Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 200

Marques Brownlee has sat down with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to give a quick overview of Gates Annual Letter 2020.

The above video was released onto Marques Brownlee's YouTube Channel, and it's basically an overview of Gates' 2020 annual letter that was released onto his website. The letter that Gates and his wife wrote, Melinda Gates, details their 2020 plan on how they are going to tackle issues such as global health (vaccines), education, climate, and more.

Gates and his wife discuss in detail that their strategies for 2020 and how some of his endeavors for creating new solutions are 'high-risk' and might cost a lot of money, but it would be worth it if it paid off. In the video, Gates talks in detail about bringing the 'green premium' (the extra cost in using green alternatives) of using environmentally friendly alternatives down to zero. If you are interested in what Gates' plan is, check out the above video or the annual letter here.

This is not a joke. A group of people are attempting to sell DNA samples of the global elites, and some of the names on the list will surprise you.

I wouldn't blame you if you thought this was a joke, because I certainly did until I read the website as well as the press release. According to the website, a mysterious group that has called themselves the Earnest Project is scheduling in an auction for items that were collected during the 2018 World Economic Forum at Davos. Some of the items are as follows: glassware, cigarettes, paper cups, cutlery, jars, serviettes, hair, and more.

The press release by Earnest Project says, "Third-party verification of EARNE$ T's attendance at Davos will be made available prior to the auction date. Past Davos attendees may also be consulted to verify the plausibility of the collection-action. Many attendees may recall enjoying a muesli parfait (lot #402) in the Central Lounge for instance. Page 10 of The Collection Catalogue provides further details on collection sites."

Astronomers around the world have their observational eyes fixed on the red giant Betelgeuse, as they are patiently awaiting any signs of detonation.

If this is the first time you are hearing about Betelgeuse, don't stress we aren't in any immediate danger. Betelgeuse is located around 650 light years away, and astronomers have estimated that due to it's dimming cycles the star could explode anytime within the next 100,000 years. What's concerning, and what has caused astronomers from around the world to focus their attention on Betelgeuse is the fact that the red giant seems to be dimming at an unprecedented rate.

Betelgeuse is currently sitting at around 35% of it's normal brightness, which has moved it from it's normal position of the 11th brightest star in the sky to the 24th bright star in the sky. These variations in Betelgeuse's brightness are normal, as the internal temperatures inside the star rises and falls. What isn't normal is how rapidly it's doing it. Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope instrument called 'SPHERE', SPHERE allows astronomers to capture polarized infrared light of objects.

League of Legends is one of the biggest games ever created with a player base of over 100 million players. So how much carbon are those players generating?

In a new study, it has been estimated that League of Legends' 115 million players throughout 2019 resulted in around 3,139,385 tonnes of CO2 emissions, based on the average player game time. This amount of output of CO2 is estimated to be around the same as charging 400,372,745,210 smartphones or driving 7,790,037,221 miles.

Both gaming companies and consoles manufacturers are working towards minimizing their carbon footprint, and with study's such as these and others coming out estimating how much carbon they are producing, they are really putting them in a not-so-good spotlight. I don't know if a few studies will push big game companies such as Riot Games to implement a carbon reduction strategy, but it's a start, I suppose.

At the moment, SpaceX is gearing up for the first crewed flight to the International Space Station with their Dragon spacecraft.

According to recent reports, paperwork is the main problem before SpaceX is given the green light to take astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. While it hasn't been publically announced, Ars Technica says that NASA is currently working towards a May 7th launch of Crew Dragon, but that date is lucrative.

Above is a video SpaceX released onto their official Twitter account. The video is of the Dragon spacecraft, and according to the post, it's currently undergoing electromagnetic interference testing. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk originally said that Dragon should launch within the second quarter of 2020, and judging on recent reports, that estimation is quite accurate. Dragon will take to the skies sometime in April, May, June. May is most likely the month when a launch will happen.

A new discovery has been made in the world of astrophysics, but unfortunately, this has got people scratching their heads as it's broken any existing explanations.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) was first detected back in 2007, and while humans first came across them, then it was most likely that there were bouncing around the universe since it's creation. Now, researchers have detected some FRB's coming all the way from deep space, while the occurrence of FRB's is initially quite rare, that isn't what has got researchers both excited and puzzled. These FRB's are coming in the form of a pattern.

Usually, when an FRB is detected, its source is traced back to what is assumed to stars colliding with each other. What has puzzled researchers this time around is the pattern of the new FRB, as it suggests something else is going on out in the universe and that the source is pumping out radio energy in certain timing. Researchers from Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project detected the FRB back in 2019. Then in January 2020, they published a paper detailing that they found more than one burst from the source.

Astronomers around the world have their eyes fixed on one supergiant star at the moment, Betelgeuse. This star is acting really strange and could very well explode into a glorious supernova.

It wasn't too long ago that I reported on Betelgeuse, and how astronomers are witnessing the supergiant star pulsating and dimming. Astronomers estimate that the star has about 100,000 years left in its life, but what they don't know is why it's dimming at unprecedented rates, raising the question of whether or not it's going to explode sooner rather than later.

Veteran Villanova University astronomer Edward Guinan and his team have collated some brand new data, which indicates that Betelgeuse could be in the middle of a 430-day pulsation period. The end of that pulsation period is estimated to be on February 21st and should bring the star to its dimmest state yet. Guinan says, "So something very unusual is going on" as Betelgeuse even now appears to be dimmer than what he and his team expected it to be.

A new report has come out regarding two Russian satellites that are closing in on a billion-dollar U.S spy satellite that is currently orbiting Earth.

According to John W. Raymond, who is the General of the United States Space Force, and serves as the Space Force's first Chief of Space Operations, "It has the potential to create a dangerous situation in space". The Russian satellite is only 100 miles from the U.S spy satellite, and other U.S experts have expressed their concerns on what the Russian craft will be able to learn from close-up images.

Fox News reports that the Russian's have said that the satellites are simply conducting experiments. Fox News also says that an amateur satellite tracker used public data to check out the motives of the Russian satellite, and found that it's "clearly designed" to monitor the U.S satellite. Raymond said to Time, " It's clear that Russia is developing on-orbit capabilities that seek to exploit our reliance on space-based systems that fuel our American way of life."

If you are a fan of space, then it's most likely one of your dreams to be able to see Earth from space. You'd imagine that the first moment you gaze out at our blue planet would be incredible, right?

Garret Reisman, a former NASA Astronaut and currently a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC and a Senior Advisor at SpaceX, sat down with Joe Rogan on his podcast to explain just what that's like. Reisman was asked by Joe, "the first day you actually got up there, was that the first time you have been in space? So your first view of the Earth from above? What is that like?" Reisman then began to describe what that was like, and what kind of experience it was to see everyone's home from space.

Here's what Reisman said, "Wow. Well, I didn't see it right away cause I was in the mid-deck the downstairs of the shuttle, and there's only one window down there, and it's in the corner, ok, so it's in the hatch and it's like the size of a dinner plate. You had a lot of work to do as soon as you get up there, so I'm working like crazy, and after about 30 minutes I see this pale blue glow coming from that window. I was like, "that's the Earth... I should have a look at that". I was super excited for this, ya know? So I wanted to be ready, so I paused, closed my eyes, meditated -- call it whatever you want, I just got ready."

There's no doubt that humans have influenced the world's climate to at least some degree since we have been around, but how much of the now changing climate is our fault?

A new study has been released in the PNAS journal by scientists who have examined the global climate and carbon cycle that occurred millions of years ago. The scientists from Trinity College Dublin looked ancient mudstone deposits in Wales and discovered that the position of Earth's orbit played a major role in carbon-cycle and global climate as a whole throughout the Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction period around 201 million years ago.

The scientists found that volcanic activity in these periods of time played a big role in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that were present in both the ocean and atmosphere. This discovery revealed that both the global climate and carbon cycles were constantly changing. Dr. Micha Ruhl, Assistant Professor in Sedimentology at Trinity, said, "Periodic changes in the shape of Earth's orbit around the sun impacted on the amount of energy received by Earth from the sun, which in turn impacted climatic and environmental processes, as well as the carbon-cycle, on local, regional and global scales."

A former NASA and International Space Station astronaut has sat down with Joe Rogan revealing many facts about space travel and the eventuality of humans going to Mars.

On the Joe Rogan Podcast, former NASA astronaut and now Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC and Senior Advisor at SpaceX, Garret Reisman deep-dived into how humans will eventually make it to Mars and the precautions we will need to take. At about an hour into the podcast, Joe asks Reisman how long does he think it will be before humans can go to another planet?

Reisman says, "going to Mars is something we could do in a decade if we really, really wanted to. It's not a question of technology, the big missing piece I think in understanding about what that would be like [travelling to Mars] is the effect of radiation on the human body." Reisman then continues to explain that there are currently solutions to this problem in the works to mitigating against deadly radiation.

At the end of last month, SpaceX successfully completed their escape test of Crew Dragon. Now rumors are flying about when their next demo flight will be.

According to Ars Technica's Senior Space Editor, Eric Berger, who took to Twitter this past Monday and said that SpaceX's Demo-2 mission is scheduled for May 7th. Berger also states in his tweet that Dragon is "in good shape" and that the specific launch date is "fluid" due to a "number of variables not hardware-related". Berger also mentions that the launch date may move into late April or push into early May, hence the May 7th date.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that you can expect that the first crewed mission will take place sometime throughout the second quarter of 2020. This means that it will happen sometime in either April, May or June, which coincides with what Berger is talking about. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX pushes the launch date back into the middle of May, just to make sure everything is right for a successful launch.

The Trump administration is moving full steam ahead with their plan to put Americans back on the Moon and eventually on Mars in the coming years.

In its annual budget request, which was released just this past Monday, the White House has requested that Congress increase NASA's funding to more than $25 billion in the 2021 fiscal year. The report also states that $12.4 billion will be allocated for the coming 'Artemis' Moon landing program that is scheduled to happen in 2024.

It isn't set in stone that Congress will approve the request, but what we do know is that the White House's recent proposal gives Congress a more detailed evaluation of where the money will be spent and when. An example of this is that $3.4 billion is being asked to be laid aside for the construction of a lunar Human Landing System, "the first directed funding for such a system since Apollo". There are critics of the Artemis program, and if you'd like to read up on that, check out this link here.

Who doesn't love a good map? I know I certainly do, and the more detailed the map, the better it is. So how about a map of our solar system?

Don't worry. Biologist Eleanor Lutz has gone out of her way to map out every single known object in our solar system greater than 10km in diameter. How did she do this? Well, the data was taken from NASA's five separate categories; TNO and Centaur Diameters, Small-body Database Search Engine, Planetary Satellite Physical Parameters, Planets, and Pluto Physical Characteristics and Horizons Batch-Interface.

Using this data, Lutz was able to map out all of the orbits of over 18,000 asteroids that are currently present in our solar system. She was also able to map out at least 10,000 asteroids that were bigger than 10km in diameter, and about 8,000 known objects of unknown size/diameter. It should be noted that this map shows the position of asteroids on New Year's Eve 1999.

The European Space Agency is launching a new Sun probe that is estimated to relay back to Earth unprecedented information about our star.

The mission in collaboration with NASA and the European Space Agency was set to launch the Solar Orbiter on February 9th from Florida's Cape Canaveral. The probe is equipped with bleeding edge instruments that will allow researchers and scientists to gain a better understanding of the Sun's polar regions and magnetic environment.

Once the orbiter is launched and it passes Venus and Mercury, it will reach a maximum speed of 150,000 mph before entering the orbit of our Sun. Once it's there, it's titanium heat shield that is designed to withstand temperatures as high as 930 Fahrenheit will protect its vital instruments from particle radiation and any coronal magnetic ejections.

At the end of last month, a new solar telescope produced the highest-resolution images of the Sun's surface ever. Now, we have a video to look at.

The new solar telescope that did the hard work of relaying these images and videos of the Sun's surface is called the NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope. This solar telescope is designed to give scientists and researchers unprecedented information regarding the Sun's surface and magnetic fields. Researchers believe that with this new information, they will be able to predict solar weather much better.

In the above video, we can see small sections that are divided up by black lines -- these are called cells. Each of the cells is about the size of Texas, and the video we are watching is taken at a wavelength of 705nm over a period of 10 minutes. The surface is seen as "boiling" solar material called "plasma". I'd recommend that when watching the video to reduce the sped down to 0.75 speed to really enjoy the movement.

The medical science field is pushing further and further into technology that is going to benefit everyone in the future. New discoveries happen all the time, sometimes they come in the form of vaccines or medical research, but today it's a handheld skin dispenser.

Scientists out of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT) have managed to create a printer that is able to print human skin. The first rendition of this new device was created back in 2017, then in 2018 Canadian scientists built upon the device and created a new device that was able to print sheets of artificial skin directly onto burn victim wounds.

The results, which were recently published in the Biofabrication journal, stated that the bio-printed skin contains healing properties and mesenchymal stromal cells, which assist the body in cellular re-growth of the affected area. The researchers tested this device on pig skin that had severe burns, and the results were very successful. Marc Jeschke, a researcher who worked on the paper, said, "We found the device successfully deposited the 'skin sheets' onto the wounds uniformly, safely and reliably, and the sheets stayed in place with only very minimal movement".

Just this past Thursday, NASA's Christina Koch made a safe return back down to Earth's surface after breaking the spaceflight record for a female astronaut.

Christina Koch was aboard the International Space Station for almost 11 months, she returned back down to Earth and touched down at precisely 0912 GMT. Koch spent a total of 328 days in space, accompanied by Luca Parmitano from the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Space Agency, who also touched down with her.

Back on December 28th last year, Koch beat the previous record for a single spaceflight by a women of 289 days. This record was set by Peggy Whitson during her stay between 2016 and 2017. Koch is now scheduled to return back to NASA's headquarters for a medical examination. The results will be extremely important as NASA will use them to design future plans for elongated missions to Mars.

There are countless galaxies out there in the infinite vastness of space, and astronomers are constantly looking for new ones to study. Sometimes the ones they find aren't alive anymore and have perished long ago, being deemed 'inactive'.

Unfortunately, this was the case for astronomers out of the University of California who described in a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, a galaxy called XMM-2599. XMM-2599 is shockingly old and has unfortunately fallen into the "inactive" category, but during its time alive, the galaxy pumped out an astonishing amount of suns. Lead author on the paper, Benjamin Forrest said, "Even before the universe was 2 billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultramassive galaxy."

What is even more interesting about XMM-2599 is that most of the suns it made happened in a relatively short amount of time. "More remarkably, we show that XMM-2599 formed most of its stars in a huge frenzy when the universe was less than 1 billion years old, and then became inactive by the time the universe was only 1.8 billion years old" said Forrest. The team of astronomers calculated that during XMM-2599's most active sun producing time, it was pumping out around 1,000 solar masses worth of stars per year.

Las Vegas Sex Dolls Experience is now open for business, offering customers special time alone "interacting" with sex dolls in a private room, at an undisclosed hourly rate.

The new sex doll brothel is licensed in Clark County and operates out of The Studios, which is a "fluid gender social lifestyle club" but residents are not happy. The Studios is under investigation by Clark County code enforcement right now, with the suspicion of operating a business without a license.

The Studios was licensed back in 2016 to operate as an educational institution, but a sex doll brothel is well, quite the opposite of that I'd say. They run under the name Fluid Lifestyles Learning Center, but inside The Studios has beds, couches, TVs, a stripper pole and even bondage equipment -- very educational.