Mar 4, 2018
Starwatch: spectacular line-up of three bright planets
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Saturn, Mars and Jupiter are all in a row this week in the pre-dawn south-eastern sky.
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Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 880
Mar 3, 2018
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques visits Montreal robotics competition
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: robotics/AI, space
“To have the opportunity to talk to someone like that and to show what we did, it feels great,” said participant Ruby Novoa Forcier, 18.
Saint-Jacques’ visit was part of the Robotics FIRST (Favoriser l’Inspiration et la Reconnaissance des Sciences et de la Technologie) Quebec competition.
Around 5,000 students from different schools across Quebec, the United States and Europe got the chance to compete at the event.
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Mar 3, 2018
China’s great leap forward in science
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: biotech/medical, computing, science, space
However, the pattern seems clear, and is worth heeding by other nations: despite China’s reputation for authoritarian and hierarchical rule, in science the approach seems to be to ensure that top researchers are well supported with funding and resources, and then to leave them to get on with it.
Chinese investment is paying off with serious advances in biotech, computing and space. Are they edging ahead of the west?
By Philip Ball
Mar 1, 2018
Asteroid Institute adds Google Cloud and AGI as tech partners for asteroid tracking
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: mapping, robotics/AI, space
Google Cloud and AGI (a.k.a. Analytical Graphics Inc.) have gotten on board with the B612 Asteroid Institute to develop a cloud-based platform for keeping track of asteroid discoveries.
The two companies have become technology partners for the Asteroid Decision Analysis and Mapping project, or ADAM, which aims to provide the software infrastructure for analyzing the trajectories of near-Earth objects, identifying potential threats, and sizing up the scenarios for taking action if necessary.
Mar 1, 2018
Why Do All The Planets Orbit In The Same Plane?
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Feb 28, 2018
First light which ever shone in universe picked up
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: physics, space
T he first light which ever shone in the universe has been detected by astronomers scouring the skies for the earliest stars.
Using a simple radio antenna positioned in the quietest place on Earth — the western Australian desert — scientists picked up a signal of the long-sought ‘cosmic dawn.’
The breakthrough was described as ‘revolutionary’, ‘trailblazing’ and the most important discovery in astronomy since the detection of gravitational waves in 2015.
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A s was the case in January, there are two full Moons in March, one on the 2nd and one on the 31st.
The second full Moon in a month has popularly become known as a Blue Moon even though this is not the original definition. That stated a Blue Moon was the third full Moon in a season which contained four full Moons.
The occurrence of two full Moons in January followed by two in March takes place approximately four times every century.
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Feb 28, 2018
Moon to get its first mobile phone network next year, 50 years after the first man walked on earth’s natural satellite
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: mobile phones, space
Feb 26, 2018
Image: Hubble finds the calm after the galactic storm
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: life extension, space
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope caught sight of a soft, diffuse-looking galaxy that is probably the aftermath of a long-ago galactic collision. Two spiral galaxies, each perhaps much like the Milky Way, swirled together for millions of years.
In such mergers, the original galaxies are often stretched and pulled apart as they wrap around a common center of gravity. After a few back-and-forths, this starry tempest settles down into a new, round object. The now subdued celestial body, cataloged as SDSS J162702.56+432833.9, is technically known as an elliptical galaxy.
When galaxies collide—a common event in the universe—a fresh burst of star formation typically takes place as gas clouds mash together. At this point, the galaxy has a blue hue, but the color does not mean it is cold: it is a result of the intense heat of newly formed blue–white stars. Those stars do not last long, and after a few billion years the reddish hues of aging, smaller stars dominate an elliptical galaxy’s spectrum. Hubble has helped astronomers learn of this sequence by observing galaxy mergers at all stages of the process.
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