Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: space – Page 119

AI will enable drone wingmen to make autonomous decisions without centralized command.

According to Airbus, FCAS will be centered around a core Next Generation Weapon System (NGWS). In this “system of systems,” piloted New Generation Fighters will work together with Unmanned Remote Carriers – all connected to other systems in space, in the air, on the ground, at sea and in cyberspace via a data cloud called the “Combat Cloud.”

The FCAS is one more step towards the goal of achieving full collaborative combat by 2040, which can replace military systems like Rafale and Eurofighter.

Airbus says that an incremental roll-out of FCAS capabilities is planned by implementing initial situational awareness across platform capabilities in the mid-2020s.

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“One of the long-term aims of the research is to make better tailored foods for astronauts, as well as other people who are in isolated environments, to increase their nutritional intake closer to 100%,” said Dr. Julia Low.

Does food smell and taste different to astronauts in space and what steps can be taken to mitigate this in the future? This is what a recent study published in the International Journal of Food Science & Technology as an international team of researchers investigated how food aromas could be altered to amplify food taste. This study holds the potential to help researchers improve diets for isolated individuals, specifically in space or nursing home residents.

For the study, the researchers analyzed food odor perception of vanilla, almond, and lemon among 54 participants between 18 to 39 years old in a neutral setting and a virtual reality (VR) simulation of the International Space Station (ISS) with a key trait being they had no history of vertigo or motion sickness. The participants were asked to rate the potency of the aromas in both settings to compare any differences between the two environments.

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At the very smallest scales, our intuitive view of reality no longer applies. It’s almost as if physics is fundamentally indecisive, a truth that gets harder to ignore as we zoom in on the particles that pixelate our Univerrse.

In order to better understand it, physicists had to devise an entirely new framework to place it in, one based on probability over certainty. This is quantum theory, and it describes all sorts of phenomena, from entanglement to superposition.

Yet in spite of a century of experiments showing just how useful quantum theory is at explaining what we see, it’s hard to shake our ‘classical’ view of the Universe’s building blocks as reliable fixtures in time and space. Even Einstein was forced to ask his fellow physicist, “Do you really believe the Moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”

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Could an exoplanet’s that is tidally locked to its parent star exhibit differences in atmospheric behavior at the boundary of its permanent dayside and permanent nightside, also known as the terminator? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of international researchers investigated the unique atmosphere of WASP-39 b, whose radius is just under 1.3 times that of Jupiter, orbits in just 4.1 days, and is located just under 700 light-years from Earth. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanet atmospheres, specifically once that are tidally locked to their parent star.

Artist’s rendition of WASP-39 b’s terminator. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI))

“WASP-39 b has become a sort of benchmark planet in studying the atmosphere of exoplanets with Webb,” said Dr. Néstor Espinoza, who is an Assistant Astronomer and Mission Scientist for Exoplanet Science at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and lead author on the study. “It has an inflated, puffy atmosphere, so the signal coming from starlight filtered through the planet’s atmosphere is quite strong.”

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Lead study author Charles Cadieux, a PhD student at the University of Montreal, remarked that among all known temperate exoplanets, LHS 1,140 b is possibly the most promising candidate for confirming liquid water on the surface of an alien world.

Approximately 10 to 20 percent of the exoplanet’s mass is estimated to be water. In stark contrast, Earth’s oceans account for a mere 0.02 percent of its mass. The state of this water, whether liquid or ice, hinges on the planet’s atmospheric composition, with gases like carbon dioxide playing a crucial role.

One encouraging factor is the planet’s gentle warming by its red dwarf star, which is only one-fifth the size of our Sun. This stellar relationship suggests that the exoplanet’s surface temperature is likely comparable to that of Earth and Mars.

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Since the Apollo missions over half a century ago, scientists have suspected that the lunar surface is riddled with an extensive network of tunnels.

But despite our best efforts, they’ve been unable to once and for all confirm their existence — until now.

Scientists at the University of Trento in Italy have used cutting-edge data analysis tools to examine radar reflections to provide the “first direct evidence of an accessible lava tube under the surface of the Moon,” according to University of Trento professor Lorenzo Bruzzone, coauthor of a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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In this study, we explore the accelerated expansion of the universe within the framework of modified f(Q) gravity. The investigation focus on the role of bulk viscosity in understanding the universe’s accelerated expansion. Specifically, a bulk viscous matter-dominated cosmological model is considered, with the bulk viscosity coefficient expressed as $$\zeta = \zeta _0 \rho H^{-1} + \zeta _1 H $$ ζ = ζ 0 ρ H — 1 + ζ 1 H. We consider the power law f(Q) function $$f(Q)=\alpha Q^n $$ f (Q ) = α Q n, where $$\alpha $$ α and n are arbitrary constants and derive the analytical solutions for the field equations corresponding to a flat FLRW metric. Subsequently, we used the combined Cosmic Chronometers (CC)+Pantheon+SH0ES sample to estimate the free parameters of the obtained analytic solution.

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