Twenty years ago, researchers saw hints of the existence of a type of exotic matter made of four neutrons. Now, researchers have found the clearest evidence it exists yet.
The Australian crater Yarrabubba is the oldest known on Earth, according to new measurements, and it might be linked to the end of a “Snowball Earth” ice age.
Yarrabubba crater in western Australia stretches roughly 40 miles across. And since its discovery in 2003, scientists have speculated it’s one of Earth’s oldest meteorite craters. Now, a team of researchers has pinned down the crater’s precise age, revealing it’s about 2.23 billion years old. This officially makes Yarrabubba the oldest known crater on Earth, surpassing the age of Vredefort crater by about 200 million years.
The meteorite impact that created Yarrabubba would have slammed into our planet at the end of one of our “Snowball Earth” ice ages, the researchers say, and it’s possible that the impact heated up our planet and ended that icy episode in Earth’s history.
Continue reading “Meteorite impact two billion years ago may have ended an ice age” »
U.K.’s Reaction Engines has revealed the start of a new testing campaign to expand the performance envelope of their high-Mach propulsion technology. Over the coming weeks, the company hopes to prove that its technology could enable current jet engines to operate from takeoff up through Mach 4 and beyond.
The new tests are being conducted in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as a part of the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) Program at the Department of Defense. The FCT program is administered by the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering for Advanced Capabilities and is focused on the discovery, assessment, and testing of leading foreign technology with the potential to satisfy U.S. Defense technical demands. The program seeks high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) technologies that could rapidly and economically satisfy current and emerging requirements.
“FCT demonstrates U.S. commitment to a ‘two-way street’ for defense procurements with both allied and friendly nations. Reaction Engines technology is world-class and is a great fit for the FCT program,” describes William Reed, the Air Force FCT manager.
Mike George’s proposal for an autonomous fleet of modular emergency vehicles that can be arranged to form an on-the-go hospital has been awarded third place in Dezeen’s Future Mobility Competition powered by Arrival.
Called National Health Network Modular Hospital System, George’s proposal features a network of modular autonomous vehicles that can be combined into purpose-built clusters to enable hospitals to grow, adapt and respond to emergencies as effectively and flexibly as required.
Each module has a chassis and mobile platform, which can be customised with various interior components to respond to different medical situations. Each interior is designed to foster patient accessibility and comfort, as well as safety.
Summary: In mice, photoreceptor cells drive vision and non-vision functions using distinct circuits in the eye.
Source: NIH/NEI
The eye’s light-sensing retina taps different circuits depending on whether it is generating image-forming vision or carrying out a non-vision function such as regulating pupil size or sleep/wake cycles, according to a new mouse study from the National Eye Institute (NEI) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful and complex observatory ever deployed. It will release its first images on July 12.
If flossing is, in short, the bane of your existence, a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania might have an ingenious solution for you.
The team has developed the ultimate no-hands dental care in the form of a swarm of shapeshifting microrobots, ready to treat and remove tooth decay-inducing bacteria and plaque from your filthy, unflossed teeth.
In simple terms, the petite and multifunctional robo-dentists do the work of brushing, flossing, and rinsing, all without the tediousness and, in some cases, the challenges of manual oral care.
Quantum computers may one day rapidly find solutions to problems no regular computer might ever hope to solve, but there are vanishingly few quantum programmers when compared with the number of conventional programmers in the world. A new beginner’s guide aims to walk would-be quantum programmers.
Researchers have discovered never-before-seen types of crystal hidden in tiny grains of perfectly preserved meteorite dust. The dust was left behind by a massive space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, nine years ago.
On 15 Feb 2013, an asteroid measuring 59 feet (18 meters) across and weighing 12,125 tons (11,000 metric tons) entered Earth’s atmosphere at around 41,600 mph (66,950 km/h).
The standard approach toward building quantum computers, called the gate model, involves arranging qubits in circuits and making them interact with each other in a fixed sequence. In contrast, Burnaby, Canada-based D-Wave has long focused on what are called annealing quantum computers.
