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Category: space – Page 124

On April 9, 1959, reporters and news media crammed into the ballroom of the Dolley Madison House in Washington—the location of NASA Headquarters at that time—to learn the names of the first American astronauts who came to be known as the Mercury 7. Public Information Director Walter Bonney kicked off the announcement by pointing to the seven men sitting on stage. “These are our astronaut volunteers,” he announced. “Take your pictures as you will, gentlemen.” One of those men on the dais, Deke Slayton, a test pilot from Edwards Air Force Base, recalled the pandemonium he witnessed. “I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since.” He described the event as, “a frenzy of light bulbs and questions…it was some kind of roar.” His colleague, Wally Schirra, a test pilot from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, called the media’s interest scary because he soon came to realize that their, “private lives were in jeopardy.”

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A multidisciplinary team is teaching dog-like robots to navigate the moon’s craters and other challenging planetary surfaces.

As part of the research funded by NASA, researchers from various universities and NASA Johnson Space Center tested a quadruped named Spirit at Palmer Glacier on Oregon’s Mount Hood.

During five days of testing in the summer of 2023, Spirit traversed various terrains, ambling over, across, and over around shifting earth, mushy snow, and stones with his spindly metal legs.

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Kyushu University researchers have shed new light into a critical question on how baby stars develop. Using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile, the team found that in its infancy, the protostellar disk that surrounds a baby star discharges plumes of dust, gas, and electromagnetic energy.

These “sneezes,” as the researchers describe them, release the magnetic flux within the protostellar , and may be a vital part of star formation. Their findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Stars, including our sun, all develop from what are called , large concentrations of gas and that eventually condense to form a stellar core, a baby star. During this process, gas and dust form a ring around the baby star called the protostellar disk.

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Do you know what they’ve discovered? This is the proton engine that Einstein predicted decades ago and that, for the first time, they’ve managed to materialize. The best part? It challenges even the laws of physics and the universe, and it’s going to decarbonize transportation.

Nuclear fusion has long been a sought-after but elusive goal for science. It involves joining atomic nuclei to release energy, the same process that occurs in the Sun and other stars. In fact, it’s a process similar to what we saw two weeks ago with the plasma engine.

Unlike nuclear fission used in current nuclear power plants—which, remember, we are highly critical of due to its lack of being an eco-friendly or renewable option—fusion offers the promise of a virtually inexhaustible and clean energy source.

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‘‘The reason why no such glory has ever been observed outside our solar system is that this phenomenon requires very specific conditions, said Dr. Olivier Demangeon.

A recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics examines rainbow-like light patterns known as “glories” between the dayside and nightside of the exoplanet, WASP-76b, which occurs from the interactions between the parent star’s light and perfectly uniform droplets within a planet’s atmosphere. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand exoplanet characteristics, as this marks the first time these “glory” patterns have been observed outside of our solar system.

Artist’s rendition of a “glory” on WASP-76b. (Credit: © ESA, work performed by ATG under contract for ESA. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

While WASP-76b was discovered in 2013, astronomers have been puzzled by its peculiar behavior along the exoplanet’s terminator, which is the separation point between the dayside and nightside. For example, astronomers have noted higher amounts of light along the east part of WASP-76b compared to the west part of the exoplanet.

Continue reading “New Insights into WASP-76b: The Ultra-Hot Giant Exoplanet” | >

“We need to accelerate and intensify efforts to recover Antarctic meteorites,” said Dr. Harry Zekollari. “The loss of Antarctic meteorites is much like the loss of data that scientists glean from ice cores collected from vanishing glaciers – once they disappear, so do some of the secrets of the universe.”

How can climate change effect the search for meteorites in Antarctica? This is what a recent study published in Nature Climate Change hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how melting snow and ice could prevent successful identification of meteorites, of which approximately 60 percent of all meteorites retrieved on Earth have been found in Antarctica. This study holds the potential to help scientists, climate change activists, and legislators better understand the impacts of climate change on science, as meteorites are crucial for gaining greater insight into the formation and evolution of the solar system and beyond.

With a combination of climate models, satellite observations, and artificial intelligence, the researchers estimate that at current rates, they will lose the ability to identify approximately 5,000 meteorites annually, with approximately 24 percent being lost by 2050 and potentially 76 percent by 2100.

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