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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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#5,189 ·

Discovery of massive early galaxies defies prior understanding of the universe


UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are upending what scientists previously understood about the origins of galaxies in the universe.

“These objects are way more massive than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modeled light from these galaxies. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”
 
#5,192 ·

Pair of invisible stars found locked in tight 17-hour orbit


Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system containing two ultra-cool dwarf stars that are so close together they orbit each other in less than a day. Oh, and they’re invisible to the human eye.

Ultra-cool dwarfs are common stars that, as the name suggests, have relatively low temperatures of under 2,430 °C (4,400 °F). This means they emit most of their light in infrared, which happens to make them invisible to us.
 
#5,194 ·

What time is it on moon? Europe pushing for lunar time zone


With more lunar missions than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone.

This week, the agency said space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The idea came up during a meeting in the Netherlands late last year, with participants agreeing on the urgent need to establish “a common lunar reference time,” said the space agency’s Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer.
 
#5,195 ·

A cosmonaut was stranded in space. Now a pop star tells the story.


When a Russian spaceship docked as a lifeboat for three stranded men at the International Space Station in February, one may have wondered if Sergei Krikalev, heading the rescue mission, felt any deja vu

If that name doesn't ring a bell, he's also sometimes known as "the last Soviet(Opens in a new tab)" for his more than 311 days spent in space as the Soviet Union collapsed 250 miles beneath him in 1991. He was only meant to be at the Mir station for five months. Instead, he remained for close to a year, never abandoning the outpost.
 
#5,196 ·

NASA’s Quantum Detector Achieves World-Leading Milestone


Quantum computers hold the promise of operating millions of times faster than conventional computers. But to communicate over long distances, quantum computers will need a dedicated quantum communications network.

To help form such a network, a device has been developed by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech that can count huge numbers of single photons – quantum particles of light – with incredible precision. Like measuring individual droplets of water while being sprayed by a firehose, the Performance-Enhanced Array for Counting Optical Quanta (PEACOQ) detector is able to measure the precise time each photon hits it, within 100 trillionths of a second, at a rate of 1.5 billion photons per second. No other detector has achieved that rate.
 
#5,198 ·

NASA scientists push for a treaty to tackle risky 'space junk'


NASA scientists and other experts have called for a legally binding treaty to ensure "space junk" caused by the burgeoning space industry doesn't irreparably threaten activities in Earth's orbit.

The space closely surrounding our planet is becoming increasingly crowded with over 9,000 satellites in orbit today, and the Eastern Southern Observatory (ESO) projects that this number may grow as high as 75,000 by 2030.
 
#5,199 ·

AI re-creates what people see by reading their brain scans


As neuroscientists struggle to demystify how the human brain converts what our eyes see into mental images, artificial intelligence (AI) has been getting better at mimicking that feat. A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen. As this technology develops, researchers say, it could have numerous applications, from exploring how various animal species perceive the world to perhaps one day recording human dreams and aiding communication in people with paralysis.
 
#5,202 ·

Meet the new space brick, now with added potato and a pinch of salt


There’s a different kind of space race under way, one that has engineers trying to crack the code on the best way to build on other celestial bodies. Concepts to build on the Moon have included using lunar dust and materials that could generate electricity, while for Mars scientists have explored no-bake bricks and 3D-printed ones using planetary minerals.
Now, from the team that earlier developed AstroCrete, fashioned out of blood, urine and Martian dirt, comes the slightly more palatable StarCrete, made from extraterrestrial dust, potato starch and a dash of salt. And the team says it’s strong enough that it could feasibly build houses on the planet.
 
#5,203 ·
#5,204 ·

College students built a satellite with AA batteries and a $20 microprocessor


It costs a lot of money to get a satellite into orbit onboard a rocket—around $50 million minimum, to be more specific. While this massively restricts who can access the space industry, it’s not all bad. According to NASA, there are approximately 27,000 hunks of space junk orbiting high above humans’ heads at the moment, with an average of 25 years before they fall from orbit and burn away upon atmospheric reentry.

Still, lowering costs while also shortening satellite lifespans is important if space exploration and utilization is to remain safe and viable. As luck would have it, a group of students and researchers at Brown University just made promising headway for both issues.
 
#5,205 ·
[/url=Fastest laser camera films combustion in real time]
Fastest laser camera films combustion in real time[/url]

A research team has developed one of the world's fastest single-shot laser cameras, which is at least a thousand times faster than today's most modern equipment for combustion diagnostics. The discovery has enormous significance for studying the lightning-fast combustion of hydrocarbons.
 
#5,207 ·

Northrop Grumman and IHI partner to develop patrol satellites


Space may be the final frontier, but it still needs someone to keep the peace. To help achieve this, Northrop Grumman and Tokyo-based IHI Corporation are teaming up to develop small, highly maneuverable Space Domain Awareness (SDA) satellites for Japan to protect commercial satellites from potentially hostile spacecraft.
 
#5,210 ·

Giant galaxy redefined after flipping jet to point straight at Earth


At the heart of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, and in some cases these monsters are busily chowing down on material and emitting higher levels of radiation. A region undergoing this process is called an active galactic nucleus (AGN) or a quasar. Some of them are such messy eaters that they’re spewing off huge jets of charged particles traveling close to the speed of light. These jets can point away from the home galaxy in any direction, and if one just so happens to be pointing towards Earth, it appears as a very bright object called a blazar.
 
#5,212 ·

The strongest evidence for a Universe before the Big Bang


  • For many decades, people conflated the hot Big Bang, describing the early Universe, with a singularity: that this "Big Bang" was the birth of space and time.
    [*]However, in the early 1980s, a new theory called cosmic inflation came along, suggesting that before the hot Big Bang, the Universe behaved very differently, pushing any hypothetical singularity unobservably far back.
    [*]Earlier this century, some very strong evidence arrived showing that there was a Universe before the Big Bang, demonstrating that the Big Bang wasn't truly the start of it all.
 
#5,214 ·
James Webb sheds more light on exoplanets’ ability to support life

Researchers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to measure the temperature of the innermost planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system, shedding more light on the ability of planets like these to support life.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool red dwarf star (or M dwarf) barely larger than Jupiter that sits about 40 light-years away and is orbited by seven Earth-sized exoplanets. It’s up to twice as old as our own solar system, making it perfect for studying the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets.
Atmosphere Moon Natural environment Sky Astronomical object
 
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