The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, is also the largest single machine operating in the world today that uses superconductivity. The proton beams inside the LHC are bent and focused around the accelerator ring using superconducting electromagnets. These electromagnets are built from coils, made of niobium–titanium (Nb–Ti) cables, that have to operate at a temperature colder than that of outer space in order to be superconducting. This allows the current to flow without any resistance or loss of energy. The High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), an upgrade of the LHC, will for the first time feature innovative electrical transfer lines known as the “Superconducting Links”

Recently, CERN’s SM18 magnet test facility witnessed the successful integration of the first series of magnesium diboride superconducting cables into a novel, flexible cryostat. Together with high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnesium diboride (MgB₂) cables, they will form a unique superconducting transfer line to power the HL-LHC inner triplet magnets. The triplets are the focusing magnets that focus the beam, right before collisions, to a diameter as narrow as 5 micrometres.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is set to achieve its most dangerous feat yet tomorrow, December 24, 2024. After a six-year journey of spiraling closer to the star at the heart of our solar system, the spacecraft is expected to come within 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface.

This tiny distance in cosmic terms lets scientists capture a new type of information, revealing secrets about solar winds, extreme heat, and magnetic fields.

Engineers have spent years carefully adjusting Parker’s flight path using multiple Venus gravity assists. These flybys reshape the spacecraft’s orbit and tighten its looping path around the Sun.

Recent discoveries reveal that bursts of slow pulsing radio waves originate from a binary star system consisting of a red dwarf and a white dwarf.

These findings challenge current pulsar theories and indicate a wider variety of stellar systems may emit similar signals.

Radio Wave Mysteries

As the multi-polar world of global politics becomes ever more complex, who better to cast light on its workings than a physicist turned President? Join Armen Sarkissian, former President of Armenia, as he argues for his new theory of quantum politics, in which individuals are necessarily connected across space and our world is dominated by randomness, uncertainty, and possibility.

However, “the idea that Saturn’s rings are young seemed very strange in the context of the solar system’s long evolutionary history,” study lead author Ryuki Hyodo, a planetary scientist at the Institute of Science Tokyo, told Space.com. “A few million years ago is the time of the dinosaurs on Earth. This would mean that the solar system was already well-established and relatively stable.”

In contrast, when Saturn formed about 4.5 billion years ago, or during the era called the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago, “the solar system was far more chaotic,” Hyodo said. “Many large planetary bodies were still migrating and interacting, greatly increasing the chances of a significant event that could have led to the formation of Saturn’s rings.”

To shed light on the age of Saturn’s rings, in the new study, Hyodo and his colleagues developed 3D computer models simulating crashes between micrometeoroids and the rings. These impacts typically occur at speeds of about 67,100 mph (108,000 km/h), they said.

A Neptune-sized planet, TOI-3261 b, makes a scorchingly close orbit around its host star. Only the fourth object of its kind ever found, the planet could reveal clues as to how planets such as these form.

An international team of scientists used the NASA space telescope, TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), to discover the exoplanet, then made further observations with ground-based telescopes in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. The measurements placed the new planet squarely in the “hot Neptune desert”—a category of planets with so few members that their scarcity evokes a deserted landscape.

The team, led by astronomer Emma Nabbie of the University of Southern Queensland, published their paper on the discovery, “Surviving in the Hot Neptune Desert: The Discovery of the Ultrahot Neptune TOI-3261 b,” in The Astronomical Journal in August 2024.

New observations show that planets forming in protoplanetary disks like that around PDS 70 can trigger the formation of subsequent planets.

This finding, based on high-resolution images from ALMA, supports the domino effect in the sequential formation of planetary systems.

Discoveries in Multi-Planet Systems.

Thirty-five years ago, our Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, was launched! The satellite was a crucial stepping stone in understanding the cosmic microwave background — the afterglow of the earliest moments of our universe.

Launched from what’s now Vandenberg Space Force Base on Nov. 18, 1989, COBE carried three instruments to space to measure microwave and infrared light across the whole sky. COBE’s observations helped us learn how our universe started and evolved.

COBE discovered that the oldest light in the universe contained tiny temperature variations (red indicates hotter regions, blue colder). These were the seeds for the gravitational formation of structures of galaxies seen in the universe today.

S James Webb Space Telescope: + There are still many questions we want to answer about the early universe, and our missions continue to study it and refine our understanding.

Explore the universe’s baby picture: https://go.nasa.gov/3VPXWgF

The James Webb Space Telescope awed the world on July 12 with its first images and data. And it’s just getting started with its exploration of the cosmos. Dr. John Mather, the observatory’s senior project scientist, has been working toward this milestone for more than 25 years.

With billions of stars in the Milky Way, some nomenclature standardization is necessary.

By Phil Plait edited by Lee Billings.

This timelapse of future technology, the 3rd year of the video series, goes on a journey exploring the human mind becoming digital. Brain chips turn memories and thoughts into data; could this data be sent out into space to live in the cosmos encoded into the magnetic fields between stars.

Other topics covered in this sci-fi documentary video include: bio-printing, asteroid habitats, terraforming Mars, the future of Teslabots, lucid dreaming, and the future of artificial intelligence and brain to computer interfaces (BCI — brain chips).

PATREON
The first and second volumes of ‘The Encyclopedia of the Future’ are now available on my Patreon.

Visit my Patreon here: / venturecity.

Created by: Jacob B
Narration by: Alexander Masters.

Addition footage: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab.