Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 181

A New York company has announced the recall of nearly 1,000 pounds of its pork products, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

The company is Hempstead Foodservice, and according to the announcement, it will be recalling 972 pounds of pork chop products as it was found that the products may contain hydrolyzed soy protein. Products were developed between April 6 and April 30 and distributed to various grocery stores and restaurants throughout New York.

The product containing this allergen didn't clearly state it on the branding, which could lead to health complications if an allergic individual consumed it. The FSIS is concerned that the product could be in retailers' refrigerators, saying, "Retailers who have obtained these products are urged not to sell them. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them." FSIS recommends that if you own this product to throw it away or return it to the place of purchase for a refund.

A Bill and Melinda Gates-funded biotech firm has released thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes in the United States.

The biotech firm Oxitec has confirmed in a press release that the release of these genetically modified mosquitoes is for population control of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that spread diseases such as dengue and malaria. All of the genetically released mosquitoes are male, and have a self-limiting gene that causes offspring to die before they can reach adulthood and reproduce again.

Oxitec has already begun testing this type of technology in Brazil, where it saw a 95% drop in the Aedes aegypti species after just 13 weeks. Oxitec announced a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation back in 2018, check out the press release here. In a recent press release, the company emphasized that the genetically modified mosquitoes it was releasing are unable to bite. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

China is building its own space station, and last week, it launched the first module, the living quarters for future astronauts.

The module was carried up to space on the back of China's Long March-5B rocket, and while the launch was deemed a success, the rocket is now in out-of-control orbit. The rocket weighs in at 21-tonnes, and according to SpaceNews, the rocket is expected to crash back down to Earth in the next coming days/weeks. At the moment, the rocket is traveling at 16,000 mph and is making one full rotation of Earth in just 90 minutes.

SpaceNews said, "It will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area". So, where will it land? Unfortunately, due to the multitude of possibilities, such as atmospheric drag, and solar activity influence, researchers are struggling to pinpoint the exact location of where it will crash land. SpaceNews said, "The high speed of the rocket body means it orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes and so a change of just a few minutes in reentry time results in reentry point thousands of kilometers away".

A week-long exercise led by NASA has shown that space agencies wouldn't be able to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth even if they had 6 months to prepare.

The simulation, or hypothetical scenario, posed an asteroid located 35 million miles away that was anywhere between 114 feet to half a mile in size was going to hit Earth in 6 months. Experts were tasked with developing ways to save Earth, and participating experts found that with the given timeframe, it wasn't possible to launch any type of spacecraft out to it in time to change its trajectory.

The participants said, "If confronted with the 2021PDC hypothetical scenario in real life, we would not be able us to launch any spacecraft on such short notice with current capabilities." Experts also considered launching nuclear weapons at the asteroid to knock it off its hypothetical course with Europe. "Deploying a nuclear disruption mission could significantly reduce the risk of impact damage", said the participants. However, due to the size of the asteroid fictitiously named 2021PDC, the chance of a nuke being effective was unclear.

Venus is a neighboring planet of ours, and despite its close position to Earth, there is still quite a lot of things we don't know about it.

One of those mysteries was 'how long is a day on Venus?'. Now, researchers from the University of California have managed to figure it out after 15 years of observations. The researchers used a radar to bounce radio signals off of the surface of the planet. From doing this, the researchers learned not only how long a day is on the sister planet but also the actual size of the planet's core, as well as how much it's tilted.

The researchers found that one day on Venus is 243.0226 Earth days or two-thirds of an Earth year. The reason for a day on Venus being 243 Earth days is because Venus rotates extremely slowly. Researchers suspect that Venus' thick layer of sulfuric acid clouds may be impacting the speed at which the planet is rotating. As for the core, researchers found that the planet's core is 2,200 miles across, which is similar to the size of Earth's core. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Last week, China launched its first piece of its own space station that is expected to be completed by 2022.

Unfortunately, the launch wasn't all sunshine and rainbows as a 21-tonne rocket that carried the space station module to space is now going to crash back down to Earth. SpaceNews has reported that the Long March 5B rocket is out of control, and is likely to crash back down to Earth in the coming days. The rocket is currently travelling at 16,000 mph, and is circulating the Earth every 90 minutes.

Another unfortunate factoid is that due to the ever-changing variables of the rocket it's almost impossible to predict where it's going to land. At the moment projections estimate that the rocket could land anywhere between New York in the northern hemisphere and Wellington, New Zealand, in the southern hemisphere. Luckily, majority of the planet is covered in water, so the chances are it will land somewhere in the ocean, and not in someones backyard. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Giant squid caused many people to tell tales of what was known in folklore as the Kraken. Now, researchers have found the real-life "Kraken", the Architeuthis dux.

The Architeuthis dux (A. dux) is the world's largest known squid, and while it's not as big as the folklore tales describe the Kraken to be, it's still incredibly large growing to about 46 feet, or about the length of a semi-trailer. These giant squid are hardly spotted in their natural habitat, but that all changed back in 2012 when a team of marine scientists managed to capture a young A. dux 2,000 feet below the sea in south Japan.

A new study has explored why these giant squid, despite their size, are so hard to capture in their environment. The researchers explain that part of the reason the giant squid is so hard to observe in its natural habitat is because of its massive eyes. Due to the A. dux living so far beneath the ocean's surface, the creature has developed the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, as no sunlight can penetrate to the depth of its natural habitat.

The United States wants to leave behind the way it has fought previous wars and move into something that is "very different".

According to speech excerpts provided to Reuters, United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says, "The way we'll fight the next major war is going to look very different from the way we fought the last ones". Speech excerpts called for harnessing technological advances, as well as implementing military operations globally as it will allow the US to "understand faster, decide faster, and act faster."

The speech excerpts didn't mention rival nations such as China or Russia, but the speech excerpts have been published right as President Joe Biden has ordered US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. Austin also states that the last two decades have been spent "executing the last of the old wars", and understanding the mistakes that were made. It should be noted that Austin didn't make any statements regarding what the US will be doing specifically and to what country.

More than 2,000 years ago, a Greek mathematician proved that the surface of the Earth was curved and not flat.

That mathematician was Eratosthenes, who was a geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. So, how did a mathematician debunk the modern-day theory that the Earth is flat 2,000 years ago? As explained by Carl Sagan in the above video, Eratosthenes planted a stick in the ground in Syene, a city south of Alexandria, and another in Alexandria. The distance between the two sticks was 800 kilometers.

Now, if both of the sticks that were planted casted an identical shadow at the same time of day, it would suggest that the surface of Earth is flat. However, Eratosthenes found that the shadow casted by one of the sticks wasn't identical to the other, in fact, the difference between the shadow casted in Alexandria, and the one in Syene was 7 degrees.

I don't know about you but I would do anything to fly around in one of these Gravity Jet Suits, just like the Royal Marines did during a successful training exercise using the Iron Man-like jet suits. Check them out, taking off, flying up and next to and then landing on the ship.

The Royal Marines are using Gravity Industries' own Gravity Jet Suit here for their operations, with 1000bhp of Jet Engine power to fly around with. The marines look so awesome easily flying off from their boat onto the ship, flying up to it and gracefully landing onto it -- reminding me of the graceful way Christopher Reeves' Superman used to land in the original Superman movies.

Former Oil Trader & Royal Marines Reservist, Richard Browning, founded Gravity Industries in March 2017 to introduce what will be a part of the future of combat -- taking "human flight into an entirely new era" explains the company on their YouTube video.

Damn... and just like that NASA and SpaceX have had their $2.9 billion Starship-based lunar landing system deal torn up and thrown into space -- I guess where no one can hear (everyone who wants to see this happen) scream.

The reason? Blue Origins Federation and Dynetics have submitted protests with the US Government Accountability Office, stopping the NASA and SpaceX deal far, far before liftoff. The space industry expected the historic $2.9 billion contract would go to two companies, but it went to one -- SpaceX -- and now its competitors are pissed.

Dynetics filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office, arguing that NASA chose "the most anti-competitive and high risk option available" when it tasked SpaceX with using its Starship to build a Human Landing System for its mission to the moon.

It looks like Tesla has silently launched its upgraded Powerwall+ system, not long after Elon Musk updated the world through Twitter on the power upgrades to Powerwall.

The new Tesla Powerwall+ system has a much upgraded max power output, with 9.6kW max power output up from 7kW on the regular Powerwall. The new Powerwall+ system also has a new inverter with an integrated breaker that sits above the Powerwall+ which will provide Powerwall+ owners with a new unique look over the regular Powerwall installation.

Tesla explains its new Powerwall+ battery pack: "Powerwall+ is an integrated solar battery system to store energy from solar production. Its integrated design and streamlined installation allow for a simple connection to any home, and improved surge power capability brings whole home backup in a smaller package. System smart controls enable owners to customize system behavior to suit their renewable energy needs".

Intel Inside has been a marketing term for what feels like forever, but now Intel is Inside of NASA's Perseverance rover that is rolling around on Mars -- not only is Intel inside, but so is SSD controller giant Phison.

Inside of the Perseverance rover is a credit-card-sized computing module that stores, and sends the photos we've been seeing from the Red Planet back to our Pale Blue Dot. The module itself is running Linux, and is powered by an Intel Atom (BayTrail) processor -- the module was made by Israel-based CompuLab in the form of the COMEX-IE38.

There are 2 x COMEX-IE38 modules inside of the NASA Perseverance rover, an off-the-shelf product that you could buy from CompuLab for around $150. There are 23 cameras on the Perseverance rover, with the data from each individual camera being fed in raw format to the DSU (data storage units) through an Ethernet link, compressed by the COMEX-IE38 module, and then stored on a 480GB SSD (thanks to Phison and its PSS4A111-8G) and then blasted back to NASA engineers back on Earth.

At some point, everything will come to an end, and Earth won't exist anymore, but where is that ending, and how will it be caused?

A new article published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science by Corey Bradshaw, a scientist working in the ecology field at Flinders University and has published over 260 peer-reviewed scientific articles, has said that humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity.

Through this human-induced rapid loss of biodiversity, Bradshaw says that Earth is losing its ability to support complex life. "But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization", said Bradshaw. Additionally, the article mentions that the world's economic and political systems are currently focusing on short-term solutions to problems that present themselves, which causes long-term problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecological destruction to go unnoticed.

A new recall has appeared on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website, and this time it's for numerous products from Velvet Ice Cream.

The voluntary recall has been issued for dozens of Velvet Ice Cream's products, and it ranges across multiple different flavors. The reason for the recall is that the products are potentially contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, according to the FDA.

Listeria infections can also be fatal for the elderly and anyone else that has a weakened immune system. So far, no illness has been linked to the recalled products that were sold in the following states; Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. The recalled products come in a variety of different sizes and containers, but all of the recalled products were "distributed and sold in supermarkets from on or after March 24, 2021." The following product codes have been recalled.

A new computer simulation using the Unity Engine has shown what it would be like if the supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted.

The simulation comes from Unity 5 ProGames, and according to the description of the video, the simulation is actually five years old, but this the updated version that can be seen above. The updated version took two weeks to develop and was created using Unity's Particle System. Now, is the simulation entirety accurate? No, it's not.

The simulation uses a lot of assumed numbers, and according to Mike Poland, the volcanologist in charge of Yellowstone, if Yellowstone erupted, we would see much more earth lifted up and larger earthquakes. Additionally, the hundreds of earthquakes that are recorded across the part would also turn into thousands. Either way, the simulation gives us an idea of what it would be like if Yellowstone erupted, not that it would happen in our lifetimes (hopefully). For more information on this story, check out this link here.

If you didn't know, China is excluded from the International Space Station. So, the country is planning on building its own.

The first key module of a new permanent space station called the Tianhe module, which is the living quarters for astronauts, has been launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center. The Tianhe module was launched on the back of a Long March-5B rocket. Beijing has very ambitious space plans and expects that the Tiangong space station, which is Chinese for heavenly place, will be completed by 2022.

China expects to launch ten more modules within the next year. Each module would be another step towards completing the construction of the Tiangong space station. The Tiangong space station will sit in Earth's orbit at an altitude of 210-280 miles and is expected to last for at least ten years. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

In 1969, NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched off Earth towards the Moon.

While Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to ever walk on the surface of the Moon, Collins stayed back and piloted the Command Module Columbia that would later take all the astronauts back down to Earth. Collins said to Armstrong and Aldrin as they descended down to the lunar surface, "you cats take it easy".

Collins traveled the farthest any human has traveled before as the command module he was piloting passed behind the Moon, cutting off any communication with Mission Control. Collins joked back in 2014, "I was the most lonesome person in the whole universe, at least according to the newspapers. Actually, I was so glad to get behind the Moon, so Mission Control would shut up."

People from around the Mar del Plata beach, which is located 250 miles south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, have come to inspect these mysterious white orbs.

On April 25, thousands of these white orbs were found littered all over the Mar del Plata beach. Onlookers inspected the orbs and weren't able to identify what they were or where they came from. According to marine biologist Alejandro Saubidet, who said, "We normally see these on the coast, but we don't see them at the density that we can see right now".

The white orbs are actually from a carnivorous sea creature known as Adelomelon brasiliana, which is a snail that lives near the coast of southern Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Saubidet said, "In general, they are found in the deep sea; however, certain movements that have to do with the tides or the wind cause these structures to rise and become deposited on the coast." For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Earth's magnetosphere is a layer around the globe that protects us from solar particles that are emitted from the Sun.

Last Sunday, the Sun emitted a coronal mass ejection (CME) that is plasma flown into the solar wind. This CME from the Sun is on track to hit Earth, and even though we have our magnetosphere, the CME has a chance of causing some disruptions across the planet. The CME may cause "widespread voltage control problems", and depending on how long it lasts, may cause transformer damage.

On a positive note, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who issued the warning, said, "The transient solar wind feature is expected to cause auroral enhancements that may be visible at night in the higher latitudes under favorable sky conditions." The NOAA also noted that the solar storm can also affect navigation systems such as the Global Navigation Satellite System and "create harmful geomagnetic induced currents (GICs) in the power grid and pipelines."