WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force estimates it would need more than $4 billion to fund a proliferated low Earth orbit constellation known as MILNET that would provide global communications services, making it the largest item in the service’s fiscal year 2026 “unfunded priorities list” submitted to Congress last week.
Researchers at The University of Osaka have developed a novel method for generating ultra-high magnetic fields via laser-driven implosions of blade-structured microtubes. This method achieves field strengths approaching one megatesla—a breakthrough in compact, high-field plasma science.
Ultrastrong magnetic fields approaching the megatesla regime—comparable to those found near strongly magnetized neutron stars or astrophysical jets —have now been demonstrated in theory using a compact, laser-driven setup.
A team led by Professor Masakatsu Murakami at The University of Osaka has proposed and simulated a unique scheme that uses micron-sized hollow cylinders with internal blades to achieve these field levels. The research is published in the journal Physics of Plasmas.
Space Renaissance International (SRI) wants to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the historical Apollo-Sojuz Rendezvous, occurred the 17 July 1975!
During the cold war age, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts gave a beautiful example of friendship and collaboration. Space culture demonstrated to be very much higher than terrestrial warmongering attitude! And such a distinctive cultural tract was demonstrated even later, with the MIR space station and then the ISS. Up to our present days, when the need of an higher Peace Culture is more urgent than ever.
Bernard Foing (SRI President), Jerry Stone, Werner Grandl, Marie-Luise Heuser, and others, will celebrate and share their thoughts about this historical Anniversary.
SRI invites All to celebrate with us!
A detailed analysis of a stellar cluster has led to a possible explanation for several fast-moving runaway stars around the cluster.
The “altercation” happened 50,000 years ago: The binary star Mel 34 was ejected from a young star cluster at a speed of 100,000 mph (46 km/s)—the result of a violent interaction that seemed buried in the cosmic past. But a group of astronomy detectives has now reconstructed part of the cluster’s history and identified a five-star smashup as the most likely cause for Mel 34’s high-speed departure [1]. This unlikely collision offers important information about the fate of young, massive stars.
The star cluster R136 is a grouping of around 60,000 stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy 160,000 light-years from Earth. The cluster is about 2 million years old, which is fairly young as clusters go. “R136 is very special because it’s the youngest and the most massive star cluster in the local group of galaxies,” says Simon Portegies Zwart from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Previous studies of R136 have identified several dozen “runaway” stars that have been kicked out of the cluster. Runaways are common around clusters, but their origins are not always clear. R136 is young, so it’s a good place to study the process that produces runaways, Portegies Zwart says.
Quantum networking is being rapidly developed world-wide. It is a key quantum technology that will enable a global quantum internet: the ability to deploy secure communication at scale, and to connect quantum computers globally. The race to realize this vision is in full swing, both on Earth and in space.
New research, in collaboration between Igor Pikovski at Stevens Institute of Technology, Jacob Covey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Johannes Borregaard at Harvard University, suggests that quantum networks are more versatile than previously thought.
In the paper titled “Probing Curved Spacetime with a Distributed Atomic Processor Clock”, published in the journal PRX Quantum, the researchers show that this technology can probe how curved space-time affects quantum theory —a first test of this kind.
NASA research has shown that cell-like compartments called vesicles could form naturally in the lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan.
Titan is the only world apart from Earth that is known to have liquid on its surface. However, Titan’s lakes and seas are not filled with water. Instead, they contain liquid hydrocarbons like ethane and methane.
On Earth, liquid water is thought to have been essential for the origin of life as we know it. Many astrobiologists have wondered whether Titan’s liquids could also provide an environment for the formation of the molecules required for life—either as we know it or perhaps as we don’t know it—to take hold there.
IN A NUTSHELL 🌌 The Quipu superstructure, spanning over 1.3 billion light-years, is the largest known entity in the universe. 🔭 Astronomers utilize X-ray galaxy clusters to map and analyze these massive cosmic formations. 📊 The immense size of superstructures like Quipu can distort critical cosmological measurements, affecting our understanding of the universe’s expansion. ⏳
