New James Webb Space Telescope measurements suggest that problems with Universal expansion rates may be caused by something else entirely.
How the Red Planet acquired its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, is unknown – they could have formed after something collided with the planet, or started out as asteroids – but now there is a hint of a cometary origin.
Building on experiments during October’s partial solar eclipse in the U.S, NASA has a once-in-400 years opportunity to study how an eclipse affects Earth’s atmosphere.
A study from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) which combines laboratory chemistry with astrophysics, has shown for the first time that grains of dust formed by carbon and hydrogen in a highly disordered state, known as HAC, can take part in the formation of fullerenes, carbon molecules which are of key importance for the development of life in the universe, and with potential applications in nanotechnology. The results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The world of science is full of important constants such as pi and the Hubble Constant, which reveals the universe’s expansion. Edwin Hubble linked red shift to distance, estimating the Hubble Constant at 500km/s/mpc, now revised to 65km/s/mpc.
“There still is work to be done, but we’re on track for an on-time launch,” said Europa Clipper Project Manager, Jordan Evans. “And the fact that this testing was so successful is a huge positive and helps us rest more easily.”
Like all spacecraft leading up to their launch date, NASA’s Europa Clipper has been undergoing rigorous tests and checkouts to ensure all systems are functioning properly, with NASA engineers recently subjecting the bus-sized orbiter to extreme environmental testing over a 16-day period to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the harsh conditions it will face during its 4-year science mission to the small, ocean world. These harsh conditions not only include the vacuum of space, but also electromagnetic radiation since it will be flying through Jupiter’s massive and powerful magnetic field throughout its mission.
“These were the last big tests to find any flaws,” said Jordan Evans, who is the Europa Clipper Project Manager at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Our engineers executed a well-designed and challenging set of tests that put the system through its paces. What we found is that the spacecraft can handle the environments that it will see during and after launch. The system performed very well and operates as expected.”
Continue reading “Into the Unknown: Environmental Testing of the Europa Clipper Spacecraft” »
Gravitons, the particles thought to carry gravity, have never been seen in space – but something very similar has been detected in a semiconductor.
There’s a specter haunting the tunnels of a particle accelerator at CERN.
In the Super Proton Synchrotron, physicists have finally measured and quantified an invisible structure that can divert the course of the particles therein, and create problems for particle research.
Continue reading “Physicists Capture Elusive 4D ‘Ghost’ in CERN Particle Accelerator” »
A new telescope called the “Condor Array Telescope” may open up a new world of the very-low-brightness universe for astrophysicists. Four new papers, published back to back in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) this month, present the first scientific findings based on observations acquired by Condor. The project is a collaborative led by scientists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
According to lead researchers Kenneth M. Lanzetta, Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Stefan Gromoll of Stony Brook, and Michael M. Shara, Ph.D., Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the AMNH, Condor is now in full operation. The new “array telescope” uses computers to combine light from several smaller telescopes into the equivalent of one larger telescope and is able to detect and study astronomical features that are too faint to be seen with conventional telescopes.
In the first paper, Lanzetta and colleagues used Condor to study extremely faint “stellar streams” surrounding the nearby galaxy NGC 5,907, a well-known spiral galaxy located some 50 million light years from Earth.
Coming hot on the heels of two massive announcements last year, last week Nvidia and Cerebras showed yet again that the pace of computing is still accelerating.
The first CS-2 based Condor Galaxy AI supercomputers went online in late 2023, and already Cerebras is unveiling its successor the CS-3, based on the newly launched Wafer Scale Engine 3, an update to the WSE-2 using 5nm fabrication and boasting a staggering 900,000 AI optimized cores with sparse compute support. CS-3 incorporates Qualcomm AI 100 Ultra processors to speed up inference.
Continue reading “Nvidia and Cerebras highlight the crazy acceleration in processing power” »
