Lifeboat Foundation

In this DNA factory, organism engineers are using robots and automation to build completely new forms of life.
»Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker.
»Watch more Focal Point | https://bit.ly/2M3gmbK

Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston company specializing in “engineering custom organisms,” aims to reinvent manufacturing, agriculture, biodesign, and more.

Continue reading “This Synthetic DNA Factory Is Building New Forms of Life” »

Breakthrough Initiatives held an exciting scientific meeting at the beginning of this week, from exoplanets to technosignatures and the future of life on Earth:

Earlier this week, the Breakthrough Initiatives held the scientific meeting Life in the Universe 2021: Our Past, Present, and Future Selves.

Orbiters spy potential ongoing planetary “death spiral”.

Mounded, luminous clouds of gas and dust glow in this Hubble image of a Herbig-Haro object known as HH 45.

Herbig-Haro objects are a rarely seen type of nebula that occurs when hot gas ejected by a newborn star collides with the gas and dust around it at hundreds of miles per second, creating bright shock waves. In this image, blue indicates ionized oxygen (O II) and purple shows ionized magnesium (Mg II). Researchers were particularly interested in these elements because they can be used to identify shocks and ionization fronts.

This object is located in the nebula NGC 1977, which itself is part of a complex of three nebulae called The Running Man. NGC 1977—like its companions NGC 1975 and NGC 1973—is a reflection nebula, which means that it doesn’t emit light on its own, but reflects light from nearby stars, like a streetlight illuminating fog.

Speaker: Swarup Bhunia.

http://www.eecs.case.edu/doku.php?id=eecs: home: seminar_series:upcoming_seminars.

Roscosmos launched a new docking node module to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, November 24 at 13:06 UTC / 8:06 am EST.

Launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the module will add additional docking ports to the Russian Segment of the station to provide options for future expansion but is the final Russian model planned for the outpost.

Continue reading “Russia launches new docking node to space station” »

NASA’s Curiosity rover has marked the 10th anniversary of its launch to Mars by sending back a spectacular ‘picture postcard’ from the Red Planet.

The robotic explorer snapped two black and white images of the Martian landscape which were then combined and had colour added to them to produce the remarkable composite.

Continue reading “NASA’s Curiosity rover sends a ‘picture postcard’ from Mars” »

As Neptune and Uranus could solve the mysteries of planet formation, we need to go back and study them in depth.

Sending a spacecraft to study Uranus and Neptune could give planetary scientists better clues about the formation of ice giants.

Major sales milestone gives birth to a compact UNO clone, finished in eye-catching black and gold — and even boasting castellated pins.