The whimsical CEO who once disrupted the auto industry is no longer hiding his ambitions for a lucrative new industry.
Interfacing technology and electronics with the real world is often fairly tricky. Complexity and edge cases work their way in to every corner of a project like this; just ask anyone who has ever tried to operate a rover on Mars, make a hydroponics garden, or build almost any robotics project. Even those of us who simply own a consumer-grade printer are flummoxed by the ways in which they can fail when manipulating single sheets of paper. This robotic lawnmower is no exception, driving its creator [TK] to extremes to get it to mow his lawn.
[TK] actually had a platform for his autonomous mower ready to go thanks to a previous build using this solar-powered robot to explore the Australian outback. Adding another motor to handle the grass trimming seemed simple at first and he set about wiring it all up and interfacing it to the robot. After the first iteration he found the robot was moving too fast to effectively cut the grass, so he added a more powerful cutting motor and a gearbox to help the mower crawl more slowly over the lawn. Disaster struck when his 3D printed mount for the steel cutting blades shattered, but with [TK] uninjured he pushed on with more improvements.
The Milky Way is blowing a star-forming bubble, and we’re in the middle of it.
Think “bubbles,” and you may think “soap” or “gum.”
Continue reading “The 1,000-light-year-wide cosmic bubble around Earth” »
Time crystals that persist indefinitely at room temperature could have applications in precision timekeeping.
We have all seen crystals, whether a simple grain of salt or sugar, or an elaborate and beautiful amethyst. These crystals are made of atoms or molecules repeating in a symmetrical three-dimensional pattern called a lattice, in which atoms occupy specific points in space. By forming a periodic lattice, carbon atoms in a diamond, for example, break the symmetry of the space they sit in. Physicists call this “breaking symmetry.”
Scientists have recently discovered that a similar effect can be witnessed in time. Symmetry breaking, as the name suggests, can arise only where some sort of symmetry exists. In the time domain, a cyclically changing force or energy source naturally produces a temporal pattern.
Chemical changes inside Mars’ core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how?
Stars are getting sharper in the James Webb Space Telescope’s field of view.
The team recently completed the third of seven planned steps to align the 18 hexagonal segments of Webb’s mirror, marking nearly the halfway point in a complex, weeks-long process.
Are we alone in the Universe? Billions of dollars are being spent trying to answer that simple question. The implications of finding evidence for life beyond Earth are staggering. The “before and after” mark would punctuate human history.
Mars is currently the most popular exploration target to search for evidence of life elsewhere. Yet little is known about its early history. Our research on a Martian meteorite provides new clues about early surface conditions on the red planet.
Today Mars is cold and inhospitable. But it may have been more Earth-like and habitable in a bygone era. Landforms on Mars record the action of liquid surface water, perhaps as early as 3.9 billion years ago.
New research reveals that electrolysis does work at lower gravitational levels. The findings could support the idea that humans could travel to Mars, use the planet’s resources to refuel, and return home.
