo erupted, and its lava covered Goma killing nearly 250 people and leaving more than 100,000 people without homes. Luckily, current reports are indicating that the most recent eruption hasn't caused any injuries or deaths. For more information on this story, or Mount Nyiragongo, check out this link here.

Virgin Galactic has announced it has completed its first crewed spaceflight with the VSS Unity in New Mexico.

The accomplishment from Virgin Galactic has marked a milestone in human spaceflight for New Mexico, as the state is now the third state in the US to launch a crewed spaceflight successfully. Originally, Virgin Galactic planned to launch the spaceflight in December 2020, but after many delays, that launch has finally happened, and it has been deemed a success.

Kelly Latimer and Michael Masucci piloted the mothership that released the VSS Unity, which carried two more passengers CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay. The VSS Unity managed to reach Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound.

The world's largest iceberg has just broken away from Antarctica over the last few days, with the European Space Agency (ESA) reporting that the iceberg broke off the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica's Weddell Sea.

The iceberg itself is known as A-76, and it's big... we're looking at 105 miles (170 kilometers) long and 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) wide, which makes it 80x bigger than Manhattan, New York. Keith Makinson, a polar oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey was the first to notice the iceberg, confirming it with the US National Ice Center using ESA's own Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery.

This isn't something you need to be worried about and bringing in your tomato plants over, as iceberg calving -- which is what is happening here with A-76 breaking away from Antarctica, is part of a natural cycle. It happens, it's just that this particular iceberg is absolutely mammoth in size... so big in size that it is currently the largest iceberg in the world.

China has recently become the second nation in the world to land a rover on the surface of Mars successfully.

NASA has released a statement on its website regarding China's Zhurong rover sending back its first images captured on the surface of the Red Planet. The statement comes from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who said, "Congratulations to the China National Space Administration on receiving the first images from the Zhurong Mars rover!". Nelson goes on to say that the world will be patiently waiting for the discoveries that come out of the Zhurong rover.

Nelson also stated, "As the international scientific community of robotic explorers on Mars grows, the United States and the world look forward to the discoveries Zhurong will make to advance humanity's knowledge of the Red Planet. I look forward to future international discoveries, which will help inform and develop the capabilities needed to land human boots on Mars."

If you heard about space companies opening up space travel to consumers, and you thought you would pick up a ticket - you are going to need at least $2.6 million for a sea on Blue Origin's rocket.

Jeff Bezos' space exploration company Blue Origin is currently auctioning off one of its seats aboard the New Shepard rocket for its first-ever crewed launch that is scheduled to take a place on July 20. Sealed online bidding for the seat began back on May 5, and on May 19 unsealed online bidding has commenced. Essentially, "unsealed online bidding" means that people can see how much the seat is actually going for, and wow, it's not cheap.

So far, the leading bid for a seat on Blue Origins New Shepard is sitting at $2.6 million, but that figure is bound to be topped as the "unsealed online bidding" phase runs through to June 10. If you think that the money from the auction will be going to Bezos, you are wrong. The auction money will "be donated to Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] and help invent the future of life in space."

China has officially become the second country in the world to successfully soft-land a rover on Mars, and now we are getting the rover's first images of the Martian surface.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which is running the operations of the Tianwen-1 mission, has released two images taken by the Zhurong rover. One image is in color, and the other is black and white. The color image showcases the rear of the Zhurong rover, where you can spot solar arrays as well as the surface of some rocks and that classic red Mars dirt.

As for the black and white image, that Zhurong rover used its obstacle avoidance camera located at the front of the rover. The rover used a wide-angle lens to capture the Martian horizon and two subsurface radar instruments that can be seen on the top left and ride hand of the image. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

NASA and the European Space Agency launched the Solar Orbiter Sun probe back in early 2020, and now the probe has returned its first video of a coronal mass ejection.

So, what is a coronal mass ejection or CME? A coronal mass ejection is when the Sun shoots out a burst of energetic solar mass from its surface. These CME send geomagnetic shockwaves all across the solar system, and when a CME crashes into Earth, it can cause disruptions in radio signals, satellite usage, and even knock out power grids.

Using its Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager instrument, the Solar Orbiter was able to capture its first video of a coronal mass ejection back in February. Due to the Solar Orbiter coming out from behind the Sun and reentering line of sight with Earth, the orbiter was able to send back the footage for NASA. Researchers didn't expect the Solar Orbiter to send back any images or video at this point as its primary mission doesn't begin until November this year. NASA has called this situation a "happy accident".

A Reddit user posted an incredible image of the Moon that is composed of 50,000 individual images and took over 40 hours to create.

The images were collected by Prathamesh Jaju, a 16-year-old resident of Pune, India. Jaju goes by the Reddit user name Prathameshjaju1, and according to his statements on the Reddit thread, the image is around 50,000+ images that equated to over 186GB of data. Prathameshjaju1 goes on to say that the image took a day and a half to process with his laptop.

Jaju said to Newsweek, "On May third, I went on my terrace at around 1 p.m. and took multiple shots of the Moon on different portions and stitched them together. I have a telescope which is automated, it tracks the objects according to the earth's rotation, I used it to capture the Moon's movements." If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Scientists have observed the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park for many years in hopes that we will have some warning if it ever erupts.

According to Michael Poland, the scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, if the supervolcano that is located directly under the park ever erupted, it would "devastate much of the United States". Poland says that the supervolcano has erupted at least three times in the past, but luckily researchers don't expect another eruption for quite some time. If the volcano does erupt it would look similar to this video.

So, how will we know that Yellowstone is erupting? Researchers have been measuring and recording the volcano's seismic activity, and at the moment, there are between 1,500 and 2,500 earthquakes per year in Yellowstone. "If we saw earthquake activity begin to pick up in very significant ways. Instead of seeing thousands of earthquakes every year, we would see tens of thousands." Poland goes on to say that if the number of earthquakes recorded began to rise suddenly, then that may be an indicator for eruption.

Well, I don't know how much clearer we can get before we have city-sized ships hovering above our cities and Will Smith walks outside for his daily newspaper... but here we are, right on CNN

CNN's Chris Cuomo hosted two retired US Navy officers (Sean Cahil, retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms and Christopher Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies) who talked about UFOs (or UAPs as the military refers to them) that have technology that is 100 to 1000 years ahead of the very best that the human race has to offer. This isn't Alex Jones or something, they are respected men in some of the very highest positions of their industry.

Retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms, Sean Cahil, said: "First of all the aircraft had zero control surfaces, it had no means of propulsion that we could detect, it moved at hyper-sonic velocities and it preceded the pilots to their cap point, so it seemed to have some knowledge of where the pilots were headed ahead of time. We don't possess those abilities to do that in our arsenals at the moment".

China has officially become the second country in the world to land a rover on another planet successfully.

Last week, reports indicated that China was going to attempt to land on Mars with its new Zhurong rover, and now the China National Space Administration (CNSA) Twitter account has announced that it has successfully landed on Mars.

The Zhurong rover was aboard the Tianwen-1 spacecraft and was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in China on July 23, 2020. The spacecraft entered the orbit of Mars back in February, and it successfully landed on the Red Planet around 7:18 p.m. EDT this past Friday. So far, China and the United States are the only two countries in the world that have successfully landed on another planet.