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The "Science and Space" Thread #2

382K views 6K replies 43 participants last post by  ekim68 
#1 ·
Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab.

By smashing gold particles together at super-fast speeds, physicists have basically melted protons, creating a kind of "quark soup" of matter that is about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and similar to conditions just after the birth of the universe.

-- Tom
 
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#4,069 ·

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-generating-oxygen-from-simulated-moon-du-1841060875']Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust
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European researchers are working on a system that can churn out breathable oxygen from simulated samples of moon dust.

"Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel," explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release.
 
#4,070 ·

Atomic bonds forming and breaking captured on video for the first time


Atoms are known for forming bonds and breaking apart, a process that's crucial to basically everything in the universe. But because it happens on such a tiny scale, it's difficult to study and record. Now, researchers from the Universities of Nottingham and Ulm have managed to capture atoms forming and breaking bonds on video for the first time.

The team used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to image a pair of rhenium atoms, as they "walked" hand in hand along a carbon nanotube. With a quadruple bond between them, the two atoms form a molecule of Re2.
 
#4,071 ·

Nine Finalists Chosen in NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Naming Contest


Members of the public have an opportunity to vote for their favorite name for NASA's next Mars rover. The nine candidate names were made possible by the "Name the Rover" essay contest, which invited students in kindergarten through 12th grade from across the United States to come up with a fitting name for NASA's Mars 2020 rover and write a short essay about it.
 
#4,073 ·

World's highest and India's largest gamma-ray telescope to go live in Ladakh this year


New Delhi:
India's largest and the world's highest gamma-ray telescope is set to go live later this year, aiming to provide a new window into distant stars and galaxies in the universe.

The Major Atmospheric Cherenkov Experiment Telescope (MACE) in Hanle, Ladakh, is placed at an altitude of 4,300 metres above sea level.

It is the world's second-largest, ground-based gamma-ray telescope with a 21-metre-diameter dish. The largest telescope of the same class is the 28-metre-diameter telescope, which is part of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) in Namibia.
 
#4,074 ·
#4,075 ·

Detection of very high frequency magnetic resonance could revolutionize electronics


A team of physicists has discovered an electrical detection method for terahertz electromagnetic waves, which are extremely difficult to detect. The discovery could help miniaturize the detection equipment on microchips and enhance sensitivity.

Terahertz is a unit of electromagnetic wave frequency: One gigahertz equals 1 billion hertz; 1 terahertz equals 1,000 gigahertz. The higher the frequency, the faster the transmission of information. Cell phones, for example, operate at a few gigahertz.
 
#4,076 ·

NASA reports Voyager 2 is experiencing technical difficulties


Voyager 2 has been going strong for over 40 years, but it's beginning to show signs of its age. NASA is reporting that a fault has caused the spacecraft to lock itself down in safe mode, as engineers work to get it back up and running again.

According to NASA, Voyager 2 failed to perform a scheduled maneuver on Saturday January 25. The craft was due to rotate a full 360 degrees to calibrate its magnetic field instrument, but for some reason the action was delayed. That in turn meant that two particularly power-hungry systems were left running at the same time, which overdrew the available power supply.

Because a mechanic can't exactly be sent 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion km) to look at it, Voyager 2 is designed to automatically react to these situations by going into a low power mode, preventing any damage. Engineers back at NASA HQ can then communicate with the craft to try to troubleshoot the problem.
 
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#4,078 ·

NASA selects first habitable commercial module for the ISS


NASA has announced its selection for the first commercial habitat module to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS). Houston, Texas-based Axiom Space will provide the first part of what will eventually become the "Axiom Segment" of the station, consisting of a node module, a research and manufacturing facility, crew habitat, and a large-windowed Earth observatory.
Spacecraft Engineering space shuttle Gas Space
 
#4,080 ·

Dense stars spotted twisting and dragging the spacetime continuum


Under general relativity, gravity is the result of huge amounts of mass bending the very fabric of spacetime. A few years after Einstein published the theory of general relativity, mathematicians Josef Lense and Hans Thirring proposed the concept of "frame dragging." Essentially, general relativity suggests that rotating objects should drag spacetime around with them.

Most of the time that effect would be too minor to detect, so it's remained unconfirmed for over 100 years. But now, the researchers on the new study claim to have found evidence of this long-sought side effect.

It's not entirely surprising that PSR J1141-6545 would be the site of this breakthrough, given the crazy amounts of mass the system is throwing around. The astronomers have been studying the objects for almost 20 years with the Parkes telescope in Australia, watching how they interact over time. And in the long-term, they noticed a gradual change that could be attributed to frame dragging.
 
#4,081 ·

NASA Gravity Probe Confirms Two Einstein Theories


A NASA probe orbiting Earth has confirmed two key predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity causes masses to warp space-time around them.

The Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission was launched in 2004 to study two aspects of Einstein's theory about gravity: the geodetic effect, or the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging, which describes the amount of space and time a spinning objects pulls with it as it rotates.
 
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#4,083 ·

Satellite Host Named for NASA Air Pollution Sensor


A NASA instrument that will measure air quality over North America in unprecedented detail during daylight hours now has a satellite host.

Maxar Technologies and Intelsat recently agreed to partner to host NASA's Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument onboard the Intelsat 40e mission. In 2019, NASA selected Maxar to host the TEMPO instrument utilizing the U.S. Air Force Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS) contract vehicle. Intelsat 40e is based on Maxar's 1300-class satellite platform and will provide commercial satellite communications for Intelsat customers in North and Central America. The satellite is scheduled to launch into geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above Earth's equator in 2022.
 
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#4,086 ·

ALMA catches beautiful outcome of stellar fight


Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, have spotted a peculiar gas cloud that resulted from a confrontation between two stars. One star grew so large it engulfed the other which, in turn, spiralled towards its partner provoking it into shedding its outer layers.
Water Sky Astronomical object Art Gas
 
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#4,088 ·

Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles


A mysterious radio source located in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth is pulsing on a 16-day cycle, like clockwork, according to a new study. This marks the first time that scientists have ever detected periodicity in these signals, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and is a major step toward unmasking their sources.

FRBs are one of the most tantalizing puzzles that the universe has thrown at scientists in recent years. First spotted in 2007, these powerful radio bursts are produced by energetic sources, though nobody is sure what those might be. FRBs are also mystifying because they can be either one-offs or "repeaters," meaning some bursts appear only once in a certain part of the sky, while others emit multiple flashes to Earth.
 
#4,089 ·

NASA Names Axiom Space to Build Its Space Hotel


Introducing Axiom Space
Earlier this week, NASA announced that it has selected Axiom Space to build "at least one habitable commercial module to be attached to the International Space Station." The contract is awarded under NASA's "Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships," or NextSTEP-2, program, which was first announced some five years ago.

In this particular demonstration project, Axiom will deliver to the ISS an "element" which "will attach to the space station's Node 2 forward port," giving access to the rest of the space station, and also a place for weary private astronauts to lay their heads at night.
 
#4,092 ·

New Horizons Team Uncovers a Critical Piece of the Planetary Formation Puzzle


Data from NASA's New Horizons mission are providing new insights into how planets and planetesimals - the building blocks of the planets - were formed.

The New Horizons spacecraft flew past the ancient Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth (2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019, providing humankind's first close-up look at one of the icy remnants of solar system formation in the vast region beyond the orbit of Neptune. Using detailed data on the object's shape, geology, color and composition - gathered during a record-setting flyby that occurred more than four billion miles from Earth - researchers have apparently answered a longstanding question about planetesimal origins, and therefore made a major advance in understanding how the planets themselves formed.
 
#4,093 ·

William Gerstenmaier joins SpaceX, and that's a really big deal


SpaceX has confirmed that NASA's former chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, has joined the company as a consultant as it prepares to launch astronauts for the first time.

This is a consequential hire for SpaceX-it is difficult to overstate the influence Gerstenmaier has over human spaceflight both in the United States and abroad. He led NASA's space shuttle, International Space Station, commercial crew, and exploration programs for more than a decade.
 
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