Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 209

Just in time for Halloween... the world's largest Ouija board has arrived in Salem. Ouijazilla was created by New Jersey-based tattoo artist Rick Schreck, who is also the vice president of the Talking Board Historical Society, of which I did not know existed until just now.

Ouijazilla weighs a hefty 9000 pounds, and so long that the world's largest Ouija board could have five 18-wheel trucks park on top of it. For those unfamiliar with a Ouija board, the "planchet" is the part of the board that you put your hands-on and it moves around -- with the planchet on Ouijazilla a massive 15.5-feet in length and weighs a huge 400 pounds on its own.

In an interview between Schreck and Talking Board Historical Society's director Karen Dahlman, he explained: "The board that I used, actually, to replicate is the 1998 (board) for Hasboro. The glow-in-the-dark board. That's my favorite. ...Ouijazilla is big enough to put, I think, 2,300 of those boards on top of it".

The use of exoskeletons can and will be vast as the technology matures and time passes, with researchers over at the University of Grenoble releasing their results of a trial using a 4-limb robotic system that helps patients with tetraplegia, which is the loss of control of all four limbs.

The most tricky way of using the system is finding a patient with tetraplegia and getting them hooked into the system, with 28-year-old French man 'Thibault' using the suit. It's not a fully-baked and ready-to-use suit just yet, but in its current trial status the researchers along with the patients can train an algorithm that interprets brain signals which then converts them into physical movement.

Professor Alim-Louis Benabid, president of the Clinatec Executive Board, a CEA laboratory, and Professor Emeritus from the University of Grenoble, France, said in a press release: "Ours' is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed for long term use to activate all four limbs".

NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have addressed the public in a recently concluded Q&A session at SpaceX's HQ.

The Q&A was held at the SpaceX HQ in California where NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX founder Elon Musk stood next two two astronauts and answered some questions regarding their upcoming mission plans. While the talk was quite lengthy, Musk and Bridenstine were asked about the upcoming Crew Dragon project, and according to the administrator after some more testing the first crewed "Demo-2" test flight could launch as early as Q1 of 2020.

Musk also touched on the subject and said that drop tests are about to commence and SpaceX's team will be evaluating its "Mark 3" parachute design. The "Mark 3" design has replaced what was once nylon cords with much stronger "xylon" material.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stepped out of the shadows and has called for the world's biggest carbon polluters to be taxed a fixed amount for their carbon emissions.

According to the IMF, the world's biggest carbon polluting nations should all agree on a worldwide tax that prices carbon emissions at $75 per ton. The IMF also says that this tax should be in place for the next 10 years to ensure the survival of the planet and to keep climate change at safe levels.

A report was released ahead of next week's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. In this report the IMF acknowledges that increase of pricing for carbon emissions from the current global average cost of $2 to $75 by 2030 could have catastrophic market effects. The report says that could prices would more than triple, electricity pricing could increase by 30% in Canada and Australia and gasoline prices could be raised anywhere between 5 and 15%.

Elon Musk is probably the most passionate man on this planet when it comes to traversing the stars, with the SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder having some interesting words to say during a recent event at the SpaceX HQ.

Musk was joined by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the SpaceX HQ in Hawthrone today, with Musk updating the world on the commercial crew launch program that SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on. During the chat, Musk talked about the state of the program, and what is coming next.

There was a Q&A session after the event, where Musk said that what the SpaceX team learned from the Crew Dragon parachute development program is open to the world -- making it available to anyone who wants it. Musk said that literally any of SpaceX's own IP is open to NASA and can feed it out as they want.

NASA are moving along quite nicely with their Mars 2020 rover mission as the space exploration company has announced a new milestone achievement.

NASA has recently completed testing the Mars 2020 spacecraft separation test at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the above image, we see can see engineers and technicians working on the assembly of the rover and according to Ryan van Schilifgaarde, a support engineer for Mars 2020 assembly at JPL, "Firing the pyrotechnic devices that held the rover and descent stage together and then doing the post-test inspection of the two vehicles was an all-day affair".

He continued and said "With this test behind us, the rover and descent stage go their separate ways for a while. Next time they are attached will be at the Cape next spring during final assembly." Since this test has been a success, the descent stage and the rover will be moved off to Cape Canaveral, Florida, this winter. Before both parts are shipped, engineers and technicians will also test the batteries for the rover, while also evaluating the computer and mechanical systems in simulated Mars-like conditions.

Back in March, NASA were planning on doing the first all-female spacewalk but unfortunately had to cancel due to a lack of correct spacesuits aboard the flying lab. Now, NASA and both astronauts have announced a spacewalk will commence on October 21st.

The first planned spacewalk was cancelled due to the spacesuits not correctly fitting rookie astronaut Anne McClain. Since the astronauts are in micro-gravity their bodies slightly stretch, and even though the suits were fitted in a pool before take-off, the measurements can be a little bit off once they get out to the lab.

Since the fitting issue of the suits has now been resolved and the safety of the astronauts has been upheld to the highest extent, both Christina Koch and Jessica Meir have announced via Twitter that they will participate in replacing the solar batteries aboard the lab. Koch and Meir say that they have five spacewalks planned for the future and that any combination of astronauts aboard the station will be participating. The astronauts will be replacing old nickel-hydrogen batteries with brand new next-gen lithium-ion batteries that are expected to last the remainder of the International Space Stations life.

I'm not saying it was aliens... but this story, I don't even know what else could've caused this BUT aliens. Anyway, in remote eastern Oregon at the Silvies Valley Ranch, mutilated cattle were found with their tongues and genitals surgically removed, without a single drop of blood found.

No evidence of how the cattle were mutilated, or how they were able to be drained of blood without a single drop hitting the ground have been explained. Silvies Valley Ranch vice president, Colby Marshall, drove down one of the roads towards the mysteriously slain cattle, where he said: "Then we'll get out and take a little walk to where one of the bulls was found. And the carcass is still there".

The bulls, in the words of NPR, "looks like a giant, deflated plush toy. It smells. Weirdly, there are no signs of buzzards, coyotes or other scavengers. His red coat is as shiny as if he were going to the fair, but he's bloodless and his tongue and genitals have been surgically cut out".

We all use lithium-ion batteries on the daily, whether it's our smartphones, tablets and other devices -- with some of the creators of the rechargeable battery technology being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

M. Stanley Whittingham, John Goodenough, and Akira Yoshino were part of the team that contributed towards the development of lithium-ion battery technology, and without them (and who they worked with, and those after) we would be stuck in the dark... and in some cases, literally. Especially with flashlights being part of a smartphone now thanks to the rear-facing camera and LED flash, all powered by lithium-ion batteries.

Experiments on replacing the then-used lead-acid batteries began in the 1950s and 1960s, with M. Stanley Whittingham partnering with Fred Gamble "showed in 1976 that lithium ions, after donating electrons to produce a charge, fit perfectly into a lattice of titanium disulfide - where they sit patiently (in their "van der Waals gaps") until an electron is provided during recharging. Unfortunately this design also used a lithium anode that could be highly reactive (think fire) if bent or crushed", reports TechCrunch.

DJI has made a significant push in reinforcing the importance of STEM. STEM for those who are not aware is the educational system focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Many schools have adopted STEM education and push forward on educating those interested in working in the science in engineering fields where many of these skills are valuable.

The Robomaster S1, as DJI has labeled the STEM learning kit, is, in essence, something you will need to build and program yourself. The Robomaster S1 looks like a mini version of a rover like we have sent into space to explore different planets. While this specific robot may not be tasked with exploring extraterrestrial bodies, it can explore and even attack terra firma here on Earth.

The Robomaster S1 comes in pieces (many of them), and you must assemble it to build your ground-dwelling or rolling, in this case, mobile robot soldier. Now as you can see the reason I say soldier or attack is that the Robomaster S1 may look cute and friendly, it comes with a gel bead firing blaster and even LED targeting lights to help map the projectile trajectories.

Back in January, China launched their Chang'e-4 spacecraft to the dark side of the moon. Now that spacecraft, and the potential life it contains has sprouted leaves.

China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft housed six life forms on the lunar surface: potato seeds, cotton seeds, rapeseeds, yeast, fruit fly eggs and Arabidopsis thaliana, a common weed. Also aboard the spacecraft was a mini-biosphere called the Lunar Micro Ecosystem (LME). This biosphere re-created Earth-like conditions excluding factors such as micro-gravity and cosmic radiation.

All of the other seeds died besides the cotton, and according to a new 3D reconstruction, the cotton planet grew not one but two leaves before it also died due to cold temperatures. The cotton leaves lasted about two weeks before falling into their cold fate, and from these findings China plans to continue studying how various life forms might be able to survive on the moon.

A new research team who was observing Saturn has found 20 more moons orbiting the planet, bringing the total number of moons circling Saturn to 82, surpassing Jupiters 79.

The research team led by Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard observed 20 new moons, each of them are about five kilometers in diameter. 17 of the moons obit the planet backwards, meaning that their obital rotation is backwards when compared to the way the planet is spinning. The remaining three moons orbit with Saturn in the same direction.

The new moons were discovered using the Sabaru telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Scott Sheppard said that "Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, we are now completing the inventory of small moons around the giant planets. They play a crucial role in helping us determine how our Solar System's planets formed and evolved." Last year when Sheppard and his team discovered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter they hosted and online naming contest for 5 of them, they will be doing the same thing for Saturn's newly found moons.

California has passed a new law that will see the banning of creating and distributing deepfake pornography videos of persons who have not consented to the video being made.

According to a study, 96% of deepfake videos found online come under the pornographic category and with more and more deepfake pornographic videos being released, California has decided to put in place some new laws to protect people. This new law will see statutory damages ranging between $1,500 and $30,000, and if malice is demonstrated throughout the video creation, damages can rise to $150,000.

With laws now in place, apps such as Fake App which allowed users to create their own deepfake porn video and post it onto Twitter, Facebook and Reddit will be stopped in their tracks. Fake App was so simple to use that fake porn videos of high profile people such as Daisy Ridley, Gal Gadot, Emma Watson, Jessica Alba circled the internet. Back in July, the House of Representatives considered federal measures to ban the distribution of deepfake videos to protect the legitimacy of the upcoming election.

NASA are currently working their way towards developing a brand new electric aircraft that could stand as a fuel-and-cost efficient alternative to normal commercial aircrafts.

At the moment, commercial air travel accounts for an approximate 4 to 9% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases, that number is also on the rise as more and more planes enter our atmosphere. NASA plans to nip that problem in the bud with a new electric aircraft design that utilizes light-weight and compact inverters. Inverters are the central component in an electric system and provide power to the electric motor.

Traditionally, the requirement of these inverters comes with the diminishing return of how large and bulky they are, and since weight is such a critical factor in aviation NASA have begun research into developing smaller and more power efficient inverters. NASA has signed a $12 million contract with General Electric to develop a new inverter the has the power of generating a megawatt of electricity, but is only the size of a brief case.

News has come out from the International Space Station (ISS) regarding the astronauts aboard completing the first of five spacewalks.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan have just returned to the ISS after changing over a pair of old batteries. The astronauts were required to install a new pair of batteries that arrived at the ISS just this past week. The new batteries are lithium-ion, and are going to be a massive upgrade from the ISS' twelve old nickel-hydrogen batteries. The newly installed batteries are twice as good as the old ones, and are expected to last for the remainder of the ISS' life.

You are probably wondering what the batteries are powering, they are directly linked to the ISS' solar power network and since 2017 astronauts aboard the ship have been upgrading them. At the moment the astronauts aboard need to do another four more spacewalks to complete the transition from the old batteries to the new. The new batteries are so powerful that one is needed for every two of the old ones. Best of luck for the remainder of the spacewalks!

A new announcement has revealed that in 2021, the Nova-C lander will be hitching a ride aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket that's headed to the Moon.

SpaceX will be using their Falcon 9 rocket for a planned Moon landing in 2021, and the NASA-sponsored flight will also have on board the Nova-C lunar lander that was built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. According to Intuitive Machines representatives, the Nova-C has the ability of carrying 100 kilograms, or 220lbs of cargo anywhere on the lunar surface.

For the 2021 mission in particular, the Nova-C will have payloads from NASA as well as some other customers to fill out the rest of the available room. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement, "We're honored that Intuitive Machines selected Falcon 9, SpaceX's tried-and-true workhorse, for this pioneering mission to the moon. Our partnership with Intuitive Machines is a great example of two private companies working together with NASA to advance space exploration."

The InSight lander that is currently on Mars has relayed back to Earth some amazing audio sounds that scientists believe to be Marsquakes and other martian sounds.

NASA's InSight lander has managed to capture more than 100 events on its radar, but its estimated that only out of these 100 events that 21 of those are marsquake potentials. InSight's seismometer which is what was used to capture this evidence is so impressively sensitive that it can also pick up the sound of wind on the distant planet.

Imperial College London's Constantinos Charalambous who assisted with the audio recordings said commented on the video, saying "It's been exciting, especially in the beginning, hearing the first vibrations from the lander. You're imagining what's really happening on Mars as InSight sits on the open landscape."

Scientists have been observing our solar system for quite some time now, and throughout their observations we have noticed some space objects affected by strange gravitational pulls.

While there are many different theories for why these space objects have had their trajectory affected by an anonymous gravitational pulls, a new theory has suggested that there could be an primordial black hole (PBH) located somewhere in our solar system. This black hole wouldn't be like the one that is located at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, as that black hole is a 'supermassive' one.

If there is a black hole hiding out somewhere in our solar system it would only be around five centimeters in radius, but still have five times Earth's mass. Due to the black holes size and gravitational pulling power, Astronomers Jakub Scholtz of Durham University and James Unwin of University of Illinois at Chicago believe that it could be located much closer than we originally think. The paper suggests that instead of thinking that there is a mysterious Planet Nine effecting the space objects, that this PBH could be the answer astronomers have been looking at for years.

NASA has announced that they are now funding more than a dozen technology projects that could assist with their future plans of landing back on the Moon and Mars.

The funding is sourced from NASA's Artemis Program which plans on landing humans back on the Moon by 2024. According to Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, "These are important technologies necessary for sustained exploration of the moon and Mars. These promising technologies are at a 'tipping point' in their development, meaning NASA's investment is likely the extra push a company needs to significantly mature a capability."

Some of the companies that are lucky enough to be able to receive the funding are Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin which is focussing on cryogenic technology. NASA will be giving Blue Origin the largest chunk of money to test out a new way of cooling hydrogen and oxygen into liquid fuel. The eventual hopes of Blue Origin is to be able to establish and design a new system that can produce fuel on the moon based on this technology.

Firstly, rest-in-peace star ASASSN-19bt. Now that the sentiments are over, NASA has recently caught a cosmic crime in the act as a black hole some 375 million light-years away has eaten a fellow star.

The star was known as ASASSN-19bt and was observed by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short. The satellite provided scientists and researchers a viewing at what happens when a star is torn apart by a black holes extreme gravitational pull. This cosmic level collision is labelled as a tidal disruption event or TDE, which is when a black hole begins the process of tearing the gas from the star before it eventually forms into an accretion disk.

Astronomer Thomas Holoien said "Only a handful of TDEs have been discovered before they reached peak brightness, and this one was found just a few days after it started to brighten." He continued and said "This makes ASASSN-19bt the new poster child for TDE research. Having so much data about ASASSN-19bt will allow us to improve our understanding of the physics at work when a star is unlucky enough to meet a black hole."