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Now that it is passing through the Kuiper Belt, away from the light pollution of the inner Solar System, it has another lucrative mission: measuring the brightness of the Universe. These measurements will allow astronomers to make more accurate estimates of how many galaxies there are, which is still the subject of debate. According to new measures by New Horizons, the light coming from stars beyond the Milky Way is two to three times brighter than the light from known populations of galaxies — meaning that there are even more out there than we thought!

What’s new — The study was led by a team from the Center for Detectors (CfD), an academic research group at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). They were joined by researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Space Exploration Sector (SES) at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), the University of California Irvine, and the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at UC Berkeley. The paper that describes their findings recently appeared online and has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

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The company almost doubled its launch record set the previous year. This year, it will likely break new ground with Starship.

SpaceX’s first mission of 2023 launched a massive 114 satellites into orbit. The Falcon 9 rideshare mission, called Transporter-6, launched at 10:56 a.m. EST (1456 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The new mission kickstarts what is set to be a massive year for SpaceX as the company readies for the orbital launch of its next-generation Starship rocket.

It also follows on from what was a record-breaking year for SpaceX in 2022, with the company almost doubling its previous launch record.

SpaceX / YouTube.

Continue reading “SpaceX launches its first mission of 2023 following a record-smashing 2022” | >

A new demo from Caltech will test the viability of unlimited solar power beamed back to Earth from orbit.

A new demo from Caltech is set to launch in January 2023, and it could shake up the way we collect and harvest solar power in the future.

Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) is getting ready to put its first Space Solar Power Demonstrator into space to test new technologies that could make the dream of space-based solar power harvesting — which could yield considerably more energy than ground-based solar arrays — closer to reality.

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The hologram device has been announced as a CES 2023 Innovation Awards Honoree. That’s two times in a row.

Zoom-like webcam chats could be going the way of the dodo, a new holographic technology is making waves to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds.

The original, patented hologram device from Proto M, created by a Los Angeles firm called Proto, was this week announced as a CES 2023 Innovation Awards Honoree in the category of Digital Health.

Mikkelwilliam/iStock.

People from all walks of life are beaming themselves into meetings in real-time from anywhere in the world, igniting the science fiction dreams of many who have eyed the likes of Star Wars, Avatar, and Prometheus (to name a few).

Continue reading “Skip Zoom? Holographic tech allows you to ‘beam’ into your next meeting” | >

The proteins can record histories of cellular events.

Researchers from MIT developed a technique to induce cells to record the history of cellular events in a long protein chain that can be imaged using a light microscope. The technique could help understand the critical steps involved in the processes, such as memory formation, response to drug treatment, and gene expression.

Studying the molecular processes within cells can provide important insights into their function and how they contribute to the overall functioning of an organ.

Design Cells/iStock.

“Biological systems are often composed of a large number of different types of cells. To understand those kinds of biological systems, we need to observe physiological events over time in these large cell populations,” said Changyang Linghu, Assistant Professor at the Michigan Neuroscience Institute and author of the study.

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Forged 66 million years ago, an enormous impact crater near Chixculub, Mexico, was left undiscovered until only a few short decades ago. But what caused it?

Millions of years ago, a dramatic mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs.

Marking the transition between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (which we are still in), it was one of the most significant events in Earth’s history. The cause? Perhaps a giant asteroid hit Chixculub near modern-day Yucatan, Mexico.

Sixty-six million years ago, something from the very edge of our solar system completed its unlikely journey into the inner planets.

Aunt_Spray/iStock.

Continue reading “Chicxulub crater might be the smoking gun for the dinosaurs’ end of days” | >

Complementing data with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory provided additional insights.

An international collaboration of researchers used observations from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to find out more about a supermassive black hole that mysteriously gives out bubbles of radiation, a press release said.

Supermassive black holes are often seen at the heart of galaxy clusters in the centers of enormous galaxies. The atmospheres of these galaxy clusters are filled with hot plasma that can exceed temperatures of 50 million degrees Celsius. Over long periods of time, these temperatures cool down relatively, which allows the formation of new stars.

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The new system could open up a whole host of new research avenues.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory developed a new method to push the limits of the lab’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), a press statement reveals.

Enhancing an incredibly powerful laser system.

Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

The team adapted a Nobel Prize-winning technique used to create superpowerful optical laser pulses called chirped pulse amplification (CPA). In doing so, they were able to produce X-ray pulses ten times more powerful than ever before.

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“No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time.”

Engineers and neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time that mice implanted with human brain organoids have functional connectivity to their cortex and respond to external sensory stimuli.

A novel experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging allowed researchers to make this observation over a period of months in real time. The implanted organoids responded to visual stimuli in the same manner as surrounding tissues, according to the press release.

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Minor tweaks could expand its scope of applications to other conditions, such as autism.

Researchers used virtual reality (VR) games to diagnose attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) through differences in eye movements, according to a press release published by Aalto University. This method could potentially be utilized as a basis for ADHD treatment and, with minor tweaks, to assess other conditions like autism.

ADHD is a common attention disorder that affects six million U.S. children between the ages of 3 and 17 years, according to a national survey of parents.

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