Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 206

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.

A new means of storing renewable energy is being researched, and strangely enough in incorporates using mountains as big batteries.

The study by Julian Hunt and his colleagues of Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) details a new system of energy storage called "Mountain Gravity Energy Storage (MGES)". MGES places cranes on the edges of steep mountains and then moves sand/gravel from a storage site located at the bottom of the mountain to another storage site located at the top.

This process is much like a ski-lift and requires a motor or a generator to transport the storage vessels but instead it generates electricity when the sand is lowered back down from the top site. How is this done? MGES uses gravity to its advantage, converting energy into storeable electricity that is proportional to the sand's mass, gravity and height of the mountain its situation on.

NASA has admitted that it is "struggling to explain" why oxygen is being created, and then consumed on Mars. The US space agency has been left scratching their collective heads since.

The reason behind this is that NASA's own Curiosity rover that is chilling on the Red Planet has returned some rather interesting data back to our Pale Blue Dot, showing that elevated methane levels were recorded, and NASA can't explain why. There have been tests conducted and completed to try and work out why these levels were so high, but NASA doesn't know why.

NASA's Curiosity rover "breathes" in the air on Mars, analyzes it and tells NASA what types of gasses are detected. But something interesting was discovered -- here on Earth the background levels of certain gasses will increase and decrease as the seasons change, and something similar is happening on Mars.

Scientists out of Britain have managed to create realistic 3D holograms that can be seen with the naked eye, heard and even felt.

A team of scientists working at the University of Sussex in southern England has managed to use technology to create a prototype called Multimodal Acoustic Trap Display (MATD). This prototype has the ability of "simultaneously deliver visual, auditory and tactile content". This is done through using sound waves or "acoustophoresis" that move and manipulate particles to form an image.

The team spoke out about how they achieved this, saying "Our system traps a particle acoustically and illuminates it with red, green and blue light to control its color as it quickly scans the display volume." Due to the system being developed with sound waves, it allows the hologram to not only be seen but also heard and felt.

The Kuiper Belt object located deep in our solar system has had its named changed from MU69 Ultima Thule, to Arrokoth.

Why have NASA decided to make the name change? Well, 'Ultima Thule' means "farthest place", but it also has the same term that white supremacists and Nazi's in particular used to refer to a mythical homeland. The 'Thule Society' was a German occultist group founded in Munich right after World War I.

The society was also heavily recognised by Adolf Hitler, and as you can imagine many people that knew these facts didn't think that NASA's name for the object fit. So in an effort to side-step the controversy, NASA decided to rename the object from 'Ultima Thule' to 'Arrokoth'. This new name is derived from Powhatan/Algonquian language and it means 'sky'. Above is a video of Dr. Phoebe Farris of the Powhatan-Pamunkey Tribe officially renaming the Kuiper Belt object.

Astronomers have confirmed that a star was ejected out the supermassive black hole that is located at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.

A team of researchers of Carnegie Mellon University's McWilliams Center for Cosmology spotted the star, which is titled S5-HVS1 in a constellation called Grus. When spotted by the team, it was traveling at insane speeds, 10x the speed of most other stars in our galaxy. According to the team, S5-HVS1 was moving at a ridiculous 3.7 million mph after it was ejected out the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*.

The team of researchers was led by Sergey Koposov, who said, "This is super exciting, as we have long suspected that black holes can eject stars with very high velocities. However, we never had an unambiguous association of such a fast star with the galactic center." Douglas Boubert, a researcher at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the study, said: "The velocity of the discovered star is so high that it will inevitably leave the galaxy and never return".

A new report out of the Wall Street Journal has suggested that Google has access to and is collating millions of patients' sensitive health information.

The WSJ reports that Ascension, a company with the second-largest health system in the United States, is currently in partnership with Google. This partnership involves Ascension sharing lab results with Google regarding patients' hospitalization records, health histories, names, dates of birth, and more.

According to a person close to the partnership, the project has been called "Project Nightingale" and that reportedly 150 Google employees have access to tens of millions of health records. But why? Google is said to be using the data to feed into new AI-driven software that will be able to make accurate suggestions for patients. It's said that Google wants to eventually be able to develop a searchable cloud-based tool that will be able to examine patient data at large.

Researchers are currently designing an extremely unusual but still awesome spacecraft for NASA. The spacecraft resembles a stingray, but it's not all just for show.

Researchers out of the University of Buffalo are designing the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Explorations (BREEZE). This is a project that has been selected by NASA to receive funding as it has the potential of changing space exploration forever. The researchers designing the spacecraft are envisioning a morphing spacecraft that can flap its wings and make efficient use of the high winds that are in Venus' upper atmosphere.

Researchers are planning on having BREEZE circumnavigate Venus every four to six days, with solar panels also located on the hull it can charge over two to three days on the planets illuminated side. This solar energy would be stored and then power the other instruments that will take atmospheric samples, track weather patterns, monitor volcanic activity, and more.

Just this past Monday, astronomers viewed Mercury sliding past the face of our Sun in quite a rare celestial event.

Astronomers equipped themselves to see the most inner-planet in our solar system go in-between Earth and the Sun. From the above image, we can see a tiny black dot, that's Mercury in comparison to the size of the Sun. US, Canada, and Central and South America managed to get the transition for around 5.5 hours, while Asia and Australia only got a brief show.

Why is this a rare transition? Due to the orbit of Mercury, astronomers don't expect to this occur until 2032, and North America, in particular, won't be able to see it again until 2049. Unfortunately, there was some weather coverage in Maryland for NASA solar astrophysicist Alex Young, he said "It's a bummer, but the whole event was still great. Both getting to see it from space and sharing it with people all over the country and world." A set of images have been provided in the entirety of this article.

On Monday, SpaceX's Falcon rocket took off to the stars, and aboard the rocket was Starlink mini-satellites. 60 mini-satellites in total to be precise.

The satellites aboard the Falcon rocket are just 575 pounds each (260kg), and have joined the other 60, which were launched back in May. Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and chief executive eventually wants to have thousands of these Starlink satellites floating around in orbit, as the plan is to offer the world a global high-speed internet connection everywhere.

Not only are there 60 more Starlink satellites now in orbit, but SpaceX also achieved two new milestones with this launch. This launch was the first time SpaceX flew a rocket with a previously used nose cone and an orbital booster that has been used three times previously. According to Musk, "These boosters are designed to be used 10 times. Let's turn it around for a fifth, guys".

The most detailed large-scale simulation has been released showing just after the Big Bang, all the way until the present day.

Scientists have been struggling with the creation of accurate simulations of cosmic-level events due to the limitations of computing power. The computational limitations forced scientists to choose between large-scale designs or fine detail. But now, scientists from Germany and the United States have completed and released the most detailed large-scale simulation of a galaxy forming.

The simulation is called TNG50 and is a state-of-the-art simulation of the formation of a galaxy similar in mass to our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. The video shows a formation of a single massive galaxy, with cosmic gas becoming denser and denser over the course of billions of years. The Hazel Hen supercomputer, located in Stuttgart, created the simulation over the course of a year using 16,000 computational cores. The results are an extremely detailed cosmic visualization that consists of 230 million light-years in diameter and more than 20 billion particles that represent dark matter, stars, cosmic gas, magnetic fields, and supermassive black holes.

Researchers have devised a new way to measure gravity, and they have done this by measuring the differences in atoms while they are in a superposition state.

To give a bit of background on this new way of gravity measuring, we must understand the traditional way of measuring gravity. Currently, the standard way of conducting an experiment to measure gravity is to drop objects down tubes that fly past measuring instruments. Unfortunately, with this method, some of the test results get obscured by stray magnet fields.

The team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has managed to create a new way of measuring that doesn't require any objects to be dropped. Instead, researchers released a cloud of cesium atoms into the air of a small chamber; they then used flashing lights to split the atoms into a superposition state.

MIT can have fun too, and it's not in the same way that normal everyday people would. Instead, it's much cooler as they take they their Mini Cheetah robots out to do flips and kick a soccer ball around.

In a new video that has been posted onto the MIT Biomimetics YouTube Channel, we observe nine new Mini Cheetah robots being taken outside for some testing. The video begins with the robots merely making their way to the testing area, and some are kicking around a soccer ball and others and just enjoying bouncing around in one spot.

The testing also shows some coordinated dancing, body-slams, and a not-so-friendly game of uncoordinated soccer ball kicking. This video proves that MIT has made some leaps and bounds when it comes to robot improvement and range of motion. Eventually, as MIT perfect the designs of the Mini Cheetah's, some could be sent out to hazardous work sites, be used in search-and-rescue missions, and perhaps save some human lives.

Just this past Tuesday, NASA opened up some lunar samples that were brought back from the Apollo 17 mission. One of those samples was an untouched Moon rock.

NASA has said that the purpose of opening up tests into Apollo 17's samples is to gain insight into the correct techniques to practice for samples that will be returned from the Artemis mission. Francis McCubbin, NASA's astromaterials curator, said that "Opening these samples now will enable new scientific discoveries about the Moon and will allow a new generation of scientists to refine their techniques to better study future samples returned by Artemis astronauts."

CNN reports that most of the samples that were brought back from the Apollo 17 mission have already been under study by scientists at NASA, but a separate group of samples was set aside and stored for testing with more advanced technology. Dr. Sarah Noble, an ANGSA program scientist, said: "We are able to make measurements today that were just not possible during the years of the Apollo program."

Who doesn't love a good asteroid story, right? We know NASA does, and so should everyone else that is on Earth, as we can still sit in peace and watch another potentially dangerous one fly on by.

This 2,000 foot wide asteroid has been given the name 481394 (2006 SF6), and in just a couple weeks, it will have a close call with our blue planet. NASA scientists believe that the asteroid will come within 0.029 astronomical units of Earth on November 20th. While that sounds like an extremely small amount of space between the asteroid and Earth, it's still actually quite far away.

An astronomical unit (AU) is the average measured distance between Earth and the Sun, which comes in at 93 million miles. This means that the asteroid still manages to be around 2.7 million miles away from Earth, or to put it into a better perspective, more than ten times farther away than the distance between Earth and our Moon. It should also be noted that after the space rock passes Earth, it won't be a threat again for several hundred years as its orbit takes it off course.