It’s said that the metal that made up the outer skin of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module was no thicker than a couple of soda cans stacked on top of each other. How it never failed even once is beyond us. But if you think the LEM looked like a screaming metal deathtrap, imagine a similar Soviet spacecraft half the size and more claustrophobic.
Blink and you miss it! 🌏
Planet Earth has recorded its shortest day since records began.
The 1.59 milliseconds shaved off the usual 24-hour spin on June 29 raises the prospect of a leap second having to occur to keep clocks aligned. This would be the first time global clocks have been sped up.
Electrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal—it’s just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge.
In old-school superconductors, which were discovered in 1911 and conduct electric current with no resistance, but only at extremely cold temperatures, the nudge comes from vibrations in the material’s atomic lattice.
But in newer, “unconventional” superconductors—which are especially exciting because of their potential to operate at close to room temperature for things like zero-loss power transmission—no one knows for sure what the nudge is, although researchers think it might involve stripes of electric charge, waves of flip-flopping electron spins that create magnetic excitations, or some combination of things.
“This launch represents the conclusion of the production and launch phase, and the commencement of the satellites’ critical missile detection and early warning mission,” Maj. Matt Blystone, program manager at the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters today at a pre-launch briefing.
SBIRS, conceived in 1996, was designed to replace the elderly Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites, the first of which was launched in 1970. The operational constellation comprises three satellites in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) and two hosted payloads on classified satellites in Highly Elliptical Orbits over the poles. Lockheed Martin is the SBIRS prime contractor and Northrop Grumman the payload integrator.
Assuming the Thursday launch goes as planned, the last of the satellites, SBIRS GEO-6, is expected to be up and running by “late spring, early summer” next year, Blystone said. The time between now and then will be filled with various tests of the satellite and its subsystems.
The startup is hiring Ritesh Jain, VP of engineering at Intel, to help it move from the prototype phase of its chip development to mass production.
ESA is prepping to send a spacecraft to Venus — a feat which will require state-of-the-art methods to get through the planet’s grueling atmosphere.
ESA is prepping to send a spacecraft to Venus — a feat which will require state-of-the-art methods to get through the planet’s grueling atmosphere.
Lengthy outages loom after storms, as surging electricity demand and global supply-chain issues quadruple wait times for the vital equipment.
A newly developed, water-activated disposable paper battery promises to make a big impact on single-use electronics – those temporary gadgets used in medical and industrial fields where electronic waste can quickly start piling up.
The battery that has been demonstrated by researchers is biodegradable, made from sustainable materials, and cheap to put together. What’s more, it can be produced in a variety of shapes and sizes as needed.
To give an idea of the power, a two-cell battery made using the technology was enough to power an LCD alarm clock. While it won’t be charging up your laptop anytime soon, there’s lots of potential for low-powered sensors and trackers.
Synchron has implanted its BCI in a US patient for the first time—bringing it a big step closer to distribution.
‘Tis all in the senses.
On her blog, Lepht Anonym describes herself as “a faceless, genderless British biohacker. It lacks both gods and money and likes people, science, and practical transhumanism.” Anonym practices, sometimes referred to as grinding — a subculture of biohacking — DIY surgery to insert electronic hardware under the skin.
At the Grinderfest in 2019, Anonym inserted a little “pirate box” device in her upper right arm.
Continue reading “A transhuman biohacker implanted over 50 chips and magnets in her body” »
