Science & TechnologyS


Question

Mysterious linear features spotted on Saturn's moon

Christopher Crockett
Sky & Telescope
Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:49 UTC
Saturn's Dione
© NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science InstituteDione sits front and center above Saturn's rings in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's largest moon Titan lurks in the background, Pandora is to the right of the rings, and Pan is the tiny dot to the left.
Saturn's moons are a hodgepodge of misfits. Iapetus looks like the Death Star from Star Wars. Tiny Pan resembles a cosmic empanada. And now something appears to be etching oddly straight lines across the icy surface of Dione.

The lines - or linear virgae, to use the proposed technical term - stretch for up to hundreds of kilometers, and yet are less than 5 kilometers wide. They all run parallel to the equator and reside only at lower latitudes. They are brighter than everything else around them and appear to be laid atop extant features such as ridges and craters, which means they've been emplaced fairly recently. And it's not clear yet how they got there.

"We are not really sure how to get such straight lines," says Emily Martin (National Air and Space Museum), coauthor on an upcoming paper describing the surface scoring in Geophysical Research Letters. "Linear virgae are really unlike anything else we see in the solar system."
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Rocket

Russia tests key piece of nuclear space engine; aims to revolutionize long-range missions


RT
Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:21 UTC
TEM spacecraft
© WikimediaArtist’s concept shows the nuclear-propelled TEM spacecraft. The four large ‘fins’ are droplets of the radiator.
A key component of Russia's future nuclear space propulsion system, which may revolutionize long-range exploration of the solar system, has been successfully tested, RIA Novosti reported.

Since at least 2009, Russian space and atomic engineers have been developing a special space propulsion system, which uses a 1 megawatt nuclear fusion reactor as source of energy. According to a work competition report, published on a website tracing public spending in Russia and reviewed by the news agency, one of the crucial elements of the system, which is responsible for cooling down the reactor, has been successfully tested.

The nuclear engine, which is known by its abbreviation YaEDU (Nuclear Propulsion and Power Engine System) consists of a small fast-neutron nuclear reactor, an electricity generator fed by the reactor's heat and space thrusters powered by the generator.

Unlike chemical rocket engines, which burn through their propellant in mere minutes, the YaEDU will be able to work for tens of thousands of hours before the reactor core expires. That would allow accelerating a spacecraft to much greater speed over time. The system also acts as a reliable source of power for onboard electric systems as a side benefit. So this type of propulsion is much better than traditional rockets for long-range space missions, like exploration of Mars and beyond.

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Camera

French company uses drones and 3D images to reconstruct destroyed heritage sites


The Epoch Times
Sat, 27 Oct 2018 00:00 UTC
Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria
© Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty ImagesTemple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria
A French startup is using drones and 3D technology to create digital reconstructions of cultural heritage sites destroyed by conflict in the Middle East.

Technicians at Iconem, a Paris-based startup, use drones and digital cameras to take hundreds of thousands of photographs of at-risk or destroyed cultural heritage sites such as Palmyra and Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Information technologists then combine the use of specially created algorithms, artificial intelligence, and supercomputers to process the photographs to produce the 3D reconstructions of the sites.

The startup hopes that their digital reconstructions will be used when the time comes to rebuild war-torn cities such as Aleppo and Mosul.
"And this 3D model that we're in the process of generating will help to make the general map and the land register of the city and all the urban analysis which will allow architects to decide how we will reconstruct the city. Which monuments we will be able to keep and which we can restore and which strategy we will adopt for the future reconstruction," said Iconem founder Yves Ubellman.
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Galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope is back online after a three week malfunction


RT
Sun, 28 Oct 2018 17:10 UTC
Hubble telescope
© NASAIt lives! Hubble Space Telescope reawakens after breakdown
The Hubble Space Telescope captured by an STS-125 crew member aboard the shuttle Atlantis.
The Hubble Space Telescope is back from the dead more than three tense weeks after it suffered an operational breakdown while carrying out its mission to study and record the distant stars and galaxies of the universe.

This weekend, NASA excitedly announced that Hubble returned to normal operations on Friday, and completed its first scientific observations since October 5 on Saturday.

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Rocket

'Abnormal event' causes the failure of China's first private rocket launch


RT
Sun, 28 Oct 2018 14:37 UTC
rocket launch
© Reuters / StringerIt was hoped Zhuque-1 would be the first privately developed Chinese rocket to enter space.
China's first privately-built space rocket has failed to make it to orbit after something "abnormal" happened during the third stage of lift-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Saturday.

Beijing-based 'LandSpace' was the first private company in China to build a three-stage rocket. They said the first and second stage of its Zhuque-1 (ZQ-1) rocket launch went off without a hitch, but something went terribly wrong in the third and final stage.

"If the launch mission can go well, the ZQ-1 will become China's first private carrier rocket that can send satellites into space," said LandSpace CEO Zhang Changwu ahead of the groundbreaking launch, which followed nine months of development.
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Map

AI-equipped autopilot combine harvester makes its debut in Russia


RT
Sun, 28 Oct 2018 14:06 UTC
automated harvester
© Screenshot / dmitry.rogozin / Facebook
Designed by one of Russian leading space-tech makers, this "fully automated" combine harvester can create its own routes and drive itself while sweeping the fields.

A video shared by the nation's space chief, Dmirty Rogozin, shows the harvester making turns and maneuvering while in "full autopilot" mode. The vehicle's operator is present in the cabin but has his hands down, not even touching the controls - the harvester's cutting-edge AI does all the driving.

"Combine drivers in Russia will lose jobs soon," Rogozin joked. "The accuracy of the field's cultivation is two centimeters."

The AI-equipped vehicle is capable of calculating its own routes, while collecting and analyzing various data on the surrounding environment.
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Comet 2

Asteroid Phaethon acts like a comet, contributes to a meteor shower, and it's blue

Matt Williams
Universe Today
Thu, 25 Oct 2018 12:00 UTC
asteroid
Having studies countless asteroids in near-Earth space, astronomers have come to understand that the majority of these rocks fall into one of two categories: S-type (grey) and C-type (red). These are defined by the types of materials on their surfaces, with S-type asteroids being primarily composed of silicate rock and C-type asteroids being made up of carbon materials.

However, there is also what are known as blue asteroids, which make up only a fraction of all known Near-Earth Objects (NEO). But when an international team astronomers observed the blue asteroid (3200) Phaeton during a flyby of Earth, they spotted behavior that was more consistent with a blue comet. If true, then Phaeton is of a class of objects that are so rare, they are almost unheard of.

The team's findings were presented at the 50th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science, which is taking place this week (Oct. 21st to Oct. 26th) in Knoxville, Tennessee. The presentation, titled "Physical Characterization of (3200) Phaethon: Target of the DESTINY+ Mission", was led by Theodore Kareta of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL).

Comment: See also:

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Info

Mounting evidence that herpes virus is a cause of Alzheimer's disease

Ruth Itzhaki
The Conversation
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 16:32 UTC
MRI of Brain
© ATTHAPON RAKSTHAPU/SHUTTERSTOCK
More than 30m people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease - the most common form of dementia. Unfortunately, there is no cure, only drugs to ease the symptoms. However, my latest review, suggests a way to treat the disease. I found the strongest evidence yet that the herpes virus is a cause of Alzheimer's, suggesting that effective and safe antiviral drugs might be able to treat the disease. We might even be able to vaccinate our children against it.

The virus implicated in Alzheimer's disease, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), is better known for causing cold sores. It infects most people in infancy and then remains dormant in the peripheral nervous system (the part of the nervous system that isn't the brain and the spinal cord). Occasionally, if a person is stressed, the virus becomes activated and, in some people, it causes cold sores.

We discovered in 1991 that in many elderly people HSV1 is also present in the brain. And in 1997 we showed that it confers a strong risk of Alzheimer's disease when present in the brain of people who have a specific gene known as APOE4.

The virus can become active in the brain, perhaps repeatedly, and this probably causes cumulative damage. The likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease is 12 times greater for APOE4 carriers who have HSV1 in the brain than for those with neither factor.
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Galaxy

Confirmed: Earth has two dust clouds in a semi-stable orbit

Royal Astronomical Society
Phys.org
Sat, 27 Oct 2018 16:16 UTC
Kordylewski cloud
© G. HorváthArtist's impression of the Kordylewski cloud in the night sky (with its brightness greatly enhanced) at the time of the observations.
A team of Hungarian astronomers and physicists may have confirmed two elusive clouds of dust, in semi-stable points just 400,000 kilometres from Earth. The clouds, first reported by and named for Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961, are exceptionally faint, so their existence is controversial. The new work appears in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Earth-Moon system has five points of stability where gravitational forces maintain the relative position of objects located there. Two of these so-called Lagrange points, L4 and L5, form an equal-sided triangle with the Earth and Moon, and move around the Earth as the Moon moves along its orbit.

L4 and L5 are not completely stable, as they are disturbed by the gravitational pull of the Sun. Nonetheless they are thought to be locations where interplanetary dust might collect, at least temporarily. Kordylewski observed two nearby clusters of dust at L5 in 1961, with various reports since then, but their extreme faintness makes them difficult to detect and many scientists doubted their existence.

Comment: See also:

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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: Being As Communion: Why Information Theory Is Cooler Than You Think

Harrison Koehli, Adam Daniels and Elan Martin
Sott.net
Sat, 27 Oct 2018 16:00 UTC
information theory
Information is more than most people think. Sure, we get information from books, the news, gossip and google searches. Information is also the basis of computer programs and the DNA within our cells. But it's also much more than that. In fact, it may be a fundamental aspect of reality as we know it: from the particles and energy of physics to the shapes of our bodies and even the very acts of observation, thought and choice.

In his 2014 book Being As Communion, mathematician, philosopher, and intelligent design proponent William Dembski lays out what he calls a metaphysics of information, arguing that information and intelligence go to the very bottom and top of the cosmos. The ideas of information theory have strong resonances with the thought of Whitehead and Jordan Peterson, too.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss information theory, Dembski's book, and how information theory helps us not only to understand the nature of reality, but our place within it, and what our purpose might be.

Running Time: 01:35:09

Download: MP3

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