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Posted in space

The Milky Way at 38,000ft

This image was taken over the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Greenland and Iceland. It points towards the galactic centre of our Milky Way. The brightest object to the top right is Jupiter. Other objects that can be seen include The Dark Horse, Pipe Nebula, M23 Cluster, M8 Lagoon Nebula, M20 Trifid Nebula, M22 Globular Cluster, M6 Butterfly Cluster, M7 Cluster among others. How many can you find?

These are the adventures of the “StarChip Wafersize.”

UC Santa Barbara students sent up, via balloon, a prototype miniature spacecraft that might eventually become the “wafercraft” that researchers posit could be propelled by lasers to achieve at relativistic speeds to reach nearby star systems and exoplanets.

So begins a journey, funded by NASA and several private foundations, that may one day lead to .

In an article last May, we covered how Rejuvenate Bio, a startup biotech company led by Professor George Church, was planning to reverse aging in dogs as a step towards bringing these therapies to us. Those plans are now starting to move forward with news of a trial launch in the fall later this year.

Developing anti-aging therapies in dogs is the first step

Back in 2015, the Church lab at Harvard began testing a variety of therapies focused on age reversal using CRISPR, a gene editing system that was much easier and faster to use than older techniques. Since then, Professor Church and his lab have conducted a myriad of experiments and gathered lots of data with which to plan future strategies for tackling aging.

Right now Chandra is studying the core of a galaxy in Fornax! Nearby in the sky is NGC 1097, a galaxy with copious clusters of young, blue stars speckling its spiral arms. This galaxy contains a central black hole about 100 million times the mass of our Sun!

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