Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 394

Astronomers have managed to spot something quite unexpected at the outer rims of our Milky Way galaxy -- new stars forming.

How is this happening? According to Price-Whelan and his colleagues who presented their findings on January 8 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, spectral analysis has shown that these young stars are not of this galaxy and are actually from another. This means that these stars haven't formed from material located in the Milky Way, but have instead come from two close dwarf galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds.

Both of these galaxies are currently on a slow collision course with the Milky Way, and it seems that a stream of gas extending from the galaxies is making its way into the Milky Way and forming new stars. Primary discoverer Adrian Price-Whelan, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, said "This is a puny cluster of stars-less than a few thousand in total-but it has big implications beyond its local area of the Milky Way". Price-Whelan also named the star cluster - Price-Whelan 1.

CES 2020 - So you might not be a people person, that's ok, but everyone needs a bit of companionship whether that comes in the form of a pet such as a dog, cat, goldfish or even a robot?

Meet PiBo, a helpful service robot that has multiple skills up his robotic sleeves. PiBo can act as your alarm clock, find out the weather for the day based on your location, fill you in on the top news stories, play your favorite music, and take pictures with its 5MP camera. Not only can PiBo do all those things, but it also has voice and facial recognition so just you can bond with PiBo and no one else.

So how tall is this robot? PiBo measures in at just over a foot tall and runs the custom Linux-based Circulus OS on a 1.4Ghz quad-core chip and 1GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there is a downside to PiBo. The battery inside of the robot is only 3,400mAh and only lasts for about 2 hours. That's not the worst of it though, PiBo takes 5 hours to charge... Hopefully, with new editions to PiBo, the Korean company behind it can implement some longer life into it.

Recent research has indicated that Venus could be volcanically active today, which means that it's the only other planet in our solar system besides Earth with active volcanoes.

The research which has been published in Science Advances and led by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) has found evidence to suggest the second closest planet to the Sun has active volcanoes. Dr. Justin Filiberto, the study's lead author, said, "If Venus is indeed active today, it would make a great place to visit to better understand the interiors of planets".

So how was this evidence found? The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Venus Express orbiter measured the amount of infrared light emitted on Venus' surface. After the data was sent back, scientists were able to determine which new lava flows that were emitting new light versus old ones from data back in the 1990s. Filiberto says, "For example, we could study how planets cool and why the Earth and Venus have active volcanism, but Mars does not. Future missions should be able to see these flows and changes in the surface and provide concrete evidence of its activity."

Astrophysicists around the world are looking to the skies at one star, in particular, Betelgeuse, as it's begun to dim, indicating that it could explode relatively soon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has taken to his personal Twitter account to let the public know that this isn't something anyone should be worried about. Tyson has littered his Twitter page with awesome facts about Betelgeuse, informing the public with information such as Betelgeuse is the "left armpit of the constellation Orion, is mysteriously dimming, having lost 60% of its brightness across the past six months."

He also has said that "Betelgeuse is so large, if you swapped it with the Sun, it would engulf the orbit of Mars and extend all the way through the asteroid belt. No need to panic, but at 700 light-years, it's the closest star to the Sun that will end its life in a Supernova explosion." Tyson also says that Betelgeuse is expected to explode within the next 100,000 years, and the explosion itself will be visible from Earth even within the daytime.

CES 2020 - CES 2020 is right around the corner, and before everything is about to kick off, we are already hearing about what kind of exhibits we are going to see this year.

For the first time in 52 years, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will feature sex-toy companies on the show floor. Companies behind these sex toys will be promoting their "smart" products through exhibits, and according to WAPO it will include "a multitasking bed for sex and a number of "smart" and Internet-connected vibrators."

CES has recently changed its policy for what it allows at the show. This change of rules came after sex-toy company Lora DiCarlo won a CES innovation award that was later taken away from them due to their product not complying with standing CES policies. The award was later given back to Lora DiCarlo, and CES changed its policies to allow for "sex tech".

CES 2020 - The future is now. Pizza-making robots are making delicious 12-inch pizzas on the show floor of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week.

Picnic is a Seattle-based "innovator of food production technology and Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) solutions" that has teamed with live event hospitality leader Centerplate, to serve CES attendees fresh pizza. Picnic's robot is capable of making 300 12-inch pizzas an hour, which is a helluva lot of pizza per day.

The AI-powered pizza making robot uses a vision system to make adjustments to the pie if it is off-center, with Picnic CEO Clayton Wood explaining: "Picnic's distinct culmination of food production customization and throughput, smart data and cloud analytics is quickly resonating with food service operators".

Scientists use long particle accelerators to move particles close to the speed of light, this testing probes the capabilities atomic and molecular structures.

While most of the testing is done on long mile plus-long particle accelerators, scientists at Standford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created a nano-scale version. The teams created a vacuum sealed silicon chip that uses an infrared laser to accelerate particles, all within less than a hairs width. So how does this work exactly? Imagine a flat silicon chip, but etched in on its surface there are channels and flowing in these channels are electrons.

When the laser is activated it fires a burst of photons that then hit the electrons and accelerates them forward to almost the speed of light. So how does this help research in anyway? For the particle accelerator to be useful it needs to achieve 1 million electron volts (1MeV) or 94% the speed of light, and to reach that stage it needs to pass through 1,000 previous stages. Electrical engineer, Jelena Vuckovic explained that this might not be as difficult as it may seem due to the accelerator being a fully integrated circuit. Meaning all critical functions for it work are built right onto the chip.

The significance of The Hubble Space Telescope cannot be overemphasized, so in an effort to honor the telescopes numerous discoveries, the United States Mint might issue a 2020 coin dedicated to it.

The Mint's American Innovation $1 Coin Program, which was introduced in 2018, aims at honoring significant innovations and innovators by releasing new coins dedicated to the achievements. The program is a multi-year effort that will see the release of one-dollar coins representing each of the 50 U.S states and their specific achievements. In this instance, The Hubble Telescope will represent the state of Maryland.

April Stafford, director of the U.S. Mint's Office of Design Management, said at a Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) meeting, "I love the dichotomy within this portfolio. We have one set of designs that look microscopically inside us and then another that looks way outside and into the universe." The committee favored the design of Hubble orbiting Earth (seen above) as it depicts the telescope doing what it does best, observing distant stars. If you are interested in reading more on this, check out this article here.

Astronomers at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics located in Pune, India, have come across something that is currently a matter of debate.

The team used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to discover an extremely large ring of hydrogen gas that's bigger than the galaxy it's surrounding. The gas is estimated to have a diameter of about 380,000 light-years, which is equivalent to about four times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.

The galaxy that the gas is surrounding is called AGC 203001 and is located around 260 million light-years away from us. Usually, galaxies that are found to have an abundance of neutral hydrogen gas are actively forming stars. Shockingly, (here's the kicker) AGC 203001 is showing zero signs of being an active galaxy, puzzling astronomers at how the hydrogen was distributed. If you are after more information regarding this discovery, check out this article here.

If you have watched Star Wars or if you are even a little bit into science fiction or just general science for that matter, then you would know what light speed is. How would you like to travel at light speed?

If you aren't aware of what light speed is, then here's a quick science lesson for you. If you take a particle and accelerate it close to the speed of light which is 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282 miles per second, the energy required to move that particle becomes infinite. Making it impossible for any form of mass to reach the speed of light or exceed it.

Luckily, Google Maps isn't moving particles, and can instead give us observers a novel hyperspace experience through a nifty effect. If you didn't know, Google Maps is now equipped with a new tool that allows users to navigate the solar system at break-neck speeds, and here's how to do it.