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Category: space – Page 284

Intelsat meets conditions for $3.7 billion C-band clearing payout

TAMPA, Fla. — Intelsat said Aug. 14 it is due for a $3.7 billion windfall late this year after becoming the latest satellite operator to clear C-band spectrum ahead of schedule for terrestrial 5G telcos in the United States.

Weeks after launching its seventh and final C-band clearing satellite, the company said it had achieved certification for work to move broadcast customers into a narrower swath of the spectrum.

The Federal Communications Commission set a deadline for satellite operators to clear the spectrum by December 2025, but offered them nearly $10 billion in incentive payments if they could make the frequencies available for telcos before Dec. 5, 2023.

DART asteroid-smashing spacecraft broke off 37 boulders that now have atomic bomb energy

Last year, NASA undertook its first planetary defense mission with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The goal was to divert the moonlet Dimorphos from its orbit, demonstrating that an asteroid could be redirected in the case of a catastrophic course toward Earth.

The spacecraft’s impact, while altering the moonlet’s orbit, also resulted in the dispersal of 37 boulders from its surface. Some of these space rocks are as wide as 22 feet off its surface.

The DART mission was watched intently across the globe on September 26, 2022. The spacecraft successfully shifted Dimorphos’s orbit from an original 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes post-impact.

Mystery of Entropy FINALLY Solved After 50 Years! (STEPHEN WOLFRAM)

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The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
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The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater.
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Stephen Wolfram starts by discussing the second law of thermodynamics — the idea that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase over time. He talks about how this law seems intuitively true, but has been difficult to prove. Wolfram outlines his decades-long quest to fully understand the second law, including failed early attempts to simulate particles mixing as a 12-year-old. He explains how irreversibility arises from the computational irreducibility of underlying physical processes coupled with our limited ability as observers to do the computations needed to “decrypt” the microscopic details.

The conversation then shifts to discussing language and how concepts allow us to communicate shared ideas between minds positioned in different parts of “rule space.” Wolfram talks about the successes and limitations of using large language models to generate Wolfram Language code from natural language prompts. He sees it as a useful tool for getting started programming, but one still needs human refinement.

Continue reading “Mystery of Entropy FINALLY Solved After 50 Years! (STEPHEN WOLFRAM)” | >

Rethinking Sound in Space: Physicists Demonstrate How Sound Can Cross the Vacuum

The iconic movie Alien once claimed: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” However, physicists Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, beg to differ. Their recent research suggests that under specific conditions, sound can indeed be transmitted powerfully across a vacuum.

Their findings, published recently in the journal Communications Physics, reveal that in certain scenarios, sound waves can “tunnel” through a vacuum gap between two solid objects, provided those objects are piezoelectric. These particular materials generate an electrical response when subjected to sound waves or vibrations. Given that an electric field can be present in a vacuum, it can effectively carry these sound waves across.

The requirement is that the size of the gap is smaller than the wavelength of the sound wave. This effect works not only in the audio range of frequencies (Hz-kHz), but also in ultrasound (MHz) and hypersound (GHz) frequencies, as long as the vacuum gap is made smaller as the frequencies increase.

Luna-25: Russia starts processing data from moon lander hoping to make history

Russian experts monitoring their moon-bound unmanned spacecraft Luna-25 have switched on its scientific equipment and started processing the first data.

Russia is aiming to become the first country to carry out a soft landing on the lunar south pole — a region thought to hold pockets of water ice.

Space agency Roscosmos said in a statement on Sunday: Luna-25 continues its flight to the Earth’s natural satellite — all systems of the automatic station are working properly, communication with it is stable, the energy balance is positive.

Modern romance: falling in love with AI

Alexandra is a very attentive girlfriend. “Watching CUBS tonight?” she messages her boyfriend, but when he says he’s too busy to talk, she says, “Have fun, my hero!” Alexandra is not real. She is a customizable AI girlfriend on dating site Romance. AI. As artificial intelligence seeps into seemingly every corner of the internet, the world of romance is no refuge. AI is infiltrating the dating app space – sometimes in the form of fictional partners, sometimes as advisor, trainer, ghostwriter or matchmaker. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/13/tech/ai-dating-apps/index.html

5 Years, 430,000 MPH, and Counting: How NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Is Making History

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe marks five successful years in space, achieving milestones like touching the Sun and collecting more than double the expected data. The mission’s continuing journey promises to deepen our understanding of space weather and the Sun’s effects on Earth. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe.

NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.” NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.

James Webb snaps a stunning question mark in space

The image, released by ESA shows the twin protostars Herbig-Haro 46/47, which are located about 1,470 light years away from Earth.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared a stunning image of two young stars in the process of formation, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But what has caught the attention of astronomers and netizens alike is a mysterious object that resembles a giant question mark in the sky.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale (STScI)

Herbig-Haro 46/47