March 29, 2023
Interestingly, they position this advancement as progress in privacy rights; “In addition, they protect individuals’ privacy and the required equipment can be bought at a reasonable price,” they wrote.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3p7xj/scientists-are-getting-eerily-good-at-using-wifi-to-see-people-through-walls-in-detail
If you’re not scared of tech yet, you should be.
March 15, 2023
An air taxi service set to feature at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka was tested in Osaka Castle Park on Tuesday, in what the prefectural government says is the first time in the country one of the craft has been piloted from the cockpit.
https://japantoday.com/category/tech/japan%27s-1st-piloted-flying-taxi-test-held-ahead-of-2025-world-expo?
The “taxi” they tested only fits one person. If the plan is to taxi visitors to the Expo back and forth between various artificial islands, I hope there are plans to test the actual three- to six-seaters.
And of course, there is always the “big challenges ahead are Japanese regulations and residents’ feelings” things. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first flying taxi to successfully taxi people around by air also becomes the first flying taxi to have a flying traffic accident.
(That’s what happened to Ohio City inventor James Lambert, who was testing an early gas-powered car when he hit a tree. Ireland claims to have an earlier accident, but it wasn’t a vehicle anything like a modern car.)
March 10, 2023
With just over a minute to go before liftoff, a California aerospace startup opted to stand down from launching the world’s first 3D-printed rocket on its inaugural test flight.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/worlds-first-3d-printed-rocket-set-make-inaugural-flight-rcna73868
At least unlike the spectacular self-destruction of JAXA’s H3 this past Tuesday (Monday, Japan time), the team testing the California rocket wisely decided that it’s not a bright idea to stick a billion dollar satellite on an untested rocket. Repeatedly.
I’m beginning to feel that using 3D printed parts may not be the way to go with rocket engines…
February 27, 2023
“I’m less frightened by a Sydney that’s playing into my desire to cosplay a sci-fi story than a Bing that has access to reams of my personal data and is coolly trying to manipulate me on behalf of whichever advertiser has paid the parent company the most money.
“Nor is it just advertising worth worrying about. What about when these systems are deployed on behalf of the scams that have always populated the internet? How about on behalf of political campaigns? Foreign governments? “I think we wind up very fast in a world where we just don’t know what to trust anymore,” Gary Marcus, the A.I. researcher and critic, told me. “I think that’s already been a problem for society over the last, let’s say, decade. And I think it’s just going to get worse and worse.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/microsoft-bing-sydney-artificial-intelligence.html
February 26, 2023
Until the new Soyuz pulls up, emergency plans call for Rubio to switch to a SpaceX crew capsule that’s docked at the space station. Prokopyev and Petelin remain assigned to their damaged Soyuz in the unlikely need for a fast getaway. Having one less person on board would keep the temperature down to a hopefully manageable level, Russian engineers concluded.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/russia-launches-rescue-ship-space-station-leaks-rcna72161
Russian space agency Roscosmos concluded that the leak in the docked Soyuz capsule was from a micrometeorite impact.
They also reversed the previous decision last year to abandon the ISS. Now Russia will still send cosmonauts through 2028.
A positive step in a brutal political climate. International space projects should include more, not fewer, countries. Space is for everyone.
February 25, 2023
“I was quite surprised by how simple the story hiding behind the curtain of complexity in the data,” Sneppen continued. “You have this immensely complex physics, unimaginable dense stars and the birth of a black hole — and then it all reduces to this beautiful sphere.”
The neutron stars that crashed into each other are “dense and compact,” Sneppen said. They only measured around 20 km in diameter — about 12 miles — but they are “heavier than the sun,” he said. “A teaspoon of neutron star matter weighs more than Mount Everest.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/02/16/kilonova-perfect-explosion-black-hole/
First reported in 2017, a new study in Nature gives more details about a “kilo nova” only detected by using gravitational waves. The collision led to the formation of a black hole.
Fortunately, this sort of cosmic event doesn’t occur too often. But..
…if a kilonova were to occur in the Milky Way — less than 30,000 light- years away — it would be the brightest star in the night sky, making it discoverable to the human eye…
Still, it’d be safer for Earth if it never happened…
February 18, 2023
At liftoff time, smoke was seen rising from the bottom of the rocket, indicating the ignition of the main engine. However, the rocket did not rise from the launchpad.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense-Industries/Japan-s-H3-rocket-launch-aborted-after-booster-fails-to-ignite
Not a great start to the year, JAXA. This, on top of the Episilon failure (zero, zero…DESTRUCT…zero…)
February 15, 2023
The agency earlier said the object was expected to “safely strike” the earth’s atmosphere near to the French city of Rouen.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64621721
“Near to”? OK.
Anyway, “SAR2667” provided some cross-cultural entertainment for people living in England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Lots of photos and videos online.
Interesting note from ESA: they were able to detect it and notify everyone exactly where and when it would disintegrate.
Since there are more than 30,000 of these things that orbit the Sun relatively close to Earth’s orbit, it’s a good thing we’re getting better at detecting them. Maybe we’d better up the ante on deflecting them…
February 6, 2023
From 11 to 17 January, the Demonstration Business Promotion Team Osaka along with Sustainable Energy Inc. ran trials on a synthetic fuel produced from water and carbon dioxide present in the air. If successful, this could become the first carbon-based and truly carbon-neutral fuel of its kind.
https://soranews24.com/2023/02/02/synthetic-fossil-fuels-made-from-light-water-and-co2-in-the-air-tested-in-osaka/
So basically this company in Osaka did some water 💧 experiments with “radical water” (water whose molecules were subjected to a kind of electrolysis⚡️ to ionize them), then a “seed fuel” (a fossil fuel like kerosene) was added to create synthetic fuel ⛽️ which in turn will create more CO2 that can be used to create more synthetic fuel.
And no, I didn’t have to insert goofy 😜 icons, but I’m on the train right now 🚊 so why not. 😝
Anyway, this all just sounds too good to be true. Surely it’s prohibitively expensive 💴 to constantly electrify water to the point where its unbound electrons can be available to bind with synthetic fuel electrons. Tidal 🌊 generators, wind 💨 turbines, solar sun ☀️ panels, and thermal heat from volcanos 🌋 all seem more likely a source of electricity to power EVs. 🚗
At any rate, there’s been nothing in the news 📰 about this, so I doubt the experiments worked. Or if they did, someone has a vested interest in continuing Japan’s reliance on Middle Eastern, Indonesian, and Russian fossil fuels.
OK I arrived, so I can stop it with the icons 🛑 ✋ for now.
🖖
February 4, 2023
A Japanese telescope positioned on top of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, captured video of an eerie flying spiral in the night sky on Jan. 18.
In the video, a small bright spot appears and slowly gets brighter and starts to dissipate into a spiral before getting small again and disappearing.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/japanese-telescope-captures-image-mysterious-180332172.html
In fact, it was the remains of a discarded Falcon 9 booster from the launch of a SpaceX satellite. And it isn’t the first time this has happened. Japanese TV talked about this, too (since it was a Japanese astronomy, at the Subaru Telescope, that first recorded it).
So, an Identified Flying Object!
Yay, more metallic junk.
(Thanks to Glen Hill for bringing this article to my attention.)
Writing Fanfiction in the worlds of Tolkien and Beyond!
Learning more about our place in the universe...
Best Tech Gadgets Advise
Writing blogs is miracle I am a writer blogger and my site mission is to give information on maximum information to audiences
Reflections of an inquiring retiree ...
Simple ideas to make every room feel stylish and welcoming
Rock & Metal Reviews That Hit Hard
Short stories | Reflections | Poetry
Read. Reflect. Grow
M Thomas Apple Author Page 