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Aug 15, 2022

Designing hetero-interfaces toward new optoelectronic functionalities using large-scale computations

Posted by in category: futurism

Assembling Lego-like, 2D heterostructures can give rise to emergent properties and functionalities very different from the intrinsic characteristics of the constituents.

Density functional theory (DFT)-based band-structure calculations can shed light on interfacial properties of different heterostructures.

Aug 15, 2022

South Korea just launched a rocket to orbit the Moon, a first for the country

Posted by in categories: internet, space travel

South Korea’s Moon mission

The mission will circle the Moon for about a year at about 100 kilometers above the surface, searching for possible landing sites for future missions, conducting scientific research on the lunar environment, and testing space internet technology, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT said in a statement. This mission will help prepare the country’s small space program for future exploration, as they hope to send a lander to the Moon by 2030.

Continue reading “South Korea just launched a rocket to orbit the Moon, a first for the country” »

Aug 15, 2022

Astronauts Pack Dragon for Return; Cosmonauts Practice Spacewalk

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, space travel

Skin healing processes and spacewalk preparations filled the work schedule aboard the International Space Station on Friday. The Expedition 67 crew members are also readying a U.S. space freighter for its return to Earth next week.

Four astronauts aboard the orbiting lab practiced surgical techniques to heal wounds in microgravity on Friday in the Kibo laboratory module. The quartet split up in groups of two with NASA astronaut Bob Hines joining ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti for the first practice session during the morning. In the afternoon, NASA Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins began their session studying how to take biopsies and suture wounds inside the Life Science Glovebox.

During the middle of the day, the foursome had time set aside time for gathering frozen research samples inside science freezers and preparing them for departure back to Earth inside the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Dragon is due to leave the station on Aug. 18 loaded with over 4,000 pounds of station supplies and science experiments after 33 days docked to the Harmony module’s forward port. The commercial cargo craft will parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida the next day for retrieval by NASA and SpaceX personnel.

Aug 15, 2022

Building on the moon and Mars? You’ll need extraterrestrial cement for that

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, habitats, space travel

Sustained space exploration will require infrastructure that doesn’t currently exist: buildings, housing, rocket landing pads.

So, where do you turn for construction materials when they are too big to fit in your carry-on and there’s no Home Depot in outer space?

“If we’re going to live and work on another planet like Mars or the moon, we need to make concrete. But we can’t take bags of concrete with us—we need to use local resources,” said Norman Wagner, Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.

Aug 15, 2022

Scientists identify what makes humans able to speak compared to other primates

Posted by in category: futurism

It’s an evolutionary simplification of the larynx.

A so-called evolutionary simplification of the larynx led to human speech. This trait is still present today. Researchers are unsure at what point in history it evolved.

Scientists have spotted the evolutionary modifications in the voice box that make humans able to speak compared to other primates. They did this through an examination of the voice box, or larynx, in 43 species of primates.

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Aug 15, 2022

Computing a theory of everything | Stephen Wolfram

Posted by in categories: computing, physics, space

Circa 2010 face_with_colon_three


http://www.ted.com Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational — able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the physics underlying the universe.

Continue reading “Computing a theory of everything | Stephen Wolfram” »

Aug 15, 2022

Making oxygen with magnets could help astronauts breathe easy

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

A potentially better way to make oxygen for astronauts in space using magnetism has been proposed by an international team of scientists, including a University of Warwick chemist.

The conclusion is from new research on magnetic phase separation in microgravity published in npj Microgravity by researchers from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, University of Colorado Boulder and Freie Universität Berlin in Germany.

Keeping astronauts breathing aboard the International Space Station and other is a complicated and costly process. As humans plan future missions to the Moon or Mars better technology will be needed.

Aug 15, 2022

AI Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Circa 2017 Basically this not about cheating but artificial intelligence helping students with their homework with perfect accuracy which is monumental.


Teachers are being forced to adapt to Wolfram Alpha, which executes homework perfectly and whose use almost impossible to detect.

Aug 15, 2022

Mysteries lurk below Iceland’s restless volcanoes

Posted by in category: chemistry

The unusual chemistry of the lava burbling to the island’s surface has raised many questions about what’s churning deep below.

Aug 15, 2022

Radio bursts from ‘zombie’ black holes excite astronomers

Posted by in categories: cosmology, supercomputing

Capturing details of faraway members of our universe is an understandably complicated affair, but translating these details into the stunning space images that we see from space agencies around the world is equally difficult. It is here that supercomputers step in, helping process the massive amounts of data that are captured by terrestrial and space telescopes. On August 11, that is exactly what Australia’s upcoming supercomputer, called Setonix, helped achieve.