Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 205

When you go and think about places in public that would be coated in everyone's germs, what's the first place you think of? I think of public bathroom door handles.

I'm probably not alone in doing this, but when I'm at a public bathroom, I will try to completely avoid touching the entrance and exit door handle, as I know it's covered in everybody's germs. Luckily, my problem could soon be solved as two students out of China have managed to create a self-cleaning door handle.

The door handle uses ultraviolet light to keep itself germ-free. It has aluminum handles at either end and a thin layer of titanium dioxide covering the glass. When the ultraviolet light is enabled, it triggers a chemical reaction that kills off 99.8% of the germs present. How does the UV light turn on? Easy. The two graduate students thought of that and equipped the door handle with a small generator that uses the kinetic energy of the door opening and closing to power itself. What an incredible invention!

Colonization of other planets may have just hit a speed bump, as a new study has indicated that humans in microgravity environments have their gut severely affected.

According to a new study by biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside, humans that are induced in simulated microgravity, such as spaceflights, have been found to have disrupted the functioning of their epithelial barrier. The epithelial barrier is a bunch of cells that line our intestines and stop any bacteria, fungi, or viruses from spreading throughout our body.

Declan McCole, a professor of biomedical sciences at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, who led the study, said "Our findings have implications for our understanding of the effects of space travel on intestinal function of astronauts in space, as well as their capability to withstand the effects of agents that compromise intestinal epithelial barrier function following their return to Earth."

Originally, astronomers believed that the galaxy NGC 6240 was a result of two galaxies merging together. Recently that theory has been thwarted with newly discovered information.

Astronomers are observing NGC 6240, which is located about 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. For quite some time, astronomers have been confused by this galaxy, but recently a new study has been conducted using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT,) along with the advanced 3D MUSE Spectrograph. This study has shone a new light on NGC 6240, revealing to researchers that the galaxy isn't a result of two colliding galaxies, but instead three.

The most surprising part is that originally, astronomers believed there to be two black holes located at the heart of NGC 6240 (the two galaxies). But after the recent study was finished, astronomers have now discovered that there are three supermassive black holes there, marking the first time ever that astronomers have discovered such a large concentration of them. Dr Peter Weilbacher of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) said, "Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe. The present case provides evidence of a simultaneous merging process of three galaxies along with their central black holes."

The Massachusetts State Police bomb squad is playing around with using robot dogs in the line of fire, leasing out the autonomous Spot robot from Boston Dynamics in some new trials.

Radio station WBUR and the ALCU are reporting that the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad borrowed Boston Dynamics' Spot robot dog, using the AI-driven bot between August and November. The Massachusetts State Police bomb squad won't exactly explain what they used Spot for, but did note it was used as a "mobile remote observation device" that kept an eye on devices and specific locations.

Could we see a gun-toting robot dog in the future, given that the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad are testing Boston Dynamics scarily good technology? No. Boston Dynamics have a specific license in place that restricts Spot from being used for any task or job where it would "harm or intimidate people". As an AI-powered quick-moving surveillance and diagnostics device? Perfect.

A new technique of saving lives has been successfully implemented on a patient; the technique involves almost freezing the patient to give surgeons more time to operate.

This new medical technique is called emergency preservation and resuscitation or (EPR) for short. At the moment its being applied at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore to patients who are arriving in critical conditions. Examples of patients who are receiving the treatment are those who have suffered gunshot or stab wounds and arrive in a cardiac arrest state. ERP is introduced to these patients if their situation indicates they only have minutes to live and need an immediate operation.

Here's how it works. EPR replaces a patient's blood with ice-cold saline cooling their body temperature to anywhere between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. After these temperatures are reached, the patient is then unplugged from the system and quickly moved to the operating table, giving doctors and surgeons 2 hours to work on the patient before his/her body reheats. How come this works? Since the body and the brain are cooled down, all chemical reactions are brought to a near-stop, meaning the brain requires less oxygen to survive, giving the surgeons more time to operate without brain damage occurring.

Back in July, China's Longjiang-2 satellite was launched to the Moon, unfortunately, we now believe that that satellite has created a new impact crater on the surface of the Moon.

China launched the Longjiang-2, which is designed to work with its counter-part Longjiang-1 to confirm low-frequency radio astronomy observations. Now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO for short, has identified a new impact crater on the moons surface, its believed that this impact crater is from China's satellite.

According to Mark Robinson, the leader of the LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) located at Arizona State University, a new lunar crater has been found within the Van Gent crater. The researchers were able to determine this by careful comparisons of old LROC images of the surface of the Moon in the same area versus the new ones. According to Robinson's measurements, "we are fairly confident that this new crater formed as a result of the Longjiang-2 impact". For those wondering how big the crater is, it's estimated that it measures in at 13 feet by 16 feet in diameter.

For quite some time, physicists have been basing their theories off four fundamental forces of nature, but what if we are on the verge of adding one more force of nature into the mix?

Scientists are currently collating evidence to support the theory that there is, in fact, a fifth force of nature that has yet to be detected and that this new force of nature could help explain the extremely mysterious dark matter. This new force of nature dates back to 2016 when the first study was published where findings supported the claim that there is a fifth force. The team behind this study were looking for "dark photons" which are believed to be "carrying" dark matter. To try and see these "dark photons" the researchers used a particle accelerator to shoot particles through a vacuum and observed the reaction.

The researchers closely monitored beryllium-8, an unstable isotope, and found unexpected light emissions that were against the law of conservation of energy. Researchers out of the University of California, Irvine, said that this unknown particle was not a dark photon but instead a boson. A boson is a particle in quantum mechanics that acts as the "glue" that holds matter together. Bosons are present with each of the four fundamental forces of nature, meaning that if researchers suggest that this unknown particle is a boson -- we have a new fifth force of nature.

Everyone wants to know if we are alone in the universe, or if there was some form of life outside of our moderately-sized blue planet. Perhaps there was, and we already have the photos.

Entomologist, William Romoser gave an extensive presentation on his analysis of NASA's Mars rover images this past Tuesday. Romoser claimed throughout the presentation that through his analysis of the images, he can provide evidence to support that life was once and still is present on our red neighbor. Looking at the above image, Romoser says, "Once a clear image of a given form was identified and described, it was useful in facilitating recognition of other less clear, but none-the-less valid, images of the same basic form."

Romoser claims from the images that reptiles and other insect-like forms of life were once on the red planet, and that NASA's rover images are evidence of that. Romoser also says, "There has been and still is life on Mars. There is apparent diversity among the Martian insect-like fauna which display many features similar to Terran insects that are interpreted as advanced groups - for example, the presence of wings, wing flexion, agile gliding/flight, and variously structured leg elements."

Soft Robotics just took a step forward into the future with a new advancement that sees the development of stretchable skin-like robots.

This new technology has been published in Soft Robotics and has come out of the University of Bristol. The difference between 'soft robots' and normal robots is that soft robots can adapt to their environment by stretching and shifting design, while normal robots are much more ridged. Up until now, researchers have had to choose between the soft robots' ability to move and its ability to be able to grip onto surfaces.

Now, researchers from the University of Bristol have taken large inspiration from biological life such as slugs and snails and developed a new robotic skin that can do both. This new robotic skin can crawl across surfaces by the new artificial muscles that researchers have developed for it and grips to surfaces using electrical charges. The new invention has been titled ElectroSkin, and it's so stretchable that it can be compressed down a normal pants pocket.

SpaceX is currently in the midst of testing its prototype Starship Mk1 vehicle, and with every good prototype you are bound to run into some complications.

During the Starship's max pressure testing that occurred yesterday in Texas, the next-gen spacecraft blew its top and erupted huge plumes of gas into the sky. Some pieces of the craft busted off the ship and scattered around the testing site. A spokesperson for SpaceX told The Verge that "The purpose of today's test was to pressurize systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected."

The spokesperson also said that "There were no injuries, nor is this a serious setback." While the above video might seem like its a massive problem, SpaceX is assuring the public that this is no set back and is routine testing procedure. Instead of repairing Mk1 and continuing ahead with that design, SpaceX founder and CEO, Elon Musk has said on Twitter that they will instead move towards a new and more up-to-date design that the company had on the shelf.

NASA has said that the Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a look at the location of the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever recorded.

According to the post on the official NASA website, in January this year, a gamma-ray burst was detected by many of NASA's telescopes, and since then further study has been made by Hubble and astronomers. This gamma-ray burst was a trillion times more powerful than visible light, and just within the few seconds of the blast happening, it emitted more energy than the sun has provided over its 10 billion year life.

Andrew Levan of the Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands said, "Hubble's observations suggest that this particular burst was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away. This is really unusual, and suggests that this concentrated location might be why it produced this exceptionally powerful light".

You might not have heard about Heliogen before, but you will soon if their new technology continues breaking barriers -- the Bill Gates-backed energy startup has successfully concentrated solar energy at "breakthrough" temperatures breaching 1000C (1832F), making it hot enough that it could replace fossil fuels in industrial tasks like producing cement and steel.

Heliogen is tapping AI in the form of computer vision to precisely align a bunch of mirrors to reflect sunlight on a single target, therefore concentrating all of the sun's energy into one point. Until now, this wasn't exactly possible and it's what Heliogen has done differently - and successfully.

At their commercial facility in Lancaster, California, Heliogen experienced what is just our first taste at the realms of replacing fossil fuels by using carbon-free, ultra-high temperature heat from the sun, transforming that sunlight into fuels. Before now, commercial concentration of sunlight have only reached 565C (1049F) -- but Heliogen's work here saw them hit 1000C (1832F). These temperatures are normally only reached by burning fossil fuels, making this a big breakthrough.

SpaceX seems to have just breathed life into its biggest rocket yet, the full-size Starship Mk1 vehicle. Are we ready to take off yet?

Perhaps not just yet, but the preliminary testing before take-off is underway. According to onlookers of the Starship testing at SpaceX's facilities near South Texas town Boca Chica, the Starship prototype entered a pressure testing phase. Above, we have a video from the NASASpaceflight YouTube Channel, who captured SpaceX employees working on Starship and then it's first-ever vent test.

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has said that the Starship Mk1 will be companies deep-space transportation vehicles and that the rockets used aboard the ship will be reusable to minimalize flight costs. Starship is 165-feet tall and uses SpaceX's biggest rocket yet, the Super Heavy. SpaceX recently got selected by NASA to work on the Artemis lunar program to design a lunar lander, check out that article here.

Since humans could see there were other planets nearby, we have always wanted to pursue these distant worlds, but what are the risks of traveling there?

NASA has recently conducted a new study on astronauts that spent some time on the International Space Station (ISS) and returned back to Earth. The study showed evidence of the human being affected by low-gravity, and more specifically, in the astronaut's upper body. The study looked at eleven astronauts, nine men and two women who spent an average of six months aboard the ISS.

NASA used ultrasounds on the astronauts and found that by the 50th day aboard the floating lab that seven of the eleven astronauts had a lack of blood flowing through their internal jugular vein. The study also found that the blood sometimes even went in reverse. For those that don't know what the internal jugular vein is, it's a vital vein located on the side of your neck that collects blood from the brain and face. NASA also found that one of the astronauts developed clotting in the vein while still in flight back to Earth.

So what happens when we run out of food due to climate change pushing us in that direction? A Swedish scientist has said that we should consider the idea of eating human flesh.

A Swedish scientist called Soderlund spoke throughout an interview on the State Swedish Television channel TV4. Throughout his interview he gave a power-point presentation called "Can you Imagine Eating Human Flesh?". As you can imagine this power-point included many topics that pointed towards cannibalism being the solution to the ill effects of climate change.

Soderlund explained that he isn't calling for people to go out and kill their neighbours and eat their corpses for dinner like humans did back in ancient times. Instead, he argues that over time food sources will become more scarce which would then result in people having to think outside the box to obtain food. That outside of the box thinking would first start with humans consuming pets, insects and then eventually other humans. The scientist believes that if people were introduced to human flesh over a long period of time there wouldn't be that much of a resistance.

Scientists have been pondering the origins of life since they have had the mental capacity to do so. Today we have been brought one step closer to the answer.

A team of scientists has made a brand new breakthrough discovery regarding the origins of life and how they occurred on Earth. The team has found ribose, arabinose, and xylose sugars in two different meteorites, which has now been added to an already growing list of biologically relevant compounds that have been found in space rocks. Ribose is a critical component of RNA (ribonucleic acid), and in modern life, RNA is the messenger molecule that copies genetic instructions from DNA.

Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, Japan, lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said "Other important building blocks of life have been found in meteorites previously, including amino acids (components of proteins) and nucleobases (components of DNA and RNA), but sugars have been a missing piece among the major building blocks of life. The research provides the first direct evidence of ribose in space and the delivery of the sugar to Earth. The extraterrestrial sugar might have contributed to the formation of RNA on the prebiotic Earth which possibly led to the origin of life."

Just over 200km north of me here in South Australia is the huge Tesla battery storage array in Hornsdale, with the Hornsdale Power Reserve currently having battery output of 100 megawatts -- and that's to soon increase by 50%.

Tesla, the South Australian government and federal government, as well as French renewable energy company Neoen will be expanding the Hornsdale Power Reserve from 100 megawatts, to 150 megawatts. The upgrades will also include battery storage capacity boosts, which will see it expand up to 193.5 megawatt hours -- enough juice to keep it operating at 100% for over an hour.

The deal comes at the perfect time, with weather here in South Australia for November 20 set to be the hottest November on record with temperatures hitting 40C (104F) at just 10AM. I'm writing this news with all air conditioning on right now and I'm just surviving, but the electrical grid will be taking a big strain today.

NASA has introduced five more companies into the Artemis lunar program, and these companies will be designing what they think is the best moon lander for an astronaut return trip.

NASA has selected the following companies to join its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS): SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp., Ceres Robotics and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc. The basis of this program is that private companies will be able to compete for contracts to deliver NASA science to the surface of the moon. This means that the previously listed companies will all be designing their lunar lander, along with nine other NASA selected companies.

According to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, "American aerospace companies of all sizes are joining the Artemis program. Expanding the group of companies who are eligible to bid on sending payloads to the moon's surface drives innovation and reduces costs to NASA and American taxpayers. We anticipate opportunities to deliver a wide range of science and technology payloads to help make our vision for lunar exploration a reality and advance our goal of sending humans to explore Mars."

The entire surface of Saturn's largest moon has been successfully mapped by astronomers for the first time ever.

Astronomers have taken data from NASA's Cassini mission to successfully map the entire surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn and its moons for more than a decade (2004 to 2017) collecting a plethora amount of data for astronomers. With this data astronomers were able to piece together a diverse terrain containing mounts, plains, valleys, craters and lakes.

According to Rosaly Lopes, a planetary scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, "Titan has an atmosphere like Earth. It has wind, it has rain, it has mountains. It's a really very interesting world, and one of the best places in the Solar System to look for life". Lopes and her team are responsible for the successful combination of images and measurements taken by Cassini to create the first global map of Titan (seen above).

The answer to efficient and cheap space travel might just be simpler than you think; all it requires is a cable and a weight.

Above, we have a video from Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, and this time around, the scientific YouTube Channel is exploring the idea of cheap and effective space travel. The idea that is proposed begins with what is called a 'Tether,' which is simply a weight with a cable attached to it. Kurzgesagt suggests that humans build extremely long versions of these tethers and place them at a safe distance around our planet and use them as a 'free' means of propulsion to other planets.

Since the tether would be spinning around our planet, spaceships would be able to attach onto the tether and use its rotational force to be pushed towards a designated planet. The video says that there will be a few problems in doing this; humans would have to create smaller spacecrafts that would be able to match the tethers speed throughout our atmosphere (12,000km per hour). While that might sound extremely difficult, it should be noted that traditional spacecrafts need to reach 45,000km per hour to exit our planet's gravity.