Science & TechnologyS


Moon

Upside-down Japanese 'Slim' lunar lander 'wakes up' , surviving freezing Moon night

Paul Serran
The Gateway Pundit
Wed, 28 Feb 2024 15:54 UTC
moon lander slim japan upside down
© AXA/TAKARA TOMY/Sony Group/Doshisha University/ReutersAn apparent thruster failure had the Japanese moon probe 'Slim' land safely but upside down on the lunar surface.
It seems to be the season of crazy - but ultimately successful - moon landings.

A couple of days ago, American Nova-C 'Odysseus' managed a historical moon landing for a private company - but ended up lying on its side.

Now, the original space oddity, the upside-down Japanese SLIM lander, has 'woken up' from its formant stage during a second freezing lunar night, to the surprise and delight of mission controllers on Earth.

Japan's first moon lander has responded to a signal from Earth in what has been hailed as a "miracle" by the country's space agency.

Comment: Yahoo News adds:
Dr Barber said that future landers will need so-called 'active' thermal control - that is the ability to dissipate heat generated on board during the daytime, and then to change into a heat-conserving mode at night to prevent things getting too cold.

"The fact that Slim survived without such a complex design might give us clues as to how electronics really behaves on the Moon," he said. "Plus, we can look forward to more science from Slim!"

The landing in January made Jaxa only the fifth national space agency to achieve a soft touchdown on the Moon - after the US, the former Soviet Union, China and India.

Also in a post on X, Jaxa congratulated the team behind a US spacecraft, the Odysseus Moon lander, for making history on Thursday by becoming the first ever privately built and operated robot to complete a soft lunar touchdown.

Like Slim, it also landed awkwardly. Controllers at the operating company, Intuitive Machines, think their robot tipped on to its side at the moment of touchdown. Odysseus does, however, appear still to be functional and is communicating with Earth.

No pictures from the Odysseus mission at the surface have yet been released.


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Info

3 new moons discovered around Uranus and Neptune

Harry Baker
Live Science
Tue, 27 Feb 2024 18:03 UTC
The International Astronomical Union has confirmed the existence of three currently unnamed moons — one around Uranus and two orbiting Neptune.
New Moons
© Getty ImagesNeptune (right) and Uranus (bottom left) have both gained at least one extra moon.
The solar system just got three new official residents — a trio of tiny moons, one of which orbits Uranus and two more that circle Neptune.

The three moons were all spotted several years ago but were recently confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Minor Planet Center — the organization responsible for naming new solar system objects such as moons, asteroids and comets. The new trio, which have been given numerical designations, will be given formal, literature and mythology-inspired names in the coming years.

Uranus' new moon, S/2023 U1, is only around 5 miles (8 kilometers) across, making it one of the smallest known moons around any of the eight planets in the solar system, alongside Mars' minute companion Deimos. The diminutive moon, which takes around 680 days to orbit around Uranus, brings the planet's total moon count to 28. Like the other Uranian moons, S/2023 U1 will eventually be named after a character from the plays of William Shakespeare, joining the likes of previously discovered moons such as Titania, Oberon and Puck.

Neptune's new satellites, S/2002 N5 and S/2021 N1, are around 14.3 miles (23 km) and 8.7 miles (14 km) wide respectively. S/2021 N1 takes around 9 years to orbit Neptune, while S/2002 N5 takes almost 27 years to orbit the furthest planet from the sun, which now has 16 known moons. Like other Neptunian moons, the newly recognized bodies will be named after the Nereids — the daughters of the sea god Nereus from Greek mythology.

The new moons were each spotted using ground-based telescopes, which is no mean feat considering their diminutive size and distance from our planet.
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Attention

Forty years of trust in science drops after pandemic

Jo Nova
joannenova.com.au
Tue, 27 Feb 2024 08:09 UTC
The brand-name of science is being trashed

Trust in science continues to fall. The disillusionment with the Covid response has spread to science in general. Anthony Fauci said "trust the science" then showed us how untrustworthy science was. SARS-2 definitely wasn't a lab-leak, except it probably was; the vaccine was 95% effective, except everyone caught covid, and the data was world's best practice but the FDA fought tooth and nail to stop us seeing it until 2076.

These results are terrible: despite respondents being surrounded by hi-tech cars, phones, food and gadgets which were all impossible without science, only 57% of people now think science has has a "mostly positive" effect. That's 43% of the population who now think science hurts us as much as it helps (or is even worse).

The good name of science, created by two generations with antibiotics, satellites, and the moon-landing, has been exploited by name-calling parasites.

Pew research released this in November, calling it just "a decline":

Trust in Science
© Pew Research
What Pew didn't say was that these sort of surveys have been going on for years and this was the biggest fall in forty years.

A similar survey set by the National Science Foundation has been running since 1979, and year after year, found that between 68% and 79% of Americans used to think the benefits of science outweighed the negatives.

It's been remarkably consistent for four decades but we're in new territory now.
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Display

'Quantum memory breakthrough' may lead to a quantum internet

Peter Ray Allison
Live Science
Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:52 UTC
A new technique in quantum storage that operates at room temperature could pave the way for a quantum internet.

quantum computer
© PM Images via Getty ImagesAs well as being faster, quantum communications are inherently secure — while classical communications can be intercepted or manipulated.
We're now one step closer to a "quantum internet" — an interconnected web of quantum computers — after scientists built a network of "quantum memories" at room temperature for the first time.

In their experiments, the scientists stored and retrieved two photonic qubits — qubits made from photons (or light particles) — at the quantum level, according to their paper published on Jan. 15 in the Nature journal, Quantum Information.

The breakthrough is significant because quantum memory is a foundational technology that will be a precursor to a quantum internet - the next generation of the World Wide Web.

Quantum memory is the quantum version of binary computing memory. While data in classical computing is encoded in binary states of 1 or 0, quantum memory stores data as a quantum bit, or qubit, which can also be a superposition of 1 and 0. If observed, the superposition collapses and the qubit is as useful as a conventional bit.

Quantum computers with millions of qubits are expected to be vastly more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers — because entangled qubits (intrinsically linked over space and time) can make many more calculations simultaneously.
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Fireball 5

Astronomers discover a new meteor shower - The Source is Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Mark Thompson
Universe Today
Mon, 26 Feb 2024 19:21 UTC
Comet Wirtanen
© Stub MandrelComet Wirtanen imaged using a 130P-DS Newtonian telescope on a guided HEQ5 mount and an astro modified and cooled Canon 450D. 45 two-minute images stacked using deep sky stacked to stack comet and stars separately before recombination topo remove blurring.
Like many of you, I love a good meteor shower. I have fond memories of the Leonid meteor storm back in 1999 when several hundred per hour were seen at peak. Sadly meteor storms are not that common unlike meteor showers of which, there are about 20 major showers per year. Wait, there's another one and this time it comes from the debris left behind from Comet 46P/Wirtanen with an expected peak on December 12. Last year, 23 meteors were seen on that night that matched the location of the comets trail.

Comets (and some asteroids) leave a trail of debris behind them like a trail of celestial breadcrumbs. If the orbit of a comet crosses the orbit of the Earth then the particles from the debris (that are often no larger than grains of sand) collide with our atmosphere. At the immense speeds (of the order of 60 km per second, the particles falling through the atmosphere cause the gas to glow giving rise to the classic shooting star we see in the sky. Because the orbits of Earth and comets are relatively fixed, this process repeats itself every time we go through the same part of the orbit giving us the familiar annual meteor showers.

One such comet that it seems may become host to a new annual shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen (46P). It nearly hit the headlines previously when it had been initially selected as the target for the Rosetta mission which, as you may recall, visited 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead. 46P is known as a short period comet taking 5.4 years to complete one orbit of the Sun. It is among the family of comets known as a Jupiter comet which has a most distant point from the Sun of between 5 and 6 astronomical units (1 AU is the average distance between the Sun and Earth). Observations have suggested it has a diameter of about 1.4km.
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People 2

Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began developing their own accent

Richard Gray
BBC
Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:24 UTC
Rothera Research Station antarctica
© British Antarctic SurveyAlthough the snow and sea can disappear during the summer months at Rothera Research Station, in winter it becomes effectively cut off
Antarctica is a bleak, remote and dark place during the winter, but a handful of people each year brave the conditions to live in almost totally cut off from the rest of the world. The experience can change how they speak.

It was a suitably icy farewell salute: a handful of snowballs arcing through the sky towards RSS Ernest Shackleton as the ship slipped away from the wharf. The vessel was setting out across the stormy Southern Ocean, leaving 26 hardy souls behind on a snowbound island at the frozen tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Those waving goodbye from the shore were watching their last tangible link to the rest of the world glide off through the bitterly cold water. Ahead of them lay six months of winter, effectively marooned, in the coldest continent on the planet.

"They say it is quicker to get to someone on the International Space Station than it is to medically evacuate someone from Antarctica in the winter," says Marlon Clark, one of those 26 international researchers and support staff left behind at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, just to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula in March 2018. Antarctica is the least-inhabited continent on the planet - it has no permanent human population - with just a handful of research stations and bases scattered across the 5.4 million sq mile (14 million sq km) frozen landscape. "So, you're isolated," says Clark. "There's a lot of mystery and lore about 'a winter in Antarctica'. Anticipation was the strongest feeling as well as realising, 'OK, this is real, I'm going to be here for a long, long time'."
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Nebula

Webb finds evidence for neutron star at heart of young supernova remnant


Webb Space Telescope
Thu, 22 Feb 2024 21:34 UTC
SN 1987A.
© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Claes Fransson (Stockholm University), Mikako Matsuura (Cardiff University), M. Barlow (UCL), Patrick Kavanagh (Maynooth University), Josefin Larsson (KTH)The James Webb Space Telescope has observed the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a well-known and recently-observed supernova known as SN 1987A. At left is a NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image released in 2023. The image at top right shows light from singly ionized argon (Argon II) captured by the Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS) mode of MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The image at bottom right shows light from multiply ionized argon captured by the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). Both instruments show a strong signal from the center of the supernova remnant. This indicated to the science team that there is a source of high-energy radiation there, most likely a neutron star.
Astronomers detect long-sought compact object within the remnant of Supernova 1987A.

In February 1987, the closest supernova to earth in almost 400 years exploded onto the scene. Designated Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), it resulted from the death of a massive star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy 160,000 light-years away. In the decades since, its remnant has been studied by telescopes at all wavelengths of light from X-rays to radio. Yet despite all the scrutiny, one mystery has remained.

Theory predicted that the stellar explosion should have produced either a neutron star or a black hole. Evidence for such a compact object has long been sought, without success. Now, new observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have provided the first direct evidence of what is likely a neutron star, revealed by the effects of its high-energy emission.
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Camera

Magnificent yellow-crested bird photographed for the first time

Chen Ly
New Scientist
Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:05 UTC
The first-ever photograph of the yellow-crested helmetshrike
© Matt Brady/The University of Texas at El PasoThe first-ever photograph of the yellow-crested helmetshrike
The yellow-crested helmetshrike was considered lost after going unseen for nearly 20 years - now an expedition has rediscovered what appears to be a healthy population in central Africa

A rare bird with a stunning yellow crest has been photographed for the first time in the tropical mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - almost two decades after its last confirmed sighting.

The yellow-crested helmetshrike (Prionops alberti), also known as King Albert's helmetshrike, is a small bird that lives in the humid forests of the Albertine Rift mountains in central Africa. Adults are covered in glossy black plumage with a splendid crown of bright, golden feathers on their heads. Their eyes are surrounded by distinctive orange tissue called a wattle.
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Propaganda

"Diversity Madness": Google (Kinda) apologizes after Woke AI Gemini exposed as Anti-White Racist

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00 UTC
Update (1645ET): Having been busted on some very clear race bias in the image generation segment of their new AI, Gemini Experiences Senior Director of Product Management Jack Krawczyk addressed the responses from the AI that had led social media users to voice concern.

Jack Krawczyk

Comment: See also:

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Cassiopaea

Mysterious wave-like structure in our galaxy found to be slowly rippling

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Wed, 21 Feb 2024 12:00 UTC
wave structure galaxy
© Ralf Konietzka, Alyssa Goodman, and WorldWide TelescopeA diagram illustrating the Radcliffe Wave. The white line represents its current position, with blue blobs representing star clusters. The green and purple lines indicate future positions. The yellow dot is the Sun. 
Gazing out upon the apparently unchanging sea of stars around us, it's tempting to think of the Milky Way galaxy as static and everything within it as fixed and immutable.

While the timescales on which our galaxy moves often defies human experience, move it does indeed.

Not all of these dynamic processes are easy to see. Just a few years ago, scientists discovered a huge, wave-shaped structure extending some 9,000 light-years in length snaking along a spiral arm of the Milky Way, just 500 light-years from the Solar System at its closest point.

Comment: One wonders whether there's an energy coursing through the region causing the wave to move like that:

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