The new dwarf planet candidate joins thousands of known objects in an area of the solar system beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. And the scientists say there may be more of them.
The Vera C Rubin Observatory (in Chile) which enabled astrophysicists from Harvard to spot “2026 ED138” will be featured in an upcoming documentary in mid-December. Probably too early to confirm the finding, but still, I hope they keep finding more. The Kuiper Belt is out there. WAY out there…
Ground squirrels reduce their metabolism during hibernation; could humans do it, too, with some genetic tweaks?
Hibernation is extremely complex – after all, it affects every cell in the body – and there are almost certainly multiple switches involved in the process. MIT neuroscience researcher Siniša Hrvatin has identified another brain region that seems to play a key role in the process. In a paper published earlier this year (but not yet peer-reviewed), he and his team targeted a region known as the preoptic area, which plays a key role in metabolism and temperature. By activating neurons in the preoptic area of hamsters, the researchers put them into torpor, lowering the animals’ body temperature to 15C.
The key would be whether this is possible in humans.
And, of course, whether revival can be timed and automated – or perhaps with robotic (AI) assistance…
Of course, science fiction has posited “sleeper ships” for decades now. The Songs of Distant Earth (Arthur C. Clarke, one of the “Big Three”) is probably the most well-known of the classic sleeper ship stories, but there are plenty of others to choose from…
“In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies,” [Julie McEnery, senior project scientist] said.
It should be ready for launch in August, to be parked at the L2 Lagrange space near James Webb ((which has been there since 2021).
Two decades in the making. Yet “under budget and ahead of schedule”? Really?
I’m all for discovering tens of thousands of possibly inhabited worlds and learning more about dark energy and dark matter. But I’d also like to see a little more practical tech from NASA. How will this help us settle the solar system and figure out how to visit other systems?
Li Jiaying, a 43-year-old police officer and mother of three, serves as the payload scientist in the three-member crew who made their way to China’s Tiangong space station on Sunday night.
“The moon really is its own unique body in the universe. When we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common. Everything we need, the Earth provides, and that, in and of itself, is somewhat of a miracle.”
“It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen radioed ahead of the flyby. “It is just unbelievable.”
Live up dates of the Artemis II mission to “cislunar space” (it will not actually land on the Moon but will take four astronauts farther away from Earth than anyone else so far).
Just one day after NASA said it was eyeing a potential March 6 launch date for the Artemis II lunar mission, the space agency said Saturday that complications with the rocket could delay all launch attempts in March from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(Btw, WordPress, the “quote” field used to have a separate area where you could put a link to the quote’s source. Where did that go? Nothing like helping the spread of unverified fake news…)
NASA’s plans for Mars sample return are effectively cancelled as part of a bill approved by the U.S. Congress, ending efforts to collect Perseverance rover samples that could contain evidence of alien life.