A RUSSIAN billionaire is bankrolling a bonkers project to build the world’s first country based entirely in space.
The nation of Asgardia plans to send millions of Earthlings up to live on giant orbiting space arks to escape the chaos as humanity “wipes itself out” in the coming decades.
The Sci-Fi community has its own flag and national anthem, and nearly 300,000 people have signed up to become citizens online.
Posted in cosmology
Like wine in a glass, huge clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in a cluster of galaxies about 480 million light years from Earth! Sloshing motions, like those seen here in Abell 2052, redistribute elements forged in supernova explosions such as iron and oxygen!
Want to learn more? https://s.si.edu/2mkQuwt
SpaceX is making progress assembling its Starship orbital spacecraft prototype, as seen in new photos shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This full-scale testing version of the Starship will take over for the StarHopper, which was a scaled-down version used to test the Raptor engine initially with low-altitude “hop” flights.
The Starship Mk I Prototype and Mk II prototypes, which are under construction simultaneously at SpaceX facilities in South Texas and Florida, will be used to test flights at higher altitudes and higher speeds, and will use as many as three to six Raptor engines simultaneously, versus the single engine used with the StarHopper.
Near an old mining town in Central Europe, known for its picturesque turquoise-blue quarry water, lay Rudapithecus. For 10 million years, the fossilized ape waited in Rudabánya, Hungary, to add its story to the origins of how humans evolved.
What Rudabánya yielded was a pelvis—among the most informative bones of a skeleton, but one that is rarely preserved. An international research team led by Carol Ward at the University of Missouri analyzed this new pelvis and discovered that human bipedalism—or the ability for people to move on two legs—might possibly have deeper ancestral origins than previously thought.
The Rudapithecus pelvis was discovered by David Begun, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto who invited Ward to collaborate with him to study this fossil. Begun’s work on limb bones, jaws and teeth has shown that Rudapithecus was a relative of modern African apes and humans, a surprise given its location in Europe. But information on its posture and locomotion has been limited, so the discovery of a pelvis is important.
O.o.
SUITA, Osaka — A group of researchers at Kansai University here has developed a material with significant germ-killing effects by copying the structure of cicada wings.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are often at odds, but there’s at least one place where those two space-industry rivals are on the same page: the newly unveiled Space Talent job database.
The search engine for careers in the space industry is a project of Space Angels, a nationwide network designed to link angel investors with space entrepreneurs.
“If you’ve ever considered working in space, this jobs board has 3,000 reasons to make the leap,” Space Angels CEO Chad Anderson said in a tweet.
A noninvasive eye exam may one day be able to screen for Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear.
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every industry, allowing vehicles to navigate without drivers, assisting doctors with medical diagnoses, and giving financial institutions more nuanced ways to predict risk. But for all the authentic use cases, there’s a lot of hype too.
Hey Google, how many enemy combatants remain standing?
British soldiers could soon be offered a “military Alexa” digital assistant which would provide troops in the field with automated information from combat tactics to repair instructions.
The Ministry of Defence has awarded a £700,000 contract to a British technology company to explore the feasibility of an artificial intelligence “chatbot” which will allow soldiers on deployment to obtain crucial information via computer link.
The specification for the AI system requires that it be accessible via military “tactical radios” and handheld devices, suggesting that it could even be used by troops on the frontline engaged in combat to access intelligence and vital information. Although initially text based, the chatbot could also be further developed to give instructions by voice.
