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Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking – the most famous physicists of the twentieth century — both spent decades trying to find a single law that could explain how the world works on the scale of the atom and on the scale of galaxies. In short, the Standard Model describes the physics of the very small. General relativity describes the physics of the very large. The problem? The two theories tell different stories about the fundamental nature of reality. Einstein described the problem nearly a century ago in his 1923 Nobel lecture 0, telling the audience that a physicist who searches for, “an integrated theory cannot rest content with the assumption that there exist two distinct fields totally independent of each other by their nature.” Even while on his deathbed, Einstein worked on a way to unite all the laws of physics under one unifying theory.

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5G will probably not hurt you, but having these products anywhere around definitely will.

5G is rapidly overtaking other wireless technology networks and may very soon become the standard for cell phone coverage. But there has been a lot of backlash with protesters stating the technology might be harmful to human health.

This has resulted in a rise of anti-5G products that claim to protect against the supposedly harmful radiation. A lot of these products have been discovered to be scams and now a new report from BBC reveals they may actually be dangerous.

The Dutch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection (ANVS) issued a warning about ten products it found to be radioactive, and anti 5G necklaces were found to be one of them. The ANVS warned that these products could cause harm with long-term wear.

“Don’t wear it anymore, put it away safely and wait for the return instructions,” the ANVS said in a statement.

Continue reading “Beware, That ‘Anti-5G’ Necklace Might Actually Poison You” | >

Just in time for Christmas.

Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) will soon open a container of Moon soil that has gone untouched since it was collected by the Apollo 17 astronauts almost 50 years ago, a press statement reveals.

To open the sample, they will have to use a specialized piercing tool jokingly titled the “Apollo Can Opener” by members of the team. The tool was specially designed to open the specific soil sample, designated the number 73001.

A double-sealed 50-year-old Moon soil sample The Moon soil sample was collected on the Moon in 1972 at the Taurus-Littrow Valley by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last person to have set foot on the Moon. Cernan hammered a 70-cm-long cylindrical tube into the Moon’s surface to retrieve a core sample of the lunar soil. The sample was then sealed in a vacuum-tight container on the Moon before it was returned to Earth. Once on Earth, the vacuum-sealed sample was then placed in a vacuum chamber for added protection.

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Continue reading “An ‘Apollo Can Opener’ Will Soon Unseal a 50-Year-Old Box of Moon Soil” | >

The nature of dark matter continues to perplex astronomers. As the search for dark matter particles continues to turn up nothing, it’s tempting to throw out the dark matter model altogether, but indirect evidence for the stuff continues to be strong. So what is it? One team has an idea, and they’ve published the results of their first search.

The conditions of dark matter mean that it can’t be regular matter. Regular matter (atoms, molecules, and the like) easily absorbs and emits light. Even if dark matter were of molecules so cold they emitted almost no light, they would still be visible by the light they absorb. They would appear like dark nebulae commonly seen near the galactic plane. But there aren’t nearly enough of them to account for the effects of dark matter we observe. We’ve also ruled out neutrinos. They don’t interact strongly with light, but neutrinos are a form of “hot” dark matter since neutrinos move at nearly the speed of light. We know that most dark matter must be sluggish, and therefore “cold.” So if dark matter is out there, it must be something else.

In this latest work, the authors argue that dark matter could be made of particles known as scalar bosons. All known matter can be placed in two large categories known as fermions and bosons. Which category a particle is in depends on a quantum property known as spin. Fermions such as electrons and quarks have fractional spin such as 1/2 or 3/2. Bosons such as photons have an integer spin such as 1 or 0. Any particle with a spin of 0 is a scalar boson.

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For more than 50 years, near space has been viewed as a vast resource to exploit with few limits. In reality, near space is a very scarce resource. While international agreements such as the Outer Space Treaty and the Registration Convention take steps to protect this precious resource, no single global body is responsible for ensuring the long-term sustainability and safety of near space.

The current surge in the exploitation of outer space means that this lack of a global framework for space sustainability must be addressed immediately, or it will be too late; near space will be cluttered and unrecoverable. We are seeing increased use of near space for tourism and other business ventures and the deployment of megaconstellations comprising tens to hundreds of thousands of satellites. And this is just the start. Last month, we witnessed a Russian anti-satellite test that left portions of near space cluttered with orbital debris. Failure to implement a global framework with an enforcement mechanism for space sustainability could severely impact the ability to fully utilize the resource in the near future.

Today near space activities are subject to disparate space sustainability requirements, generally reliant on the requirements of the object’s launching state or conditions imposed by countries in which entities have market access. Some countries have developed well-crafted requirements for at least some space objects, but others have not. In addition, except for the items covered in existing treaties, like launching state liability, there is almost no harmonization on requirements, which further jeopardizes space sustainability.

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