Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 84

NASA has taken to its Hubble Space Telescope Twitter account to tease upcoming research that will be conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA explains in the above post that its Hubble Space Telescope snapped a photograph of the galaxy ESO 137-001, which resides in the constellation Triangulum Australe and in the cluster Abell 3627. NASA explains that ESO 137-001 is slowly plunging into a galaxy cluster that is causing it to be stripped of hot gas, which creates a galactic tail that stretches some 260,000 light years.

Notably, when observed in visible light, the galaxy looks like a "jellyfish" with large blue ribbons of young stars forming the legs of the aquatic animal. Furthermore, NASA explains that once Webb is fully calibrated and operational, the next-generation space telescope will be pointed at ESO 137-001 to study this strange galaxy and how stars are forming in the galactic tail. To read more on this galaxy from NASA, check out this link here.

Researchers have created artificial "living" skin constructed out of human cells that is capable of healing itself.

A team of researchers has moved the scientific needle forward with the development of artificial living skin that is designed to give robots the look and touch of living creatures. As explained in the above/below video and in the researcher's paper penned in the journal Cell, the scientists from the University of Tokyo designed skin that molded itself to a robotic finger as it's very difficult to cut and glue skin onto the device manually.

The team explains that they dipped the robotic finger into a solution that consists of collagen and dermal fibroblast, which are cells that create proteins that basically form the structure and connectivity of human skin. The team then added epidermal cells, which are the main cells found on the outer layer of skin, and as explained by ScienceAlert, without these cells, the skin wouldn't repel water.

NASA has announced that it will be launching a new study that will investigate UFO sightings and how scientists can develop a deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

On Thursday, NASA announced that it will be recruiting several high-ranking scientists to lead the project, which will analyze already obtained data of the mysterious events and, hopefully, provide the agency with a deeper understanding of the phenomena. Notably, the agency intends that the project will inform NASA on how to gather data on UFOs in the future.

NASA now joins the list of US government bodies that have taken on the responsibility of demystifying the UFO topic. Congress recently shined a light on UFOs by hosting a public hearing last month where the Pentagon announced it has encountered nearly 400 UFOs. Additionally, NASA has stated that its newly announced project will also focus on mitigating UFOs, citing a part of the mission is to develop new safety measures for aircrafts.

The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of the risk of monkeypox becoming established in new countries.

The monkeypox virus is endemic to Africa, meaning it can resurface often. However, since about May 17th of this year, cases of the rare virus have begun appearing across Europe, and outbreaks have occurred in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and other countries. The total number of cases has surpassed a thousand, though no deaths have been reported so far as a result.

A new report from the Washington Post has revealed that Twitter's board will go along with the demands made by Elon Musk to investigate the platform's true number of bot accounts.

The new report from WAPO has revealed that the board will give Musk the full "firehose" of data that consists of more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to an individual close to the matter who discussed it with WAPO under the condition of remaining anonymous. The spotlight on Twitter's userbase and its percentage of fake accounts came under fire when Musk announced that the deal to purchase the platform for $44 billion was on hold until Twitter could prove that less than 5% of total users on Twitter are bots.

The individual who spoke to WAPO said that the "firehose" of data is already being accessed by approximately 24 different companies, who pay for access to the pool so they can see a real-time record of tweets, what devices those tweets came from, and information about the account that wrote the tweet. If Musk gets access to Twitter's data stream and is able to prove the platform has more spam accounts than what Twitter has previously stated, it may be enough grounds for Musk to renegotiate the agreed-upon price.

A study on the microplastics discovered titled "First evidence of microplastics in Antarctic snow" has been published in the journal The Cryosphere.

Researchers from the University of Canterbury have uncovered microplastics in fresh snow in Antarctica that was collected in late 2019. Research on microplastics has shown their negative impact on the health of environments due to limiting the growth and reproduction of organisms, and their general biological functions, including those in humans.

A brand new telescope in the Indian Himalayas has been commissioned at the Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES).

The telescope is known as the International Liquid-Mirror Telescope (ILMT) and is "the first liquid-mirror telescope designed exclusively for astronomical observations." It joins another four-meter class telescope at the observatory, the Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT), which are both the largest aperture telescopes in the country.

The telescope was built by Indian, Belgian, and Canadian astronomers and employs a 4-meter (13.1 feet) diameter rotating mirror made up of liquid mercury. Mercury is a reflective liquid, which the astronomers laid in a thin film and curved into a parabolic shape, allowing it to focus light. The mercury is protected from the wind by a thin transparent film of mylar.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that its James Webb Space Telescope has been struck by a micrometeorite.

The space agency recently published a report that states Webb was struck by a micrometeorite between May 23 and May 25. The micrometeorite struck Webb's primary mirror, and NASA has said that the telescope is still performing at a level that is beyond its intended mission requirements despite there being a "detectable effect in data". Notably, NASA writes that micrometeorite impacts are an "unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft" and that Webb engineers anticipated that impacts such as these would be common.

Engineers behind Webb constructed the next-generation space telescope to be capable of withstanding micrometeorite impacts. However, the micrometeorite that recently impacted Webb was larger than what was simulated on Earth, and over the course of Webb's life, it will undoubtedly continue to be hit with micrometeorites that will "gracefully degrade telescope performance," according to Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard.

An artificial intelligence (AI) powered system has been developed that can reportedly clone pigs better than humans can.

A new report by the South China Morning Post has revealed that a new AI-powered system created by researchers from the University of Nankai's College of Artificial Intelligence has already created seven piglets via surrogate. The new system created the piglets without any human intervention, and according to the researchers behind the project who spoke to the publication, the system may pave the way forward to commercialized cloning.

Notably, most cloning processes consist of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is a laboratory strategy that involves a scientist manually transferring cells and their nuclei, which can take hours. The manual process also involves a lot of injuries for the cells, which is AI-system dramatically reduces as it can "can calculate the strain within a cell and direct the robot to use minimal force to complete the cloning process," according to Liu Yaowei, who spoke to the publication.

The Colombian military have used a remotely operated vehicle to uncover the remains of a legendary San Jose galleon.

Military sent down the remotely operated vehicle four separate times, which went to a depth of approximately 3,100 feet located off the Caribbean coast. Each of the missions was performed with observations by the Colombian navy and yielded different results.

From the images taken by the vehicle, we can see a part of the bow and hull of the ship, which is covered in algae and shellfish. Authorities believe the San Jose galleon was owned by the Spanish crown and was sunk by the British navy in 1708.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to light up YouTube over the abundance of spam accounts on the platform.

Musk posted the above meme on June 8, has moved the spotlight from Twitter's number of fake accounts to YouTube, and while Twitter is still being investigated for the true number of fake accounts on its platform, now individuals are discussing YouTube's similar problem. Musk made fun of YouTube's policies for when someone swears on the platform and the seeming inaction Google/YouTube has taken at curbing the ever-growing problem of obvious scams that riddle the website.

In response to Musk's meme, Trung Phan, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, posted a meme that depicts Elon ignoring Twitter and "checking out" YouTube as a replacement. In response to this fantastic meme, Musk posted the suspicious eyes emoji. Notably, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, replied to Musk's meme and wrote that he had seen thousands of fake advertisements on YouTube that claim he is giving away free money, and that he has been "screaming at [YouTube] for forever" to fix this problem.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that the agency and SpaceX will both be standing down from this week's Falcon 9 launch.

The mission named CRS-25 was a planned cargo mission headed for the International Space Station (ISS), and according to NASA's blog post, a major issue was identified during the loading process of the Dragon spacecraft. NASA states that "elevated vapor readings of mono-methyl hydrazine (MMH) were measured in an isolated region of the Draco thruster propulsion system", which is the fuel used by the Dragon spacecraft to course-correct itself as it's approaching the ISS to dock.

CBS News reported that NASA informed astronauts aboard the ISS that CRS-25 would now launch no earlier than June 28 (it was previously scheduled to launch on June 12). Notably, the space agency writes that an investigation has been launched into the fuel leak, and once the exact source of the leak is identified, both NASA and SpaceX teams will announce a new launch date. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

A team of astronomers have uncovered some interesting facts about Jupiter that have led researchers to learn more about the origin of the largest planet in our solar system.

The team has penned a study that was published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal on June 8 that details observations made of Jupiter's gaseous envelope. The researchers found that Jupiter's gas isn't composed of one substance and that the inner part of the planet is made up of more metals than the outer part. Notably, the team found that Jupiter's inner metal parts consist of between 11 and 30 Earth masses, which is approximately 3-9% of the total mass of the planet.

Using data from NASA's Juno mission that arrived at our solar system's largest planet in 2016, the team studied the distribution of metals in Jupiter's atmosphere, which has provided some insight into how the planet originally formed over the course of millions of years. The team was led by Yamila Miguel, who said that previously researchers believed that Jupiter's envelope was similar to boiling water, where elements were completely mixed, but the new findings has found there is some gradient structure to its element distribution.

Germany disabled its space telescope aboard a Russian spacecraft earlier this year in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The X-ray telescope managed by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany is named eROSITA and flies aboard the Russian-German Spektrum-Rontgen-Gamma space observatory, or Spektr-RG for short. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, reportedly plans to restart the eROSITA without German assistance after the MPE put it into safe mode in protest.

The navigation sensor for NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has recently stopped working.

In a blog post providing the latest update on Ingenuity by Havard Grip, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Chief Pilot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Grip revealed that Ingenuity's inclinometer navigation sensor is no longer functional. The fault while the Ingenuity team was recommissioning the helicopter over the last several days for more flights.

Ingenuity can keep track of its current position, velocity, and orientation, thanks to a suite of sensors that its onboard flight control system can monitor. These include an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for measuring acceleration, a laser rangefinder for determining altitude, and a navigation camera for photographing the ground below.

The U.S. Air Force recovered the hypersonic sled as part of its Hypersonic Sled Recovery (HSR) project.

The 846th Test Squadron conducted testing of the hypersonic sled at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in late March 2022. The reusable sled was stopped after reaching speeds of 6,400 feet per second on a monorail, equivalent to about Mach 5.69, or almost 5.7 times the speed of sound. The test was performed on the Holloman High Speed Test Track (HHSTT) and was the fastest sled recovery in more than thirty years.

According to the Air Force, the HHSTT "is the only sled track capable of recovering sleds with test articles from velocities over Mach 5." The vehicle's high-performance braking systems allow it to be recovered for analysis and reuse, which is less often the case with hypersonic aircraft tests. The sled tests bridge the gap between full-scale flight tests and laboratory experiments.

A study on the cancer treatment titled "PD-1 Blockade in Mismatch Repair-Deficient, Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer" has been accepted from publication in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) is conducting a new trial administering the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab, sold under the brand name Jemperli, to patients with rectal cancer tumors. Only twelve patients have seen positive results as the trial is currently ongoing. However, every patient so far has entered remission following the treatment, and no tumors returned by their six-month check-ups.

All of the patients had tumors with genetic mutations known as mismatch repair deficiency (MMRd), making them less responsive to chemotherapy or radiation treatments and increasing the need for surgical removals. However, it also makes cancer cells more vulnerable to the immune system, especially when supported by immunotherapy drugs.

A new video tweeted out by Elon Musk provides an update on some of the accomplishments of SpaceX up to this point and some plans for the future.

In the video, an animated segment shows off how Starship will deploy SpaceX's next generation of Starlink satellites, Starlink V2.0. A small slit is shown opening up near the top of Starship, allowing Starlink satellites to be deployed two at a time, with Starship's partially transparent body showing a stack of the satellites within and ejecting those at the bottom before the rest of the stack moves down.

The animation confirms what was spotted last month on Starship to be what was described as a "pez dispenser type door" for deploying Starlink satellites. With similar comments being made on the latest video, even Musk has acknowledged the similarity, suggesting that "maybe we should make an actual Starship model that dispenses pez for our merch store."

A study on Dyson spheres titled "Infrared and Optical Detectability of Dyson Spheres at White Dwarf Stars" has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ben Zuckerman, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), suggests that aliens may be inhabiting Dyson spheres encircling white dwarf stars throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Therefore, such spheres and stars are where astronomers should focus their search for extraterrestrial life.

A Dyson sphere, named after physicist Freeman Dyson, allows a sufficiently advanced civilization to harness all of the energy output of its host star by building a megastructure around it to capture the solar energy. Zuckerman argues that of the stars an alien civilization could build a Dyson sphere around, white dwarf stars would be the most likely, which make up about 6% of all known stars in the Milky Way.

It was only a few days ago that Elon Musk postponed Tesla AI Day while also teasing the reveal of the coming Tesla bot named Optimus.

Musk announced that Tesla AI Day would be held on August 19, 2022, but recently took to his personal Twitter account on June 3 to announce that the event has been pushed back to September 30. The Tesla CEO also teased the reason for the delay, explaining the company "may have an Optimus prototype working by then", which will seemingly be revealed at the show.

Previously Musk has explained that the Tesla bot is designed to perform any task that humans don't want to do, or any job that is too monotonous for humans to enjoy doing. Furthermore, Musk has said that Optimus, when it is in working order, will "upend our idea of what the economy is" and "it may be hard to imagine it, but as you see Optimus develop, and we will make sure it's safe, no Terminator stuff, it will transform the world to a degree even greater than the car".