Physicists haven’t yet ruled out the possibility that the universe has a complicated topology in which space loops back around on itself.
About 9.2 billion light-years from Earth is a colossal structure which has confounded astronomers.
The discovery might upend current cosmological theories.
What they’ve found is a 1.3-billion-light-year-across, almost perfect ring of galaxies. No such structure has been seen before. And it doesn’t match any known formation mechanism. It has been dubbed the “Big Ring.”
The aerospace firms are working together on Tranche 2 Tracking Layer to enhance space-based missile defence capabilities.
WASP-193 b is the second least dense planet discovered to date, after Kepler-51 d, which is much smaller,” said Dr. Khalid Barkaoui. “Its extremely low density makes it a real anomaly among the more than five thousand exoplanets discovered to date.
Can gas giant exoplanets larger than Jupiter have less density than the latter? This is what study published today in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of international researchers discovered WASP-193 b in 2023, which is located just under 1,200 light-years from Earth and orbits its parent star (slightly larger than our Sun) in only 6.25 days. What’s unique about WASP-193 b is that it exhibits a radius almost 1.5 times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, but whose mass is only 14 percent of Jupiter and whose density is just under 4 percent of Jupiter, as well. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanets, which continue to challenge our understanding of solar system architecture.
WASP-193 b has a density of approximately 0.059 grams per centimeter cubed (g/cm3), which is comparable to cotton candy. For context, Jupiter has a density of 1.33 g/cm3, Saturn has a density of 0.69 g/cm3, Uranus has a density of 1.27 g/cm3, and Neptune has a density of 1.64 g/cm3. Therefore, despite being larger than Jupiter, WASP-193b’s density is far less than the largest gas giant in our solar system.
Continue reading “Exploring WASP-193 b: A Cotton Candy-like Exoplanet” »
We think of GoogleDeepMind as the engine room of Google in the #AI era.
We’re sharing updates across our Gemini family of models and a glimpse of Project Astra, our vision for the future of AI assistants.
Google is trying to turn AI chatbots to intelligent systems that can reason, plan, and remember. Project Astra is a window into this potential future.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite will eventually face competition in the ARM-based AI chipset space from MediaTek and NVIDIA, who have reportedly joined forces to co-develop a new SoC whose design is said to be finalized in the third quarter of this year. The upcoming silicon is said to support advanced technologies, including being mass produced on TSMC’s 3nm process, with the new entrant possibly competing with Apple’s M4 when comparing lithography.
The unnamed chipset from MediaTek and NVIDIA is rumored to fetch a price of $300 per unit, likely due to leveraging advanced nodes and packaging technologies
With the AI PC segment estimated to grow massively by 2027, MediaTek and NVIDIA want to pounce on this opportunity, giving this category a healthy dose of competition. The Taiwanese fabless semiconductor manufacturer has already received praise from Morgan Stanley analysts for its Dimensity 9,300, so there is no question that the company’s chip-making prowess has a gold-standard label. Add NVIDIA to the mix, and we could see an SoC that overtakes the competition in graphics performance, though Economic News Daily has not mentioned this.
How will liquids boil under reduced gravity, specifically on the Moon and Mars? This is what a recent project hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and working with Texas A&M University investigated the behavior of boiling liquids under reduced gravity using parabolic flights that are designed to simulate reduced gravity conditions. This project holds the potential to help researchers and future astronauts better understand how to manage boiling liquids during long-term space missions to the Moon and Mars where the gravity is one-sixth and one-third of the Earth’s, respectively.
From left to right: SwRI Research Engineer, Emilio Gordon, Texas A&M University Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, and SwRI Research Engineer, Dr. Eugene Hoffman, examine the experimental payload right before its parabolic flight on April 24th, 2024. (Credit: Southwest Research Institute)
“We have so little data about how boiling works in reduced gravity,” said Kevin Supak, who is a program manager at SwRI and the project lead. “Our experiment studies boiling in conditions that simulate lunar and Martian gravity levels using four different surfaces to examine how bubbles initiate and detach.”
