Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 194

Italy has been one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, and yet the country's government has just announced that it will reopen in early June.

According to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who spoke publically through a television address to the country, Italy will reopen early June to European tourists. This is an effort by the government to restart the economy, while at same time being extra cautious of a potential second wave of COVID-19. Cote said that gyms and cinemas will also be reopening, and that "We're facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again. We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again."

Italy is heavily dependant on its tourism, and early in early March, Cote announced a full shutdown of the country due to coronavirus. Now, the virus has taken nearly 32,000 lives. Italy will also be abandoning the two-week mandatory quarantine when tourists decide to enter the country; this new ruling will begin on June 3. Local authorities will be monitoring the situation, and if they notice a spike in COVID-19 infection cases, they will be limiting travel throughout the region.

Scientists have hit a new milestone in mixing human cells into animal embryos, as researchers have managed to create a human-mouse hybrid.

As reported by ScienceNews, and is something out of a science-fiction horror movie, researchers have reached a new milestone in the stem cell field by modifying human cell proteins and successfully adding them to mice embryos. This is the first time researchers were able to add a large amount of human cells to an animal. The scientists let the embryos develop for 17 days, and after that period of time, they observed that human cells spread throughout much of the mice embryo.

The human cells were found in the tissue that would form the heart, brain, and blood. Scientists noted that all mice that were given this treatment didn't have the same percentage of human cells found in tissues throughout the embryo, but on average, a mouse embryo contained up to 4% human cells. So why do this? Scientists believe that if they can get a firm understanding of stem cell research that one day they will be able to use pigs, for example, to grow human organs that could be used to save lives of people who need them. If you are interested in reading more about this subject, check out this link here.

Razer has kicked off an interesting new pilot program in Singapore, where the gaming peripheral giant is offering a free COVID-19 fask mask... but it has some (green) strings attached to it. First, check out the #RazerForLife video:

Back when the COVID-19 pandemic first started spreading throughout the globe, many companies were quick off their feet in reacting to it and transitioning supply chains to making face masks and ventilators. Razer was one of those companies, and is now running a new pilot program that is will make one free surgical mask for every resident that is 16 years or older in Singapore.

It is a pilot program just for now, running between May 12 to June 2 with 20 vending machines spread throughout Singapore. Razer will have a full rollout throughout Singapore right as the local shelter-in-place orders are lifted.

The Boring Company has just announced it has completed its excavation work under the streets of Las Vegas, finishing up on the second of two tunnels this week.

Elon Musk's not-so-boring Boring Company first began its work under the streets of Vegas in February 2020, just under a year after the Las Vegas Convention and Vistors Authority (LVCVA) announced the project. Now the "Convention Center Loop" is closer to completion than ever before.

The LVCVA is expecting to take around 4000 people per hour through the LVCC venue inside of Tesla autonomous vehicles, which will save a bunch of time. It takes around 15 minutes to walk across the LVCC, but just two minutes inside of the Boring Company's upcoming Loop.

OK -- let's face it... some people really want to socialize, and even when there's an on-going pandemic (like the novel coronavirus pandemic right now), socializing can be hard. Well, not anymore!

Thanks to the geniuses at Production Club, a newly-designed anti-pandemic suit has been created dubbed Micrashell. It is a full suit that feels like it's ripped out of movies and games, with the designers explaining that Micrashell was born as a "socially responsible solution to safely allow people to interact in close proximity".

The team continues, explaining Micrashell as being specifically designed to "satisfy the needs of nightlife, live events and entertainment industries, Micrashell is a virus-shielded, easy to control, fun to wear, disinfectable, fast to deploy personal protective equipment (PPE) that allows socializing without distancing". Alrighty then.

Since the coronavirus pandemic everyone has been on high alert for viruses on Earth, but what about potential viruses on other planets?

What if there is another virus on Mars for example that has the same level of infectiousness as SARS-CoV-2, and NASA accidentally brings it back to Earth? Don't worry, the chances of that are extremely small, and NASA are already taking precautions to make sure that never happens in the first place. Firstly, for NASA to bring back a virus to Earth that would mean they have found alien microbe life. Secondly, any samples NASA brings back from the red planet immediately go into quarantine as if they have COVID-19 or Ebola.

In an interview with Stanford's Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA Ames and scientist specializing in planetary protection, "I have heard from some colleagues in the human spaceflight area that they can see how, in the current environment, the general public could become more concerned about bringing back some alien microbe, virus or contamination".

We all knew it was going to happen, and it now seems that we're not far from official announcements from all major companies that they're pulling out of Computex 2020.

According to a new report from DigiTimes, it seems that AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA will be pulling out of Computex 2020 because of the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. It won't just be the major players like AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA -- with MSI reportedly not attending Computex 2020 either.

Computex 2020 was originally slated for its usual late-May kick off, but was delayed until September 2020 because of coronavirus. It seems that companies are now opting in for a virtual event, versus an in-person event in Taiwan.

President Trump has been pretty head on with a coronavirus vaccine, where the US president recently said that we don't even need a vaccine for coronavirus as COVID-19 is just going to go away.

Trump said: "I just rely on what doctors say. I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: this is going to go away without a vaccine. It's gonna go away, and we're not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time".

He did talk about the expected second wave of coronavirus in the coming months, with President Trump adding: "There are some viruses or flus that came and they went for a vaccine, and they never found the vaccine. And they've disappeared. They never showed up again. They die too, like everything else".

Elon Musk and his partner Grimes welcomed their new baby boy into the world on May 4, 2020 -- naming him X Æ A-12 -- but no one in the world knew how to pronounce it... until now.

Musk joined Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience, where they talked about Musk's new son -- X Æ A-12. Musk gave Rogan some advice on how to pronounce X Æ A-12, explaining: "X Ash A 12". The X in his name is just pronounce "X" while the A-12 is pronounced "A 12". Easy... I guess?

During the chat, Musk explained how he and Grimes came up with the name. He said that Grimes "mostly came up with the name". Grimes also tweeted out an explanation on the name, where she said:

Can you imagine a future where a plane sniffs and smells you to make sure you're not sick, or carrying some kind of biological hazard or a bomb? Well, get ready -- because the future is about to smack you in the face, and then probably give you a sniff down.

Airbus has teamed with Koniku on developing a new air-scanning system that will -- in laymen's terms -- sniff out for viruses, bombs, and other threats. The partnership between the two companies "was originally focused on contactless and automated detection, tracking, and location of chemicals and explosives on-board aircraft and in airports".

But now with coronavirus floating around the world like a wrecking ball, the companies changed things up in order to "include the identification of biological hazards".

SpaceX is performing some upgrades on its new Crew Dragon spacecraft, adding touchscreens so that astronauts going to the International Space Station receive some next-gen SpaceX innovation.

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first astronauts to take off in the Dragon capsule, headed up to the International Space Station, and will now get to tweak and play around with a touchscreen versus buttons and dials of yesteryear.

In a recent press interview with NASA, Behnken explained: "It's probably a dream of every test pilot school student to have the opportunity to fly on a brand-new spaceship, and I'm lucky enough to get that opportunity with my good friend here".

Elon Musk has just announced that he has become a father again, with Elon confirming on Twitter that his Canadian girlfriend Claire Boucher -- who is known as Grimes -- have had a healthy baby boy.

Musk tweeted that: "Mom & baby all good", but it was the next tweet that kinda blindsided me -- Musk was asked about the name of his baby, to which he replied: "X Æ A-12 Musk". Yeah, I think Elon is being serious by saying that he's named his baby X Æ A-12 Musk. I don't even know how to begin to think about pronouncing that.

Musk has been with Grimes for two years now, meeting at the Met Gala back in 2018. Grimes announced her pregnancy on Instagram back in January, but didn't confirm Musk was the father at the time. In March 2020, Grimes was interviewed by Rolling Stone where Musk was confirmed as the father.

A store worker in Kentucky, USA has uploaded a video to TikTok showing a customer that walks in to pay for her gas with a face mask on -- but she's got a custom one where she cut a hole in it. Yeah, I'm not kidding around.

In the video called "Karen Mask", the woman walks up to the counter to pay for her gas, saying "Hi, there, can I get 10 on pump one please?" to which store worker Joe Samaan takes her payment and then replies: "Where did you get that mask from?".

The woman replies, saying: "Well since we have to wear them and it makes it hard to breathe, this makes it a lot easier to breathe". Samaan wants to make sure he's actually seeing what he's seeing, getting her to reiterate her changes to the mask by asking: "Cutting it?"

Australia has had its COVID-19 contact tracing app COVIDSafe deployed to Australians, but the government received a huge pushback from Aussies that didn't want the app being forced on them as mandatory.

Well, India hasn't been so pleasant -- with the Indian home ministry making it mandatory for all workers to download and use their new COVID-19 contact tracing app 'Aarogya Setu'. To makes matters worse, the Indian home ministry have warned that there will be "punishment" if there's negligence.

Over 80 million people across India have downloaded the COVID-19 contact tracing app so far, but the government has hopes to hit 350 million smartphone users throughout the country -- on top of basic phone users with an interactive voice system. Yeah, India is taking things to the next level with COVID-19 contact tracing.

The one question that has been puzzling scientists' minds is, 'are we alone in the universe?'. While we haven't found any evidence to suggest that we aren't alone, it's still important to keep an open mind about it all and keep on searching.

One British scientist claims that we aren't alone, and that she is certain that there is at least some form of life out there in the vastness of space. This British scientist is Professor Monica Grady, and she claims that we should be looking for external life on Jupiter, in particular, one of Jupiter's moons Europa. The professor says that this life would resemble an "octopus", and wouldn't look like a human.

According to Grady, "When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's almost a racing certainty that there's life beneath the ice on Europa". Grady goes on to explain that Europa could be home to new life below its very thick layer of ice, which stretches fifteen miles deep. The idea behind life being on Europa is that there's water below the thick layer of frozen water, and that the frozen water shelters the life from the harsh radiation and asteroid impacts from above.

Well, coronavirus is coming in like a wrecking ball in a bigger way than we thought -- where if it's not causing havoc worldwide through social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, deaths, industries shuttered and businesses closed -- some permanent.

Yeah, it's not enough -- now it's time for social distancing to have its effect on what we're all sitting at home doing right now: binging TV series after TV series and movie after movie. Warner Bros. Television presidents Susan Rovner and Brett Paul recently held a conference call to talk about the studio and its future production in the weeks post-coronavirus shutdowns.

Variety spoke with a "source familiar with what was said on the call", with the site reporting that coronavirus and its social distancing impacting production from feeding the cast and crew of TV and movies, through to sex scenes and hand-to-hand combat.

The Boeing designed X-37B plane is about to take off on a new mission, and as per usual, no one really knows what it's doing and why.

The U.S Air Force is preparing to launch the Boeing designed X-37B, which is a space drone that is highly classified by the United States government. Due to the space plane being so classified, no one really knows what its missions are or what it's doing while it's off the ground, but what we do know is this will mark its sixth mission to date. The last mission the X-37B went on had the plane in the air for a total of 780 days, it was airborne from Sept. 7, 2017, until Oct. 27, 2019.

The missions are called OTV, which stands for Orbital Test Vehicle. This mission, in particular, is called OTV-6, and we can expect that the plane will be breaking the previous record it set. The Air Force hasn't disclosed what kind of payload the plane is carrying, but we do know that it isn't any kind of weaponry, or at least that is what the Air Force has said. The upcoming mission for the X-37B is scheduled to launch on May 16.

A team of international astronomers has managed to capture 15 rare images of the inner rims of planet-forming disks that are located hundreds of light-years away.

The images were published in the journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics, and shed some new light on how planetary systems are eventually born over. Planet-forming, or protoplanetary disks are formed in unison with their neighboring star. Dust particles are pulled together through gravity and eventually form into small rocks that then pull more dust particles together to eventually become what we know as planets.

According to the lead author on the study, Jacques Kluska from KU Leuven in Belgium, "In these pictures, the regions close to the star, where rocky planets form, are covered by only few pixels. We needed to visualize these details to be able to identify patterns that might betray planet formation and to characterize the properties of the disks." The images were created at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and astronomers used a technique called infrared interferometry using the ESO's PIONIER instrument.

If you happened to miss the news due to the slew of coronavirus related stories flooding the news, NASA will be launching a helicopter from the surface of Mars after they arrive.

NASA plans on landing on the red planet with its new rover Perseverance sometime in early 2021. While the rover will be doing most of the reconnaissance work that will include a wide range of testing, there is a small aircraft aboard Perseverance that will be tagging along for the fun of it. NASA will be slapping a small helicopter on the back of the Mars rover, it has no scientific value and is merely there for a technical demonstration of launching the first man-made aircraft on another planet.

Since the launching of the helicopter on Mars will mark the first time humans have launched an aircraft on another planet, NASA has decided that the helicopter deserves a name. NASA took essay submissions from students around the country for what the helicopter should be named, and high school student Vaneeza Rupani from Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, won. NASA has now officially named the helicopter 'Ingenuity'.

For one of the biggest reveals in decades, the Pentagon has just released not one, but three different videos of UFOs -- yeah, unidentified flying objects. The truth really is out there.

I should correct myself: they're not called UFOs, because that's so 1999 -- the US Defense Department refers to them as unidentified aerial phenomena. This isn't new and it's something that I covered in 2019, with the previously released footage coming out in "unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017".

In a statement, the US Department of Defense said: "The US Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos. After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorised release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena".