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Blog – Page 6987

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On April 9, 2021 NASA demonstrated video footage on Mars Helicopter Ingenuity during rotor blades spinning test and HI-RES first image from Ingenuity. Launch day of Ingenuity Perseverance Mars Rover sent images of Ingenuity Helicopter’s rotor blades spin up within motor test. Ingenuity is going to fly on Mars on April 11–12. Rotor blades spinned up and are unlocked and helicopter is going to make high-rpm test. So next milestone is to spin up rotor blades full-speed for the first time on Mars (to the planned flight speed of ~2400 RPM) while still on the surface. Flight can’t happen too late in the Martian day either. A long flight late in the afternoon could deplete the battery without giving the Sun a chance to recharge it. You don’t want to go into that cold Martian night without a good bit of energy in the battery!

Credit: nasa.gov, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Source for NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity page: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/

Source for Ingenuity fly update: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/289/when-…nuity-fly/

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A team of theoretical physicists working with Microsoft today published an amazing pre-print research paper describing the universe as a self-learning system of evolutionary laws.

In other words: We live inside a computer that learns.

The big idea: Bostrom’s Simulation Argument has been a hot topic in science circles lately. We published “What if you’re living in a simulation, but there’s no computer” recently to posit a different theory, but Microsoft’s pulled a cosmic “hold my beer” with this paper.

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MSU’s expertise in fish biology, genetics helping researchers rewrite evolutionary history and shape future health studies.

The network of nerves connecting our eyes to our brains is sophisticated and researchers have now shown that it evolved much earlier than previously thought, thanks to an unexpected source: the gar fish.

Michigan State University’s Ingo Braasch has helped an international research team show that this connection scheme was already present in ancient fish at least 450 million years ago. That makes it about 100 million years older than previously believed.

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Writer-director Neil Burger is well known for his provocative cinematic projects, most notably 2006’s period-set magician movie “The Illusionist,” 2011’s psychological thriller “Limitless,” and a trio of “Divergent” films adapted from author Veronica Roth’s young adult sci-fi novels.

Now Burger has his eyes fixed on the stars with his new science fiction adventure flick, “Voyagers,” which revolves around the perils inside a generation spaceship carrying 30 home-grown candidates on a one-way mission to settle an exoplanet 86 years from Earth.

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I found your rocket … Kyle Foreman, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told GeekWire that the property owner left a message reporting the debris. “The sheriff’s office checked it out on Monday, and SpaceX staff came over on Tuesday and retrieved it,” Foreman said. SpaceX has yet to detail precisely what went wrong with the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage, such that it failed to de-orbit in a controlled manner over the ocean. Fortunately, no one on the ground was injured. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Brazilian launch site stirs controversy. The Brazilian government is committed to further developing the Alc ntara Launch Center on the country’s north Atlantic coast, near the equator. However, the region is also home to Afro-Brazilian residents of settlements first established by escaped slaves. These settlements are known as Quilombola communities. The Washington Post recently did a deep dive into the controversy, examining how eviction of these communities would affect local residents. The newspaper found that the spaceport expansion could displace nearly 2100 people from Quilombola communities.

Brazil’s polarizing dilemma … Marcos Pontes, head of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said there are no plans to relocate families “right now.” And if the time comes to remove people, he predicted, they will go willingly. “They are going to see development coming in, real development,” he said. “All of the resistance, that is going to be gradually disappearing.” This seems unlikely. The clash is the distillation of one of Brazil’s most urgent and polarizing dramas, the publication says. What is more important: developing a vast country with unrealized potential and a lagging economy? Or protecting some of its most vulnerable communities?

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If the bill passes, it would “unfairly shift the cost of ancillary electric services exclusively onto renewable generators rather than all the beneficiaries,” according to a letter written by the Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (PREF), an industry group, and signed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Goldman Sachs, and a number of other firms.

Bill would “directly assign” grid stability costs to renewable power providers.

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