Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 197

We knew it was going to happen, but now the day is here -- the Toyko 2020 Olympics have been postponed, the first time an Olympics has been disrupted by a pandemic: coronavirus COVID-19.

The world is being rocked to its core over coronavirus COVID-19, and while International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound said it would be making its final decision regarding the postponing of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics with the World Health Organization (WHO), the decision has been made: the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been officially postponed.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed until summer 2021 at the very least, which is another big deal -- it is the first time in history that the Olympics have been delayed or postponed in peacetime. The last time this happened was during the world wars, a much more violent and tumultuous time.

In early March, the team behind the Folding@Home project dedicated the public's power to uncover the mysteries of the coronavirus COVID-19.

If you aren't sure what Folding@Home is, it's a computing project run by a team at Stanford University. The premise of Folding@Home is that PC users around the world can dedicate spare CPU/GPU computational resources to the project, which will then fuel its purpose, and in this case, its purpose is to explore the mystery behind the coronavirus COVID-19. The donated computational power the project receives goes toward researchers who are looking at the molecular structures, and who are attempting to understand its properties.

Greg Bowman, the Director of Folding@home, has taken to his personal Twitter account to announce that Folding@Home "has over 470 petaFLOPS of compute power. To put that in perspective, that's more than 2x the peak performance of the Summit super computer!". Bowman then followed up by saying, "I think that makes @foldingathome the largest super computer in the world, and we're trying to bring the whole thing to bear on #Covid_19. We can't guarantee what the results will be but man is this a cool opportunity!"

Apple is on the move to save struggling healthcare workers who are lacking essential medical supplies. A significant donation from the tech giant is inbound.

According to a Twitter post from CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, Apple has currently been working hard at trying to source medical supplies for healthcare professionals that are at war with coronavirus COVID-19. Cook says that due to the medical supply shortages, Apple will be donating a "millions" of facemasks to health professionals across the United States and Europe.

Cook then goes on to thank all medical professionals that are currently on the front line battling the virus, calling all of them "heroes". Cook didn't state how many facemasks would be going to the United States and Europe, but according to what Vice President Mike Pence said in a briefing, the United States will receive 2 million N95 masks. I'd assume Europe will be receiving a similar amount.

Amidst all the doom and gloom recently, fresh data was released earlier today from the European Space Agency (ESA), showing increased nitrogen dioxide emissions over China, as monitored by its Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor observation satellite.

In a recent tweet by ESA, embedded above, a 10-day moving average graphic shows levels of NO2 from December 20, 2019 till March 16, 2020 from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). In December and January, we saw a high measured amount of nitrogen dioxide, which starts to reduce over time. By the end of January, the levels of nitrogen dioxide reduced significantly till around the start of March, which shows a build-up again, particularly in the northern regions of China.

Congress is not immune to coronavirus COVID-19, with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (a 9th-term Florida Republican) and Rep. Ben McAdams (a new Democrat from Utah) announcing they've tested positive for coronavirus.

The two members of Congress are now the first US lawmakers to be struck down with coronavirus, with Diaz-Balart feeling the symptoms on Saturday -- hours before he left the House floor for a vote on a coronavirus response bill. He explained: "I want everyone to know that I am feeling much better".

Diaz-Balart added: "However, it is important that everyone take this extremely seriously and follow CDC guidelines in order to avoid getting sick and mitigate the spread of this virus. We must continue to work together to emerge stronger as a country during these trying times".

I can only imagine the type of load that digital infrastructure is under right now, with hundreds of millions of people forced to stay at home over the current coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak -- but especially Facebook.

During a conference call on Wednesday to address Facebook's response to coronavirus COVID-19, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the number of voice calls on both Messenger and WhatsApp in Italy have skyrocketed, as well as many other countries around the world as people keep in contact with their loved ones.

Now that more and more people are at home using social media, it has seen a gigantic surge in activity on Facebook's servers. The social media giant has increased its infrastructure and server capacity, with Facebook noting it has doubled the server capacity for WhatsApp.

The search for a coronavirus COVID-19 vaccine is probably the most-wanted thing on this planet right now, outside of toilet paper that is -- and don't worry, scientists are on top of it.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have said that their clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins, with a new study kicking off in Seattle with local, healthy adult volunteers putting their arms up for a jab. A new Phase 1 "clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle", according to a new post on the NIH website.

The new COVID-19 vaccine trial will see 45 "healthy adult volunteers" that are aged between 18-55 years old, across the next 6 weeks, where the first "participant received the investigational vaccine today". The 6-week study will be evaluating "different doses of the experimental vaccine for safety and its ability to induce an immune response in participants".

NASA has been directly affected by COVID-19 coronavirus, with the US space agency having a staffer in Alabama testing positive for COVID-19.

This has forced NASA into a lockdown and pushing a mandatory work-from-home order, elevating the center to "Stage 3". This is NASA's internal label for a mandatory work-from-home order. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama is the NASA site affected, with all employees at the Alabama-based facility forced to work from home.

In a NASA press release, the US space agency explains that all staff will have "restricted access to the center until further notice". Stage 3 designation has NASA forcing its other facilities into a Stage 2 mandate, which means the US space agency "strongly encourages" employees to work from home, but it's not mandatory at this stage -- which is where Stage 3 comes in.

Ava Louise is a 22-year-old "clout-chaser" on social media, where she posted a video of her doing the "coronavirus challenge" which saw her licking a plane toilet seat. Yeah, I wish I was joking, but I'm not.

Louise completed the "coronavirus challenge" stunt and then has been slammed on social media across the world, with the video in question shared to TikTok and saw her licking a plane toilet seat. She captioned the 6-second video clip with: "Please [retweet] this so people can know how to properly be sanitary on the airplane".

She has 19,000 followers on TikTok and over 150,000 followers on Instagram. The video was posted on her personal Twitter on March 14. The reason for her doing the "coronavirus challenge" -- that would be clout. Yeah, she actually admitted that in a follow-up tweet:

The current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak is stopping the world, forcing the largest technology companies in the world to issue a joint statement.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube have all joint forces against coronavirus -- with the joint statement reading:

"We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We're helping millions of people stay connected while jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe".

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that in-person events with over 50 people be limited, or outright cancelled in the United States over coronavirus.

In an update of COVID-19 coronavirus on March 15, the CDC has new interim guidance that recommends "in accordance with its guidance for large events and mass gatherings, recommends that for the next 8 weeks, organizers (whether groups or individuals) cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States".

The CDC includes "conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events, weddings, and other types of assemblies" in its criteria for "large events" and "mass gatherings". However, the new guidance over COVID-19 coronavirus spread doesn't include schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses.

AMC is the largest movie theater chain in the United States, and has just announced plans it is pushing forward with social distancing plans -- cutting down theater attendance by 50% to reduce the chance of COVID-19 coronavirus spread.

The company will now only sell half the tickets per theater that it does now, with any theater that can seat over 500 people to be capped at 250. AMC will also be complying with local and federal restrictions on large social gatherings, where it will be limiting ticket availability and screenings in some of its auditoriums, too.

AMC Theaters boss Adam Aron, said in a statement: "The health and safety of our guests and theatre teams are of the utmost importance to AMC. Therefore, AMC is proactively taking action to cut in half the number of tickets that we will make available at all our US theatres. With this action, who still want to see movies on a big screen".

If you want to use the power inside of your GPU and CPU at home to help researchers find a cure for COVID-19 / coronavirus, then Folding@Home is where you'll want to go.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project spearheaded by Stanford University, and has been around for what feels like forever. Instead of a single gigantic supercomputer, the premise of Folding@Home will use regular computers owned by regular people, building the computing power up into a single, much more powerful force -- towards a single effort, which in this case is coronavirus.

Your unused computational resources from your CPU and graphics card/s can be used to help researchers that are working on understanding the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV (COVID-19 / coronavirus) that will help "aid in the design of new therapies".

This probably won't be surprising to anyone who has been keeping up with the news recently, but the coronavirus has caused The Walt Disney Company to announce the closure of Disneyland.

The announcement was made this past Thursday, and according to the statement, there have been no cases of COVID-19 at the park, but the company has decided to close it anyway in the people's best interest. The closure will be for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure and will begin on March 14th until the end of the month. It was also mentioned that Disneyland Resort Hotels would remain open until March 16th so guests can sort out the proper travel arrangements.

According to New York Times reporter Brooks Barnes, this is the fourth time in the history of the park that it has closed down. The previous times the park has experienced a close was on September 11th, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. At the moment, there is no word on whether or not The Walt Disney Company will be deciding to close Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. If the news is announced, I will be sure to update you in a follow-up post.

An announcement from the European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that the ExoMars mission will be delayed for a further two years as further testing is needed to be done.

According to the announcement, several parts of the spacecraft still need to crucial testing completed before it's given the green light to be sent off to the red planet. Since more testing is needed, the ExoMars mission will miss its launch window for 2020 and will need to wait until sometime between August and October in 2022 for another opportunity. Why do they have to wait so long? Well, that is because of the orbital cycles of Earth and Mars.

Space agencies can only launch spacecrafts to the red planet when the orbital cycles of Mars and Earth are at their closest points to each other. Launching it at any other time would require unnecessary amounts of fuel. The rover is being held back from launch this year to have its parachutes tested, which are used to ensure that the craft lands safely on the red planet. ESA director Jan Woerner said just yesterday, "Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests. This is a very tough decision, but I am sure the right one."

Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to discover a new exoplanet that is so hot that it rains iron instead of water.

The planet is called WASP76b, and is an ultra-hot giant exoplanet that's dayside temperature of more than 2,600 degrees Celsius (4712F). This temperature is high enough that it can melt metals such as iron, but what happens is that strong winds push the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it is cooled and turns into tiny droplets of iron. According to David Ehrenreich, "One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron."

So why does this happen on this planet in particular? Phys.org explains that 'iron rain' occurs on this planet because it only ever shows one side of the planet to its neighboring star. This means that the other side of the planet always remains in darkness, much like how our Moon is tidally locked to Earth. Since the dayside side of the planet is so hot, molecules separate themselves into atoms, and metals such as iron begin to evaporate into the atmosphere. Winds then carry the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it's then cooled, and iron droplets are formed.

You can't escape hearing or seeing news and videos about COVID-19 / coronavirus, so why not track it using available data inside of a web browser?

John Hopkins University have created an interactive web-based dashboard that secures data from the WHO, CDC, and China CDC in order to "visualize and track the reported cases on a daily timescale". John Hopkins University staff explain that the purpose of the coronavirus tracker is to "provide the public with an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds, with transparent data sources".

You can visit the website right here, with some really interesting data on coronavirus cases around the world. At the time of writing there were over 126,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4630 deaths worldwide. The countries with the most confirmed cases of the disease are China with over 80,000 confirmed cases, and Italy with over 12,000.

Apple has already asked its Silicon Valley based staff to work from home over coronavirus / COVID-19, but now the company has reportedly delayed an event over the outbreak.

Cult of Mac is reporting that a source of theirs at Apple has said that the iPhone giant has postponed an event that would've introduced a new, cheaper iPhone (a successor to the iPhone SE) and iPad Pro with a triple-lens camera rig, has been postponed. The company became "concerned" about people gathering at Apple Park in late-March, so they postponed the event.

Not only that, but the Santa Clara County (which is where Apple Park is located in Cupertino) has banned all gatherings of over 1000 people. The ban will be running between March 11 and April 1, so even if Apple wanted to host the event -- they can't. As for the event itself being canceled, Apple will probably announce the products through a regular press release versus an event where people could get coronavirus -- or spread it.

The world is getting a little scary with all the fear mongering over coronavirus / COVID-19, but now New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is deploying the National Guard to New Rochelle to establish a "containment area" in what feels like it was ripped directly from Tom Clancy's The Division game.

Gov. Cuomo said on Tuesday that starting this Friday (13th of March) that all schools, large gathering places and houses of worships will be closed for 2 weeks. The new containment area will have a 1-mile radius, which will be centered around a synagogue that is reportedly the center of the cluster of the coronavirus outbreak in New Rochelle.

New York's Nassau County have 19 confirmed coronavirus cases, including 2 school bus drivers that took around 80 students through many routes in Long Island. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran confirmed that most of the students' families have been contacted by the Department of Health.

When researchers look out into the vastness of space, there are many mysteries to be solved, but one, in particular, has puzzled researchers for quite some time.

That mystery is dark matter. Dark matter cannot be observed directly, but researchers know that its there due to how other objects in the cosmos react to its gravity. Unfortunately, researchers have been strapped for answers when it comes to explaining the origin of dark matter and the role it played and is still playing in the creation of the universe. A new study conducted by researchers located at the University of New York may have answered these head-scratching questions.

The researchers explain that dark matter's secret might be located in a specific type of particle called d-star hexaquark. Researchers who worked on the paper say that these d-star hexaquarks might've been in extremely high quantities at the time of the Big Bang. They also state that they may have formed together to become a fifth state of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensate as they cooled. According to Professor Daniel Watts of the University of York, "The origin of dark matter in the universe is one of the biggest questions in science and one that, until now, has drawn a blank."