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Sep 17, 2018

Where Are We in Space? Astronomers Update Their Celestial Frame of Reference

Posted by in category: cosmology

How do you know where anything is in space? Sure, you can say, “Oh, that star, it’s the one in the middle of the Big Dipper,” but that’s not very useful in an era of incredible telescopes peeping at galaxies billions of light-years away. On January 1, 2019, scientists will adopt the newest, internationally standardized frame of reference to help locate things in space.

The third edition of the International Celestial Reference Frame, or ICRF-3, is the most up-to-date version of the International Astronomy Union’s standardized reference frame. Imagine the universe as a graph from geometry—scientists need a place to put the origin and axes.

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Sep 17, 2018

Devastating solar storm is a matter of ‘when not if’ warns Met Office as Solar Orbiter begins testing

Posted by in categories: energy, space

A devastating solar storm which could wipe out communications on Earth and fry power grids is a matter of ‘when not if’ the head of the Met Office’s Space Weather Monitoring centre has warned.

Extreme space weather has already caused widespread disruption, with a geomagnetic storm leaving six million people without power in 1989 while Apollo astronauts narrowly missed being exposed to deadly radiation in 1972 and solar flares in 2003 forced the crew of the International Space Station to take cover.

The largest solar storm ever recorded, The Carrington Event in 1859, knocked out Telegraph systems and even set fire to paper in offices.

Continue reading “Devastating solar storm is a matter of ‘when not if’ warns Met Office as Solar Orbiter begins testing” »

Sep 17, 2018

The electrifying energy of gut microbes

Posted by in category: biological

Some bacteria make energy in a process that is accompanied by transfer of electrons to a mineral. A previously unknown electron-transfer pathway now reveals an energy-generation system used by bacteria in the human gut.

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Sep 17, 2018

AI helps unlock ‘dark matter’ of bizarre superconductors

Posted by in categories: cosmology, robotics/AI

Machine learning supports 20-year-old theory of bizarre electron behaviour in high-temperature superconductor.

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Sep 17, 2018

Stephen Hawking’s ‘ghosts’ may have been found

Posted by in category: cosmology

All the evidence shows our universe emerged from a single event: an eruption commonly known as the Big Bang.

What preceded that point is a mystery.

But it has significant implications.

Continue reading “Stephen Hawking’s ‘ghosts’ may have been found” »

Sep 17, 2018

SpaceX will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the Moon

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and founder of Zozotown, Japan’s largest online clothing retailer, will be the first private customer to ride around the Moon on the company’s future massive rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). Maezawa plans to fly on the trip as early as 2023, and he wants to take artists with him to turn the entire ride into an art project called #dearMoon. A website for the mission went live after the announcement.

“Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the Moon! I choose to go to the moon with artists!” Maezawa said to announce his trip at a SpaceX event.

Continue reading “SpaceX will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the Moon” »

Sep 17, 2018

🔥😲 Jupiter and Io… Credit — NASA,… — Planetary Landscapes

Posted by in category: space

🔥 😲 Jupiter and Io… Credit — NASA, Voyager mission.

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Sep 17, 2018

Navy to flight test first-of-its-kind carrier-launched drone in 2021

Posted by in category: drones

The Navy will launch formal flight testing in 2021 for a new, first-of-its kind carrier-launched drone engineered to double the attack range of F-18 fighters, F-35Cs and other carrier aircraft.

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Sep 17, 2018

Mars-Moon Lava Tube habitation simulation in Iceland

Posted by in categories: habitats, space

Mike Dunn talked about the use of lava tubes for the Moon and Mars habitats. Mike has worked on The Mars Lava Tube Pressurization Project’s (MLTPP).

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Sep 17, 2018

Shifting focus from life extension to ‘healthspan’ extension

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

On the new article by Prof Dr S. Olshansky published in JAMA, advising to focus on healthspan extension not on lifespan extension. No, I personally believe that we can still focus on lifespan extension. We could obtain indefinite healthy life extension by different methods of rejuvenation because the rejuvenation process eliminates the main reason for sickness ie the aging diseases and renders us healthy again! And also only through indefinite life extension we could close the gap of tens of years between the lifespan in different social and ethnic groups (Lens-Pechakova, Rejuvenation Res. 2014 Apr;17:239–42)


Clinicians, scientists and public health professionals should proudly “declare victory” in their efforts to extend the human lifespan to its very limits, according to University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky.

In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Olshansky writes that the focus should shift to compressing the “red zone” — the time at the end of life characterized by frailty and disease, and extending the “healthspan” — the length of time when a person is alive and healthy.

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