Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 67

Elon Musk's lawyers have sent out subpoenas to prominent figures such as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey regarding the Twitter lawsuit.

Musk backed out of the $44 billion deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media platform Twitter on April 25, which turned into a lawsuit filed by Twitter to get Musk to follow through with the initial deal to purchase the platform. Twitter filed for an expedited trial citing the nature of the deal and how leaving it in limbo negatively impacts the company. The court agreed to an expedited trial with a date set for October 17.

The latest unravelings of the Musk-Twitter trial are Musk's lawyers now sending out subpoenas to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, along with former product chief Kayvon Beykpour and former head of revenue Bruce Falck. At the moment, it's not known how Dorsey or the other former Twitter officials that received subpoenas fit into Musk's legal teams' argument, but the subpoena, at least with Dorsey, refers to "documents and communications reflecting, referring to, or relating to the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter's business operations."

A fossilized shark tooth from a species that has been extinct for many years now has been discovered by a curious 8-year-old boy.

Riley Gracely of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, traveled to Myrtle Beach with his father, Justin Gravely, his mother, Janelle Gracely, and his brother, Collin. The family decided to have a look around Palmetto Fossil Excursion Summerville, South Carolina, in search of a discovery, which was later found by Riley, who was exploring the bases of large piles of dirt and gravel. Riley bent down and pulled out what he believed to be a tooth and when the object was finally excavated, it was revealed to be a 4.75-inch tooth from a prehistoric shark.

In an email to Fox News Digital, Justin Gracely explained that employees at the Palmetto Fossil Excursions said that Riley's discovery was significant considering the species the tooth is from, its condition, and its size. Officials confirmed the tooth to be from an Otodus angustidens, which is a species of megatooth shark that is a close relative of the megalodon, the world's largest prehistoric shark that measured in at a whopping 68 feet in length.

The new augmented reality (AR) glasses are developed by startup company XRAI Glass.

The company's CEO, Dan Scarfe, conceived of the glasses after the previous year's Christmas, spending it with his family, including his 97-year-old hard-of-hearing grandfather. Scarfe noticed his grandfather struggling to engage in conversations with the rest of the family in real-time, telling Euronews Next that "it's just so difficult when there are so many people around you and you're trying to keep track of the different conversations which are going on," and that "it's got to the point now where he literally just sits in silence."

Scarfe thought to himself that his grandfather always watches TV with subtitles, planting the idea to "subtitle the world" for him and others. Six months later, his company XRAI Glass had partnered with Nreal, a manufacturer of AR glasses, to reveal the XRAI Glasses. The glasses are connected to a mobile phone that will process the required information and create the graphics to be displayed and used to create and display a speech transcription from nearby people using Amazon's Alexa transcription service.

On Tuesday, August 16th, 2022, an employee found a foot inside a shoe floating in the Abyss Pool at Yellowstone National Park.

The Abyss Pool is located in the West Thumb Geyser Basin in the southern region of the park, and law enforcement officers have opened an investigation into its origin. Currently, it's believed that an incident involving an individual to whom the foot belonged occurred on July 31st, 2022, and that no foul play was involved. No photos have surfaced of the incident, and no other details have yet been shared by park officials, but they are reminding park visitors to stay on designated paths and "exercise extreme caution around thermal features."

The West Thumb Geyser Basin and its parking lot were temporarily closed following the discovery but have since reopened. According to the National Park Service (NPS), "the ground in hydrothermal areas is fragile and thin, and there is scalding water just below the surface." The Abyss Pool is over 50 feet (15.24 meters) deep, making it one of the park's deepest hot springs, with a temperature of about 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius).

A study on growing plants on Mars titled "Farming on Mars: Treatment of basaltic regolith soil and briny water simulants sustains plant growth" has been published in the journal PLOS One.

Researchers from Iowa State University have tested what crops are best suited for growing in Martian regolith, which mostly comprises basaltic dust (weathered pieces of volcanic rock). Volcanic regions on Earth are typically nutrient-dense, and Mars' volcanic regions share similar nutrients in the surrounding soil. However, on Mars, there is a lack of organic carbon, so the regolith doesn't hold water well, nor does it contain enough nutrients to support growing calorie-dense crops.

To make the soil on Mars more viable for crops, it will need to be sufficiently fertilized. The researchers determined this could be achieved by growing alfalfa, which requires few nutrients to grow, and which the team was able to grow in simulated Martian regolith. Furthermore, by crushing up the alfalfa into powder form and using it to fertilize the regolith directly, the researchers could support the growth of other plants like turnips, radishes, and lettuce.

Russia's Defense Minister has announced the nation has successfully fired three missiles that have displayed "outstanding qualities".

Reports from RT that cite Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, that took to Russian 1 TV over the weekend, Kremlin military have successfully fired three Kinzhal hypersonic missiles during its conflict with Ukraine. The Kinzhal (Dagger) is a Russian hypersonic air-to-surface missile that was put into service in 2017, and according to reports, the missile is capable of traveling at Mach 12, or 9,207 mph, and can even perform maneuvers during its journey.

RT states that the missile is nuclear-capable and can be launched from Russia Tu-22M3 and MiG031 bombers. Russia announced the first use of the hypersonic missile in March, when its Defense Ministry claimed it used the Kinzhal missile to destroy a Ukrainian weapons depot in western Ukraine, marking the first time a hypersonic weapon has been used in combat.

NASA astronaut Bob Hines took to Twitter to share photographs taken of Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, August 17th.

Hines shared a collection of four photos from a larger time-lapse taken of the northern lights that will potentially be released at a later date. Also known as the aurora borealis, the lights are caused by disturbances in the planet's magnetosphere owing to solar winds. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun and other more significant solar activity enhance the appearance of the light show, and three recent CMEs directed towards Earth were predicted to result in a G3, or strong, geomagnetic storm on August 18th.

The recorded storm was only registered as G2, or moderate, geomagnetic storm. Forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have indicated G1-class, or weak, geomagnetic storms could occur on August 22nd, as a small CME has been fired towards Earth from the AR3078 sunspot. However, according to Spaceweather.com, the CME is unlikely to result in a geomagnetic storm as it grazes Earth's magnetic field.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to post a teaser for an upcoming progress reveal for the highly anticipated Neuralink.

Musk took to his Twitter on August 22 to reveal that there will be a progress "show and tell" on October 31, coinciding with Halloween. For those that don't know, Neuralink is another one of Musk's pioneering ventures that aims at developing a human brain and machine interface. The device, which would be implanted into an individual, is said to be capable of translating a human's thoughts into actions. An example of this would be typing, pressing buttons, or manipulating a mouse or joystick.

Reuters recently reported that Neuralink is playing catch up with development woes surrounding is brain implant device. Notably, the report also states that Musk recently approached brain chip implant developer Synchron about a potential investment following the company's announcement of creating a breakthrough platform, "an endovascular brain-computer interface that can access every corner of the brain using its natural highways, the blood vessels."

Elon Musk is back again, tweeting out a meme calling CERN's Large Hadron Collider "demonic technology" and that should totally, totally not surprise us at this point.

For those unaware of what the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is, it's the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator located underground in Geneva, Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research with over 10,000 scientists, hundreds of universities and laboratories, with the collaboration of over 100 countries.

CERN recently turned the Large Hadron Collider back in 6 weeks ago, with Elon tweeting out the meme 6 weeks and 6 hours after the LHC was turned back on. Elon's tweet had a meme that reads: "please let me use the CERN Large Hadron Collider. I am normal and can be trusted with a demonic technology unlike anything the world has ever seen".

An international team of researchers have published what is claimed to be the largest image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to date.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been making headlines since it began its scientific operations in July, with the space agency publishing the first batch of images snapped by the space telescope's next-generations instruments. Now, an international team of researchers that includes 105 scientists from 19 from 28 institutions around the world have used the telescopes instruments to gather an immense amount of data on the cosmos. The Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Study (CEERS) has now released the image.

Webb's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) were all used to gather the data, which was then converted to imagery and then stitched together to form an incredible mosaic piece. Out of the myriad of galaxies captured in the images the researchers honed in on six specific galaxies. A blue spiral galaxy, some elliptical galaxies, a galaxy nicknamed Pac-Man for its resembling shape, and galaxies that are extremely old - dating around 9 billion years ago.

NASA has released new footage of the spacecraft that will be sent to one of Jupiter's moons for an upcoming mission.

The timelapse video features NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft as it is being put together in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility. The main body of the Europa Clipper stands 10 feet (3 meters) high and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide and will reside in High Bay 1, an ultra-clean room, over the next two years as engineers and technicians prepare it for its mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, in October 2024.

At Europa, the spacecraft will complete almost 50 flybys of the moon to gather data about its atmosphere, surface, and interior. It's believed that underneath the moon's icy crust, vast oceans may have suitable conditions to sustain life, so the spacecraft will also assess how the thickness of the surface ice, the salt content of the subsurface ocean, and any potential vents from the subsurface ocean that may leak water into space.

A study on the moisture-driven electricity generation (MEG) device titled "An Asymmetric Hygroscopic Structure for Moisture‐Driven Hygro‐Ionic Electricity Generation and Storage" has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) have created a new ultra-thin MEG device, consisting of only a thin layer of fabric, measuring only 0.3 millimeters (mm) thick, sea salt, carbon ink, and a water-absorbent hydrogel. The device generates electricity by utilizing the moisture in the air, and the concept of MEG devices shows promise for various applications such as wearable electronics.

Water saturation has been one of the challenges facing existing MEG devices, stopping them from being able to produce more electricity. The researchers overcame this by creating their new MEG device with two distinct regions, each with different properties that can indefinitely maintain a difference in water content between them. The fabric is made from wood pulp and polyester and coated with carbon nanoparticle ink.

A study on the newly discovered crater titled "The Nadir Crater offshore West Africa: A candidate Cretaceous-Paleogene impact structure" has been published in the journal Science Advances.

Researchers from the University of Arizona have discovered an impact crater at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, which indicates additional asteroids may have struck the Earth during the extinction event that marked the end of the dinosaurs. Named the Nadir Crater, it is thought to have been created by an asteroid striking Earth around the same time as when the Chicxulub asteroid impacted Earth off the coast of what is now Yucatan, Mexico, causing the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

The Nadir Crater was found buried beneath up to 1,300 feet (396 meters) of seabed roughly 250 miles (402 kilometers) off the coast of Guinea, West Africa, and spans over 5 miles (8 kilometers) in diameter. The crater was found using scientific instruments that can see deep into Earth, and if confirmed, the crater will be added to the list of fewer than 20 confirmed impact craters in the ocean on Earth.

Dallas-based company Colossal Biosciences has set its sights on bringing the Tasmanian tiger, an Australian marsupial also known as the thylacine, back to life after it became extinct in 1936.

The Tasmanian tiger marks the second species in Colossal Biosciences' plans to bring extinct species back from the dead, as they are also working on reviving the wooly mammoth species. The Tasmanian tiger roamed the Earth for millions of years before it became extinct, living across mainland Australia and its island state, Tasmania. It became extinct two thousand years ago on the mainland, likely due to native dingos, but was only fully made extinct by hunters in Tasmania in 1936.

Colossal Biosciences is partnering with the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research Lab at the University of Melbourne to help accelerate the effort the bring the creature back to life. According to Lamm, the team has access to DNA from the Tasmanian tiger, unlike with the wooly mammoth project, and the gestation period is supposedly easier to work with thylacine.

NASA is scheduled to collide a high-speed spacecraft with an asteroid in an attempt to change its orbit using a technique called a "kinetic impactor".

The mission is called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and launched on Nov. 23, 2021, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft successfully exited Earth's atmosphere, and since then, it has been on a journey towards its target, a binary near-Earth asteroid system called Didymos and its smaller moonlet Dimorphos. The DART mission is the very first planetary defense mission that will attempt to deflect an asteroid, and the results from the mission, if the method is proven effective, will affect how Earth as a planet defends itself from asteroids entering our orbit.

The small spacecraft headed on a suicide mission with the Dimorphos will approach the space rock at extremely high speeds, with NASA officials estimating that the craft will be traveling 14,760 mph or 4.1 miles per second. The extreme speed of the aircraft and the kinetic power that will be generated by its impact should be enough to change the Dimorphos' orbit around the larger Didymos. To what degree the orbit changes will determine if the mission has been a success and if the results line up with NASA pre-launch estimations.

NASA is gearing up for the first mission of its Artemis program, which will be the first big step the agency takes to getting humans back on the Moon and eventually stepping up an off-world base.

Commander Moonikin Campos wearing the new Orion Crew Survival System spacesuit.

NASA is closing in on the launch date for its Artemis I mission which will include launching its new Space Launch System, which features the SLS mega-rocket along with the Orion capsule. The goal is to send the rocket around the Moon to record vital data that will be used to ensure the safety on efficiency of humans revisiting the lunar surface in Artemis III. The Artemis I mission will be uncrewed, which means no humans will be on board the Orion capsule, but that doesn't mean the capsule will be empty.

Military has fired upon Europe's largest nuclear power plant, with officials inside the plant now performing disaster drills.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and is located in southeastern Ukraine near the city of Enerhodar. Currently, Russia occupies the power plant, but the technicians inside are Ukrainian. Recent reports revealed the plant suffered a missile strike that local government officials claim to have been at least a "several dozen" projectiles, with some being guided missiles that came just "ten meters" from hitting barrels filled with spent nuclear fuel.

Both Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for missile strikes, with both countries claiming "nuclear terrorism". However, Kyiv and Moscow have both agreed that the nuclear power plant needs to be visited by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to assess its condition, which has led to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelendskyy and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday for a discussion regarding the Zaporizhzhia situation.

Mission control has ordered a Russian cosmonaut to get back into the International Space Station (ISS) after spacesuit issues.

The Russian cosmonaut told to get back into the ISS is called Oleg Artemyev, and at the moment, there isn't a clear idea of what the specific issue was with the spacesuit. However, in a statement to Space.com, NASA spokesperson Bob Navias said that Artemyev was never in "any danger" and that the anomaly occurred when fellow Russian cosmonaut Denis Matveev and Artemyev were venturing outside of the ISS to work on the European Space Agency's robotic arm that's equipped with cameras.

The issue was noticed by mission control three hours into what was going to be a six-hour spacewalk, and upon noticing the malfunction with what appeared to be the suit's battery power, mission control immediately ordered Artemyev to return to the ISS airlock and plug in his suit into the station's power supply.

The paper published in the scientific journal Science Advances details warns that California's biggest threat may not be droughts or wildfires but a megaflood that may occur in the not-so-distant future.

The study examined the chances of a megaflood hitting the California state across the next forty years and found that due to climate change, the chances of "catastrophic flooding" occurring have doubled. The researchers recognize that many Californian residents are used to water being scarce rather than there being an abundance, but according to historical and paleoclimate data, the state is still at risk of large amounts of rainfall.

The study notes that a megaflood has occurred in the past, citing flooding events that happened in 1969, 1986, and 1997. More specifically, the researchers pointed to the benchmark megaflood that happened between 1861 and 1862, which happened after winter storms battered the area that produced catastrophic flooding across virtually all of California's lowlands. The flooding during this period was so bad that it even produced an inland sea that stretched 300 miles in length.

In a new segment on "The Daily Show," the 91-year-old actor William Shatner gave a narration on the life of Elon Musk.

The recently aired Daily Show segment featured Star Trek actor William Shatner giving a narration on an overview of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The video, as seen above, is done in a humorous manner but still had many digs thrown at Musk, with Shatner referring to him as "part annoying dude in the group chat", and saying that one day "we'll all be his serfs, but in a funny way".

Shatner's commentary is also directed at Daily Show host Trevor Noah where Shatner can be heard saying, "unlike other South African celebrities, he didn't make his childhood into a whole thing", which is a reference to Trevor Noah's past comments on Musk and his book. The segment also shined a light on claims Musk made about Tesla's autopilot features while simultaneously showing instances where the vehicle failed to perform efficiently.