A research team from Japan plans to put a prototype of an artificial-gravity building on the Moon by 2050.
Category: space – Page 464
Asteroid Bennu is essentially a ball of cosmic confetti — studies
The lightly-packed surface of a near-Earth asteroid is cool and a little scary.
China’s Mars probe has photographed the entire red planet
After more than a year on the surface of Mars, China’s Tianwen-1 probe has taken images covering the entire red planet, the country’s space agency announced Wednesday.
Tianwen-1, which means “quest for heavenly truth,” was launched in 2020 and landed on Mars last May, when the Zhurong rover on board started its mission of patrolling and exploring the planet while the orbiter spun overhead.
In a statement, China’s National Space Agency (CNSA) said the probe has now completed all its assigned tasks, including taking medium-resolution images covering the entire planet.
Using thermodynamic geometry to optimize microscopic finite-time heat engines
Stochastic thermodynamics is an emerging area of physics aimed at better understanding and interpreting thermodynamic concepts away from equilibrium. Over the past few years, findings in these fields have revolutionized the general understanding of different thermodynamic processes operating in finite time.
Adam Frim and Mike DeWeese, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), have recently carried out a theoretical study exploring the full space of thermodynamic cycles with a continuously changing bath temperature. Their results, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, were obtained using geometric methods. Thermodynamic geometry is an approach to understanding the response of thermodynamic systems by means of studying the geometric space of control.
“For instance, for a gas in a piston, one coordinate in this space of control could correspond to the experimentally controlled volume of the gas and another to the temperature,” DeWeese told Phys.org. “If an experimentalist were to turn those knobs, that plots out some trajectory in this thermodynamic space. What thermodynamic geometry does is assign to each curve a ‘thermodynamic length’ corresponding to the minimum possible dissipated energy of a given path.”
James Webb Space Telescope releases a teaser image, revealing a deep universe
Scientists begin the countdown to July 12 date with Webb images. Launched in December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope, the observatory, is all set to ensure it is ready for science.
Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) recently captured a view of stars and galaxies that provides a tantalizing glimpse at what the telescope’s science instruments will reveal in the coming weeks, months, and years.
The resulting engineering test image is among the deepest images of the universe ever taken, representing highly faint objects, and is now the deepest image of the infrared sky. Bright stars stand out with their six long, sharply defined diffraction spikes. This was the effect of Webb’s six-sided mirror segments. Beyond the stars – galaxies fill nearly the entire background.
Megastructures 09 Nicoll Dyson Beams
Continuing our look at Dyson Spheres we examine the concept of the Nicoll-Dyson Beam, a type of advanced weapon that uses the output of an entire sun to create a laser that can strike target across the galaxy.
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China Rejects NASA’s Claim That It Plans to ‘Take Over’ the Moon
NASA director Bill Nelson warned that China’s space program was primarily established to be used as an extension of its military rather than for peaceful or scientific purposes.
By Trevor Filseth L
China’s Foreign Ministry issued a condemnation on Monday of reports from the United States that Beijing intends to pursue exclusive control over the Moon in the future, accusing administrators within the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of ignoring facts and speaking “irresponsibly” about China’s space program.