Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 77

A New Zealand patient has volunteered to be the first person to receive a gene-editing treatment to lower their blood cholesterol.

The patient is part of a clinical trial by Verve Therapeutics, a U.S. biotechnology company. The patient suffers from heart disease and inherited the risk for excessively high cholesterol, which lends itself to an increased risk of heart attacks and heart disease. The patient's treatment involved an injection of a version of the CRISPR gene-editing tool designed to modify the DNA in the patient's liver cells slightly.

A new report from the United Nations has revealed what intergovernmental organization estimates the world population will be before 2022 is finished.

According to the report titled "World Population Prospects", the world's population is expected to reach 8 billion by mid-November, according to the UN's estimations. By 2030 the UN predicts that the planet will hold a total of 8.5 billion people, and by 2050 there will be 9.7 billion people. Notably, the UN predicts the world's population will reach a peak of approximately 10.4 billion people around 2080.

Furthermore, the UN writes that these sharp increases in population will come from less than ten countries, and those countries are; Congo, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, and Tanzania. Other notable predictions from the report are that there will be as many women in the world as men by 2050, with current metrics indicating that as of 2022, the world's population is about 50.3% male.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is fired up for scientific operations, and the space agency has released a beautiful image of a star-forming region.

NASA has shared a new image snapped by the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared instrument that focuses on the star-forming region NGC 3324, or the Carina Nebula. According to NASA's recent blog post, the region is called the Cosmic Cliffs, and after looking at the image, you can understand why. The agency explains the space mountains consist of cosmic dust, but Webb's extremely sensitive instruments are capable of peering through that veil at the young stars behind it.

NASA notes that the ultraviolet radiation that is being released from the young stars is influencing the mountain's edge, while the mist that is seen above the mountain top is actually hot ionized gas and dust that is being forced away from the nebula by star radiation. Furthermore, the tallest "mountain" seen in the above image is estimated to be 7 light-years tall.

NASA has released a selection of colored images snapped by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These images are the first colored images taken by the JWST.

NASA has taken to its blog to showcase a planetary nebula called NGC 3132, which is also called the Southern Ring Nebula, located approximately 2,500 light-years from Earth. NASA explains that the above observations of the nebula have been taken almost face-on to the subject and that if you were to look at the nebula from side-on, it would look like two bowls placed together pointing outwards with their bases touching.

Notably, NGC 3132 consists of two stars that orbit each other very closely. This orbit between the two stellar objects stirs the nebula's dust and gas, causing asymmetrical patterns to be produced. Furthermore, Webb's Mid-infrared camera revealed for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust, with the brighter star next to it being in the earlier stages of star evolution, hence its difference in color.

NASA has released a set of incredible images taken by the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

NASA has taken to its blog to finally released the first colored images snapped by the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, and showcased above is the galaxy group "Stephan's Quintet". According to the space agency, Stephan's Quintet has been photographed in never-before-seen detail. The above image is actually a mosaic piece made up of 1,000 separate images.

Notably, NASA states that the collection of images flattened into one image consists of more than 150 million pixels and reveals previously unknown details such as the sparkling clusters of a million or more stars and how gas and dust are being pulled into different directions by the gravity of certain objects. Furthermore, NASA states in its blog that this is the largest image to date, and is approximately the same size as one-fifth of the Moon's diameter.

NASA recently released the first set of images taken by the $10 billion next-generation space telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope from Earth on December 25 and since then it has travelled to its destination approximately 1 million miles from Earth, and prepared all its next-generation instruments for scientific operations. It has been many months of Webb calibrating, but now NASA has released the first set of images ever captured by Webb and they are nothing short of amazing.

The first image, seen below, is the deepest and sharpest image of the universe ever taken. According to NASA the image is of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and it contains thousands of galaxies as well as the faintest objects ever observed in infrared light. Following the release of the first image, and the now first set of images, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to his personal Twitter account to show his support for NASA's most powerful telescope.

A meteor was spotted in the sky over Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand's North Island and South Island, during the daytime hours on July 7th, 2022.

Witnesses described the meteor as a "giant bright orange fireball" that produced a "trail of smoke that hung around for a few minutes." The fireball is presumed to have been caused by a small meteor, up to a few meters wide, that fragmented in the atmosphere, producing a sonic boom as it exploded with the power of 1,800 metric tonnes of TNT.

The shock wave generated by the fragmented meteor was detected by GeoNet, a network seismometers used to detect earthquakes, which recorded sound waves produced as a result. The event also produced a bright flash of light that was recorded by satellites used to detect lightning globally. The meteor likely fragmented over the ocean, and fragments of it will therefore be unrecoverable.

Kyoto University and Kajima Corporation have presented concept plans for Moon and Mars bases.

The major downside of the ambitious plans is that the bases are only expected to become feasible to implement in the 22nd century at the earliest. The "artificial gravity living facilities" will provide a safe habitat for humans on both the Moon and Mars and will create artificial gravity by harnessing centrifugal forces created by rotating the entire base.

A study on the modified worm titled "Nematode surface functionalization with hydrogel sheaths tailored in situ has been published in the journal Materials Today Bio.

Researchers from Osaka University have found a new use for a type of nematode, which are microscopic unsegmented roundworms, particularly the Anisakis simplex species. The Japanese researchers equipped the worms with "hydrogel sheaths," allowing them to be loaded up with cargo. A. simplex is usually found in marine environments, but if ingested, they can colonize inside humans, where they have been shown to develop a taste for cancer cells.

A study on the Earth's formation titled "Stochastic accretion of the Earth" has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have used a new modeling approach to determine a likely pathway through which Earth came to be. The prevailing theory until now suggested that Earth formed from chondritic asteroids gradually conglomerating. However, according to planetologist Paolo Sossi of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, "the problem with this theory is that no mixture of these chondrites can explain the exact composition of the Earth, which is much poorer in light, volatile elements such as hydrogen and helium than we would have expected."

When stars form, leftover dust and gas surrounding the star make up a protoplanetary disk, which gradually aggregates into concentrated pockets. In what's known as the accretion model, matter clumps together, held in place by electrostatic forces, and then gravitational forces begin to hold matter together as larger objects form, such as planetesimals, which can go on to become a planet.

SpaceX is currently testing a prototype of its Super Heavy rocket booster that is expected to be what gets the company's massive Starship off the ground and into space.

Elon Musk's pioneering company was testing Super Heavy Booster 7 prototype on Monday, July 11, with engine firing beginning at 5:20 pm at Starbase, SpaceX's South Texas facility. Shortly after firing up the engines, an explosion shook the entire SpaceX facility, which was followed by an eruption of flames that licked up the sides of the massive 165-foot-tall Starship.

One Twitter user asked Musk if this explosion was intentional, Musk quickly replied and said, "Yes. Booster engine testing." However, the SpaceX CEO then deleted that tweet and followed up with a reply to a video of the incident by NASASpaceflight where he said, "yeah, actually not good. Team is assessing damage". Notably, Musk explained that cryogenic fuel is a "challenge", "as it evaporates to create fuel-air explosion risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth." Furthermore, Musk said that he would give updates later.

A TikTok teen has taken approximately 1.4 million of frog spawn and decided to breed them to create a frog army.

The TikTok user goes by the name "ThinFrog" and created a series of taking the large quantity of frog spawn and breeding them in a backyard pool. In recent videos posted to the TikTok page the UK-based teen reveals that the frogs had hatched into tadpoles, and then eventually into small frogs. According to the video, one of the surrounding neighbors had left due to the immense amount of frogs.

Tierra Curry, a conservation biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity has said that the release of more than a million frogs into an environment for a stunt "makes me cringe", as it actually hurts the animals that they are releasing and can have wider impacts on animals living in the surrounding environment. "Instead of helping, [These TikTok users] are actually hurting the animals they're releasing and all the animals in the environment that they're releasing them into - it's creating a vector for disease and invasive species," said Curry.

Following Elon Musk's legal team sending a letter to Twitter's board of directors indicating that Musk wants to back out of the $44 billion acquisition deal, Musk has fired off a couple of trolling tweets.

Musk has been engaged in a deal to purchase Twitter for a few months now, and leading up to the present date, the Tesla CEO said that the deal was "on hold" until Twitter could prove that its number of bot/spam accounts was below the stated 5% of total Twitter users. Twitter provided the "full pipe" of data to Musk's team, which was unable to prove that Twitter's estimation was incorrect.

Now, reports have come out that Twitter is moving to pursue legal action against Musk that may force him into purchasing the company for the locked-in $44 billion. Notably, Twitter's market capitalization is currently at $28 billion, nearly half of Musk's offer. Musk has recently posted a meme to his Twitter account that pokes fun at the bot account situation. The meme states that Twitter didn't want Musk to buy the company in the first place, and when he went to purchase it and asked for "bot info," the company didn't disclose the correct information. Lastly, "now they have to disclose the bot info in court".

NASA has been teasing that its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful space telescope in the world, will soon be releasing its first colored images.

Webb launched from Earth on Christmas Day, 2021, and since then, the $10 billion+ observatory has been gearing up for scientific operations with NASA engineers on Earth running it through numerous checks to prepare its highly advanced instruments. Now, Webb is beginning science operations, and NASA has already taken to its social channels to release the first colored image taken by Webb.

Above is the first image colored image taken by NASA's JWST, and according to NASA's website its, the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe ever taken. The image showcases galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, which contains thousands of galaxies and the faintest objects ever observed in infrared. Furthermore, NASA explains that this image and all of the galaxies contained within it covers a patch of sky equivalent to the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length.

The James Webb Space Telescope is slated to unlock the universe to researchers with powerful instruments capable of looking further back in time than ever before.

A new report published in Nature last Friday estimates that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be slapped by at least one meteorite per month for the rest of its life. Notably, NASA stated in early June that its next-generation space telescope was struck by a micrometeorite in May, and that the impact didn't cause any significant damage. However, over time NASA estimates that micrometeorite impacts will reduce the total lifespan on if the observatory.

So far, Webb has been smacked by five micrometeorites, with the fifth being the most recent and the largest. When Webb was being designed, engineers knew the large observatory would be prone to fast-moving dust particles impacting the mirrors, which is why they took a large amount of time testing how much Webb's mirrors could endure micrometeorite impacts.

NASA has explained that one of the asteroids left over from the formation of the solar system isn't what it appears to be.

Asteroid Bennu is a relic from the formation of the solar system, and is expected to hold many clues about the history of the solar system, ancient life, and more. With the aforementioned goals in mind, NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to collect a sample from the asteroid, and it was successfully acquired in October 2020 when it briefly landed on the asteroid's surface.

NASA explains that it didn't expect Bennu's surface to be so loosely packed, and according to a recent blog post on NASA's website, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft would have sunk into Bennu if the spacecraft didn't fire its thrusters immediately after it collected the sample. According to Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx, "our expectations about the asteroid's surface were completely wrong". The space agency says a good way to think about what it would be like to walk on the surface of Bennu is to imagine walking in a plastic ball pit.

A study on the creature titled "A three-eyed radiodont with fossilized neuroanatomy informs the origin of the arthropod head and segmentation" has been published in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada, discovered a collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale dating back 506 million years, including "incredibly well preserved" ones of the extinct Stanleycaris hirpex, a kind of arthropod known as a radiodont. The S. hirpex was an ancient marine predator, measuring no more than 20 centimeters (~7.8 inches), existing when few animals grew larger, making it rather formidable.

The fossil collection includes 84 S. hirpex with the brain and nerves intact, showing that the brain of the Stanleycaris was made up of two segments, called the protocerebrum and deutocerebrum, which connect to the eyes and front claws, respectively. This differs radically from present-day arthropods like insects, which have a brain comprising three segments: the protocerebrum, deutocerebrum, and tritocerebrum. Stanleycaris also had a central, third eye on its head between its two stalked eyes, differentiating it from any other known radiodont.

NASA has issued a statement in response to Russia using the International Space Station (ISS) to spread 'anti-Ukraine propaganda.'

On Monday, July 4th, 2022, Russia's space agency Roscosmos shared images of three of its cosmonauts aboard the space station posing with flags representing Russian-backed breakaway states in the Donbas region of Ukraine. This immediately prompted strong responses from retired astronauts and the multiple space agencies involved in the ISS.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Senseable City Lab (SCL) has unveiled a new concept its calling "space bubbles."

Space bubbles would be a form of geoengineering, also known as climate engineering, but not one that focuses directly on Earth-bound systems that could be manipulated to alter the climate, as these pose "tremendous risks to our living ecosystem." Instead, the SCL has conceived of a space-based solution, noting that if we could deflect 1.8% of solar radiation before it hits Earth, "we could fully reverse today's global warming."

The SCL team has tested thin-film structures in its lab, inspired by the work of Roger Angel, who first proposed using them in outer space. The SCL solution would be manufactured in space, easily deployable, and reversible. The ideal position would be the Lagrangian Point between the Earth and the Sun, known as L₁. At this point, the Sun's and the Earth's gravitational influence on an object effectively cancel out, and the object can stay at that same relative position with limited corrections.

Google Earth has revealed the construction of a new system at the Russian Ministry of Defense's Krona space object recognition station.

An extensive investigation published by The Space Review using satellite imagery, as well as Russian financial documents and industrial contracts, uncovered the "strong evidence" for the development of an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) laser system at the Krona facility. The laser system is called Kalina and will be able to target foreign imaging satellites' optical systems, effectively blinding them as they fly over Russian territory.

The intended purpose of the Kalina system is "electro-optical warfare." It would permanently blind satellites, in contrast to a Russian mobile laser "dazzler" called Peresvet, which temporarily blinds satellites. The Kalina project first began in 2011 but was delayed multiple times. However, it appears to be finally making significant progress.