Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 272

Reports have indicated that the Inspiration4 crew faced some "challenges" when it came to using the Dragon toilet.

The Inspiration4 mission with SpaceX raised $200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. $50 million was thrown in by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after the crew successfully landed back on Earth off the coast of Florida. While the mission was an overall success, it didn't come without its challenges. According to Musk, the crew experienced some "challenges" with Dragon's toilet system.

Musk tweeted that Dragon will be getting upgraded bathroom facilities for future flights, "Definitely upgraded toilets :) We had some challenges with it this flight," said Musk. Back in July, mission sponsor and crew member Jared Issacman said to Insider that "It's not a ton of privacy. But you do have this kind of privacy curtain that cuts across the top of the spacecraft, so you can kind of separate yourself from everyone else." If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

A new video has captured the moment the Inspiration4 crew first saw the Earth through SpaceX's Dragon cupola.

The video has been posted on the Inspiration4 YouTube channel and shows crew members floating around the Dragon capsule. Hayley Arceneaux, the crew's medical officer, is seen center frame smiling at the camera, and in the background, the very famous soundtrack from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing.

Hayley is then seen looking out the see-through dome or cupola that SpaceX equipped the Dragon for this specific flight. The video shows Hayley's reaction to the view out the cupola and other crew members vocalizing their amazement. The very last few frames really show how genuine this moment is as Hayley's reaction goes from excited and smiling to blank-faced awe with tears welling up in her eyes. A truly incredible moment to capture on video.

Reports are indicating that a newly released study has added to our timeline of human evolution through carbon dating footprints.

The study has been published in the journal Science, and co-author David Bustos explained that he first heard about "ghost tracks" when he began work as a wildlife scientist at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico back in 2005. The "ghost tracks" got their name from how the footprints would appear on blank Earth if the ground were wet enough during certain times of the year. When the ground became drier, the tracks would disappear.

Inspection of these tracks confirmed in 2016 that humans made them, and according to research published in Science on Thursday, the tracks have been dated and are now some of the earliest known footprints of humans anywhere throughout the Americas. The tracks date back to 21,000 to 23,000 years ago and prove that during that time period, humans were present in the area, which is several thousand years earlier than scientists previously estimated.

Officials have warned that Tropical Storm Sam formed on Thursday in the Atlantic Ocean and has now become the 18th named system of the season.

According to reports and official warnings from the National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Sam is strengthening 1,560 miles east-southeast of the northern Leeward Islands and is currently moving west at around 15 mph. Officials are warning that Tropical Storm Sam could gain enough strength over the weekend to have wind speed greater than 110 mph, categorizing it as a major hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center said, "Sam is rapidly intensifying, and maximum sustained winds have increased." Adding, "Rapid intensification is forecast to continue through early Saturday. Sam is likely to become a hurricane very soon and then could be a major hurricane by Friday night or early Saturday." At the moment, it's unclear whether Sam will reach landfall, but officials have said that residents located in Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the US East Coast to remain alert about the situation.

A team of researchers has accidentally found two galaxies that were hidden from view sitting at the edge of space and time.

Yoshinobu Fudamoto, an astronomer at the Research Institute for Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Japan, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), led the team that used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) located in Chile to make the discovery. ALMA is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes and is capable of seeing through dusty environments and viewing incredibly large distances.

The team stumbled across the two new galaxies when they were observing two target galaxies named REBELS-12 and REBELS-29. The team noticed that thousands of light-years away from the target galaxies, there were bright emissions. This discovery led the team to pursue with follow-up observations that led to the discovery of two galaxies are named REBELS-12-2 and REBELS-29-2. These galaxies were hidden behind a cloud of cosmic dust and aren't visible in UV and optical light.

On Monday, a volcano erupted on a Spanish island, and now residents are filming the giant rivers of oozing lava flowing down streets.

The Cumbre Vieja ridge is where the eruption occurred, and the 5,500 residents in the nearby area were lucky enough to put some distance between them and the volcano, thanks to early warnings from scientists. The first eruption was heard on Sunday afternoon, and onlookers saw the Cumbre Vieja ridge spewing bright red magma into the air.

According to the Canary Islands Volcanology Institute, the lava measured in at more than 1,800 F and was moving 2,300 feet per hour, headed towards the Atlantic Ocean. As previously mentioned, prompt warnings from officials caused all residents in the area to evacuate, avoiding any casualties. However, officials are saying the lava flow could last for weeks or even months.

Researchers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to spy on six galaxies that appear to have died early in the universe's development.

NASA has announced the news with a press release via its website. According to the post, when the universe was in its early stages of development when it was only around 3 billion years old, it went through the most significant period of star birthing in its history. However, not all galaxies were as lucky as the Milky Way, as some appear to have run out of key components resulting in deaths.

Hubble, in conjunction with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) located in northern Chile, researchers were able to identify six galaxies that ran out of cold hydrogen gas that is required to create a star. As a result, all six of these galaxies are "dead". So, what caused these galaxies to die? At the moment, the answer remains a puzzle, but Kate Whitaker, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and lead author on the paper, has proposed a few different theories that could have interrupted development.

Using new techniques to observe the constellations of Taurus and Perseus, astronomers have been able to discover something "unprecedented".

A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal has detailed the discovery of a spherical-shaped void in space between the two star-birthing constellations. When viewing the constellations in 2D images from Earth, astronomers have to consider the illusion of forced perspective. But now, due to observational advancements, astronomers have achieved a breakthrough in terms of analyzing molecular clouds in the interstellar medium.

Researchers, for the first time, are able "to analyze the 3D spatial structure and thicknesses of famous nearby star-forming regions." Allowing an "unprecedented insight into the origins and fates of molecular clouds in the interstellar medium", per this study. From the new mapping strategies, researchers have confirmed what was long theorized and now what is named as the Per-Tau shell.

Officials have observed that the frequency and the intensity of the ash coming from the Semisopochnoi Island volcano.

According to the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) and satellite imagery of the volcanic activity, the ash cloud that the volcano has emitted stretches approximately 15,000 feet above sea level and around 60 miles southeast. The AVO has raised the volcano alert level to "Red/Warning," as the observed increase in sulfur dioxide gas emissions is an indicator of an increase in eruptive activity.

Semisopochnoi is a part of the Aleutian Islands, which are a chain of 14 large volcanic islands and 55 smaller islands. Alaska is the owner of most of the islands, with some of them also belonging to the Russian federal subject of Kamchatka Krai. Natureworldnews reports that the activity of volcanoes such as Semisopochnoi is usually brought on by tectonic plate activity. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

A study that was published in the journal Nature Geoscience back in March details the lifespan of Earth's biosphere and how long it will be until the planet becomes uninhabitable.

Christopher Reinhard, associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Kazumi Ozaki, assistant professor at Toho University, used a model that represents Earth's climate and biochemical processes. With this model, the researchers accounted for uncertainties in Earth's atmosphere and tested it over 400,000 times, with each test the parameters of the model being adjusted.

According to the results from the model testing, the researchers found that the oxygen levels will be completely depleted in around one billion years, resulting in Earth not being able to support any life that is dependent on oxygen to survive. Around 2.5 billion years ago, the Great Oxidation Event occurred, bringing forth new forms of life as the atmosphere began to fill with oxygen. Until that moment, Earth was only capable of supporting life that didn't require oxygen to survive, such as anaerobic life forms.