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Category: space – Page 30

Experiments support a controversial proposal to generate electricity from our planet’s rotation by using a device that interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.

“It seems crazy,” says Chris Chyba of Princeton University, talking about the hollow magnetic cylinder he has built to generate electricity using Earth’s magnetic field. The cylinder doesn’t move—at least not in the lab—but it rotates with the planet and is thus dragged through Earth’s magnetic field. “It has a whiff of a perpetual motion machine,” Chyba says, but his calculations show that the harvested energy comes from the planet’s rotational energy. He and his colleagues now report that 18 microvolts (µV) are generated across the cylinder when it is held perpendicular to Earth’s field [1]. Next they have to convince other scientists that the effect is real.

Chyba became interested in electricity generation about a decade ago while studying a possible warming mechanism in moons moving through a planet’s magnetic field. He wondered if a similar effect might occur for objects on Earth’s surface.

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A puzzling new type of radio signal – lasting seconds to minutes – has been linked to a binary star system featuring a white dwarf and a red dwarf. Scientists suspect these signals arise from the white dwarf’s intense magnetic field or its interaction with its companion. This discovery suggests t

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Physicists in Germany have led experiments that show the inertia of electrons can form ‘tornadoes’ inside a quantum semimetal.

It’s almost impossible for electrons to sit still, and their motions can take on some bizarre forms. Case in point: an analysis of electron behavior in a quantum material called tantalum arsenide reveals vortices.

But the story gets weirder. These electrons aren’t spiraling in a physical place – they’re doing so in a quantum blur of possibility called momentum space. Rather than drawing a map of particles potential locations, or position space, momentum space describes their motion through their energy and direction.

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The ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope has already wowed us with some fantastic images. After launching in July 2023, the telescope delivered some stunning first images of the Perseus Cluster, the Horsehead Nebula, and other astronomical objects.

Now, the telescope has released its first images of its three Deep Fields.

Euclid features a powerful 600 MB camera that can take detailed images of objects like the Horsehead Nebula. However, its main job is to probe the history of the expansion of the Universe.

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I’m back, baby. I’ve been away traveling for podcasts and am excited to bring you new ones with Michael Levin, William Hahn, Robin Hanson, and Emily Riehl, coming up shortly. They’re already recorded. I’ve been recovering from a terrible flu but pushed through it to bring you today’s episode with Urs Schreiber. This one is quite mind-blowing. It’s quite hairy mathematics, something called higher category theory, and how using this math (which examines the structure of structure) allows one manner of finding \.

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A team of geologists at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, the Institute of Space Sciences and the Shandong Institute of Geological Sciences, all in China, has found evidence in soil samples collected from the far side of the moon that bolsters a theory that the moon was once covered by an ocean of magma. In their study published in the journal Science, the group analyzed a moon soil sample returned to Earth by China’s Chang’e-6 mission.

In 2024, the China National Space Administration launched a spacecraft that carried a lander to the surface of the . The mission was the first to collect samples from the far side of the moon and return them to the Earth. For this new study, the research team obtained 2 grams of the soil for testing.

The researchers used multiple methods to determine its composition and then compared the results to those of analyses of from the near side of the moon.

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AI gives a thumbs up to Brett Bellmore innovative modifications to Robert Zubrin’s Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR). Switching from water to polyethene and storing in sausage strings could enhance its performance and safety, particularly focusing on avoiding criticality during storage, minimizing parasitic mass, and addressing practical challenges like micrometeorite protection and fuel state.

Robert Zubrin’s Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR) design is a rocket that uses known physics and engineering. My previous analysis shows that the first working prototype might be made in space with a 10–20 year development program for 10–30 billion. There are versions that could reach 7–8% of light speed. The use of low grade uranium enrichment for a more near term version is the one that is often described. However, if weapons grade uranium (90% enrichment) is used then he exhaust would be at 1.575% of the speed of light. A 30,000 ton ice asteroid and 7,500 tons of uranium could propel a 300 ton payload including a crew to 7.62% of light speed.

One of key parts of the engineering is to use water to protect the nozzle from the intense heat of the system. A combination of the coatings and space between the pipes would prevent the solution from reaching critical mass until it was pumped into a reaction chamber. It would reach critical mass and it being expelled through a nozzle to generate thrust. The nozzle would be protected by running water.

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