Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 50

A telescope located at the summit area of Maunakea, the highest point in the state of Hawaii, has captured a "mysterious" spiral appearing in the night sky on January 18, 2023.

The Subaru Telescope has published footage of the event, and the observatory explains that its Asahi STAR Camera that's installed at the Catwalk of the Subaru Telescope captured a spiral forming in the night sky that eventually dissipated over the following thirty minutes. The observatory believes that the spiral was caused by SpaceX launching its GPS III Space Vehicle 06 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. SpaceX launched its rocket at 7:24 AM EST on January 18, 2023

Notably, Ichi Tanka, a researcher at the Subaru Telescope, said that he wasn't the first person to spot the phenomena as he was sent a screenshot from an individual that was viewing the timelapse livestream of the Asahi STAR Camera. Tanka described his reaction when he saw the screenshot of the livestream, saying, "When I opened Slack, that is what I saw, and it was a jaw-dropping event for me."

NASA has penciled in another flight for its Ingenuity helicopter, marking the small helicopter's 41st flight across the surface of the Red Planet.

For those that didn't know, NASA landed its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars back in February 2021. Since then, the rover has been exploring the barren plains of the Jezero Crater, looking for any signs of ancient microbial life. Ingenuity has acted as a scout for Perseverance, flying around the rover and observing the surface, looking for any potential hazards the rover and its operators should know about.

With the information gathered by Ingenuity's flights, the Perseverance team is able to make the most efficient path for the rover whenever it needs to travel next. The 41st flight for Ingenuity happened on January 27, when the helicopter covered 600 feet in horizontal distance in just 109 seconds. NASA called this flight an "out-and-back flight" as the helicopter took off, flew to its destination, and then back to land in its original spot.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently experienced a glitch, but the observatory is now back online and conducting valuable science.

The space agency has taken to its official James Webb Space Telescope Twitter account to announce that Webb has honed its sensitive instruments on a region of deep space that contains ancient galaxies. NASA explains that the above image was snapped during instrument calibration to test Webb's ability to dig up galactic "fossils".

The European Space Agency (ESA) explains in its blog post that the large spiral galaxy seen at the bottom of the image is called LEDA 2046648 and is slightly over one billion light-years from Earth, residing in the constellation Hercules. Additionally, the ESA explains that one of Webb's main purposes is to gather information on distant galaxies so researchers can learn more about their formation, evolution, and composition.

NASA announced last week that one of the key instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope malfunctioned, causing a glitch to occur.

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021 and eventually made it to its destination at Lagrange point 2 in July 2022, where it began scientific operations after a lengthy warm-up period. Now, the space telescope is making major developments in multiple scientific fields. It has already captured incredible images of the iconic star-forming regions such as the Pillars of Creation, while also using its extremely sensitive instruments to analyze the atmosphere of exoplanets for any biological indicators such as water, oxygen, etc.

On January 15, Webb's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) experienced a glitch that caused its flight software to time out. NASA wrote on its blog that this glitch was a communications delay that tripped the flight software, knocking out the NIRISS instrument until further notice. Now, NASA has announced on its blog that a full investigation was launched between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, the developers of the NIRISS instrument, and found the cause of the problem, which has been fixed.

Officials have issued an urgent health alert to the public regarding a missing radioactive capsule that was presumably lost during transportation.

The announcement comes from Western Australia's chief health officer, Andy Robertson, who stated at an emergency press conference called on Friday that a very small capsule containing radioactive material is now missing, presumably lost in transportation along the 870-mile-long road between Newman and the north-eastern suburbs of Perth. Notably, the substance that has been lost is used within gauges in mining operations, and exposure to it could result in radiation burns or sickness.

Unfortunately, the capsule is extremely small, measuring 6mm in diameter and 8mm tall. According to reports, the radioactive gauges give a comparable amount of radioactive exposure as getting ten x-rays within one hour. Robertson warned that the obvious risk of this kind of radioactive exposure is developing cancer.

Skywatchers or anyone that is interested in checking out a piece of cosmic history should gaze up at the night sky to find C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

The comet is currently on its way to the outer solar system, but before it scoots out from our view, it will be making a relatively close approach with Earth coming within just 26 million miles from the planet. This distance is roughly 28% of the distance between Earth and the sun. Due to its proximity to the planet, and its incredible green hue, the comet will be reasonably bright in the sky and, depending on viewing conditions, will be visible to the naked eye.

Notably, the last time C/2022 (ZTF) made a close approach with Earth was around 50,000 years ago, approximately the time of the Neanderthals, or the last Ice Age. Those that are wanting to see this ancient comet for themselves are advised to look toward the Camelopardalis constellation when it reaches its closest approach around 6:49 p.m. EST (2349 GMT) on Wednesday, February 1. Additionally, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is circumpolar, which means it will permanently stay right above the horizon line.

NASA has already begun to prepare for the arrival of the very first Mars samples acquired by the hard-at-work Perseverance rover.

Perseverance has been exploring the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet since it became active in February 2021, and throughout its exploration, the rover has acquired several samples that NASA plans on transporting back to Earth as researchers believe they could contain microbial traces of ancient life.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce it will be constructing a special facility to house these samples at Johnson Space Center in Houston and that this facility will be designed to keep the samples as safe as possible from any Earth-based contamination.

A researcher manning the telescope located at the top of Hawaii's tallest mountain has photographed what looks like a portal to another world.

The photographs were captured on January 18 by a camera that is located at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest mountain that is home to Japan's Subaru Telescope. According to reports, the camera was placed at the top of the mountain to take time-lapse footage and images of the area surrounding the Subaru telescope that can then be shared with the residents of Hawaii and the rest of the world.

Ichi Tanaka, a researcher at the Subaru telescope, admitted that he wasn't the first person to spot the spiral randomly appearing in the camera's frame as he was doing other work at the time it emerged. A random stargazer that was watching the YouTube livestream of the camera's view sent him a screenshot of the spiral, which caused Tanaka to drop his jaw. "When I opened Slack, that is what I saw, and it was a jaw-dropping event for me," the researcher said.

The University of Arizona has shared an image snapped by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and it appears to show the face of a massive teddy bear.

The image was snapped on December 12, 2022, and posted to the University of Arizona's blog on January 25. The blog post explains that MRO was flying overhead at approximately 156 miles when it took the photograph, which shows various geological formations across the surface of the Red Planet. The University of Arizona explains that when all of the geological formations are viewed together, the viewer may see a bear's face. Is it really a giant Martian bear?

Most likely not. Viewers that see the face within the collection of Mars' geology can attribute the thought to the human phenomenon called pareidolia, which is the tendency to see faces or meaning within an image of an object/s that has none. Technically speaking, there is a V-shaped hill that makes up the bear's nose, two impact craters make up the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern creates the head. UA writes on its blog that "Maybe just grin and bear it".

NASA has confirmed that the world's most powerful space telescope has experienced a glitch that caused an instrument to time out.

The space agency took to its blog to announce that the James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) experienced a communications delay that resulted in flight software engaging a safety time out. For those that don't know, Webb was launched in December 2021 after lengthy development that was plagued with delays and increasing expenditure. However, the next-generation space telescope made it to its destination at Lagrange point 2, where it began scientific operations in July 2022.

The space telescope is already making waves in the scientific community and beyond with its images of the cosmos and planetary inspection capabilities. As for the NIRISS instrument, NASA writes that since the glitch was detected, the instrument has been put out of operation, but there is no indication of any damage to any of the hardware. Furthermore, NASA writes that the observatory as a whole and any other instruments onboard are in good health.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been tracking the changes in Mars' atmosphere for the past 250 sols, or Martian days. The acquired data has been released in the rovers first detailed weather report.

Perseverance is equipped with several sensors, cameras and sensitive instruments which are all designed to gather to most accurate details about the conditions of the Red Planet. NASA's rover has been exploring Mars since it landed in the Jezero Crater in early 2021. Since then the rover has taken several samples of martian rock which will eventually be transported back to Earth for further analysis.

Many researchers are excited about the coming samples as they are set to undoubtedly unlock more in-depth knowledge about the geology of our red neighbor. This information will then be used to reduce the overall risk humans will endure when we begin our colonization. Perseverance for the past 250 sols, which are about 40 minutes longer than one 24-hour Earth day, has been collecting data on the pressure and temperature of Mars.

An astronomer discovered an asteroid on January 21, 2023, and found that it's going to be making a very close approach to Earth in the coming days.

The asteroid called 2023 BU was discovered by astronomers Gennadiy Borisov at the MARGO Observatory in Crimea. The asteroid was identified, and calculations were performed that estimated the small space rock will make its closest approach to Earth on January 26 at an altitude of just 2,178 miles above the surface of the Earth.

For perspective, geostationary orbit is at an altitude of approximately 22,000 miles. This level of orbit is commonly used by satellites that are locked into a circular synchronized orbit around Earth, in which the satellite's orbital period is the same as Earth's rotation period of 23 hours and 56 minutes (1 day). Researchers estimate that 2023 BU has a diameter between 12 and 28 feet, and since it's relatively small, it will be difficult to spot without a powerful telescope and a skilled operator.

The world's most powerful observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, has used its instrument to make a breakthrough discovery.

NASA has taken to its blog on its official website to announce that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), operated by an international team of astronomers, has discovered an inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date. The space agency explains that knowledge of interstellar ice is very valuable as ices will be a crucial ingredient for building a habitable planet off Earth.

These ices contain vital elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Notably, these elements are key ingredients for a viable planetary atmosphere and molecules such as sugars, alcohols, and simple amino acids vital for life. Webb's sensitive instruments were pointed at the Chameleon I cloud located in the southern constellation of Chameleon, some 500 light-years away from Earth.

Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot is one of the most advanced humanoid robots, and if you've seen a clip of it in action over the years, then you'll no doubt have been impressed by how it moves. Now equipped with hands, Boston Dynamics has released a new video of Atlas on a mock construction site as a worker up on a scaffold realizes he's forgotten his tool bag.

And with that, we cue Atlas to create a little bridge to make its way up the scaffolding, grab the bag, toss it up to the worker, and then perform a gymnast-style backflip as it dismounts back onto ground level.

Check it out.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter Blue will soon get a more expensive option for users that wish to remove advertisements from the platform entirely.

The news came from Musk, that took to his personal Twitter account to announce that advertisements are "too frequent on Twitter" and are "too big". The Tesla CEO went on to explain that development teams are tackling both of these issues in the "coming weeks" and that there will be a "higher-priced subscription that allows zero advertisements". These announcements of new revenue streams from Musk come at a crucial time as the company is suffering from a dramatic loss in advertising expenditure from big-name advertisers and ad agencies.

Notably, reports from last week indicated that Twitter wants its old and new advertisers so badly that it's giving away $250,000 in ad spend to specific companies that spend $250,000 on the platform. This means a company would get $500,000 in ad spend on Twitter if they bought $250,000 of ads. Advertisers left or temporarily stopped spending on Twitter following Musk's takeover in late October, with many former advertisers citing Musk's unpredictable behavior on the platform, changes to the platform's content policy, and layoffs.

A group of scientists have created a high-power laser beam that they claim lightning will follow for a period of time.

Physicists have published a new study in the scientific journal Nature Photonics that explores the use of a high-powered laser beam to control where lightning strikes in what seems to be the successor to the still-in-use lightning rod. The idea behind the laser beam is to protect areas such as airports, rocket launch pads, and other infrastructure that is vulnerable to electrical damage from rolling thunderstorms that spawn lightning strikes.

Benjamin Franklin first proposed the lightning rod that is still widely used today to protect buildings from lightning strikes in around 1750. The rod or lightning conductor is a large metal rod mounted on a structure that routes lightning into the ground, protecting the building from any electrical damage. While Franklin suggested the idea, the design of the lightning rod was perfected by Nikolas Tesla.

Researchers have discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus was far more tectonically active than previously thought after analyzing recent measurements of material from the moon's surface.

A new study published in the scientific journal Icarus details measurements conducted on the material that coats the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. According to the study, the material is called 'regolith' and has an appearance very similar to snow found on Earth. However, Enceladus' snow isn't formed the same way normal snow is formed on Earth.

The researchers explain that the regolith is created through snow cannon-like plumes, or ice geysers erupting and shooting large quantities of particles up into the atmosphere that then fall back down to the moon's surface. Smaller particles launched by the eruption are shot into space and eventually become part of Saturn's iconic rings. While scientists are quite sure that Enceladus' snow is coming from surface eruptions, the researchers are in the dark when it comes to the physical properties of the regolith material.

A college student has used Open AI's chatbot called ChatGPT to write an essay about burqa bans that they then submitted for grading.

According to a report from The New York Times, the student confessed to using the chatbot to write the essay after their teacher, philosophy professor Antony Aumann from Northern Michigan University, busted them. Aumann explained to Futurism that the student was instructed to rewrite the essay, which is what is done the majority of the time in plagiarism cases.

Chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT are free and have very powerful capabilities that are resulted in them going viral. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence designed to have human-like conversations where it remembers what was talked about earlier in the conversation. Additionally, users make improvements to the AI's answers, write code, essays, format data, create programs, and more. An example of a prompt would be, 'write an essay on burqa bans'. A more simpler request could be, 'Got any creative ideas for a 10 year old's birthday?'

A rogue asteroid has been spotted photo-bombing NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's field of view as it attempts to observe a nearby galaxy.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has taken to its website to explain the "visitor to a galaxy", as displayed in the above image. The above image was captured by NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope that was pointed at the small galaxy known as UGC 7983, which appears as a hazy cloud of light in the center of the image.

This small galaxy is located approximately 30 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Virgo and is categorized as a dwarf irregular galaxy that is believed to be one of the earliest galaxies to form in the universe.

A team of astronomers has used the Green Bank Telescope to capture what is now being described as the most detailed image of the Moon ever taken from Earth.

A new report from BGR has claimed that the new images of the surface of the Moon by the Green Bank Telescope are the most detailed photographs humans have captured from the surface of Earth. The Green Bank Observatory took to its website to explain that it used the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to capture the highest-resolution radar images of the Moon, which will be used to pave the way for next-generation radar systems that'll study planets, asteroids and other moons within our solar system.

The press release states that a low-power radar transmitter, capable of 700 watts of output power at 13.9 GHz, was tested on the GBT. Astronomers aimed the telescope at the Moon's Tycho crater "An image of the Tycho crater was captured with a 5-meter resolution, showing unprecedented detail of the Moon's surface from Earth. "It's pretty amazing what we've been able to capture so far, using less power than a common household appliance," emphasizes Patrick Taylor, radar division head for GBO and NRAO."