“No bunker in Greenland is going to save you.”
Roland Emmerich’s ‘Moonfall’ will bring the Moon crashing down to Earth early next year. But could that actually happen in real life? And if so, could we survive?
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Like Hitting a Bullseye With Your Eyes Closed Two statisticians put into perspective the chances of asteroid Bennu striking Earth in the next 300 years. Even Harry Stamper would probably like these odds. Recently NASA updated its forecast of the chances that the asteroid Bennu, one of the two most hazardous known objects in our solar system, will hit Earth in the next 300 years. New calculations put the odds at 1 in 1,750 a figure slightly higher than previously thought.
Pandemic lockdown forces a new perspective on designs for futuristic AI-based computing devices.
Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking scientific productivity while isolated from the spread of bubonic plague is legendary. University of California San Diego physicists can now claim a stake in the annals of pandemic-driven science.
A team of UC San Diego researchers and colleagues at Purdue University have now simulated the foundation of new types of artificial intelligence computing devices that mimic brain functions, an achievement that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. By combining new supercomputing materials with specialized oxides, the researchers successfully demonstrated the backbone of networks of circuits and devices that mirror the connectivity of neurons and synapses in biologically based neural networks.
The findings of a new study by the University of Liverpool provides further evidence of an approximately 200 million-year long cycle in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Researchers performed thermal and microwave (a technique which is unique to the University of Liverpool) paleomagnetic analysis on rock samples from ancient lava flows in Eastern Scotland to measure the strength of the geomagnetic field during key time periods with almost no pre-existing, reliable data. The study also analysed the reliability of all of the measurements from samples from 200 to 500 million years ago, collected over the last ~80 years.
They found that between 332 and 416 million years ago, the strength of the geomagnetic field preserved in these rocks was less than quarter of what it is today, and similar to a previously identified period of low magnetic field strength that started around 120 million years ago. The researchers have coined this period “the Mid-Palaeozoic Dipole low (MPDL).”
Not much is known about the vortex beams’ properties at the moment, but scientists plan to learn more by crashing them into other particles.
A Shortfall of Gravitas: SpaceX’s new drone ship detailed
The ship supported its first mission on August 29. This was the 23rd Commercial Resupply Services mission, the latest in a series of launches for NASA that sends cargo to the International Space Station.
A Shortfall of Gravitas is a notable upgrade over previous ships. SpaceX explained during the mission launch livestream that it improves over its predecessors with a fully autonomous operation procedure. That means it can travel to sea, find its position, receive the rocket, grab the rocket with the “octograbber” robot and return it to land — all autonomously.
A similar nuclear waste storage project, proposed in New Mexico by Holtec International Corp., is also awaiting approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said it expects to make a decision on that proposal in January 2022.
Texas officials vowed to fight a federal regulator’s decision to approve plans to allow thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste to be stored in oil fields in the state.
In June, San Francisco-based startup Orbit Fab launched a prototype refueling station into Earth’s orbit — but rather than allowing astronauts to venture into deep space, this system is meant to give old satellites a new lease on life.
That’s a compelling idea, and now the company has locked down $10 million in funding to further it. Our planet’s orbit is getting cluttered with old and new satellites, increasing the risks of a collision and adding to an existing space junk problem.
Orbit Fab’s Tenzing Tanker-001, an early prototype satellite fuel tanker, launched into orbit as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-2 rideshare mission on June 30.
Ending the global sanitation crisis — jack sim, founder world toilet organization.
Around 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to the basic tools of improved sanitation (toilets and latrines). One billion people still have to defecate in the open, and at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by raw wastewater. An estimated 800,000 children, younger than 5 years of age, perish from diarrhea each year, including conditions related to cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.
Current weather forecasts are 80% go for launch!
SpaceX just test-fired the rocket that will take the private Inspiration4 mission on a three-day journey around Earth.
