Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 211

The word explosion is not what you want to hear when you read news about the smallpox virus, but an explosion has rocked Russia's State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology on Monday.

The facility is only one of two places on the planet that actually houses live smallpox samples on-hand, so an explosion has officials concerned. Russian news agency TASS reports that the explosion and post-explosion fire were caused during "routine maintenance" of the facility.

No hazardous pathogens were released, if you trust Russia that is, while one worker at the facility was injured in the explosion and is at a local hospital getting treated for burns.

We all know the world will not end because of climate change or global warming, or whatever they start blaming next year... but rather, ourselves. We will do it to the human race -- humans, and while it might not be us directly... we'll blow the world to sh*t indirectly.

Laura Nolan, an ex-Google staffer that resigned in 2018 over protesting having to work on a project that would see big changes to the US drone program -- has said that AI robots that aren't operated by humans, should be banned. Nolan said that robots that aren't human-controlled should be outlawed, in the same way chemical weapons are kept under control over an international treaty.

Nolan was hired by Google back in 2017 to work on Project Maven, which saw Google working with the US Department of Defense on the AI project. Over 3000 Google employees ended up signing a petition against the involvement between the search giant and the US DOD that would see improvements to drone strikes killing more people abroad.

Astronomers were going about their rounds in search for gravitational waves and stumbled across the biggest neutron star discovered to date.

The findings were published in Nature Astronomy and are from the National Science Foundation-funded NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center. Astronomers at the West Virginia University were using the Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County to observe the star which has been titled J0740+6620.

J0740+6620 is a rapidly spinning pulsar star that harbors 2.17 times the mass of the Sun which is staggering 333,000 times the mass of the Earth. What is most interesting though is that this neutron star is only 20-30 kilometers across, breaching the known limits of how massive and compact a single object can be without converting itself into a black hole. For more information about the recently discovered neutron star, check out this article here.

Being an Astronaut is no walk in the park, there is numerous different tests you must pass before you strap on a space suit and get blasted off to a nearby planet or Moon.

One of these tests is being able to operate confidently in low-gravity, so NASA has begun their low-gravity simulation training in a huge water tank at the Johnson Space Center. Since the Moon has much less mass than Earth, its gravitational pull is considerably less than Earths. In fact the Moon's gravity is exactly 83.3% less than Earths, meaning that when on the Moon an objects weight is reduced to 16.6% of what it would be on Earth.

While training in a water tank in weighted suits isn't a one-to-one simulation of the gravitational change, its the best we can do as a human race for the time being. NASA has given a statement regarding the training, "NASA astronauts wear weighted vests and backpacks to simulate walking on the Moon, which has one-sixth the gravity of Earth. Astronauts Drew Feustel and Don Pettit are among those training in the massive pool, which is used primarily to train astronauts for spacewalks aboard the International Space Station."

Last week India attempted landing on the moon and right before the country was about to achieve touchdown India's Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost communication with the craft.

Since India can't communicate with its Chandrayaan-2 lunar lander it has been assumed that the lander has collided with the moons surface in a crash landing. NASA has decided that they will be using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's high-powered camera (LRO) to attempt to spot the crashed lander next week.

Noah Petro of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said that "Per NASA policy, all LRO data are publicly available. NASA will share any before and after flyover imagery of the area around the targeted Chandrayaan 2 Vikram lander landing site to support analysis by the Indian Space Research Organization."

Imagine a future where you buy a car in no particular color, and then customize it instantly -- in real-time from your phone or a button in the car, to change the entire color scheme both inside and outside.

MIT is working on just that with researchers out of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) developing a reprogrammable ink that has been called PhotoChromeleon, for obvious reasons. It has a chameleon-like ability to change color, and does so using an specially-created ink.

This ink is sprayed onto something and then each color can be tweaked by activating and deactivating specific light sources. The team explains: "For example, if you use a blue light, it would mostly be absorbed by the yellow dye and be deactivated, and magenta and cyan would remain, resulting in blue. If you use a green light, magenta would mostly absorb it and be deactivated, and then both yellow and cyan would remain, resulting in green".

Palmer Luckey rode into the technology world like a tornado, pioneering VR with the Oculus Rift -- having his company acquired by Facebook for $2 billion, then off into the (real) sunset. Now his new company, Anduril Industries, is valued at $1 billion thanks to a new fundraising round.

Back in mid-2017 he founded his new company Anduril, which uses lidar technology that powers self-driving cars -- with cameras and infrared systems as well as AI as a virtual wall. Anduril is working with the US government, and has plans of monitoring the battlefields of the future with what should amount to much less loss of human life.

Anduril has had a new fundraising round where the company is reportedly now valued at $1 billion, with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz signing a big cheque according to anonymous sources of CNBC.

Something strange happened on August 21 -- an environmental monitoring station on the very bottom of the Baltic Sea off of the coast of Germany, went completely missing. Yeah, it is GONE.

The Boknis Eck Observatory was sending out its usual data transmission when it all of the sudden just stopped, so the team sent divers down to the bottom of the ocean to check it out and discovered it just wasn't there anymore. The entire 1630-pound (740kg) observatory has disappeared, with the divers only finding a cable -- the observatory had been torn away from the cable and taken.

Hermann Bange, a marine biologist for GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel explained: "The devices were gone, the divers could not find them anymore. When the divers reached the bottom of the sea last week at the observatory's location, they found only the torn-off land cable. It was completely shredded".

Foxconn's first job once its factory in Wisconsin is built and operational will be an automated coffee robot for mall kiosks, airports (probably the best place) and office spaces of the future.

The Chinese giant teamed with Texas-based company Briggo to manufacture the new automated coffee machines. Foxconn will use its upcoming LCD factory in Wisconsin, which will make the coffee machines for Briggo, while seeking other contracts to build products for other companies.

Foxconn has been in hot water over its facility, which seems to be spiralling in mismanagement. The company is saying it'll have its factory complete in 2020, but it'll be smaller, and employ less Americans than the original plans.

Elon Musk has some choice words for conspiracy theorists: SpaceX has better technology than Area 51 -- the super-secretive US base where supposedly aliens and associated alien technology is hidden from the world.

During the recent World Artificial Intelligence conference in Shanghai, China, Musk talked about the possibilities of the US government being in contact with aliens, and hiding it from the public. Musk doiesn't think that's the case, with the Tesla and SpaceX founder saying: "There are people out there who think we have found aliens. Trust me, I would know: We have not".

This is when the Area 51 and Area 59 mentions happened, with Musk saying: "People ask me if I have been to Area 51. Ok, please. SpaceX actually has area 59 and it's eight better than area 51".

China has found something bizarre and very strange on the far side of the moon, with its Yutu-2 rover discovering a tiny crater on the moon with material of an unusual color and consistency.

The discovery was discussed in a new paper published by Chiense researchers, on Chinese-language site Our Space. The discovery was pretty much by accident, with the Yutu-2 rover scheduled for power down during the lunar night in late-July but then something strange was spotted.

The team spotted a crater near the Yutu-2 on its image preview of the "strange-looking substance", which led the team to scanning it with the Yutu-2's optical and near-infrared spectrometer. Still, they had no idea what they were looking at apart from reporting the material is "gel-like" and isn't a color that is seen on the lunar surface.

If you thought deepfake foolery only happened in video form, then you would be wrong -- some fraudsters have slammed a manager for $243,000 in something called vishing (voice phishing).

This method involves using fake voice technology, with the Wall Street Journal reporting a case of voice fraud in which the company was caught with its pants down over $243,000.

Criminals used commercially available voice-generating AI software that tricked the CEO of a UK-based energy firm into thinking "he was speaking on the phone with his boss". The CEO heard the voice, thinking it was his boss and not thinking anything suspicious -- requesting him to transfer $243,000 urgently for an order with a Hungarian supplier.

President Trump and Vice President Pence have announced that US Space Command is back and operational, after a lengthy 17-year hiatus the Cold War-era division of the Air Force is back.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the US Space Command will "ensure the protection of America's interests in space", but the new Space Command isn't the same, and shouldn't be confused with Space Force. Space Force is the 6th branch of military that President Trump is hoping to build, which will focus on Air Force operations where no one can hear you scream.

Trump said at the event itself: "The dangers to our country constantly evolve. Now, those who wish to harm the United States, who seek to challenge us in the ultimate high ground of space, it's going to be a whole different ballgame".

Humans will forever be on this discovery chase of finding life outside of our own planet, and to do that we must invent the instruments that will make it much easier to detect potential life on other planets. Astronomers from the McGill University have just taken that step in the right direction.

These two McGill University students, Evelyn Macdonald and her supervisor Prof. Nicolas Cowan have devised a "fingerprint" for Earth. Both of the astronomers have used over a decade of observations of Earth's atmosphere which has been taken by SCISAT satellite that is currently monitoring the planet. With this data the astronomers constructed a transit spectrum of Earth, or a"fingerprint" containing information about Earth's atmosphere in infrared light.

Better known as a "bio-signature", the "fingerprint" also contains information about our ozone and methane levels which scientists expect to be the basic building blocks of life. Prof. Cowan said "A handful of researchers have tried to simulate Earth's transit spectrum, but this is the first empirical infrared transit spectrum of Earth. This is what alien astronomers would see if they observed a transit of Earth."

DARPA is on the look out for a new underground military tunnel or base, putting out a request for university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels.

Why? Well, for research and experimentation purposes of course. DARPA is desperate, posting the request on August 20 and saying it wants responses by August 30 by 5PM ET. I guess the world might be ending on September 1, eh?

DARPA said that their ideal space would be a "human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks w/ complex layout & multiple stories, including atriums, tunnels & stairwells. Spaces that are currently closed off from pedestrians or can be temporarily used for testing are of interest".

KFC offered up its plant-based meat-free chicken nuggets collaborating with Beyond Meats for its Beyond Fried Chicken test, exclusive to one of its stores in Atlanta -- well, that 'chicken' sold out in 5 hours flat.

Interestingly, KFC said it sold as much of the meat-free chicken it did in those 5 hours than it sells popcorn chicken in a week. KFC said it would be looking at the results of its meat-free chicken sales and reception, but didn't indicate whether we'd see a bigger test or nationwide rollout.

With its popularity, KFC would be silly to not continue this trial at least -- it seems popular. Beyond Meat also gets a bunch of that limelight, and now they have headlines of selling out their meat-free chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken of all places.

NASA launched their Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) back in June and now the clock is starting its orbit around Earth. NASA will be testing DSAC for over a year.

What is an atomic clock? Well, a traditional clock counts its seconds based on a ticking pendulum, an atomic clock measures the distance between objects by timing how long it takes for a single to travel to the object and make it back to the clock. NASA goal in mind is that having an atomic clock out in space will allow for future space missions to have pinpoint accuracy without the need of transmitting the signal back down to Earth.

Currently, a spacecraft sends and receives signals to Earth, which then people on Earth use to pinpoint its location. This process can take several minutes and sometimes even hours. A spacecraft with its own atomic clock would not have to deal with this transfer time and would be able to calculate what it needs to aboard the ship. With NASA's orbital atomic clock now floating around Earth, spacecrafts can also travel much longer distances as the signal no longer needs to reach Earth's surface. NASA will be conducting a one-year test on this atomic clock.

The SpaceX team are currently celebrating the successful test launch of the human-transporting Starship vehicle, the Starhopper.

The Starhopper is designed to carry humans to different locations on Mars' surface when we arrive there, and today SpaceX has successfully achieved a 150 meter high flight test. The Starhopper lifted off just after 6pm EDT and flew sideways in the air and touched down at a separate landing pad. The flight lasted for just 57 seconds.

SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk took to Twitter to congratulate his team on their achievement, saying "Congrats SpaceX team!!" The Starhopper ship uses one Raptor engine, for a comparison - the 100-passenger 'Starship' rocket that SpaceX is developing has six Raptor Engines and the 'Super Heavy' will have 35. Yesterday SpaceX had to cancel the Starhopper's test flight due to a engine malfunction, its great to see fixes were made in such a short time. Congratulations SpaceX!

If you are a fan of science and space, then you should definitely check out Rick and Morty. An episode in the series tackles the debate of whether or not Pluto should gain its planetary status back or remain as a dwarf-planet.

NASA's Chief Administrator believes that Pluto should re-gain its planetary status and be looked at as if it's a planet. He says "Just so you know, in my view Pluto is a planet and you can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again, I'm sticking by that, its the way I learned it, I'm committed to it."

Pluto lost its planetary status a little over a decade ago when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) conducted a vote towards whether or not Pluto met the planetary criteria. For a space body to be considered a planet it must orbit the sun, have an almost round shape and "clear its orbital neighborhood". The 2006 vote on Pluto remaining a planet fell short due to it not meeting the last part in the criteria.

SpaceX's Starhopper vehicle was scheduled to conduct its test run today when it had to be canceled due to one of the engines on the hopper malfunctioning.

Starhopper is the single engine version of the SpaceX Starship and is the craft Musk and his team designed to eventually take people around the Moon and Mars. According to the team, the hopper's 150 meter test flight and landing was aborted due to one of the gines on the hopper not igniting. Elon Musk Tweeted and said "Igniters need to be inspected. We will try again tomorrow same time."

Musk then followed up with another tweet explaining the malfunction in more detail, saying "Raptor uses dual redundant torch igniters. Better long-term, but more finicky in development. Appears to be a wiring/connector issue " Another flight schedule hasn't been booked as of yet as the SpaceX team is currently evaluating what is needed to be done before a test flight can commence.