Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 215

Venezuela has been plunged into darkness for the fourth time this year with another nationwide blackout hitting the country, in something that Venezuelan officials are calling a hostile "electromagnetic attack".

The blackout has taken most of the country down including the capital Caracas, with close to 94% of the Venezeulan telecommunications infrastructure affected. Internet connectivity in the country has dropped to 10% nationwide, which means we're not hearing much out of the country and whatever comes out, is in drips.

The Venezuelan government released a statement on Twitter saying the blackout was "an electromagnetic attack" but didn't point any fingers in who did it. Officials are working around the clock to restore power and internet cconnectivity, while working on supplies like food and water, as well as health services and transportation.

Elon Musk is the real-life Tony Stark of our age, founding companies such as Tesla and SpaceX and pioneering some of the best technology advancements in their respective fields.

SpaceX is currently designing a selection of rockets, some of which are eventually aimed at to at taking us humans to Mars. The rocket that is shaping up to be the winner of the Mars race is SpaceX's Super Heavy Rocket. Originally, the Super Heavy Rocket was planned to have 31 next-generation Raptor Engines, each of the engines are powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Ignition of both of these substances creates 200 tonnes of force per engine, and the Super Heavy Rocket now has 41 of them on at launch.

Musk recently took to Twitter to answer a fans question regarding the full stack of engines on the rocket. Musk replied with "Full stack is 41 rn, but kinda beggin for just one more ..." SpaceX's Super Heavy booster will be launching the 100-passenger Starship vehicle towards Mars. Starship will be powered by 6 Raptors, which explains the total of 41 - Super Heavy having 35 + Starship having 6. Funnily enough, SpaceX already has one round flight booked to the moon, Yusaku Maezawa will be taking the Starship Super Heavy rocket around the moon sometime in 2023.

During the 50th anniversary for the Apollo 11 Moon missions, Vice President, Mike Pence shared with the American people some great news surrounding the next moon mission, Artemis 1.

NASA is currently planning on returning to the moon by 2024, and to do that the space exploration company needs to do two preparation tests on their brand new spacecraft called Orion. This new space program has been called Artemis by NASA - in honor of Apollo's twin sister in Greek Mythology and will consist of three stages.

The Artemis 1 launch will an uncrewed spacecraft thousands of miles past the moon. Artemis 2 will consist of the astronaunts actually being aboard Orion, and then finally Artemis 3 will be the launch where American astronauts will step foot back on the moon. Before these checkpoints of the Artemis space program can go underway, there still needs to be some final tests done to Orion before its blasted off into space.

A recent discovery has come out from the Faulty of Physics, University of Warsaw and University of Oxford regarding Quantum Computation and how it is much faster then standard methods we are using today.

According to the scientists from the mentioned Universities, the discovery has been deemed the 'Holy Grail' of computer science and will unlock more faster and more accurate data processing. The studies suggests that with this now new found knowledge, quantum technologies could boost applications such as medical diagnostics, robotics, artificial intelligence and much more.

Since the the 1970's, we have been using the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm (FFT). This algorithm makes it possible to efficiently compress and transmit data, store pictures, broadcast digital TV and talk over our phones. While this algorithm is widely used, it still has limited capabilities. The answer to these limitations has now be found in the power of Quantum Mechanics with what has been called the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT).

Ever wondered the fastest possible time with a Rubik's Cube? Its not by a human, but of course an artificial intelligence and boy its quick.

Above we have Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo who have engineered a robot that can solve a Rubik's Cube much faster than humanly possible. This robot can solve a puzzle in just 0.38 seconds, which is the current record on paper. This news came out in March of last year, but now we have a new invention in the artificial intelligence Rubik's Cube solving field. This time, researchers behind DeepCubeA have managed to teach their artificial intelligence through human experience to solve a cube in 1.2 seconds.

While this might not be as fast as Katz and Di Carlo's demonstration, DeepCubeA's AI managed to solve the cube in less moves. This is because the system focuses on using real learning experience and to improve speeds. DeepCubeA equipped their AI with roughly 10 billion different puzzle combinations, this repertoire of combinations allowed for the AI to complete the puzzle in just 28 moves. The average human takes around 50 moves to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Israeli-Russian physicist, Yuri Milner has decided to partner up with VERITAS to go on the hunt for alien communication code in a completely different way.

Yuri Milner decided to fund Breakthrough Listen, a science based program with the initiative of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence somewhere across the cosmos. To help them do that, Breakthrough have partnered up with VERITAS, or - Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System. The goal of the partnership is to basically search the surrounding stars for alien morse code through nanosecond-long optical pulses.

The most conventional way of looking for alien communication is through radio waves, so the line of thinking behind is the project is to stray away from the norm and try something different in hopes of receiving some form of information. As we don't know how aliens communicate, anything is really worth a shot. Its certainly not guaranteed that Breakthrough or VERITAS will stumble across something, but hopefully they do because it will be good to know that we aren't alone out here.

Elon Musk's research company that is creating what could be the bridge between the brain and technology is beginning its testing on human subjects as early as next year.

Musk's Neuralink is the newest technology in brain-interfacing and has the goal of what Musk describes as a way of achieving a "a sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence." Doing this will pave the way forward for human benefits in the field of medical science and other fields. At the moment the technology is quite new, and for it to be used applicants will have to surrender their skulls to a drilling process that will create the ultra thin holes that are required to insert the Neuralink threading.

While this might seem out of the ball park for human technological capabilities, Musk's company performed tests on rats and the performance results exceeded that of today's systems. The rats that were tested showed exceptional data transfer results, the data was captured through a USB-C port located on the head of the rat, and provided 10x more than what the best current sensors can offer. Long term, Neuralink plans to allow for the electrodes that are planted in the subjects head to be able to communicate wirelessly with chips outside the brain (image above).

Area 51 is going to light up on September 20 for all the right reasons, with a huge crowd of people planning to storm Area 51 in Nevada. The event is being organized on Facebook with 1.6 million people (and it keeps going up) planning to attend Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us.

The event will see the millions of people at the time meeting at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and then from there the post says they will "coordinate our entry" into Area 51. Better yet, in case the government starts shooting at people to stop them the post adds that "if we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets", finishing on a more positive note of "Lets see them aliens". Yeah BOI.

The United States Air Force is putting its military foot to the ground, with Air Force spokesperson Laura McAndrews telling ABC News: "The United States Air Force is aware of the Facebook post. The Nevada Test and Training Range is an area where the Air Force tests and trains combat aircraft. As a matter of practice, we do not discuss specific security measures, but any attempt to illegally access military installations or military training areas is dangerous".

Americans are currently celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 space launch, and what better way to experience it all over again then with an interactive website that shows you the entire thing.

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch that occurred on Wed Jul 16th, 1969 a website has been developed and dedicated to re-living the whole experience. Users can go to this website here which has been sourced entirely of historical material.

Heading over to the website we can see that it can filtered by 'mission milestones', as well as the transcript has been provided and updates in real-time as the launch progresses. There is also images on the right-hand side of the site, each of the images are from the official launch taken by NASA and the astronauts themselves.

Perhaps the future of human health benefits will come in the form of tiny robots that assist your health problems from the inside your body.

The above video has been released onto the official Georgia Tech YouTube Channel and showcases what is has been called a "bristle-bot". The bot is only 2mm (about 0.08in) in length, weighs 5mg and can move at about 8mm per second. Not only are the bots, small fast and diversable, but they are made out of lead ziconate titante and have the ability to turn voltage into vibration for movement.

Georgia Tech has developed these bots but at the moment they wouldn't be much benefit to health insitutes as they can only move in one director and can't carry a payload. The end goal of these bots is eventually equipping them with the ability to jump and swim. Once these goals are completed and implemented, we could see these bots being adopted to combat health problems and fix people from inside their bodies out.

Humans are continuously attempting to map the stars and gain a better understanding of the planets we have in our solar system. One of those planets that are in our understanding slow cooker is our very own red planet, Mars.

Scientists are hell-bent on attempting to figure out if Mars was home to its very own version of life and now a recent discovery coming out MSL Curiosity regarding a specific Mars landmark and how it could of potentially been the spot life developed. MSL Curiosity is Mars Space Laboratory, a space probe mission with a goal of discovering more about Mars and if life was ever at home on the planet.

Christopher House is a Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University, he is involved within NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission and in a press release from Penn State University he talked about the discoveries made in Mars' Gale Crater. "Gale Crater appears to have been a lake environment. The water would have persisted for a million years or more." The team managed to locate a mudstone in the crater and also find that "the whole system, including the groundwater that ran through it, lasted much longer, perhaps even a billion or more years."

As America and NASA come closer to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Moon landing, NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine shined a light on what the next space-program will be.

Bridenstine was on Face The Nation and was iasked about how NASA plans on getting to the Moon within the next 5 years. According to Bridenstine, "There's two risks. There's technical risk and there's political risk. We would be on the moon right now if it weren't for the political risk. We would be on Mars, quite frankly, by now had it not been for the political risk." Combining into the 'political risk' is the other half the equation which is funding, which Bridenstine also says that was a massive issue.

Since the announcement by the Vice President for a Moon mission in the next 5 years, NASA has recently received the funding necessary to make this mission possible. Donald Trump recently said on Twitter that the Moon mission should not be focused on, and rather that Mars should be America's next goal.

The human race has made another milestone in the quantum entanglement field where they have managed to teleport an electron to a low-orbiting satellite 300 miles away.

According to a team of researchers in China, scientists have managed to use quantum entanglement to teleport an electron 300 miles away. An MIT Technology Review said that this is the furthest the technology has managed to teleport an object, the scientists findings have been published in a paper online at arXiv.

This isn't the first test of its kind, for about a month these scientists have conducted many tests and have beamed up millions of photons from their ground site located in Tibet. The team said that "This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum Internet."

The global understanding of how the universe works could get another injection of information after a new Russian space probe conducts its 6.5 year survey of the cosmos once it reaches its destination.

Russia partnered with Germany has successfully launched a new space probe telescope called Spektr-RG, and after its 100 day journey to Lagrange Point 2 it will be surveying the surrounding galaxies. Spektr-RG will be surveying for 6.5 year survey that is expected to gather information on 100,000 galaxies clusters, hundreds of thousands of active stars and 3 million supermassive black holes.

With this new information that will be recovered, its believed that the human race as a whole will be given a better understanding of how the universe is mapped. Not only will this new map be great, scientist also expect to gain a better understanding of how black holes form and the distribution of matter is throughout the universe. Dark energy is also on the list of theories that should gain some level of information.

NASA has partnered up with Made In Space to demonstrate a new spacecraft that will 3D print spacecraft components in Earth's lower-orbit.

Made In Space and NASA will soon be bringing Archinaut One to lower-earths orbit when the launch of the Rocket Lab Electron rocket takes to the skies from New Zealand in 2022. The spacecraft will be "positioned in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft will 3D-print two beams that extend 32 feet (10 meters) out from each side of the spacecraft." The craft will be equipped with solar panels that will generate five times more power than normal solar panles the same size spacecraft. These solar panels will act as energy sources for when the craft is manufacturing.

Here is the official description: "Once it's positioned in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft will 3D-print two beams that extend 32 feet (10 meters) out from each side of the spacecraft. As manufacturing progresses, each beam will unfurl two solar arrays that generate up to five times more power than traditional solar panels on spacecraft of similar size. The in-space technology demonstration marks the start of the second phase of a partnership established through NASA's Tipping Point solicitation."

There is many black holes throughout the observable universe, and as humans attempt to try and discover physics behind these strange matter eating giants we are constantly thrown off track by new information. Today is one of those days.

NASA has been using its Hubble Telescope which is designed to view deep into space at objects that are many, many light years away, such as black holes. At the heart of the NGC 3147 galaxy, which is 130 million light years away, the Hubble Telescope spotted a black hole that was acting differently than expected. Supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies are matter swallower's, as their huge mass has been pulled into an infinitely small space, where their gravitational pull becomes infinite and space-time curves inwards infinitely.

Keeping this in mind, active galaxies feed these supermassive black holes which are at the center of galaxies. Black holes having such a large gravitational pulls usually produce a ring of space debris that circle the hole until it is swallowed. Galaxies that are less active and have smaller black holes don't have the gravitational pull to produce these material rings. The black hole that is in NGC 3147 shouldn't be one of those producing a ring, as scientists assumed the hole was starving. That wasn't what the Hubble revealed though.

The billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, just unveiled a new giant lunar landing vehicle that was created by Blue Origin, his own rocket company. The new lander is called Blue Moon and comes in varying sizes and will take different payloads to the moon.

Blue Moon is the first step in what would turn into what Blue Origin calls a "sustained human presence" on the moon. Bezos said at the event: "This is an incredible vehicle, and it's going to the moon". The comapny has received multiple grants from NASA adding up into the millions in its mission to create critical lunar lander systems.

Bezos unveiled its new Blue Moon landers that have been designed to carry robotic and infrastructure payloads to the moon, with payloads weighing up to 7 tons (6.5 metric tonnes). The larger variant will, in Blue Moon's words, return Americans to the moon by 2024. Blue Moon explains: "the larger variant of Blue Moon has been designed to land an ascent vehicle that will allow us to return Americans to the moon by 2024".

NASA has announced that SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is set to deliver supplies to the International Space Station today, the craft will bring science supplies and hardware.

NASA has shared the news to its official Twitter account saying that Dragon will be leaving earth and will rendezvous with the Space Station starting on 5:30am ET. The launch will be live-streamed and will be the expected arrival time is 7:30 a.m. Back in early March we learned that the mission would carry 400 pounds of supplies and equipment and that eventually SpaceX will be looking to send astronauts and not just cargo to the International Space Station.

If you are interested in checking out the successful splashdown of the Crew Dragon back in early March visit that footage here. If you want to keep on top of what NASA is doing you can visit the official NASA website here.

The US Air Force has gone next-gen in defensive technology and have demonstrated with a ground-based laser that they can shoot missiles out of the air.

The above image is what is called Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD for short. SHiELD is located at the White Sands Missile Range and a recent demonstration has proved that the new technology can still perform when intense scenarios are occurring. The laser is intended as a defensive technology, with the end goal being it shrinking down and becoming portable by it being applied to jets.

While this is some pretty darn cool technology don't expect that it will be going live anytime soon. The first airborne tests are expected to be conducted sometime in 2021, so its a fair way off before it is implemented. When that time arrives and SHiELD is fully developed air combat could be changed forever as the ultimate defensive weapons has been created.

NASA plans on putting a man and a women on the Moon by 2014, to do that they are going to need integrated human lunar landing systems.

NASA are sticking to their guns with their goal of putting a man and the first women on the moon by 2024. To do this the Space exploration administration is seeking proposals from the industry in support of rapid development of an "integrated human lunar landing system" that will include "elements such as a descent element, ascent element, and transfer vehicle."

NASA will be going over proposals from U.S industry that fulfill their needs of integrating a crewed demonstration of the elements they require and accurately meet the challenge of getting a man and the first women on the moon by 2024. If you are interested in checking out anymore news regarding NASA, head on over to their website here.