Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 335

Astronomers have found evidence that proves a 40-year-old supernova theory correct and a mysterious sky event that occurred in 1054 AD.

A new study has been published in Nature Astronomy and outlines researchers finding evidence of a new type of supernova. When stars die, they go supernova, and for some time, astronomers believed that there were only two types of supernova. Type Ia, is when a white dwarf star explodes in an uncontrolled fusion reaction. Type II supernova - when a star 10 times the mass of the Sun exhausts its fuel resulting in its core collapsing into either a black hole or a neutron star.

Now, astronomers have located a new type of supernova called electron capture (type III) supernova. This type of supernova happens when the a star eight to ten times the Sun's mass burns up all of its fuel, resulting in gravity causing immense pressure on the core's electrons that are then forced into their atomic nuclei. The end result is a core that collapsed in on itself.

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have gained recently popularity lately after videos of UFOs, or as the military call them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), were released by the US Navy.

Since then many videos/photos have surfaced online of people claiming to have spotted a UFO, and with most of these videos there is an insinuation that the object that is being observed is otherworldly. Unfortunately, majority of the video proof is also captured with a camera that lacks quality, which can lead to viewers believing that the object is otherworldly, and that what they are witnessing cannot be explained by something much simpler.

One UFO sighting that recently went viral came from Matthew Evans, a student living in Devon. Evans lives in a block of units on the top level and looked out his kitchen window to see what was described as object that had four bright lights that were orientated in a triangular formation. Matthew Blythe, a local photographer took an image of the same view as Evans, but Blythe's image was taken with a much better and showed that the object was just the Moon.

After 20 years of delays, the International Space Station (ISS) will finally get its long-awaited "walking" robotic arm.

On July 15, the European Robotic Arm (ERA) will launch from Earth towards the ISS on board a Russian Proton rocket that will also be carrying the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module. The European Space Agency has explained that the robotic arm measures in at 36 feet and will be smart enough to anchor itself to locations outside of the Russian segment of the ISS as well as move between certain points.

The purpose of the arm is to assist astronauts that are out on spacewalks by carrying payloads, transporting crew members, using its cameras to inspect areas out of the station. Essentially, the arm will free up time for astronauts that can now concentrate on other matters. Astronauts have the ability to control the robot from inside the Space Station or from the outside. Additionally, the robot can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions or can be used free-hand.

Astronomers have located four planets near the center of the Milky Way galaxy that are close to the mass of Earth.

The new study has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and presents evidence of four planets that are "rogue" or "free-floating", meaning they aren't bound to the gravitation pull of a star. The team of researchers used data from a 2016 mission conducted by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that observed a field of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way.

Interestingly, Kepler isn't designed to find new planets, which means that the researchers needed to create new data extracting techniques to extrapolate the evidence from Kepler's dataset. Co-author Eamonn Kerins of the University of Manchester said, "Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets. Now it passes the baton on to other missions that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed."

Hubble is at it again with another breathtaking image that shows off a great comparison between two different light waves of a spiral galaxy.

As NASA explains, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured two extremely different images of the spiral galaxy M51 called the Whirlpool Galaxy. The image located on the left is an image captured in visible light, or the light that humans would see it in if they were floating around in space looking at the galaxy. The visible-light image shows off the galaxy's long arms and the pink star-forming regions littered with blue strands of star clusters.

The image on the right is shot in infrared light, light that humans are unable to see. The infrared image has stripped all of the starlight away from the image and leaves viewers with what NASA describes as "Whirlpool's skeletal dust structure". If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here. If you would like to check out more images released by Hubble, visit this link here.

Chimpanzees are our closest known relatives, and a distinct difference between us is that chimpanzees are unable to talk.

But what if they could talk? What would they sound like? Back in 2016, researchers posed that very question to themselves and decided to create a simulation of a monkey talking. The researchers did this by using x-ray videos to map out vocal tracts in living macaques and found that macaques were able to produce an "adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language". So, why is this important?

The study outlines that for forty years, researchers have believed that the monkeys being unable to speak stems from "limitations in their vocal tract anatomy". This study has disproved that, and has instead found that the limitation doesn't lay in the vocal anatomy but instead with the brain as it's unable to control the vocal tract. If you have never heard what a monkey would sound like if it spoke, the 1-second video can be watched above. The stimulated monkey says, "will you marry me?" - in a not-so-romantic voice.

The Pentagon has just pulled the plug on its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing deal with Microsoft, and now the entire JEDI program is up in the air.

JEDI -- or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure -- had originally caused issues for Amazon that had been one of the players in the $10 billion cloud deal. Microsoft eventually won, but now they've lost their grip on the JEDI contract with the Pentagon explaining in a statement: "Due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs".

Toni Townes Whitley, Microsoft's president of U.S. regulated industries, said in a blog post: "One contract has never, and will never, define our relationship with the DoD or any customer. Our decades-long partnership with the DoD will continue - and we stand ready to support our nation's men and women in uniform as they address our national security needs".

The world of space billboards and major cities having billboards in the sky are about to become a reality, with Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) announcing it will be offering advertising in space very soon.

GEC announced on April 1, 2021 that it would be sending up Geometric-1 with the 12 x 6U CubeSat adapter plate into low Earth orbit. Geometric-1 will ride the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rideshare mission, announced as DOGE-1 which is completely paid for in cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Well, now GEC has provided more details on what it will be doing with its CubeSat and that's offering billboards in space that would be available above major cities, at a major cost. We're looking at around $974,000 per month for an advertisement on one of the new space billboards above Tokyo, Japan -- while it would cost an average of around $932,000 above a major city.

Reports are indicating that Chinese researchers have announced a new species of human after DNA analysis was performed on a skull.

Paleoanthropologists have been performing studies on a skull that a bridge construction worker found in Harbin, a city in Northeastern China, in 1933. The researchers have published their findings in three separate studies in the peer-reviewed journal The Innovation on June 25, 2021, and according to the studies, the researchers discovered a new species of human that has now been named Homo Longi, or Dragon Man.

The skull that was discovered back in 1933 and handed into paleoanthropologists for studies to be performed on it three years was found to be from a male that lived 146,000 years ago during the Central Pleistocene geological period. The Harbin skull is the largest Homo skull that has been discovered, and according to Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology at Hebei GEO University, "The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world. This fossil preserved many morphological details that are critical for understanding the evolution of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens".

Researchers have discovered what is currently believed to be a Christian community's remains that date back to the 6th century.

A team of researchers from the Dyfed Archaeological Trust partnered with the University of Sheffield unearthed more than 200 skeletons that the University of Sheffield said were a mix of children, women, and men. The skeleton remains were found in more than 100 graves at a popular beach in Pembrokeshire. The researchers found that the bodies were positioned so their heads for pointing west and that they weren't buried with any possessions.

Due to the bones being completely submerged in sand, the quality of the bones was found to be very high. Jenna Smith at Dyfed Archaeological Trust, who led the excavation, said the bone preservation is "absolutely incredible". The Dyfed Archaeological Trust said there's "still a significant amount of evidence left to excavate". Adding, there is an "intriguing stone structure which pre-dates the burials" that still needs to be excavated from the site. The bones are being stored in the National Museum of Wales.