E ven by astronomical standards it is a discovery that is out of this world.
Scientists have for the first time witnessed the birth of a planet, a huge gas giant many times the size of Jupiter, swirling into existence 370 light years from Earth.
The theory of how gas planets form from a vortex of hydrogen and helium molecules captivated by their own gravity, is now widely accepted by scientists. But it has never been seen before, until now.
The disk of our home galaxy – the Milky Way – is bigger than we previously thought. A new study shows it would take 200,000 years for a spaceship traveling at the speed of light to go across the entire galaxy.
Researchers made the find after analyzing the abundances of metals (heavy elements) in stars, also known as their metallicities. When looking beyond the previously assumed boundary of the Milky Way’s disk, scientists were surprised to see stars with compositions resembling those of disk stars. [Amazing Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy]
“We have shown that there is an appreciable fraction of stars with higher metallicity, characteristic of disc stars, further out than the previously assumed limit on the radius of the galaxy disc,” study co-author Carlos Allende, a researcher at Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, said in a statement.
Looking for a plastic straw to sip your soda? It’s no longer allowed in Seattle bars and restaurants.
Neither are plastic utensils in the latest push to reduce waste and prevent marine plastic pollution. Businesses that sell food or drinks won’t be allowed to offer the plastic items under a rule that went into effect Sunday.
Seattle is believed to be the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service, according to Seattle Public Utilities. The eco-conscious city has been an environmental leader in the U.S., working to aggressively curb the amount of trash that goes into landfills by requiring more options that can be recycled or composted.
There is increasing chatter among the world’s major military powers about how space is fast becoming the next battleground. China, Russia, and the United States are all taking steps that will ultimately result in the weaponisation of space. Any satellite that can change orbit can be considered a space weapon, but since many of the possible space-based scenarios have yet to occur, cybersecurity experts, military commanders, and policymakers do not fully understand the range of potential consequences that could result.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was interested in paralysing America’s strategic forces, strategic command, and control and communications, so that its military command could not communicate with its forces. They would do so by first causing electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to sever communication and operational capabilities, and then launch a mass attack across the North Pole to blow up US Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
In 1967, the US, UK and Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty, which was either ratified by or acceded to 105 countries (including China). It set in place laws regarding the use of outer space and banned any nation from stationing nuclear warheads, chemical or biological weapons in space. However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit, so such weapons as kinetic bombardment (i.e. attacking Earth with a projectile) are not strictly prohibited.
Posted in satellites
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have shown—for the first time—that established lung fibrosis can be reversed using a drug treatment that targets cell metabolism.
This novel finding, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, is important because, despite significant advances to reveal the pathological mechanisms of persistent fibrosis, effective treatment interventions are lacking.
Pulmonary fibrosis can develop after lung injuries like infections, radiation or chemotherapy, or it can have an unknown cause, as in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF is a progressive, and ultimately fatal, lung disorder that strikes more than 150,000 patients a year in the United States and more than 5 million worldwide.
Posted in cryptocurrencies
Securities, or not securities. That is the crypto question.
Except in Thailand.
While regulators around the world have grappled with the issue of what category digital currencies and assets fall into, Thailand has skipped the debate altogether.
Instead, using an emergency decree that came into effect earlier this year, authorities wrote an entirely new law.
