Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 1,070

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

DESI releases largest 3D map of the universe to date

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is mapping millions of celestial objects to better understand dark energy—the mysterious driver of our universe’s accelerating expansion. Today, the DESI collaboration released a new collection of data for anyone in the world to investigate.

The dataset is the largest of its kind, with information on 18.7 million objects: roughly 4 million stars, 13.1 million galaxies, and 1.6 million quasars (extremely bright but distant objects powered by supermassive black holes at their cores).

While the experiment’s main mission is illuminating , DESI’s Data Release 1 (DR1) could yield discoveries in other areas of astrophysics, such as the evolution of galaxies and black holes, the nature of dark matter, and the structure of the Milky Way.

Counties north of Austin aim to help Central Texas space industry hit warp drive

On the heels of Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace Inc. successfully putting a lunar lander on the Moon, counties adjacent to Austin are taking a step to grow the Central Texas space industry.

The Williamson County Commissioners Court on March 11 unanimously approved the creation and bylaws of the Central Texas Spaceport Development Corp., an entity being formed in partnership with Burnet County.

Additional steps remain, including the filing of articles of incorporation and the appointment of a seven-member oversight board. Burnet County is scheduled to vote on the plan March 25.

A possible way to generate electricity using Earth’s rotational energy

A trio of physicists from Princeton University, CIT’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Spectral Sensor Solutions, all in the U.S., is proposing the possibility of generating electricity using energy from the rotation of the Earth. In their study, published in the journal Physical Review Research, Christopher Chyba, Kevin Hand and Thomas Chyba tested a theory that electricity could be generated from the Earth’s rotation using a special device that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field.

Over the past decade, members of the team have been toying with the idea of generating electricity using the Earth’s rotation and its magnetic field, and they even published a paper describing the possibility back in 2016. That paper was met with criticism because prior theories have suggested that doing so would be impossible because any created by such a device would be canceled as the electrons rearrange themselves during the generation of an electric field.

The researchers wondered what would happen if this cancelation was prevented and the voltage was instead captured. To find out, they built a special device consisting of a cylinder made of manganese-zinc ferrite, a weak conductor, which served as a magnetic shield. They then oriented the cylinder in a north-south direction set at a 57° angle. That made it perpendicular to both the Earth’s rotational motion and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Eruption at Alaska’s Mount Spurr is likely and scientists say preparations should begin

Scientists are urging people who live in southcentral Alaska to begin preparing for a possible eruption of the Mount Spurr volcano.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory said now is a good time for Alaskans to “familiarize themselves with the possible hazards of a Spurr eruption” following last week’s announcement that the likelihood of an eruption has increased.

“The major hazards to Alaska residents from Spurr would be from ash risk to aviation and possible ashfall,” the observatory said in a Wednesday post on X.

/* */