Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 332

A man that was a massive advocate for the Flat Earth Theory has tragically died in his homemade rocket that crashed landed into the desert.

The man was "Mad" Mike Hughes, who built homemade rockets with limited funding for a Science Channel series called "Homemade Astronauts". The series' aim was to document the adventures of rookie rocket designers. Hughes' goal for his homemade rocket was to prove to the world that Earth was in fact a flat disc by viewing it from space himself. This also wasn't Hughes' first attempt at reaching space, back in 2014 the homemade astronaut reached a height of 1,374ft, then in 2018 he reached 1,875ft.

The rocket was steam powered and during his launch in 2020 the chute detached, causing him to collide with the Barstow, Californian desert at an extremely high velocity. The rocket was also not tested correctly as Hughes didn't have the funding that NASA or SpaceX has, instead he had $18,000 sourced from fellow flat Earthers and extreme levels of confidence in his creation. Flat Earth advocates have been beating the drum that the Earth is disc shaped since we realised that the Earth was spherical, much like all the other planets/exoplanets.

The United Kingdom decided to release a large portion of UFO related documents to the public, under the Freedom of Information act. This decision has no doubt sparked interest of UFO's globally, but what do Americans think?

Market research firm, Piplsay has posted a new article regarding the mystery behind UFO's and whether or not Americans would like to see the disclosure happen in their country as well. According to the paper, which polled 30,741 Americans, around 61% of those who were polled want the American government to follow in the footsteps of the UK government and disclose what they have to the public. Out of those 30,000+ people, 27% of them didn't want to the files disclosed, and 12% said they don't care what happens.

The paper also says that around 58% of those that were polled think that the American government is investigating alien life. 25% of the Americans believe that the US government isn't investigating alien life and 17% aren't sure what they are doing. Around 27% of Americans think that UFO sightings are real, while 34% of them are a bit unsure about what their answer is. Piplsay also polled 4,161 people in the UK, and it was found that 60% of those people are excited about the disclosure of the "X-Files", versus the 28% of those people believing the disclosure will cause "madness".

SpaceX is wanting to raise another $250 million in new funding according to CNBC, with the new cash seeing Elon Musk's space-venturing company worth around $36 billion.

The $36 billion valuation is a $2.5 billion increase in the last time the reported valuation came in, with Elon Musk seeing SpaceX injected with around $1.33 billion across 2019 from 3 different rounds of fundraising. SpaceX has rounded up $3 billion or so in funding over the years, but it's no wonder as it continues to push the boundaries of technology and dominate beyond our pale blue dot.

NASA awarded SpaceX over $3.1 billion to develop the Crew Dragon capsule that the company built to take astronauts to the International Space Station, with Musk saying SpaceX has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" of its own funds to develop Crew Dragon.

One of the biggest problems we all face on Earth is if a large asteroid decides to line up Earth. It's an even bigger problem if that asteroid is so large that it falls into the category of "planet-killing".

So, in the event of one of those asteroids making its way over to Earth, how do we defend ourselves as a planet? MIT researchers have announced a battle plan for dealing with a "planet-killing" asteroid being on a collision course with Earth. According to the new paper, there are three options for missions that could be prepared in reasonably short notice. The first is "type 0", and is when a single, heavy spacecraft is fired at the asteroid using all information gathered from Earth to knock it off course.

The second is "type 1" mission, and that is when a scout craft is launched first to examine the asteroid. With the data gathered from the scout craft, humans back on Earth would be able to launch an impactor craft more accurately. The third option is "type 2" mission, which is when an impactor craft is launched at the same time as the scout craft. The scout craft then examines the asteroid after the initial impact, then relays data back for a second impactor that should finish the asteroid off.

It was only a few weeks ago that astronomers announced that they received what is called Fast Radio Bursts from deep space. Now, a Harvard scientist and astronomer have said that it could be aliens who are sending the signals.

If you don't know what Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) is, here's a quick summary of what has happened so far. In January 2020, astronomers picked up FRB's from deep space, and while this is originally a rare finding, these signals are usually traced back to a cosmic event such as stars colliding. What puzzled astronomers were that these new FRB's were arriving in a regular pattern.

The pattern was that the FRB goes through a four-day cycle of regular activity almost every hour, then after those four days, it would go dormant for 12 days. The researchers also said that the source of the FRB would sometimes skip it's four-day activity period and only let out a single burst. This discovery broke all explanations towards for what the source of the FRB could be.

A study has shined a new light on how traditional Western-style fast-food diets can lead to memory and brain deficiencies.

The new study was published in the Royal Society Open Science and has examined the effects of high-fat, high-sugar, and processed foods and how they affect cognitive ability. Researchers took 110 participants aged 20-33, who were generally healthy and split them into two groups. The first ate their normal healthy diets for a week, and the other was assigned a calorie-heavy Western-style diet filled with fast-foods.

At the start and end of the week, both groups were asked to rate how much they like sugary foods while eating breakfast. The participants were also asked to rate how much they wanted to continue eating them and were also given a memory test. Richard Stevenson, study co-author and psychology professor Macquarie University in Sydney, found that "After a week on a Western-style diet, palatable food such as snacks and chocolate becomes more desirable when you are full. This will make it harder to resist, leading you to eat more, which in turn generates more damage to the hippocampus and a vicious cycle of overeating."

Elon Musk's SpaceX is checking off milestones as it moves towards making commercial space travel a real thing. Now, we are hearing about when SpaceX will be taking its first tourists.

TheNextWeb has reported that SpaceX will begin to send tourists to orbit as soon as 2021, but the costs it won't be like a international flight -- they will be much higher than that. Space Adventures is the company that will be handling the bookings for SpaceX's orbital experience, and they also handled the brokering deal of tourists going into orbit throughout 2001 and 2009.

According to Quartz, the last space tourism flight by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte cost a whopping $30 million. Space Adventures expects that SpaceX will be taking four passengers on their first flight to space "late 2021 and mid-2022", but that won't happen until the Crew Dragon Capsule completes its first manned flight in just a couple of months. Once that is complete, SpaceX has set the runway for tourists entering space.

Back in late April 1986, a nuclear accident happened that shook the planet. This disaster was none other than Chernobyl, and the nuclear fallout was devastating.

Since the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, the radioactive site has become more of a real-life research site for scientists. Researchers have since sent in several robots to examine the site and how the nuclear fallout has affected both plant and animal life. In 1991, a team found that black-spotted fungi were growing on the walls of one of the nuclear reactors. The team also found that this fungi was slowly breaking down the radioactive graphite from the core, and was growing more strongly towards the center of the zone.

In 2007 a follow-up study was conducted by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan, and found that certain types of fungi were "attracted" to radiation and actually grew more rapidly in radioactive conditions. The three fungi species were Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Wangiella dermatitidis. These species of fungi and five others were then sent to the International Space Station in 2016 to be exposed to further radiation.

Alright, so I need to do this -- it has gone to the top of my bucket list instantly. Jetman Dubai has unleashed a new video that shows pilot Vince Reffet flying through the sky in a jet-powered carbon-fiber suit like a real-life Superman, or Iron Man, depending on how you want your superheroes.

The pilot launches off the ground and flies into the air at around the 2-minute mark in the video, flying around Dubai and heading south towards Jumeirah Beach Residence. Jetman Dubai notes that Reffet in "eight seconds [Reffet] had reached 100 meters height, in 12 seconds 200m, 19 seconds 500m, and reached 1000m in 30 seconds at an average speed of 130 knots". Crazy, but oh-so-damn-awesome stuff.

Reffet has a bunch of GoPro cameras attached to the suit which gives us some utterly gorgeous footage of his flight, which is wicked-fast in the end and makes me want to do it personally... even though I'm deathly afraid of heights, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, that's for sure.

NASA has announced that Rocket Lab will be the company to provide launch services to get their 55-pound satellite to the Moon's orbit.

More specifically, Rocket Lab will be taking the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), or CubeSat to the Moon's cislunar orbit. Once it has arrived, it will learn the Moon's seven-day cislunar orbit cycle, and relay valuable information back to Earth that will allow engineers and NASA to better prepare for future missions.

The CubeSat will be aboard the Electron rocket and blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. At the moment, the mission is targeted to launch sometime in early 2021, and the firm-fixed launch contract is valued at $9.95 million. If you are after anymore information regarding this new contract, check out the official NASA press release here.