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Category: space – Page 661

Mars Missions From China and UAE Are Set to Go Into Orbit – Here’s What You Need to Know

How times have changed since the Apollo era. Within the space of a few days, two space missions from China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), respectively, are set to reach Mars. The UAE’s Hope mission will go into orbit around Mars on February 9. The next day, the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission – an orbiter and lander — will swing into orbit, with a predicted landing date sometime in May.

It is a very big moment for both countries. Hope is the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation ever. And if China succeeds, it will be the first country ever to visit and land on Mars on its first try. The odds are stacked against them with nearly 50% of all Mars missions failing. China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011.

A warp in the Milky Way linked to galactic collision

When most of us picture the shape of the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our own sun and hundreds of billions of other stars, we think of a central mass surrounded by a flat disc of stars that spiral around it. However, astronomers know that rather than being symmetrical, the disc structure is warped, more like the brim of a fedora, and that the warped edges are constantly moving around the outer rim of the galaxy.

Making Of A Neuromorphic Synchronization Circuit Using Quantum Metaheuristics

In this video I show how I made a self-organisating network of Kuramoto-style oscillators in a system undergoing metaheuristic-guided synchronization. There are also ways to visually demonstrate this with relatively simple hardware, such as using modified microelectronics, controlled using microcontroller circuits.

In this project, which I have dubbed “Feynman’s Quantum Fireflies” I program individual systems of oscillators which display discontinuous pas coupling which can be implemented in a network of transceiver circuits. Using the Path Integral Approach is one way to understand how the system behaves like a quantum thermal bath.

This example is a self-organising network of flashing optical transceiver circuits, each circuit containing and RGB LED and phototransistor.

Each circuit is programmed under a simple principle of discontinuous pas-coupling as discussed before to achieve synchronization but this results in behavior across the entire network space that is a collective emergent behavior that has not been explicitly programmed, it emerges as a discrete simulation of a pseudo-quantum system.

This emergent behavior of the network is in fact a visual demonstration of how the network regulates itself over time to the most energy efficient configuration possible, which is to the state of most uniform synchronisation.

We can understand this synchronized state as being the ground state of our whole system, which the set of oscillators wants to head towards.

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Episode 36 — NASA Aims For The Geophysical Heart Of Mars

Fascinating new episode with NASA planetary geophysicist Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for the Mars InSight lander which is changing the way scientists now view Mars’ interior dynamics and inner workings. Please have a listen.

I welcome Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for NASA’s Mars InSight lander, which has been operating on the Martian surface for two years now. Although it’s had some technical issues, it’s offered a sea change in how geophysicists are interpreting the dynamics and makeup of the Martian core. In this episode, we talk about what we currently understand about Mars’ geophysical makeup and, among other things, whether it ever had plate tectonics which was so crucial for the evolution of sentient life here on Earth.

Possible detection of hydrazine on Saturn’s moon Rhea

In a new report on Science Advances, Mark Elowitz, and a team of scientists in physical sciences, optical physics, planetary science and radiation research in the U.S., U.K., India, and Taiwan, presented the first analysis of far-ultraviolet reflectance spectra of regions on Rhea’s leading and trailing hemispheres—as collected by the Cassini ultraviolet imaging spectrograph during targeted flybys. In this work, they specifically aimed to explain the unidentified broad absorption feature centered near 184 nanometers of the resulting spectra. Using laboratory measurements of the UV spectroscopy of a set of molecules, Elowitz et al. found a good fit to Rhea’s spectra with both hydrazine monohydrate and several chlorine-containing molecules. They showed hydrazine monohydrate to be the most plausible candidate to explain the absorption feature at 184 nm.

Viasat receives $50 million Air Force contract to develop space technology

Viasat on Feb. 2 received a $50.8 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a broad range of space systems.

WASHINGTON — Viasat, a provider of satellite communications and wireless networking technology, received a $50.8 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a broad range of space systems.

The Defense Department announced the contract Feb. 2. The contract was first announced Nov. 20. A spokesperson told SpaceNews at the time that the contract terms had not yet been finalized so the award would be reposted at a later day.

Nikolai Kardashev

Nikolai Kardashev, creator of the civilization ranking scale, outstanding space explorer, specialist in experimental and theoretical astrophysics and radio astronomy, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Director of the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute, died in August 3, 2019. The Russian scientist was 87 years old.

The scientist’s most famous work is the Kardashev Scale — the cosmic civilization ranking system. As part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), he proposed a model of cosmic civilisations and calculated the scale of ranking civilisations

The Kardashev Scale

In 1963, he studied the quasar CTA-102. It was the first contribution of Soviet scientists to SETI, since the radio source CTA-102 was first assumed to be evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization.

In his paper ‘Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilisations’, published in 1964, Kardashev explored the idea that other galactic civilisations may have existed for billions of years before ours, so they would be far more advanced. He proposed a theoretical scale of technological development of civilisations based on the amount of energy that civilization is able to utilize. According to the theory, there are 3 main types of advanced civilisations:

Type I: Planetary Civilization

A civilisation that can use and store all the energy available on its planet — a small fraction of a star’s energy emissions that reach the surface. In the case of Earth and the Sun that’s about 1016 watts. For now, humanity has not quite reached Type I civilisation status, consuming only about 1012 watts.

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Bizarre, Never-Seen-Before Activity Spotted From One of the Strongest Magnets in the Universe

Astronomers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) and CSIRO have just observed bizarre, never-seen-before behavior from a ‘radio-loud’ magnetar—a rare type of neutron star and one of the strongest magnets in the Universe.

Their new findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), suggest magnetars have more complex magnetic fields than previously thought – which may challenge theories of how they are born and evolve over time.

Magnetars are a rare type of rotating neutron star with some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the Universe. Astronomers have detected only thirty of these objects in and around the Milky Way —most of them detected by X-ray telescopes following a high-energy outburst.