October 21, 2020
“The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/21/nasa-osiris-rex-spacecraft-lands-on-asteroid-bennu-in-mission-to-collect-dust
Um. OK. That’s some confidence in your own project you got there, dude.
Now all we have to do is wait a couple of weeks to find out if it actually grabbed anything!
October 9, 2020
The volcano is about the size of Arizona with a volume 100 times larger than that of Mauna Loa’s, Earth’s largest volcano, NASA says. “In fact, the entire chain of Hawaiian islands (from Kauai to Hawaii) would fit inside Olympus Mons!”
Brighter than Jupiter this October! And the closest Mars will be until 2035.
(The photo is from Forbes, but the information was better on The Telegraph.)
October 3, 2020
“When you look at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, that area of space is very different from the blackness we perceive with our eyes,” says Michele Bannister, an astronomer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, who studies the outer reaches of the Solar System. “Magnetic fields are fighting and pushing and tied up with each other. The image you should have is like the plunge pool under Niagara Falls.”
June 30, 2020
“In the future, our system could be part of a global quantum network transmitting quantum signals to receivers on Earth or on other spacecraft,” says Aitor Villar, lead author of the study. “These signals could be used to implement any type of quantum communications application, from quantum key distribution for extremely secure data transmission to quantum teleportation, where information is transferred by replicating the state of a quantum system from a distance.”
OK, OK, so it’s not the first time quantum entanglement has been demonstrated. But it sure is the smallest. Only 20 cm by 10 cm!
Now we only need a few thousand of these things and a way of somehow making tangled photons actually carry encrypted messages…
(Sorry, thinking of the SF novel I should have published by now…still figuring out the last two chapters!)
See more at New Atlas (note: I seriously doubt the CubeSat actually looks like that picture when it’s doing its thing).
June 17, 2020
The researchers looked at Phobos, which loses height as it interacts with Martian gravity over time. Eventually, its orbit will be too low and Mars will essentially rip it into pieces that form a ring around the planet. It’s estimated that this will happen within 50 million years.
So say goodbye to fear, but dread may stick around a while longer…
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/03/world/mars-rings-moons-scn/index.html
April 24, 2020
On April 29, an asteroid estimated to be 1.2 miles wide will fly by Earth, but it’s not on a destructive path. And new images of the asteroid make it appear as though it’s wearing a face mask.
😷
— Read on edition.cnn.com/2020/04/23/world/asteroid-1998-or2-face-mask-scn-trnd/index.html
April 18, 2020
Hmm, this doesn’t look much like a dragon… 🐉 🤔
(First NASA manned launch in a decade. First NASA launch by a private company. We’ll likely see many, many more.)
April 1, 2020
“The most energetic outflow came from a quasar called SDSS J1042+1646 with 5×1030 gigawatts, or 5 million trillion trillion gigawatts. For perspective, a nuclear reactor puts out about one gigawatt of energy, while the total energy of all Milky Way stars is about 1028 gigawatts.”
Tired of corona-related news. Time to relax with a completely science-based, “you are somewhat insignificant in the greater scheme of things” post.
Enjoy.
March 14, 2020
Wasp-76b, as it’s known, orbits so close in to its host star, its dayside temperatures exceed 2,400C – hot enough to vaporise metals.
Hmm….this reminds me of…let me think for a minute…wait, I got it…
Yeah, that’s the one. I think.
(Seriously, check it out. Not even the Jedi could possibly handle an actual “inferno” planet.)
March 8, 2020
“So, let’s bring the samples back. So if those extraordinary claims are made, they can be verified.”
One likely extraterrestrial form of life might resemble a terrestrial form: the stromatolite.
They basically look like big rocks. I visited one site in Western Australia in 2003 with a group of Japanese students who were told by a local guide that the stromatolites were “3.5 billion years old.” (They’re not, but they do look like what life might have looked like at that point.”
So NASA is sending another rover to see if they can find evidence of a similar life form.
Sorry. No Slurm (yet?).
— Read on www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-51544476
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