Experiments have shown how the world’s hardiest microbe could endure freezing, dry and irradiated conditions on Mars.
Category: space – Page 427
Space-cleaning robots could be developed thanks to novel device that was inspired by wilting passion fruits
Turns out, dehydrated passion fruits exhibit a type of symmetry not previously known, inspiring self-adapting robots that could one day ‘grasp’ space junk.
A previously unknown type of wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits inspired the invention of a device that could be used to clean up space debris and hazardous materials, according to South Morning China Post (SMCP)
The real-life application comes after Fan Xu, Xi-Qiao Feng and colleagues at Fudan University in Shanghai reported an unknown type of chiral wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits in their study published in the journal Nature Computational Science the same day. previously unknown type of wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits inspired the invention of a device that could be used to clean up space debris and hazardous materials, according to South Morning China Post (SMCP).
Auroras are responsible for punching holes in the ozone layer
A type of aurora briefly tore a 400 km wide hole in Earth’s ozone layer.
An international team of researchers showed that a certain type of aurora called the “Isolated proton aurora” depletes our atmosphere’s ozone layer. They discovered a nearly 250-mile-wide (400 kilometers) hole in the ozone layer right above where an aurora occurred. Before now, the influence of these particles was only vaguely known. The study is published in Scientific reports.
What causes the auroras?
Solar storms on the sun’s surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth. Most of these particles are deflected away, but some become captured in the Earth’s magnetic field. When they are entrapped, their charge ionizes the atmosphere and produces nitrogen oxides and hydrogen oxides. Both compounds contribute to ozone loss.
Earth’s magnetic field is the spookiest thing you’ve ever heard
The new Halloween haunted house soundtrack just dropped, courtesy of the European Space Agency.
New Halloween haunted house soundtrack just dropped, courtesy of the European Space Agency.
Astronomers Puzzled by Extremely Peculiar Object in Deep Space
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious neutron star that’s far lighter than previously thought possible, undermining our understanding of the physics and evolution of stars. And fascinatingly, it may be composed largely of quarks.
As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy this week, the neutron star has a radius of just 6.2 miles and only the mass of 77 percent of the Sun.
That makes it much lighter than other previously studied neutron stars, which usually have a mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun at the same radius.
TITAN is a thing of great strength, intellect, and importance: For the Army, it’s all that for JADC2
A tactical ground station that finds and tracks threats to support long-range precision targeting, TITAN promises to bring together data from ground, air, and space sensors. Graphic courtesy of Raytheon.
With Project Convergence, the Army has sought to further its integration into the Joint Force and change the way it fights, with an eye toward greater speed, range, and accuracy — particularly for long-range precision fires. Army leadership is looking particularly to close the gaps around sensor-generated intelligence — specifically how it’s sensed, made sense, and acted upon.
To that end, Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) was selected in June for a competitive, prototype phase in the continued development of the Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program. Awarded under an Other Transaction Agreement, TITAN seeks to turn battlefield intelligence into targeting information. A tactical ground station that finds and tracks threats to support long-range precision targeting, TITAN promises to bring together data from ground, air, and space sensors.
Toward Flawless Atom Optics
The engineering of so-called Floquet states leads to almost-perfect atom-optics elements for matter-wave interferometers—which could boost these devices’ ability to probe new physics.
Since Michelson and Morley’s famous experiment to detect the “luminiferous aether,” optical interferometry has offered valuable tools for studying fundamental physics. Nowadays, cutting-edge applications of the technique include its use as a high-precision ruler for detecting gravitational waves (see Focus: The Moon as a Gravitational-Wave Detector) and as a platform for quantum computing (see Viewpoint: Quantum Leap for Quantum Primacy). But as methods for cooling and controlling atoms have advanced, a new kind of interferometer has become available, in which light waves are replaced by matter waves [1]. Such devices can measure inertial forces with a sensitivity even greater than that of optical interferometers [2] and could reveal new physics beyond the standard model.
Student uses NASA data to reveal new details on planets in other solar systems
In the past decades, the number of known exoplanets—planets in other solar systems—has skyrocketed. But we’re still in the dark about a number of details, including how massive they are and what they’re made up of.
A University of Chicago undergraduate, however, was able to tease some clues out of data that most scientists had overlooked.
Jared Siegel, B.S. ‘22, spent six months analyzing data taken by a NASA spacecraft. Some of this data was full of statistical noise, making it hard to differentiate planets from other phenomena; but Siegel and his advisor, astrophysicist Leslie Rogers, were able to extract useful information about these planets, setting an upper bound on how massive they could be.