Science & Technology

Move over, Elon Musk! Chief designer of Russia's new 'Oryol' spacecraft says it'll be capable of crewed flights to Moon & Mars

RT
Tue, 04 Aug 2020 16:50 UTC

Ground control to Major Artyom? In the same week that NASA and SpaceX made headlines for performing a type of splashdown landing that the Soviet Union perfected in the 1970s, Russia is looking beyond mere orbital space travel.

The man behind Russia's latest spacecraft, the Oryol, says it will be able to fly to asteroids and Mars, as well as to the Moon. Igor Khamits made the comments during an interview with the Russian Space magazine, published by the federal space agency Roscosmos.

The Oryol is projected to begin crewed missions in 2025, with unmanned operations starting two years earlier. The capsule is scheduled to make an uncrewed flight around the Moon in 2028.

World's first commercial long range, wireless power transmission trialed in New Zealand

Loz Blain
New Atlas
Mon, 03 Aug 2020 21:50 UTC

© Emrod
Emrod's wireless power transmission devices can beam large amounts of electrical power between two points, with line of sight between relays the only limit on distance

A New Zealand-based startup has developed a method of safely and wirelessly transmitting electric power across long distances without the use of copper wire, and is working on implementing it with the country's second-largest power distributor.

The dream of wireless power transmission is far from new; everyone's favorite electrical genius Nikola Tesla once proved he could power light bulbs from more than two miles away with a 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s - never mind that in doing so he burned out the dynamo at the local powerplant and plunged the entire town of Colorado Springs into blackout.

Tesla's dream was to place enormous towers all over the world that could transmit power wirelessly to any point on the globe, powering homes, businesses, industries and even giant electric ships on the ocean. Investor J.P. Morgan famously killed the idea with a single question: "where can I put the meter?"

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's: Objective:Health #15 - The Dangers of 5G & WiFi - With Scott Ogrin of Scottie's Tech.Info

'Dream incubation' device that manipulates content of people's dreams being tested by MIT

Peter Dockrill
Science Alert
Thu, 30 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC

Scientists have developed an experimental device and protocol for manipulating the content of people's dreams while they are sleeping, by making them recall specific cues that can trigger targeted dream themes and experiences.

While the boundless dream-building of Inception remains the stuff of science fiction for now, the new research shows that the evolving science of dream control is far more than fantasy - and that information processing during sleep is capable of being engineered from the outside.

In a new study, a team led by neuroscientist Adam Haar Horowitz from MIT describes how a wearable electronic device - called Dormio - enables what the researchers term 'targeted dream incubation' (TDI), during the fluid first stage of sleep where the sleeper experiences a borderland state of consciousness called hypnagogia.

"This state of mind is trippy, loose, flexible, and divergent," Haar Horowitz explains.

Comment: See also:

New Comet C/2020 O2 (Amaral)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Mon, 03 Aug 2020 19:44 UTC

CBET 4822 & MPEC 2020-P10, issued on 2020, August 02, announce the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~18) by Leonardo S. Amaral (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) on three 60-s CCD exposures taken on July 23 with a 0.3-m f/4 reflector. The new comet has been designated C/2020 O2 (Amaral).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.

Stacking of 16 unfiltered exposures, 90 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, July 27.05 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma about 8" in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)

Lockdown lunacy 3.0: It's over

J.B. Handley
jbhandleyblog.com
Tue, 28 Jul 2020 17:07 UTC

If you're hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary. And, if you're living in the United States, like I am, you probably think my declaration that this pandemic is "over" to be somewhere between wishful thinking and incredibly premature, and I hear you, too, although forgive me if I'm not sure you're the one thinking clearly, given some of the things I've recently read. I promise to support my assertion with data, and the wisdom of people far more expert than me who are having a harder time being heard in the present climate of...bats#@t crazy.

Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.

You may not be one of them. In fact, I'm guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven't been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have? Jeffrey A. Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research put it best in his excellent essay on July 10 titled, When will the Madness End?:

"I'm a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I've been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It's hard enough to contain these problems in normal times. What's happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population. It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic. It seems almost deliberate. It is tragic. Once this starts, it could take years to repair the psychological damage."

How human sperm really swim: New research challenges centuries-old assumption

University of Bristol
Phys.org
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC

A breakthrough in fertility science by researchers from Bristol and Mexico has shattered the universally accepted view of how sperm 'swim'.

More than three hundred years after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used one of the earliest microscopes to describe human sperm as having a "tail, which, when swimming, lashes with a snakelike movement, like eels in water", scientists have revealed this is an optical illusion.

Using state-of-the-art 3-D microscopy and mathematics, Dr. Hermes Gadelha from the University of Bristol, Dr. Gabriel Corkidi and Dr. Alberto Darszon from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, have pioneered the reconstruction of the true movement of the sperm tail in 3-D.

Comment: See also: Choosy eggs may pick sperm for their genes, defying Mendel's law

Pluto's dark side spills its secrets - including hints of a hidden ocean

Shannon Hall
Nature
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC

© NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured different faces of Pluto as it flew past the dwarf planet in 2015.

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zipped past Pluto in 2015, it showed a world that was much more dynamic than anyone had imagined. The dwarf planet hosts icy nitrogen cliffs that resemble the rugged coast of Norway, and giant shards of methane ice that soar to the height of skyscrapers. Cracks deeper than the Grand Canyon scar the surface, while icy volcanoes rise taller than Mount Everest. In one part of the distant orb, the spacecraft's cameras captured a giant heart-shaped feature that caused a collective swoon among countless fans on Earth.

"I expected Pluto to be a scientific wonderland, but it did not have to be so beautiful," says Leslie Young, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and a deputy project scientist on the New Horizons mission.

Although scientists caught that first jaw-dropping glimpse nearly five years ago, they are still seeing images of the world for the first time.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

The explosive secret hidden beneath 'boring' volcanoes

Trinity College Dublin
Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC

An international team of volcanologists working on remote islands in the Galápagos Archipelago has found that volcanoes which reliably produce small basaltic lava eruptions hide chemically diverse magmas in their underground plumbing systems - including some with the potential to generate explosive activity.

Many volcanoes produce similar types of eruption over millions of years. For example, volcanoes in Iceland, Hawai'i and the Galápagos Islands consistently erupt lava flows - comprised of molten basaltic rock - which form long rivers of fire down their flanks.

Although these lava flows are potentially damaging to houses close to the volcano, they generally move at a walking pace and do not pose the same risk to life as larger explosive eruptions, like those at Vesuvius or Mt. St. Helens. This long-term consistency in a volcano's eruptive behaviour informs hazard planning by local authorities.

The research team, led by Dr Michael Stock from Trinity and comprising scientists from the US, UK and Ecuador, studied two Galápagos volcanoes, which have only erupted compositionally uniform basaltic lava flows at the Earth's surface for their entire lifetimes. By deciphering the compositions of microscopic crystals in the lavas, the team was able to reconstruct the chemical and physical characteristics of magmas stored underground beneath the volcanoes.

Comment: See also:

Forensic astronomy offers fresh look at Vermeer's 'View of Delft'

Alex Fox
Smithsonian Magazine
Tue, 28 Jul 2020 21:36 UTC

Dutch Golden Age artist Johannes Vermeer is known for creating iconic works like Girl With a Pearl Earring. But it was his View of Delft that French novelist Marcel Proust deemed "the most beautiful painting in the world." Now, an astronomer has studied the 17th-century cityscape's depiction of light and shadow to pinpoint the moment that inspired the artist down to the hour, reports Daniel Boffey for the Guardian.

Art historians have long thought that View of Delft was painted in the late spring or early summer of 1660, but the details of Vermeer's life are so hazy that no one could be sure exactly when the masterwork came to fruition, according to Jennifer Ouellette of Ars Technica.

Donald Olson, an astronomer at Texas State University, and his colleagues used Google Earth and maps from the 17th and 19th centuries to identify landmarks in the painting. Then, they measured the distances and angles of its shadows and highlights. As the Guardian notes, the team even visited Delft firsthand to deduce the position of the sun — and thus the time of year — associated with a slice of light seen on the Nieuwe Kerk tower's belfry in Vermeer's skillful rendering.

Adapt 2030: Collapse the economy rebuild the world with a new power system

Adapt 2030
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:41 UTC

Nothing goes to zero, if the present economy evaporates it will be replaced with free wireless power to achieve the elitist objectives. The playbook for fiat money collapse and narrative build of new technologies discovered that can now gave the world pollution-less free power. Banking starts over with even more control, problem, this technology has been around since the early 1900's with the inventions of Tesla and subsequent improvements over a century. The missing piece of world history about to be dusted off.

Comment: See also:

Quote of the Day

State power has its own limits defined by the fact that it is authority that reaches people from outside. State power cannot oversee and dictate the creative states of the soul and mind, the inner states of love, freedom and goodwill. The state cannot demand from its citizens faith, prayer, love, goodness and conviction. It cannot regulate scientific, religious and artistic creation. It should not intervene in moral, family and daily private life, and only when extremely necessary should it impinge on people's economic initiative and creativity.

- Ivan Ilyin

RT = CNN So this piece is likely agitprop. "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Please, just follow the $cience.

DeliciousTears

Whats a Lizzo? Is that like a Lesbo? Asking for a friend....

Bezel Bub

New York hospitals prepare for staffing crisis as vaccination mandate forces mass firings [Link]

Serig

I think we need to start a GoFundMe so we can air drop AK-47's into Australia....

Bezel Bub

slime biden exacts no consequences for murdering 10 afghans, but punishes cowboys for riding horses

smertzasmert

Science & Technology

Move over, Elon Musk! Chief designer of Russia's new 'Oryol' spacecraft says it'll be capable of crewed flights to Moon & Mars

World's first commercial long range, wireless power transmission trialed in New Zealand

'Dream incubation' device that manipulates content of people's dreams being tested by MIT

New Comet C/2020 O2 (Amaral)

Lockdown lunacy 3.0: It's over

How human sperm really swim: New research challenges centuries-old assumption

Pluto's dark side spills its secrets - including hints of a hidden ocean

The explosive secret hidden beneath 'boring' volcanoes

Forensic astronomy offers fresh look at Vermeer's 'View of Delft'

Adapt 2030: Collapse the economy rebuild the world with a new power system

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