This week’s ‘Cold Moon’ is the highest full moon of the year, but will also rise and set at its most extreme northerly points on the horizon. Here’s why.
Category: space – Page 92
Mars Curiosity Rover takes a Last Look at Mysterious Sulfur
NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing for the next leg of its journey, a months-long trek to a formation called the boxwork, a set of weblike patterns on Mars’s surface that stretches for miles. It will soon leave behind Gediz Vallis channel, an area wrapped in mystery. How the channel formed so late during a transition to a drier climate is one big question for the science team. Another mystery is the field of white sulfur stones the rover discovered over the summer.
Curiosity imaged the stones, along with features from inside the channel, in a 360-degree panorama before driving up to the western edge of the channel at the end of September.
The rover is searching for evidence that ancient Mars had the right ingredients to support microbial life, if any formed billions of years ago, when the Red Planet held lakes and rivers. Located in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain, Gediz Vallis channel may help tell a related story: what the area was like as water was disappearing on Mars. Although older layers on the mountain had already formed in a dry climate, the channel suggests that water occasionally coursed through the area as the climate was changing.
Rehabilitation Reimagined : The power of Virtual Reality in Therapy
We can expect to see more recommendations for VR in catastrophic injury cases.
Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR or VR) as a tool in rehabilitation is changing at pace and has far reaching consequences that will increasingly be seen in the claims space.
Combined with AI powered treatment planning and smart home devices for daily rehabilitation, innovative technologies are now evident in all aspects of rehabilitation.
Webb telescope provides new clues to universe’s expansion mystery
This discrepancy, known as the Hubble Tension, has challenged our understanding of the universe’s fundamental nature.
Now, new observations from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has deepened this perplexing enigma.
JWST measured the distances between stars and galaxies, which confirmed earlier measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Neutrino that can be most energetic detected by underwater observatory
Neutrino astronomy enters a new era as ARCA tracks an ultra-high-energy particle, potentially the most powerful ever.
The ARCA observatory detects potentially the most energetic neutrino, opening new frontiers in neutrino astronomy and cosmic event studies.
Our Solar System’s Orbits May Have Been Arranged by an Invading Planet
The orbits of the planets around the Sun have been the source for many a scientific debate. Their current orbital properties are well understood but the planetary orbits have evolved and changed since the formation of the Solar System.
Planetary migrations have been the most prominent idea of recent decades suggesting that planetary interactions caused the young planets to migrate inwards or outwards from their original positions.
Now a new theory suggests a 2–50 Jupiter-mass object passing through the Solar System could be the cause.
Deformable mirror technology takes laser welding and 3D printing to new heights
Yongcui Mi has developed a new technology that enables real-time shaping and control of laser beams for laser welding and directed energy deposition using laser and wire. The innovation is based on the same mirror technology used in advanced telescopes for astronomy.
In a few years, this new technology could lead to more efficient and reliable ways of using high-power lasers for welding and directed energy deposition with laser and wire. The manufacturing industry could benefit from new opportunities to build more robust processes that meet stringent quality standards.
“We are the first to use deformable mirror technology for this application. The mirror optics can handle multi-kilowatt laser power, and with the help of computer vision and AI, the laser beam can be shaped in real time to adapt to variations in joint gaps,” explains Yongcui, a newly minted Ph.D. in Production technology from University West.
Tracking Mars’ Catastrophic Dust Storms: A New Step Toward Forecasting
What processes are responsible for dust storms on Mars? This is what a study presented today at the American Geophysical Union 2024 Fall Meeting hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) investigated the causes behind the massive dust storms on Mars, which periodically grow large enough to engulf the entire planet. This study holds the potential to help researchers predict dust storms on Mars, which could help current and future robotic missions survive these calamities, along with future human crews to the Red Planet.
“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Heshani Pieris, who is a PhD Candidate in planetary science at CU Boulder and lead author of the study. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”
For the study, the researchers examined 15 (Earth) years of data obtained from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to ascertain the processes responsible for kickstarting dust storms. After analyzing countless datasets of Martian surface temperatures, the researchers found that 68 percent of large dust storms on Mars resulted from spikes in surface temperatures during periods of increased sunlight through Mars’ thin atmosphere.
Watch: X-Class Solar Flare Erupt On Sun’s Surface Causing Radio Blackout In Africa
The sun continues its hurling out solar flares. On Sunday, it hurled out an X-class solar flare, the strongest type of solar flare, signalling its dynamic nature. The dramatic eruption originated from sunspot region 3,912, peaking at 4:06 AM. EST (0906 GMT) on December 8. Accompanying the flare was a coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive outpouring of magnetic fields and plasma from the sun’s atmosphere.
While CMEs, also known as solar storms, can cause geomagnetic disturbances and spark vibrant auroras when they interact with Earth’s magnetosphere, experts predict only mild effects from this event. According to Space Weather physicist Tamitha Skov, Earth may experience a glancing blow from the CME.
“The solar storm launched will graze Earth to the west. Sadly, the coming fast solar wind streams might deflect the structure even further to the west. Expect only mild impacts by midday December 11,” Skov shared in a post on X.