Quiet supersonic jets may one day fly over land to offer faster commercial and passenger flights. Before that can happen, however, the FAA will need to establish new rules regarding these typically noisy flights. To help usher in that era, NASA plans to test Lockheed Martin’s X-59 QueSST, an experimental supersonic jet that produces a ‘thump’ instead of a ‘boom,’ something the space agency will verify using a microphone array that is 30 miles long.
The Moon’s subsurface is the key to its longterm development and sustainability, says NASA scientist.
A view of the Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle” as it returned from the surface of the moon to dock with the command module “Columbia”. A smooth mare area is visible on the Moon below and a half-illuminated Earth hangs over the horizon. Command module pilot Michael Collins took this picture.
Anousheh Ansari, the chief executive of the XPrize Foundation, says that storing data and growing human organs would be easier off Earth—but moon vacations are a ways off.
Last December, scientists discovered an “active” asteroid within the asteroid belt, sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The space rock, designated by astronomers as 6478 Gault, appeared to be leaving two trails of dust in its wake—active behavior that is associated with comets but rarely seen in asteroids.
While astronomers are still puzzling over the cause of Gault’s comet-like activity, an MIT-led team now reports that it has caught the asteroid in the act of changing color, in the near-infrared spectrum, from red to blue. It is the first time scientists have observed a color-shifting asteroid, in real-time.
“That was a very big surprise,” says Michael Marsset, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “We think we have witnessed the asteroid losing its reddish dust to space, and we are seeing the asteroid’s underlying, fresh blue layers.”
The famous Fibonacci sequence has captivated mathematicians, artists, designers, and scientists for centuries. Also known as the Golden Ratio, its ubiquity and astounding functionality in nature suggests its importance as a fundamental characteristic of the Universe. Science amazing science cool stuff science weird science cool nature science cool stuff.
We’ve talked about the Fibonacci series and the Golden ratio before, but it’s worth a quick review. The Fibonacci sequence starts like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on forever. Each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. It’s a simple pattern, but it appears to be a kind of built-in numbering system to the cosmos. Here are 15 astounding examples of phi in nature. Science amazing science cool stuff science weird science cool nature science cool stuff.
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An asteroid larger than some of the world’s tallest buildings will zip by Earth next month.
Terraforming would be a monumental task. How about this instead?
Humanity could make patches of the Red Planet habitable relatively cheaply and efficiently by placing thin layers of silica aerogel on or above the Martian surface, a new study suggests. The insulating aerogel would warm the ground enough to melt water ice and would also block harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, potentially creating an environment where plants and other photosynthetic life could flourish.
Aug. 27 (UPI) — Built-in night vision may not be far off. Scientists have developed nanoparticles that allow mice to see near-infrared light.
Researchers are scheduled to describe the technological breakthrough on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. ET at the American Chemical Society’s fall meeting, held this week in San Diego. Their presentation will be streamed live online.
“When we look at the universe, we see only visible light,” lead researcher Gang Han, a material scientists and biochemist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said in a news release. “But if we had near-infrared vision, we could see the universe in a whole new way. We might be able to do infrared astronomy with the naked eye, or have night vision without bulky equipment.”
Read more about this major milestone: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-james-webb-…first-time
Reaching a major milestone, engineers have successfully connected the two halves of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California. Once it reaches space, NASA’s most powerful and complex space telescope will explore the cosmos using infrared light, from planets and moons within our solar system to the most ancient and distant galaxies.
The fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope with its sunshield and unitized pallet structures (UPSs) that fold up around the telescope for launch, are seen partially deployed to an open configuration to enable telescope installation.
