Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 82

Viewing pornography in China is a crime, and authorities have used artificial intelligence (AI) and "porn appraisers" to flag questionable content.

Researchers from China's Beijing Jiaotong University have created a device that can detect pornography when a man is watching it by "reading his mind." In an experiment involving fifteen male university students aged 20 to 25, a device worn on the head detected spikes in brainwave activity whenever an explicit image appeared on a computer screen in front of the wearer.

The device is a proof-of-concept for human-machine collaboration in detecting explicit imagery, catching what AI misses, and assisting porn appraisers, or jian huang shi, that professionally scour and censor content, and are much more accurate than AI, but cannot continuously carry out the task. A peer-reviewed paper on the prototype device was published on June 13th in the Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation.

The recent wet dress rehearsal was NASA's first successful attempt after various problems thwarted three previous ones.

The last hurdle in validating NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for its upcoming Artemis I mission was scrapped on previous occasions due to technical issues, including a fuel leak and stuck valves, and a hydrogen leak almost delayed the latest attempt. Despite this, NASA went ahead with a wet dress rehearsal on June 20th, 2022, and completed a mock countdown procedure down to T-29 seconds.

The wet dress rehearsal marked the first time the SLS rocket's propellant tanks were all fully loaded, and engineers could test launch-day conditions in rapid succession. To circumvent the hydrogen leak that arose in preparation for the attempt, launch controllers found a way to mask the data the leak would send to the launch computer to allow them to continue the test as far into the countdown as possible.

The United States' first human trial of CRISPR gene-editing technology has been ongoing since 2019.

The trial sought to treat two rare blood diseases, beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease (SCD). CRISPR was used to make a single genetic change to stem cells harvested from a patient's blood, designed to lead to higher fetal hemoglobin levels in red blood cells, before re-administering the stem cells to the patient.

The treatment effectively cured the first two patients to receive it in a matter of months, and follow-up results from about two years in showed completely successful treatments in 22 patients. Seven of those 22 patients were a year past their first treatment, which was still proving effective.

China has recently outlined the nations plans to return samples from Mars back to Earth, and it believes it can do it much faster than NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

For context, NASA, partnered with the ESA, is planning on returning a selection of samples from the Red Planet that involves a complex method of landing a second spacecraft next to the Perseverance rover to hand off the samples. The second spacecraft, which is planned to launch in 2026 and arrive on Mars in 2028, will deploy a rover that will collect the samples from Perseverance and transport them to the Mars ascent vehicle, which is a small rocket that will launch from the surface of Mars.

The small rocket will then sync up with a third nearby spacecraft that will collect the samples and then transport them back to Earth sometime in 2033. Now, that is NASA and the ESA's plan on getting the first Mars samples back to Earth, and while it seems somewhat convoluted, it's the best plan the agencies could come up with given the timeframe.

SpaceX has set a new record for the most reuses of a single Falcon 9 rocket booster.

On Friday, June 17th, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida before launching a radar satellite for the German military from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California the following day. With a third Falcon 9 launch at 04:27 UTC on June 19th from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, SpaceX has launched three rockets within 36 hours, and all safely made it back to Earth.

The first of the three missions saw SpaceX break its rocket-reuse record, as the Falcon 9 first-stage booster used in the mission flew for the thirteenth time. The booster has flown for the launches of GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, and now a total of ten Starlink missions.

A study on the Lac-Phe molecule titled "An exercise-inducible metabolite that suppresses feeding and obesity" has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine, and other institutions have identified an exercise-induced molecule that appears in the blood of mice during exercise. The molecule is a modified amino acid, Lac-Phe, synthesized from lactate and phenylalanine. Lac-Phe was found to suppress food intake by roughly 50%, without affecting their overall energy expenditure or activity.

Lac-Phe also contributed to lowered overall food intake, reduced body weight, primarily due to a reduction in body fat, and improved glucose tolerance when administered over ten days. An enzyme called CNDP2 was also identified, used in the production of Lac-Phe, and was shown to be critical in weight loss from exercise.

Being the world's richest person comes with many benefits and shortcomings, but if there is one thing that Elon Musk hasn't lost on his ride to the top is his sense of humor.

Musk, is known for his CEO position at both Tesla and SpaceX, is known for his public wit, which is mostly said on his personal Twitter account. In April, Musk shared a meme, that was likely created by him, that poked fun at Bill Gates, and it showcased Gates next to the "pregnant man" emoji with Musk's caption "in case u need to lose a boner fast". Musk followed up to that tweet with a "shadow ban council reviewing tweet".

Now, Musk is at it again by taking to Twitter to announce that he will be changing the default Wi-Fi name for Starlink to "Stinky", in an effort to get people to change their Wi-Fi names. The tweets from Musk have seemed to cause a large selection of Starlink users to change their Wi-Fi names to some obscure names. In other Elon Musk news, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO may have caused stargazers to be confused as a spiral formation of lights streaked across the night sky.

NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope used its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys to snap the large galaxy cluster Abell 1351.

Hubble snapped the above image of this galaxy cluster that resides in the constellation Ursa Major within the northern hemisphere. As detailed by the the European Space Agency (ESA) in its "image of the week", Abell 1351 features streaks of light that are caused by gravitational lensing, which is a phenomenon that is caused when a large celestial body warps spacetime.

These massive celestial bodies such as galaxies warp light that is being seen by telescopes, and essentially act as a magnifying glass. The image of Abell 1351 is a part of an astronomical album that is a collection of the largest galaxy clusters ever observed, which clearly demonstrate the phenomenon of gravitational lensing.

Some residents that were lucky enough to see the event were left confused and some even scared at the whirlpool that appeared in the night sky over New Zealand.

Stargazers and anyone that was happening to look up at the night sky over the weekend at around 7:25 pm witnessed a spiral of light formations appearing in the night sky. The spiral of light streaked across the night sky and according to Alasdair Burns, who witnessed the event and spoke to The Guardian, "it looked like an enormous spiral galaxy" that was "slowly just drifting across". Notably, Burns said that many residents of his neighborhood banded together to watch the light show.

So, what was thousands of people witnessing? According to Professor Richard Easther, a physicist at Auckland University, the phenomenon isn't aliens, or anything sci-fi, but can be simply answered. The physicist explains that when a rocket is carrying a satellite into space its expelling propellant out its back, which mostly consists of water and carbon dioxide that form a cloud. This cloud is then illuminated by the sun.

One of the world's most valuable shipwrecks has been photographed, and a collection of images have been released by the Colombian military.

The shipwreck is Spain's San Jose Galleon that sunk with a large collection of now extremely valuable treasure. British navy sunk the vessel in 1708 throughout the War of the Spanish Succession. According to reports, the ship was and still is, carrying a large amount of treasure that includes gold coins, silver, emeralds, crockery, pots, cannons, and glass bottles. Previously the treasure was estimated to be worth $1 billion, but according to ScienceAlert, it's now estimated to be worth $17 billion.

The San Jose Galleon sunk with 600 souls on board, and on June 6, footage of the wreck was revealed by the Colombian military, with Colombian President Ivan Duque saying in a press conference, "The idea is to recover it and to have sustainable financing mechanisms for future extractions. In this way, we protect the treasure, the patrimony of the San Jose galleon." Notably, Colombia has claimed that the sunken vessel is its property, but Spain has also thrown its hat in the ring by stating that the ship was their property, claiming that the ship and its treasure fall under World Heritage Site guidelines.

Russia blew up its own satellite late last year in an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) test, generating a large amount of space debris.

The destroyed satellite was the Kosmos 1408 satellite, which was blown up by a Russian ASAT missile on November 15th, 2021. The ASAT test generated 1,500 trackable pieces of space debris, along with estimated hundreds of thousands of pieces too small to track.

The debris has spread between 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) and 1,000 kilometers (621.3 miles) above Earth, endangering low-Earth orbit satellites, including the International Space Station (ISS) and Tiangong, China's space station.

A study on the atom laser titled "Continuous Bose-Einstein condensation" has been published in the journal Nature.

Conventional lasers produce a coherent wave of light, meaning all of the light vibrates in a synchronized fashion. As described by the wave-particle duality from quantum mechanics, the behavior of particles like atoms can be described with the classical understanding of both particles and waves. Therefore, lasers can also be built from atoms, naturally dubbed 'atom lasers.'

A Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) is when matter particles, like atoms, condense into a coherent wave, synchronized like a light in a typical laser. However, this can typically only occur at temperatures roughly a millionth of a degree warmer than absolute zero, making most BECs short-lived. Now, physicists from the University of Amsterdam have devised a process to sustain BECs, and produce a continual atom laser.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has committed to sharing information regarding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) with the United States.

Larry Maguire, a member of parliament (MP) in Canada, questioned Canada's Natural Resources department during a meeting, about the safety of Canada's nuclear facilities and the potential threat posed by UAP, also known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Maguire later received a letter from the Natural Resources department informing him of their commitment to sharing information on UAP issues with its United States counterpart.

U.S. government bodies like the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and NASA have a collective renewed interest in UAP. Maguire raised the issue of UAP with the Canadian parliament after its ongoing silence on the matter and has since had fellow MPs back him in paying closer attention to the issue and the U.S.' handling of them.

A study on the black hole titled "Discovery of the most luminous quasar of the last 9 Gyr" has been submitted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

An international team led by astronomers from the Australian National University (ANU) has discovered a black hole growing faster than any other black hole in the last nine billion years. This black hole consumes an amount of mass equivalent to one Earth per second.

The black hole has a mass equivalent to three billion times that of our Sun and shines with 7,000 times more light than all of the light coming from the Milky Way, resulting in an apparent magnitude of 14.5, which measures how bright an object appears to an observer on Earth. Similarly sized black holes have been observed to stop growing at such fast rates billions of years ago.

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched into space on September 5th, 1977, and August 20th, 1977, respectively.

Both Voyager spacecraft have identical designs, and both have reached interstellar space, the first human-made objects to do so. Almost 45 years later, they are still in service, returning data to Earth from beyond the solar system. This makes the Voyager spacecraft the longest-lasting spacecraft in history after initially only being designed for a four-year mission.

Each Voyager launched with ten different scientific instruments, but Voyager 2 only has five still functioning, while Voyager 1 has four. They are all powered by electricity converted from heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium in their radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).

The new Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) has been developed by Estonian company Milrem Robotics and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.

The autonomous, robotic tank was first unveiled in June 2021 and has now completed the first test firing of its Protector Remote Turret. It is equipped with a Bushmaster 30 mm cannon, one of the many payloads the Type-X can use, such as 50 mm cannons, anti-tank missiles, and even a tethered drone. The tank can reach a top speed of 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) per hour on sealed roads,

Milrem and Kongsberg have partnered to develop the Nordic Robotic Wingman (NRW), which Type-X will serve as the base platform for creating RCVs for supporting larger, manned tanks and infantry vehicles. The artificial intelligence system governing the Type-X has multiple functions, including following, waypoint navigation, and obstacle detection.

A study on the asteroid titled "The Heterogeneous Surface of Asteroid (16) Psyche" has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

The 16 Psyche asteroid is scheduled to be visited by a NASA probe that will launch later in 2022. The spacecraft will visit the asteroid belt occupying the region between Mars and Jupiter, comprising remnants from the solar system's formation. One such remnant is the 16 Psyche asteroid, thought to be the core of an ancient planet, which contains a large number of valuable metals, producing an estimated value of as high as $700 quintillion.

Before the NASA probe is launched and reaches the asteroid to begin an almost two-year-long mission orbiting and analyzing it, researchers from MIT have mapped 16 Psyche in the highest resolution yet, coming in at roughly 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) per pixel. They combined signals from radio antennas at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile before running hundreds of simulations to determine the surface composition.

A senior official from NASA has told Reuters it is concerned about damage to its launch infrastructure.

The primary home for Starship is at SpaceX's Starbase facility, located in Boca Chica, Texas. Both Starship and the facility have been the subject of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) environmental assessment that was recently finalized. While the assessment was underway for the first half of 2022 and earlier, SpaceX constructed an orbital launchpad for Starship in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

At the same facilities in Cape Canaveral exists Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. From here, SpaceX launches its Crew Dragon capsule, which ferries astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. As it is the only launchpad approved for Crew Dragon, NASA wants SpaceX that Starship poses no risk to the pad as a result of some catastrophic incident such as an explosion.

The Boring Company has just received approval from the City of Las Vegas, so that the Elon Musk-led company can extend its tunnel network underneath the city, to downtown Las Vegas.

Clark County Commissioners first approved the Vegas Loop, which was planned as a 29-mile tunnel network that was connected to 51 stations. But with the expansion approval, it will boost up to a bigger 34-mile tunnel network with 4 more stations: 55 in total, with connections to Harry Reid International Airport and the Allegiant Stadium.

If you forgot how the Boring Company tunnel network works, the Vegas Loop will see passengers get into a human-driven Tesla Model X or Model Y electric vehicle -- underground, in a series of networked tunnels -- and boosted off to their destination with much, much more time to spare than driving on the roads.

NASA's upcoming Artemis I mission will fly over three million people's names around the Moon.

Artemis I is the first mission in NASA's Artemis program, which is set to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon, hoping to establish a more permanent presence from which NASA can stage missions to Mars for its Moon to Mars initiative. Artemis I will comprise an uncrewed test flight around the Moon using the new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft.

Aboard this flight will be a flash drive containing over three million names collected by NASA, and will be placed inside the Orion spacecraft. Before NASA stopped accepting further submissions, 3,390,384 "boarding passes" were claimed using NASA's website.