This artificial spiderweb mimics the elasticity, adhesion, and tensile strength of spiderweb silk and, with the capacity to self-clean and sense objects, can even replicate some spiderweb features that rely on the behavior of spiders themselves.
Read more about the research Science Robotics:
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âif you were the type of geek, growing up, who enjoyed taking apart mechanical things and putting them back together again, who had your own corner of the garage or the basement filled with electronics and parts of electronics that you endlessly reconfigured, who learned to solder before you could ride a bike, your dream job would be at the Intelligent Systems Center of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Housed in an indistinct, cream-colored building in a part of Maryland where you can still keep a horse in your back yard, the ISC so elevates geekdom that the first thing you see past the receptionistâs desk is a paradise for the kind of person who isnât just thrilled by gadgets, but who is compelled to understand how they work.â
Continue reading “The brain-computer interface is coming, and we are so not ready for it” »
A YouTube engineer invented an off-road âNot-A-Wheelchairâ for his wife to give her more freedom than ever before.
Zack Nelson, better known as JerryRigEverything, is known for testing out the durability of smartphones, looking at drones and conjuring other cool, wacky stuff.
Continue reading “Guy Designs Off-Road Wheelchair For His Wife So She Can Go On Adventures” »
The California-based company aims to launch a private Venus mission in 2023 to hunt for signs of life in the clouds where scientists just spotted the possible biosignature gas phosphine. But that landmark effort will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan.
Rocket Labâs life-hunting Venus mission in 2023 will be just the beginning, if all goes according to the companyâs plan.
Discovering chemical substances as possible chemical markers of life existence in Venusâs atmosphere via remote astronomical observations cannot be considered objective evidence of life existence on the planet, says Roscosmos Executive Director for Science and Advanced Programs Alexander Bloshenko. âCredible scientific data on that matter can be obtained only via contact explorations of the planetâs surface and atmosphere,â he added.
Notably, the USSR was the only country to conduct regular explorations of Venus using on-planet stations. The first ever soft landing on another planetâs surface in the Solar system was performed in 1970 by the Venera-7 descent module. Several orbital missions and landings provided detailed data on the Venerian climate, soil and atmosphere composition. The Soviet Venera-13 spacecraft still holds the record as the longest active spacecraft on Venus remaining operational for 127 minutes.
A huge breakaway of the Soviet Union from its competitors in exploration of Venus contributed to the fact that USA called Venus a âSoviet planetâ. Having recently analyzed the pictures of Venus captured by Soviet missions, scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences claimed they discovered moving objects and even might be living. And it remains to be seen, whether these guesses are true.
Continue reading “Proofs of life on Venus can be obtained only through contact explorations” »
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to carry what will soon become the International Space Stationâs first privately-built airlock.
The company has previously built standardized boxes for space-based experiments and tiny satellite deployers, The Verge reports.
The Bishop is shaped like a bell jar and attaches itself to the outside of the space station using a number of clamps and latches.
Continue reading “The ISS Is About to Get Its First Commercial Airlock” »
With todayâs news of the first-ever detection of an intact planet closely orbiting a stellar white dwarf, a team led by two Cornell University astronomers has also shown that NASAâs forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would be capable of detecting biosignatures from earth-sized planets orbiting such dying stars.
As reported in the journal Nature, the white dwarf in question â- WD 1856+534 â- is now thought to harbor a Jupiter-size object orbiting this dying stellar core on an insanely short orbit of only 34 hours. But even before todayâs announcement, Cornell astronomers were testing their idea that the Webb telescope might also be able to detect earth-sized objects within the same system.
In separate research submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Cornell University astronomers Lisa Kaltenegger and Ryan MacDonald and the paperâs 1st co-authors, lay out their case for using the Webb telescope to look for very short transits of such rocky worlds as they pass in front of the these white dwarfs. They used WD 1856+534, which is only 40 percent larger than Earth and lies only 80 lights years away in the constellation of Draco, as their test case.
A single infusion of an experimental drug markedly reduced levels of the coronavirus in newly infected patients and lowered the chances that they would need hospitalization, the drugâs maker announced on Wednesday.
The drug is a monoclonal antibody, a manufactured copy of an antibody produced by a patient who recovered from Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Many scientists hope that monoclonal antibodies will prove to be powerful treatments for Covid-19, but they are difficult and expensive to manufacture, and progress has been slow.
A so-called monoclonal antibody lowered levels of the coronavirus and prevented hospitalizations. The research has not yet been vetted by independent experts.
Millions of space nerds reacted with joy Monday to a study showing the atmosphere of Venus contains phosphine, a chemical byproduct of biological life. But none would have been more thrilled or less surprised by the discovery than the late, great Carl Sagan â who said this day might come more than 50 years ago.
Now best remembered as the presenter of the most-viewed-ever PBS series Cosmos, the author of the book behind the movie Contact, and the guy who put gold disks of Earth music on NASAâs Voyager missions, Sagan actually got his start studying our closest two planets. He became an astronomer after being inspired as a kid by Edgar Rice Burroughsâ space fantasies, set on Mars and Venus.
âCosmosâ presenter Carl Sagan was one of the worldâs top experts on Venus, and he saw first what scientists have just announced: possible life on Venus.
Weâve had impressive efforts, such as India planting 66 million trees in a day, but that was a large-scale event, which required organizing millions of volunteers. It would be difficult to recreate something like that on a regular basis.
Luckily, a former NASA engineer has developed drones that can plant 100,000 trees per day each.
Multiply that by 165 drones, and we could easily fill the 6-billion-tree gap we face each year.
