Circa 2020
The idea of humans living underwater may not be as crazy as you think. An idea once reserved for video games or science fiction, underwater cities may be a viable solution for humanity in the distant future.
Continue reading “7 Things You Should Know About the Future of Underwater Cities” »
face_with_colon_three circa 2018.
Gold is amazingly weird. For one thing, it’s now thought that much of it came from aftermaths of the collisions of two super-dense neutron stars. Some of this atomic gold, sprayed across the cosmos, managed to coalesce under gravity, get trapped in a newly-formed Earth, undergo a suite of geological processes, and ultimately pop up at the surface.
Continue reading “New Form Of Lab-Made Gold Is Better And Golder Than Nature’s Pathetic Version” »
It’s the officially spooky season in space.
In its newest image, the Webb Space Telescope teams up with Hubble to study how stars form in nearby galaxies.
No more dark side of the Moon?
An international research team headed by ETH Zurich has investigated the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon with the use of artificial intelligence. Future lunar missions will be able to find acceptable spots thanks to the knowledge they have gained about the region’s physical properties.
The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters on August 26.
An exoplanet 100 light-years beyond Earth looks to be the finest contender for a mucky, water-covered tropical paradise hitherto discovered. TOI-1452b is its name, and assessments…
Proposals for beaming solar power down from space have been around since the 1970s, but the idea has long been seen as little more than science fiction. Now, though, Europe seems to be getting serious about making it a reality.
Space-based solar power (SBSP) involves building massive arrays of solar panels in orbit to collect sunlight and then beaming the collected energy back down to Earth via microwaves or high-powered lasers. The approach has several advantages over terrestrial solar power, including the absence of night and inclement weather and the lack of an atmosphere to attenuate the light from the sun.
But the engineering challenge involved in building such large structures in space, and the complexities of the technologies involved, have meant the idea has remained on the drawing board so far. The director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, wants to change that.
Russia’s national space agency Roskosmos presented a model of the planned space station, dubbed “ROSS” by Russian state media, on Monday at “Army-2022”, a military-industrial exhibition outside Moscow.
Yuri Borisov, whom President Vladimir Putin appointed last month to head Roskosmos, has said Russia will quit the ISS after 2024 and is working to develop its own orbital station.
Launched in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000 under a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
The annual Aurigid Meteor Shower peaks this Thursday, September 1. Though the Aurigids are less flashy than some (the American Meteor Society calls them a “reliable minor shower”), they still put on a show worth watching. That’s especially true since this year’s shower coincides with a waxing crescent moon, meaning moonlight won’t upstage the meteors. Here’s everything you need to know to catch the Aurigids in action.
When to see the Aurigid Meteor Shower
The Aurigids pelt our atmosphere with bits of burning rock and dust about this time every year. This year’s Aurigid shower started on August 28 and will continue until September 4 or 5, but the real show happens at the meteor shower’s peak, on September 1.
ESA
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may seem like a NASA project considering that it is named after one of NASA’s administrators. Though, what gets forgotten behind the nomenclature is that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and European Space Agency (ESA) are also contributors to the program.
Whether you’re thinking about the future of Mars and how to send humans there, or trying to understand its past and see how the planet became the way it is today, one particular feature is crucially important: water. Scientists know that there was once abundant water on Mars, but over time this evaporated away and left the planet a dry husk, with little to no liquid water on its surface today. But that water has left indications in the geology of the planet, and now the European Space Agency (ESA) has shared a water map of Mars that traces the planet’s history and points to potential resources for future missions.
The map uses data collected by two different Mars orbiters, ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Spectrometers on each of the orbiters have been collecting information on the location of what is called aqueous minerals, meaning rocks that have interacted with water in the past and which have formed minerals such as clays.
The map shows not only the locations of these minerals but also how abundant they are. And one of the biggest findings is that these minerals aren’t rare — in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of patches of minerals across the planet.
