Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 203

Back in April last year, humans achieved something had never done before - taking an image of a supermassive black hole. Now, that black hole has been caught emitting jets that are traveling close to the speed of light.

The black hole that we took a picture of is called Messier 87 (M87), and according to NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, that same black hole has been caught emitting jets of material from its accretion disk. The accretion disk is where gas, dust, and other materials swirl around the black hole, and some of the materials are sucked into the black hole, while some are shot back out into space.

The X-ray data indicated that some of the particles that were moving in the jets were traveling faster than the speed of light. While that might sound impossible, it's only possible because of the phenomenon known as superluminal motion. Brad Snios, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said "The jet travels almost as quickly towards us as the light it generates, giving the illusion that the jet's motion is much more rapid than the speed of light".

Over the course of Earth's life many meteors have slammed into its surface, scientists know about the impacts but have struggled to find the craters, until now.

One meteor, in particular, crash-landed into Earth around 790,000 years ago, and the explosion that it created blanketed 10% of the Earth in rock debris. The debris was launched all the way from Indochina to eastern Antarctica and from the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific. Scientists were aware of the impact the meteor created but were unable to find the crater until just recently.

Through the analysis of geochemical and local gravity, scientists were able to pinpoint the impact location to southern Laos on the Bolaven Plateau. The crater was found under a massive field of cooled volcanic lava that spanned a ridiculous 2,000 square miles. According to the recent study, scientists estimated that the crater impact measured in at about 300 feet thick, 8 miles wide and 11 miles long. In the entirety of this article, you will find a geological map of what the scientists have comprised out of evidence.

Astronomers have managed to spot something quite unexpected at the outer rims of our Milky Way galaxy -- new stars forming.

How is this happening? According to Price-Whelan and his colleagues who presented their findings on January 8 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, spectral analysis has shown that these young stars are not of this galaxy and are actually from another. This means that these stars haven't formed from material located in the Milky Way, but have instead come from two close dwarf galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds.

Both of these galaxies are currently on a slow collision course with the Milky Way, and it seems that a stream of gas extending from the galaxies is making its way into the Milky Way and forming new stars. Primary discoverer Adrian Price-Whelan, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, said "This is a puny cluster of stars-less than a few thousand in total-but it has big implications beyond its local area of the Milky Way". Price-Whelan also named the star cluster - Price-Whelan 1.

CES 2020 - So you might not be a people person, that's ok, but everyone needs a bit of companionship whether that comes in the form of a pet such as a dog, cat, goldfish or even a robot?

Meet PiBo, a helpful service robot that has multiple skills up his robotic sleeves. PiBo can act as your alarm clock, find out the weather for the day based on your location, fill you in on the top news stories, play your favorite music, and take pictures with its 5MP camera. Not only can PiBo do all those things, but it also has voice and facial recognition so just you can bond with PiBo and no one else.

So how tall is this robot? PiBo measures in at just over a foot tall and runs the custom Linux-based Circulus OS on a 1.4Ghz quad-core chip and 1GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there is a downside to PiBo. The battery inside of the robot is only 3,400mAh and only lasts for about 2 hours. That's not the worst of it though, PiBo takes 5 hours to charge... Hopefully, with new editions to PiBo, the Korean company behind it can implement some longer life into it.

Recent research has indicated that Venus could be volcanically active today, which means that it's the only other planet in our solar system besides Earth with active volcanoes.

The research which has been published in Science Advances and led by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) has found evidence to suggest the second closest planet to the Sun has active volcanoes. Dr. Justin Filiberto, the study's lead author, said, "If Venus is indeed active today, it would make a great place to visit to better understand the interiors of planets".

So how was this evidence found? The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Venus Express orbiter measured the amount of infrared light emitted on Venus' surface. After the data was sent back, scientists were able to determine which new lava flows that were emitting new light versus old ones from data back in the 1990s. Filiberto says, "For example, we could study how planets cool and why the Earth and Venus have active volcanism, but Mars does not. Future missions should be able to see these flows and changes in the surface and provide concrete evidence of its activity."

Astrophysicists around the world are looking to the skies at one star, in particular, Betelgeuse, as it's begun to dim, indicating that it could explode relatively soon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has taken to his personal Twitter account to let the public know that this isn't something anyone should be worried about. Tyson has littered his Twitter page with awesome facts about Betelgeuse, informing the public with information such as Betelgeuse is the "left armpit of the constellation Orion, is mysteriously dimming, having lost 60% of its brightness across the past six months."

He also has said that "Betelgeuse is so large, if you swapped it with the Sun, it would engulf the orbit of Mars and extend all the way through the asteroid belt. No need to panic, but at 700 light-years, it's the closest star to the Sun that will end its life in a Supernova explosion." Tyson also says that Betelgeuse is expected to explode within the next 100,000 years, and the explosion itself will be visible from Earth even within the daytime.

CES 2020 - CES 2020 is right around the corner, and before everything is about to kick off, we are already hearing about what kind of exhibits we are going to see this year.

For the first time in 52 years, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will feature sex-toy companies on the show floor. Companies behind these sex toys will be promoting their "smart" products through exhibits, and according to WAPO it will include "a multitasking bed for sex and a number of "smart" and Internet-connected vibrators."

CES has recently changed its policy for what it allows at the show. This change of rules came after sex-toy company Lora DiCarlo won a CES innovation award that was later taken away from them due to their product not complying with standing CES policies. The award was later given back to Lora DiCarlo, and CES changed its policies to allow for "sex tech".

CES 2020 - The future is now. Pizza-making robots are making delicious 12-inch pizzas on the show floor of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week.

Picnic is a Seattle-based "innovator of food production technology and Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) solutions" that has teamed with live event hospitality leader Centerplate, to serve CES attendees fresh pizza. Picnic's robot is capable of making 300 12-inch pizzas an hour, which is a helluva lot of pizza per day.

The AI-powered pizza making robot uses a vision system to make adjustments to the pie if it is off-center, with Picnic CEO Clayton Wood explaining: "Picnic's distinct culmination of food production customization and throughput, smart data and cloud analytics is quickly resonating with food service operators".

Scientists use long particle accelerators to move particles close to the speed of light, this testing probes the capabilities atomic and molecular structures.

While most of the testing is done on long mile plus-long particle accelerators, scientists at Standford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created a nano-scale version. The teams created a vacuum sealed silicon chip that uses an infrared laser to accelerate particles, all within less than a hairs width. So how does this work exactly? Imagine a flat silicon chip, but etched in on its surface there are channels and flowing in these channels are electrons.

When the laser is activated it fires a burst of photons that then hit the electrons and accelerates them forward to almost the speed of light. So how does this help research in anyway? For the particle accelerator to be useful it needs to achieve 1 million electron volts (1MeV) or 94% the speed of light, and to reach that stage it needs to pass through 1,000 previous stages. Electrical engineer, Jelena Vuckovic explained that this might not be as difficult as it may seem due to the accelerator being a fully integrated circuit. Meaning all critical functions for it work are built right onto the chip.

The significance of The Hubble Space Telescope cannot be overemphasized, so in an effort to honor the telescopes numerous discoveries, the United States Mint might issue a 2020 coin dedicated to it.

The Mint's American Innovation $1 Coin Program, which was introduced in 2018, aims at honoring significant innovations and innovators by releasing new coins dedicated to the achievements. The program is a multi-year effort that will see the release of one-dollar coins representing each of the 50 U.S states and their specific achievements. In this instance, The Hubble Telescope will represent the state of Maryland.

April Stafford, director of the U.S. Mint's Office of Design Management, said at a Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) meeting, "I love the dichotomy within this portfolio. We have one set of designs that look microscopically inside us and then another that looks way outside and into the universe." The committee favored the design of Hubble orbiting Earth (seen above) as it depicts the telescope doing what it does best, observing distant stars. If you are interested in reading more on this, check out this article here.

Astronomers at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics located in Pune, India, have come across something that is currently a matter of debate.

The team used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to discover an extremely large ring of hydrogen gas that's bigger than the galaxy it's surrounding. The gas is estimated to have a diameter of about 380,000 light-years, which is equivalent to about four times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.

The galaxy that the gas is surrounding is called AGC 203001 and is located around 260 million light-years away from us. Usually, galaxies that are found to have an abundance of neutral hydrogen gas are actively forming stars. Shockingly, (here's the kicker) AGC 203001 is showing zero signs of being an active galaxy, puzzling astronomers at how the hydrogen was distributed. If you are after more information regarding this discovery, check out this article here.

If you have watched Star Wars or if you are even a little bit into science fiction or just general science for that matter, then you would know what light speed is. How would you like to travel at light speed?

If you aren't aware of what light speed is, then here's a quick science lesson for you. If you take a particle and accelerate it close to the speed of light which is 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282 miles per second, the energy required to move that particle becomes infinite. Making it impossible for any form of mass to reach the speed of light or exceed it.

Luckily, Google Maps isn't moving particles, and can instead give us observers a novel hyperspace experience through a nifty effect. If you didn't know, Google Maps is now equipped with a new tool that allows users to navigate the solar system at break-neck speeds, and here's how to do it.

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the best tools we have to observe the cosmos. To close out 2019, NASA has decided to honor the telescope by making the last photo from it.

Above, we have an image of the galaxy called ESO 021-G004, which is located 130 million light-years from Earth. The image that Hubble has taken is simply breathtaking, as we can see such a detailed image of the galaxy. NASA scientists offered some insights to what we are exactly looking at, here's what they had to say:

"This galaxy has something known as an active galactic nucleus. While this phrase sounds complex, this simply means that astronomers measure a lot of radiation at all wavelengths coming from the center of the galaxy. This radiation is generated by material falling inward into the very central region of ESO 021-G004, and meeting the behemoth lurking there-a supermassive black hole".

2020 is shaping up to be a massive year for NASA, and the space exploration company wants you to be as excited as they are.

A new video has given the public a basic road map of what to expect from NASA this year. In 2020, NASA is preparing for the launch of Artemis I for the Moon, rocket testing, making plans for commercial science missions to the Moon, preparing for a rover to land on the Moon and search for water, trying out the next-gen spacesuit and most importantly, launching American astronauts from the U.S.

The video also shows that Boeing and Space X will be bringing astronauts to the International Space Station. Despite some expected setbacks, NASA seems to be more than excited about what 2020 will allow the space exploration company to achieve. We will have to keep our eyes peeled because if NASA stays on schedule 2020 could be a monumental year.

Have you ever seen galactic fireworks? They don't have anything to do with traditional fireworks that use paper, powder and fire. Instead, they use sonic booms and gas.

The above photo is of a galaxy in NGC 4258, it's quite similar to our Milky Way galaxy but instead it has two extra spiral arms that flow in X-ray, optical and radio light. A new study using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that at the heart of this galaxy a supermassive black hole could be spewing out high-energy particles that then heat up the disk of the galaxy, and create shock waves that are much like sonic booms.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory captured an image that showed many bubbles of heated gas that were equivalent to about 10 million suns. Astronomers observed these bubbles and concluded that gas that was originally in the disk of the galaxy had been heated and then catapulted out into different regions of space.

Astronomers are peering out into the black void and are wondering how space bodies (comets, asteroids) are interacting with our Sun and Jupiter.

The scientists decided to simulate many different types of space bodies and watch how each of them interacted with the Sun and Jupiter as they approached them. The results were released in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and revealed that in some cases of an object entering our solar system, Jupiter could alter the trajectory of the object enough that it becomes bound to our solar system.

Hands and Walter Dehnen of the University of Munich said, "We used an advanced code which runs on graphics processing units rather than traditional computer processors to enable us to simulate such a large number of objects in a short time. The simulations took two days in total using around 70 graphics cards, so roughly 140 days if we had only used one card and much, much longer if we had used a normal desktop computer processor."

Just last year, it was revealed that a Stanford-trained scientist had created the world's first gene-altered human baby. That scientists and a few of his colleagues have now been sentenced in a secret Chinese court.

He Jiankui and his two colleagues are facing prison time of three years for being found guilty of "illegal medical practice". Jiankui is also required to pay a huge 3 million yuan fine, which is equivalent to $429,000 USD). Think that's where the pain for Jiankui stops? Nope. He is also banned from reproductive medical work for life.

China's state-run Xinhua News Agency says that back in 2016 the scientists and his co-workers (Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou) assisted in enabling the reproduction of "multiple couples of HIV-infected persons." The team edited the embryos of two of the babies that were implanted into women, removing the CCR5 gene in hopes of making the offspring resistant to HIV. The women eventually gave birth to three gene-edited babies.

If you didn't know, every planet in the solar system spins at a different speed. This is due to each of the planet's size and mass. So how fast are other planets spinning in comparison to Earth?

James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at the Japanese space agency (JAXA) and a former scientist over at NASA, has comprised a short animated video that gives us a clear visualization of each of the planets rotation speed. The video shows one globe, but each of the sections of the globe is the different planets in the solar system. Each is rotating at their respective speeds.

Earth rotates at 460 meters per second or roughly 1,000 miles per hour. This is how we established that there are 24 hours in one day. The above video shows how each of the other planet's full rotations compares to Earth's relative to our star. O'Donoghue said on Twitter, "I had the idea to make this back in December last year but I didn't think people would be interested in it." Since then, the video has had over 215,000 views.

NASA's Curiosity rover is hard on work uncovering mysteries and creating new ones on the distant red planet, and now it's at the center of another one.

Curiosity has given planetary scientists another brain teaser to wrap their heads around as the SUV-sized laboratory has found "significant seasonal and year-to-year variability" in Mar's oxygen levels. The SAM instrument aboard Curiosity measures what molecules makeup Mars' atmosphere. Scientists know that as the planet goes through its seasonal changes - CO2 freezes in winter, reducing air pressure. During summer and spring, things thaw out, and the CO2 raises air pressure.

Oxygen, on the other hand, accounts for only 0.16% of the Mars atmosphere but didn't follow the expected rises and falls. Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and first author on the new study, said "The fact that the oxygen behavior isn't perfectly repeatable every season makes us think that it's not an issue that has to do with atmospheric dynamics. It has to be some chemical source and sink that we can't yet account for."

With the planet becoming more and more demanding on energy, physicists already began exploring ways of creating unlimited energy. Now, we could be on the brink of unlocking it.

The Sun, our main source of energy in the solar system, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. At the Sun's core, 500 million metric tons of hydrogen are fused each second, emitting massive amounts of energy. Physicists for some time have been trying to attempt to replicate this same principle of nuclear fusion on Earth, and if that is achieved, we can expect an unlimited supply of electricity.

According to scientists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), boron powder has been injected into the plasma allowing for more control of the experiment, a lowering in greenhouse gas emissions, and removal of long-term radioactive waste. Adding boron powder to the mix of plasma prevents the tungsten in tokamak (fusion facilities) walls from interacting with the plasma.