Lifeboat Foundation

Even though black holes swallow anything that comes near them — even light — they are still possible to locate by looking for signs of their effects. Black holes are extremely dense, so they have a lot of mass and a strong gravitational effect that can be observed from light-years away. But the universe is a big place, and researchers are hoping that the public can help them to identify more black holes in the name of scientific exploration.

A project called Black Hole Hunter invites members of the public to search through data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to look for signs of a black hole. Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, citizen scientists will look at how the brightness of light from various stars changes over time, looking for indications that a black hole could have passed in front of a star and bent the light coming from it. This should enable the project to identify black holes that would otherwise be invisible.

One of the researchers on the project, Matt Middleton of the University of Southampton, explained in a statement: Black holes are invisible. Their gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape, making them incredibly hard to see, even with specialist equipment. But that gravitational pull is also how we can detect them because it’s so strong that it can bend and focus light, acting like a lens that magnifies light from stars. We can detect this magnification and that’s how we know a black hole exists.

Data-centric applications benefit from dense, low-power memory. Here the authors use a combination of chalcogenide superlattices and nanocomposites to achieve low switching voltage (0.7 V) and fast speed (40 ns) in 40-nm-scale phase-change memory.

Team designed a photonic chip in a way that reduced the speed of light by more than 10,000 times. That could boost performance and applications in light sensing, communications and computing.

A report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has revealed that it is still cheaper to use humans for certain jobs than artificial intelligence (AI).

This comes amid concerns that AI will replace many jobs currently handled by humans. The report suggests that AI cannot replace the majority of jobs in cost-effective ways at present.

In a study addressing fears about AI replacing humans in various industries, MIT established that using AI to replace humans is only profitable in a few industries.

If true, this could mark an astronomy breakthrough.

After just over 10 and a half days in space, Peregrine Mission One, which was hosted by the private space company, Astrobotic Technology, burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean on January 18, 2024, at approximately 4:04 pm EST (1:04 pm EST). This concluded what is being deemed as a mostly successful mission for the first commercial mission for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, although the spacecraft was unable to land on the lunar surface due to a fuel leak that occurred about seven hours after launch on January 8, 2024. Despite this, Peregrine was able to test several of its onboard instruments during the short mission, which will provide valuable data for future missions to the Moon, specifically for NASA’s Artemis program.

Had Peregrine landed on the Moon, it would have marked the first time a US-built spacecraft would have landed on the lunar surface since NASA’s Apollo 17 in 1972. Despite this, four of the five instruments on Peregrine successfully collected data during the 10-day mission: Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS), Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), with the fifth instrument, NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), designed to only be used on the lunar surface.

“Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission provided an invaluable opportunity to test our science and instruments in space, optimizing our process for collecting data and providing a benchmark for future missions,” said Dr. Nicola Fox, who is the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “The data collected in flight sets the stage for understanding how some of our instruments may behave in the harsh environment of space when some of the duplicates fly on future CLPS flights.”

A coronal mass ejection will trigger a geomagnetic storm, which can impact technology and cause the Northern Lights to be seen further south.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. health officials on Monday urged millions of parents to book their children for missed measles, mumps and rubella shots during a sharp increase in the number of measles cases and the lowest vaccination rates in a decade.

The National Health Service is launching a publicity campaign after figures showed there were about 250 confirmed measles cases in parts of England last year. Most cases were in children under 10 years old.

The combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is offered in the U.K. in two doses to all children, first at 12 months and then again at 3 years. Vaccination rates have dropped to about 85% nationally, and far lower in parts of London, according to U.K. Health Security Agency chief executive Jenny Harries.

Organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors (OMIECs) are a highly sought-after class of materials for non-conventional applications, such as bioelectronics, neuromorphic computing, and bio-fuel cells, due to their two-in-one electronic and ionic conduction properties.

To ensure a much wider acceptance of these fascinating materials, there is a need to diversify their properties and develop techniques that allow application-specific tailoring of the features of OMIEC-based devices.

A crucial aspect of this process is to develop strategies for evaluating the various properties of these materials. However, despite the increasing popularity of OMIECs, there is a severe lack of research on the molecular orientation-dependent transient behaviors of such conductors.