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Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 342

Nov 4, 2021

Planning for a space mission to last more than 50 years

Posted by in category: space

In 1,977 NASA sent out two Voyager probes to study Jupiter and Saturn. The spacecrafts were designed to last about five years, but they are still, to this day, collecting and sending back data from beyond the solar system. But the Voyager mission is living on borrowed time. Today NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce talks about a proposal for an intentionally long mission — what it would take for NASA to actually plan for an interstellar voyage that would pass research and responsibility down through generations.

What would you put on a spacecraft bound for the stars? Email the show at [email protected]!

Nov 4, 2021

Enormous ‘shipyard’ of ancient galaxies discovered 11 billion light-years away

Posted by in category: space

A similar protocluster may have created our Milky Way.


Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a massive protocluster 11 billion light-years away that acts as an assembly yard for over 60 emerging galaxies.

Nov 4, 2021

Shared neural codes for visual and semantic information about familiar faces in a common representational space

Posted by in category: space

Our brain processes faces of close others differently than faces of visually familiar individuals. While both types of faces activate similar visual areas, faces of close others activate areas involved in processing social and semantic information. Here, we used between-subject linear classifiers trained on hyperaligned brain data to investigate the neural code for visual and semantic information about familiar others. The identity of both visually and personally familiar faces could be decoded across participants from brain activity in visual areas. Instead, only the identity of personally familiar faces could be decoded in areas involved in social cognition. Our results suggest that individually distinctive information associated with familiar faces is embedded in a neural code that is shared across brains.

Processes evoked by seeing a personally familiar face encompass recognition of visual appearance and activation of social and person knowledge. Whereas visual appearance is the same for all viewers, social and person knowledge may be more idiosyncratic. Using between-subject multivariate decoding of hyperaligned functional magnetic resonance imaging data, we investigated whether representations of personally familiar faces in different parts of the distributed neural system for face perception are shared across individuals who know the same people. We found that the identities of both personally familiar and merely visually familiar faces were decoded accurately across brains in the core system for visual processing, but only the identities of personally familiar faces could be decoded across brains in the extended system for processing nonvisual information associated with faces.

Nov 3, 2021

What’s Killing The Galaxies Next Door? The ‘Cosmic Thief’ Stealing From Our Neighboring Galaxy-Cluster Has Been Found Say Scientists

Posted by in categories: energy, physics, space

Something is killing-off galaxies by preventing the birth of stars—and astronomers now think they know why.

While studying 51 galaxies in a “galaxy-cluster” called the Virgo Cluster an international team of scientists have found that molecular gas—the fuel for new stars—is being “swept away by a huge cosmic broom.”

Exactly what is preventing nearby galaxies from birthing new stars has been a long-standing mystery in astrophysics. The new paper, now available online, blames the extreme environment of the Virgo Cluster. It’s been accepted by the journal Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Nov 3, 2021

Engineers Find New Way to Clean Up Space Junk in Orbit

Posted by in category: space

Engineers have devised a new technique to clear space debris using magnets.

This would allow you to move the debris where you wanted it to go without actually having to touch it. “What we wanted to do was to manipulate the thing, not just shove it but actually manipulate it like you do on Earth,” Abbott said. “That form of dexterous manipulation has never been done before.”

While this is important for clearing out space junk that can’t be repaired, this method could also be … See more.

Nov 2, 2021

James Webb Space Telescope: An Astronomer on the Team Explains the “First Light Machine”

Posted by in category: space

The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to head to space on December 18 2021. With it, astronomers hope to find the first galaxies to form in the universe, will search for Earthlike atmospheres around other planets and accomplish many other scientific goals.

I am an astronomer and the principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera – or NIRCam for short – aboard the Webb telescope. I have participated in the development and testing for both my camera and the telescope as a whole.

To see deep into the universe, the telescope has a very large mirror and must be kept extremely cold. But getting a fragile piece of equipment like this to space is no simple task. There have been many challenges my colleagues and I have had to overcome to design, test and soon launch and align the most powerful space telescope ever built.

Nov 2, 2021

NASA’s Juno probe reveals secrets of Jupiter’s atmosphere in 3D

Posted by in categories: climatology, space

We’ve got more information than ever on how the gas giant’s cyclones and water operate, deep in the atmosphere.

Nov 2, 2021

NeuReality and IBM team up to develop AI inference platforms

Posted by in categories: finance, robotics/AI, space

The technology aims to deliver cost and power consumption improvements for deep learning use cases of inference, the companies said. This development follows NeuReality’s emergence from stealth earlier in February with an $8 million seed round to accelerate AI workloads at scale.

AI inference is a growing area of focus for enterprises, because it’s the part of AI where neural networks actually are applied in real application and yield results. IBM and NeuReality claim their partnership will allow the deployment of computer vision, recommendation systems, natural language processing, and other AI use cases in critical sectors like finance, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and smart cities. They also claim the agreement will accelerate deployments in today’s ever-growing AI use cases, which are already deployed in public and private cloud datacenters.

NeuReality has competition in Cast AI, a technology company offering a platform that “allows developers to deploy, manage, and cost-optimize applications in multiple clouds simultaneously.” Some other competitors include Comet.ml, Upright Project, OctoML, Deci, and DeepCube. However, this partnership with IBM will see NeuReality become the first start-up semiconductor product member of the IBM Research AI Hardware Center and a licensee of the Center’s low-precision high performance Digital AI Cores.

Nov 2, 2021

The new Voyager: NASA is planning an interstellar mission that could last more than 100 years

Posted by in category: space

It would travel faster and farther than any man-made object we’ve made thus far.


When the famous Voyager twin spacecraft left Earth in the 1970s, their mission was originally meant to last only five years. However, the plutonium-powered spacecraft were still going strong when they reached Jupiter and Saturn, so NASA engineers decided they would try a flyby of Uranus and Neptune. But, even after that, the spacecraft still kept going and going — and they’re still at it almost 50 years later. So much so that both probes made history by officially exiting the bubble-shaped region created by the sun’s wind, known as the heliosphere, crossing into interstellar space.

Although they’re 14 billion and 11 billion miles, respectively, away from Earth, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are continuing to provide invaluable scientific data. For instance, sensors on the spacecraft are recording important information about the composition and levels of the gas, dust, and radiation that fills interstellar space — which is anything but empty, contrary to popular belief. This wouldn’t have been possible without these two daring spacecraft.

Continue reading “The new Voyager: NASA is planning an interstellar mission that could last more than 100 years” »

Nov 2, 2021

A ‘Blood Moon,’ Two Meteor Showers And The Return Of Orion Spark A Naked Eye Sky Feast: Your Stargazing Guide To November 2021

Posted by in category: space

Here comes another great month for stargazing. If you’ve been learning about the night sky during lockdown and paying attention to what goes on each evening in the skies above you may already have seen a bright naked-eye comet, a “Super Blood Moon” lunar eclipse and even a super-rare “great conjunction.”

Now get ready for some repeats—and some incredible new sights.

November will see a couple of meteor showers—the South and North Taurids—as well as the seventh planet, Uranus, at opposition. Those in North America may also get to see a big partial lunar eclipse on November 19 2021 and, if we’re all really lucky, our planet may just get treated to another rare sight as Comet Leonard pays us a visit. That’s due to look its best in December, but for now there’s plenty to get excited about in the November night skies … not least the return of the famous constellation of Orion “the hunter”.