Las Vegas hosted two successful test flights using unmanned aircraft to carry human organs and tissue last week. On Sept. 17th, MissionGo, a provider of unmanned aviation solutions and Nevada Donor Network, conducted two unmanned flights — one of which was the longest organ delivery flight in Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) history. The first flight involved transport of research corneas fromSouthern Hills Hospital and Medical Center to Dignity Health — St. Rose Dominican, San Martín Campus.
Two years after Bezos said he would create a network of preschools, the first of those schools, called Bezos Academy, will open south of Seattle in October.
Following a series of critical contract awards and hardware milestones, NASA has shared an update on its Artemis program, including the latest Phase 1 plans to land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the Moon in 2024.
US space agency NASA has forecast a recently-spotted asteroid, 2020 SW, for a fly-by on Thursday. It will fly by at an agonising distance of around 17,000 miles – closer than a weather satellite.
Data from Southwest Research Institute-led instruments aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft have helped reveal auroral emissions in the far ultraviolet around a comet for the first time.
At Earth, auroras are formed when charged particles from the Sun follow our planet’s magnetic field lines to the north and south poles. There, solar particles strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, creating shimmering curtains of colorful light in high-latitude skies. Similar phenomena have been seen at various planets and moons in our solar system and even around a distant star. SwRI’s instruments, the Alice far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectrograph and the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES), aided in detecting these novel phenomena at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G).
“Charged particles from the Sun streaming towards the comet in the solar wind interact with the gas surrounding the comet’s icy, dusty nucleus and create the auroras,” said SwRI Vice President Dr. Jim Burch who leads IES. “The IES instrument detected the electrons that caused the aurora.”
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili routinely deals with the strangest subject in all of science — quantum physics, the astonishing and perplexing theory of sub-atomic particles. But now he’s turning his attention to the world of nature. Can quantum mechanics explain the greatest mysteries in biology?
His first encounter is with the robin. This familiar little bird turns out to navigate using one of the most bizarre effects in physics — quantum entanglement, a process which seems to defy common sense. Even Albert Einstein himself could not believe it.
Jim finds that even the most personal of human experiences — our sense of smell — is touched by ethereal quantum vibrations. According to the latest experiments, it seems that our quantum noses are listening to smells. Jim then discovers that the most famous law of quantum physics — the uncertainty principle — is obeyed by plants and trees as they capture sunlight during the vital process of photosynthesis.
Finally, Jim asks if quantum physics might play a role in evolution. Could the strange laws of the sub-atomic world, which allow objects to tunnel through impassable barriers in defiance of common sense, effect the mechanism by which living species evolve?
After repurposing facial recognition and deepfake tech to study galaxies and the Higgs boson, physicists think they can help shape the responsible use of AI.
Featured image: @Carroll__Burns/Twitter
At the Q2 2020 Earnings Call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the location of the new factory. The Gigafactory for the production of the Semi, Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model 3 will be built in Austin, Texas and will be Tesla’s largest factory yet.
For now, the plan describes a 280-acre building, although the company has purchased a 2,100-acre site. Of course, given the company’s plans for the production of the Semi, Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model 3—as well as the presence of a recreation area on the territory of Giga Texas—it is not surprising that Tesla needs such a massive piece of land.
Newly published results offer compelling evidence that hydrogen is a metal at extremely high pressures. But is the research enough to convince the field at large that metallic hydrogen exists?
Andy takes a closer look at one of his favourite demos from the 2012 Christmas Lectures, bringing together a levitating superconductor and a bewildering Möbius strip made from over 2,000 magnets.
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As his super-conducting boat whizzes along the track, Andy demonstrates the remarkable properties of the superconducting material (Yttrium barium copper oxide) which allows it to seemingly float both above and below the track.
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