science.slashdot.org Open in urlscan Pro
172.64.151.192  Public Scan

Form analysis
3 forms found in the DOM

GET //slashdot.org/index2.pl

<form id="search" class="form-inline nav-search-form" method="get" action="//slashdot.org/index2.pl">
  <!-- //news.slashdot.org/index2.pl" -->
  <div class="form-group">
    <label class="sr-only" for="sitesearch">Search Slashdot</label>
    <div class="input-group">
      <input type="text" id="" class="" name="fhfilter" value="" placeholder="Search">
    </div>
  </div>
  <button type="submit" class="btn icon-search"></button>
</form>

POST https://slashdot.org/my/login

<form action="https://slashdot.org/my/login" method="post" onsubmit="if (global_returnto) { this.returnto.value = global_returnto }" class="embedded">
  <fieldset style="-webkit-border-radius:10px 10px 0 0;border-radius:10px 10px 0 0;-moz-border-radius:10px 10px 0 0">
    <div style="height:25px;">&nbsp;</div>
    <input type="hidden" name="returnto" value="">
    <input type="hidden" name="op" value="userlogin">
    <p>
      <label class="fleft" for="unickname">Nickname:</label>
      <input type="text" name="unickname" value="">
    </p>
    <p>
      <label class="fleft" for="upasswd">Password:</label>
      <input type="password" name="upasswd">
    </p>
    <label class="checkbox"><input type="checkbox" name="login_temp" value="yes"> Public Terminal</label>
    <br>
    <hr>
    <input type="submit" name="userlogin" value="Log In" class="fno"> <a href="//slashdot.org/my/mailpassword" class="btn link" onclick="getModalPrefs('sendPasswdModal', 'Retrieve Password', 1); return false;">Forgot your password?</a>
  </fieldset>
</form>

POST //science.slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl

<form id="pollBooth" action="//science.slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl" method="post">
  <input type="hidden" name="qid" value="2489">
  <input type="hidden" name="section" value="science">
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="1"> yard, still sticking to it </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="2"> meter </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="3"> kiloparsec </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="4"> furlong </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="5"> nanomoreorlessmeter </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="6"> mille passuum </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="7"> Anther option for which this poll is too short </label>
  <label>
    <input type="radio" name="aid" value="8"> huh ? I live on zero dimensions, you insensitive clod !" </label>
  <div class="poll-controls">
    <button type="submit" class="btn-polls">vote now</button>
  </div>
  <footer>
    <span>
      <a href="/poll/2489/favorite-unit-of-length">Read the <strong>8</strong> comments </a> | <strong>3850</strong> votes </span>
  </footer>
</form>

Text Content

We value your privacy
Our site is supported by advertising and we and our partners use technology such
as cookies on our site to personalize content and ads, provide social media
features, and analyze our traffic. Click "I Accept" below to consent to the use
of this technology across the web. You can change your mind and change your
consent choices at any time by returning to this site and clicking the Privacy
Choices link.

By choosing I Accept below you are also helping to support our site and improve
your browsing experience.
Store and/or access information on a device
Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different
sources
Precise geolocation data, and identification through device scanning
Personalised content
Content measurement and services development
Personalised advertising and advertising measurement
I DO NOT ACCEPT I ACCEPTSave + Exit
More Options | Privacy Policy



SLASHDOT

 * Stories
 * * Firehose
   * All
   * Popular
 * Polls
   
 * Software
 * Newsletter
 * Jobs

Submit
Search Slashdot

 * Login
 * or
 * Sign up

 * Topics:
 * Devices
 * Build
 * Entertainment
 * Technology
 * Open Source
 * Science
 * YRO
   

 * Follow us:
 * RSS
 * Facebook
 * LinkedIn
 * Twitter
 * Youtube
 * Mastodon
 * Newsletter

Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 

Nickname:

Password:

Public Terminal


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forgot your password?
Close

binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid
freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated
insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror
Sign up for the Slashdot newsletter! OR check out the new Slashdot job board to
browse remote jobs or jobs in your area

Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your
GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily with this tool so your
projects have a backup location, and get your project in front of SourceForge's
nearly 20 million monthly users. It takes less than a minute. Get new users
downloading your project releases today!

×
173602038 story


THE INGENUITY MARS HELICOPTER JUST SENT ITS LAST MESSAGE HOME (LIVESCIENCE.COM)
7

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 21, 2024 @06:25PM from the
gentle-into-that-good-night dept.
Two months ago the team behind NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter released a video
reflecting on its historic explorations of Mars, flying 10.5 miles (17.0
kilometers) in 72 different flights over three years. It was the team's way of
saying goodbye, according to NASA's video.

And this week, LiveScience reports, Ingenuity answered back: On April 16,
Ingenuity beamed back its final signal to Earth, which included the remaining
data it had stored in its memory bank and information about its final flight.
Ingenuity mission scientists gathered in a control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in California to celebrate and analyze the helicopter's final
message, which was received via NASA's Deep Space Network, made up of ground
stations located across the globe.

In addition to the remaining data files, Ingenuity sent the team a goodbye
message including the names of all the people who worked on the mission. This
special message had been sent to Perseverance the day before and relayed to
Ingenuity to send home.

The helicopter, which still has power, will now spend the rest of its days
collecting data from its final landing spot in Valinor Hills, named after a
location in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" books.

The chopper will wake up daily to test its equipment, collect a temperature
reading and take a single photo of its surroundings. It will continue to do this
until it loses power or fills up its remaining memory space, which could take 20
years. Such a long-term dataset could not only benefit future designs for
Martian vehicles but also "provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather
patterns and dust movement," researchers wrote in the statement. However, the
data will be kept on board the helicopter and not beamed back to Earth, so it
must be retrieved by future Martian vehicles or astronauts.

"Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft,
or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data,"
Teddy Tzanetos, an Ingenuity scientist at JPL, said in the statement.
Thursday NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released another new video tracing the
entire route of Ingenuity's expedition over the surface of Mars.

"Ingenuity's success could pave the way for more extensive aerial exploration of
Mars down the road," adds Spacae.com: Mission team members are already working
on designs for larger, more capable rotorcraft that could collect a variety of
science data on the Red Planet, for example. And Mars isn't the only drone
target: In 2028, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, a $3.3 billion mission to
Saturn's huge moon Titan, which hosts lakes, seas and rivers of liquid
hydrocarbons on its frigid surface. The 1,000-pound (450 kg) Dragonfly will hop
from spot to spot on Titan, characterizing the moon's various environments and
assessing its habitability.



173588348 story


SOME ASTRONOMERS WILL RE-EXAMINE A 102-YEAR-OLD THEORY ABOUT THE UNIVERSE'S
EXPANSION (FUTURISM.COM) 58

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 21, 2024 @03:34AM from the
cosmological-constants dept.
Several "high-profile astronomers" will meet at London's Royal Society (the UK's
national academy of sciences), "to question some of the most fundamental aspects
of our understanding of the universe.reports Futurism: As The Guardian reports,
the luminaries of cosmology will be re-examining some basic assumptions about
the universe — right down to the over-a-century-old theory that it's expanding
at a constant rate. "We are, in cosmology, using a model that was first
formulated in 1922," coorganizer and Oxford cosmologist Subir Sarkar told the
newspaper, in an apparent reference to the year Russian astronomer Alexander
Friedmann outlined the possibility of cosmic expansion based on Einstein's
general theory of relativity. "We have great data, but the theoretical basis is
past its sell-by date," he added. "More and more people are saying the same
thing and these are respected astronomers."

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding
more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing
possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in
significant ways. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that
the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the
active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a
supermassive black hole.
The article notes that another theory is that the so-called cosmological
constant that's been used for decades "actually varies across space."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.



173593134 story


JWST GETS AN IMAX DOCUMENTARY: 'DEEP SKY' (IMAX.COM) 12

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 20, 2024 @04:34PM from the moving-movies
dept.
A large-screen IMAX documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope "has just
opened in 300 theaters across North America," write an anonymous Slashdot
reader, noting that it's playing for one week only. "And it gets a rave review
in Forbes." Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring
cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they've remained unseen by human
eyes until now.

This is the promise of "Deep Sky," an extraordinary IMAX presentation that
brings the universe's awe-inspiring mysteries closer than ever before. Directed
by the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn and narrated by the equally
acclaimed actress Michelle Williams, "Deep Sky" is a monumental journey through
the cosmos, powered by the groundbreaking images captured by NASA's Webb
Telescope... "Deep Sky" is more than a documentary about a space telescope; it's
an immersive experience that invites audiences to see the universe as never
before. Through the power of IMAX, viewers are transported across 13 billion
years of cosmic history, to the very edges of the observable universe. Here, in
stunning clarity, we witness the birth of stars, the formation of galaxies, and
the eerie beauty of exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our own Sun.
These images, beamed back to Earth by JWST, reveal the universe's vast beauty on
a scale that seems only the giant IMAX screen can begin to convey...

What makes "Deep Sky" particularly captivating is its ability to render the
incomprehensible beauty and scale of the universe accessible. The IMAX®
experience, known for its breathtaking visuals and sound, serves as the perfect
medium to convey the majesty of the cosmos.
The review says the film celebrates the achieve of thousands of people working
across decades, "aiming to answer some of humanity's oldest questions: Where did
we come from? How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the vastness of
space?"

The reviewer also spoke to JWST telescope scientist Matt Mountain — in another
article applauding the film for "encapsulating the grandeur of space exploration
on the IMAX canvas." In "Deep Sky," viewers are taken on a journey from the
telescope's construction to its deployment and early operational phases. The
documentary highlights the international collaboration and engineering marvels
behind the JWST, featuring insights from key scientists and engineers who
brought the telescope to life. The film aims to rekindle a sense of wonder about
the universe and our place within it, emphasizing the human desire to explore
and understand the cosmos.



173585954 story


NASA VETERAN BEHIND PROPELLANTLESS PROPULSION DRIVE ANNOUNCES MAJOR DISCOVERY
(THEDEBRIEF.ORG) 244

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 20, 2024 @03:00AM from the
potentially-game-changing-breakthrough dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief: Dr.
Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion
Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive,
which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to
counteract Earth's gravity. "The most important message to convey to the public
is that a major discovery occurred," Buhler told The Debrief. "This discovery of
a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a
sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said
object without expelling mass." "There are rules that include conservation of
energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind
has done before," Buhler added. "It will be this force that we will use to
propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes."

To document his team's discovery as well as the process behind their work, which
Dr. Buhler cautions is in no way affiliated with NASA or the U.S. Government,
the outwardly amiable researcher presented his findings at a recent Alternative
Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). Filled with both highly-credentialed career
engineers and propulsion hobbyists, APEC is an organization The Debrief once
referred to as the World's Most Exclusive (And Strange) Anti-Gravity Club. In
conjunction with that presentation, "The Discovery of Propellantless Propulsion:
The Direct Conversion of Electrical Energy into Physical Thrust," Dr. Buhler
also sat down with APEC co-founder and moderator Tim Ventura to explain how his
past in electrostatics, which is his primary area of expertise, ended up being a
key component of his discovery of this new force. [...]

Up next, Buhler says his team is seeking funding to test their devices in space
to better understand the force at work. "We're hoping to do some demos," said
Buhler. "Some space demos. That's what we're trying to get some funding to do. I
think that would be a great way to show off the technology." Besides proving
once and for all that the force they are seeing is real, the accomplished
engineer believes that such tests could encourage other scientists to search for
an explanation of what exactly it is they are seeing. "I think it's a good
opportunity for people to run these tests, look at them, watch them go in space,
watch it move in space, and then say, "what does it imply? What are the
implications?'" Until that time, Buhler says he believes his work proves that
the force they are seeing is "fundamental" and that understanding it is the next
logical step. "You can't deny this," he told Ventura. "There's not a lot to
this. You're just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this
thrust."

So, while his team believes their experiments speak for themselves, the veteran
scientist says he also believes it is the job of science to analyze and
understand this discovery. If successful, he thinks it may even address some of
the harder questions in science, including the nature of dark energy or even
space/time itself. "It's easy to make these things," he said, "so it's a tool
for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions." If
there are companies or individuals interested in working with Exodus Propulsion
Technologies, Buhler asks that they reach out via their LinkedIn page.



173585132 story


A CHESS FORMULA IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD (THEATLANTIC.COM) 27

Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 19, 2024 @05:25PM from the
Elo-rating-all-the-things dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In October 2003, Mark
Zuckerberg created his first viral site: not Facebook, but FaceMash. Then a
college freshman, he hacked into Harvard's online dorm directories, gathered a
massive collection of students' headshots, and used them to create a website on
which Harvard students could rate classmates by their attractiveness, literally
and figuratively head-to-head. The site, a mean-spirited prank recounted in the
opening scene of The Social Network, got so much traction so quickly that
Harvard shut down his internet access within hours. The math that powered
FaceMash -- and, by extension, set Zuckerberg on the path to building the
world's dominant social-media empire -- was reportedly, of all things, a formula
for ranking chess players: the Elo system.

Fundamentally, what an Elo rating does is predict the outcome of chess matches
by assigning every player a number that fluctuates based purely on performance.
If you beat a slightly higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a little, but
if you beat a much higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a lot (and theirs,
conversely, goes down a lot). The higher the rating, the more matches you should
win. That is what Elo was designed for, at least. FaceMash and Zuckerberg aside,
people have deployed Elo ratings for many sports -- soccer, football, basketball
-- and for domains as varied as dating, finance, and primatology. If something
can be turned into a competition, it has probably been Elo-ed. Somehow, a simple
chess algorithm has become an all-purpose tool for rating everything. In other
words, when it comes to the preferred way to rate things, Elo ratings have the
highest Elo rating. [...]

Elo ratings don't inherently have anything to do with chess. They're based on a
simple mathematical formula that works just as well for any one-on-one, zero-sum
competition -- which is to say, pretty much all sports. In 1997, a statistician
named Bob Runyan adapted the formula to rank national soccer teams -- a project
so successful that FIFA eventually adopted an Elo system for its official
rankings. Not long after, the statistician Jeff Sagarin applied Elo to rank NFL
teams outside their official league standings. Things really took off when the
new ESPN-owned version of Nate Silver's 538 launched in 2014 and began making
Elo ratings for many different sports. Some sports proved trickier than others.
NBA basketball in particular exposed some of the system's shortcomings, Neil
Paine, a stats-focused sportswriter who used to work at 538, told me. It
consistently underrated heavyweight teams, for example, in large part because it
struggled to account for the meaninglessness of much of the regular season and
the fact that either team might not be trying all that hard to win a given game.
The system assumed uniform motivation across every team and every game. Pretty
much anything, it turns out, can be framed as a one-on-one, zero-sum game. Arpad
Emmerich Elo, creator of the Elo rating system, understood the limitations of
his invention. "It is a measuring tool, not a device of reward or punishment,"
he once remarked. "It is a means to compare performances, assess relative
strength, not a carrot waved before a rabbit, or a piece of candy given to a
child for good behavior."



173571520 story


CANADIAN SCIENCE GETS BIGGEST BOOST TO PHD AND POSTDOC PAY IN 20 YEARS
(NATURE.COM) 23

Posted by msmash on Thursday April 18, 2024 @11:24AM from the moving-forward
dept.
Researchers in Canada got most of what they were hoping for in the country's
2024 federal budget, with a big boost in postgraduate pay and more funding for
research and scientific infrastructure. From a report: "We are investing over $5
billion in Canadian brainpower," said finance minister Chrystia Freeland in her
budget speech on 16 April. "More funding for research and scholarships will help
Canada attract the next generation of game-changing thinkers."

Postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers have been advocating for
higher pay for the past two years through a campaign called Support Our Science.
They requested an increase in the value, and number, of federal government
scholarships, and got more than they asked for. Stipends for master's students
will rise from Can$17,500 (US$12,700) to $27,000 per year, PhDs stipends that
ranged from $20,000 to $35,000 will be set to a uniform annual $40,000 and most
postdoctoral-fellowship salaries will increase from $45,000 to $70,000 per
annum. The number of scholarships and fellowships provided will also rise over
time, building to around 1,720 more per year after five years.

"We're very thrilled with this significant new investment, the largest
investment in graduate students and postdocs in over 21 years," says Kaitlin
Kharas, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, Canada, and executive
director of Support Our Science. "It will directly support the next generation
of researchers." Although only a small proportion of students and postdoctoral
fellows receive these federal scholarships, other funders tend to use them as a
guide for their own stipends. Many postgraduates said that low pay was forcing
them to consider leaving Canada to pursue their scientific career, says Kharas,
so this funding should help to retain talent in the country.



173565538 story


SWEDEN BECOMES 38TH COUNTRY TO SIGN NASA'S ARTEMIS ACCORDS FOR MOON EXPLORATION
(SPACE.COM) 14

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday April 18, 2024 @03:00AM from the more-the-merrier
dept.
Sweden is the newest nation to sign onto NASA's Artemis Accords -- a series of
non-binding bilateral arrangements for peaceful and responsible exploration.
Space.com reports: During a signing event in Stockholm on Tuesday (April 16),
Swedish Minister for Education Mats Persson penned the agreement alongside U.S.
Ambassador Erik D. Ramanathan. "By joining the Artemis Accords, Sweden
strengthens its strategic space partnership with the U.S. on space covering
areas such as Swedish space research and the space industry, which in turn also
strengthens Sweden's total defense capability," Persson said in a NASA
statement. The event in Stockholm comes just on the heels of Switzerland's
signing of the Artemis Accords the day before. Greece and Uruguay were also
included in February. Sweden is now the 38th nation to join the accords, which
were established in 2020, as the first Artemis moon launch inched closer to
reality.

The Accords mirror principles set out in 1967, as part of the Outer Space Treaty
to help govern international cooperation space. NASA is using the refreshed
agreement as a guideline for the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts
back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, in 1972. In the agency's
statement, NASA administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Sweden to the expanding space
club. "Our nations have worked together to discover new secrets in our solar
system, and now, we welcome you to a global coalition that is committed to
exploring the heavens openly, transparently, responsibly, and in peace," Nelson
said, adding, "the United States and Sweden share the same bedrock principles,
and we're excited to expand these principles to the cosmos."



173562274 story


AVERAGE WORLD INCOMES TO DROP BY NEARLY A FIFTH BY 2050, STUDY SAYS
(THEGUARDIAN.COM) 121

Posted by msmash on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @02:01PM from the
shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result
of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage
will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. From a
report: Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense
extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn of destruction each year by
mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis
of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal
Nature. The hefty toll -- which is far higher than previous estimates -- is
already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the
enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning
of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a
disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate
disruption, further worsening inequality. The paper says the permanent average
loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049. In the United States and Europe
the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%,
with some individual countries much higher than this. "It's devastating," said
Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
and one of the authors of the study. "I am used to my work not having a nice
societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The
inequality dimension was really shocking."



173553294 story


NASA CONFIRMS THAT DEBRIS FROM ISS CRASHED INTO FLORIDA HOME (NBCNEWS.COM) 57

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @03:00AM from the lost-and-found
dept.
NASA has confirmed that a piece of metal that tore through a Florida home last
month was space junk from the International Space Station. NBC News reports: The
agency confirmed Monday that the 1.6-pound object was debris from a cargo pallet
that had been intentionally released from the space station three years ago. The
pallet, packed with aging batteries, was supposed to burn up harmlessly in
Earth's atmosphere, but a piece survived -- the piece that smashed into a house
in Naples, Florida, on March 8.

WINK News, a CBS News affiliate in southwestern Florida, first reported the
incident. Naples resident Alejandro Otero told the outlet that the object
crashed through the roof and two floors of his home. Otero was not home at the
time, he told WINK News, but the metal object nearly hit his son, who was two
rooms away. In a blog post about the incident, NASA said it had analyzed the
object at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and confirmed that it was part of
the equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.

The piece of space junk is roughly cylindrical in shape and is about 4-inches
tall and 1.6-inches wide. NASA said agency staff studied the object's features
and metal composition and matched it to the hardware that had been jettisoned
from the space station in 2021. At that time, new lithium-ion batteries had
recently been installed at the space station, so the old nickel hydrogen
batteries were packed up for disposal. The space station's robotic arm released
the 5,800-pound cargo pallet containing the batteries over the Pacific Ocean, as
the outpost orbited 260 miles above the Earth's surface, according to NASA. NASA
said it will perform a detailed investigation of the latest debris incident to
determine how the object withstood the extreme trip through the atmosphere.



173547836 story


NASA SAYS NEW PLAN NEEDED TO RETURN ROCKS FROM MARS; CURRENT MISSION DESIGN
CAN'T DELIVER BEFORE 2040 (BBC.COM) 65

Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @10:40AM from the big-challenges
dept.
SonicSpike shares a report: The quest to return rock materials from Mars to
Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major
overhaul. The US space agency says the current mission design can't return the
samples before 2040 on the existing funds and the more realistic $11bn needed to
make it happen is not sustainable. Nasa is going to canvas for cheaper, faster
"out of the box" ideas. It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later
in the year.

Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important
priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades. Just as the Moon
rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of
early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to
recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.



173524538 story


CNN REPORTER 'STILL HAUNTED' BY SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA DISASTER (CNN.COM) 93

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 14, 2024 @08:54PM from the
days-of-remembrance dept.
After nearly 11 years as CNN's space correspondent, Miles O'Brien found himself
in 2003 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida covering the launch of the space
shuttle Columbia: As part of the post-launch routine, NASA began sharing several
replays of the launch from various cameras trained on the vehicle. And that was
when we saw it. Producer Dave Santucci called me into our live truck, and said,
"You got to look at this." It was kind of a grainy image of what looked like a
puff of smoke, as if someone dropped a bag of flour on the ground and it broke
open. We played it over and over again, and it did not look good at all. The
giant orange fuel tank was filled with super cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, so
it was enveloped in insulating foam. A big piece of the foam had broken away
near a strut called the "bipod," striking the leading edge of the orbiter's left
wing. It was made of reinforced carbon to protect the aluminum structure of the
spacecraft from the searing heat of re-entry from space.

I reached out to some of my sources inside the shuttle program. Everyone had
seen it, of course, but the people I spoke with cautioned me not to worry. The
foam was very light, and it had fallen off on earlier missions and nothing of
concern had happened as a result... I wish I hadn't taken my eye off the ball.
Space was my beat, and I was uniquely positioned to put this concerning event
into the public domain. Like NASA's leadership, I went through a process of
convincing myself that it was going to be okay. But I had this sinking feeling.
It didn't feel right. A spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at 17,500 miles an
hour — much faster than a rifle bullet — is enveloped in a glowing inferno of
plasma...

[As it returned to earth 16 days later] the communication between the ground and
the orbiter became non-routine. Producers in the control room realized the
gravity of the situation, and we cut to a commercial break to get me off the
couch. As I was making my way across the newsroom, I started heaving. I knew in
an instant that they were all gone. There was no survivable scenario. I was
sickened. It was like a body blow. Somehow I got my act together and started
talking. I felt like it was my responsibility to mention the foam strike, to get
the information out there to the public. About an hour after Columbia had
disintegrated, I shared with a huge global audience what I knew... "That bipod
is the place where they think a little piece of foam fell off and hit the
leading edge of that wing."

During the mission, I could have easily done a story about the foam strike,
spreading the word that some NASA engineers believed there may be some reason
for concern. What if I had done that? It might have made a difference.
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible," the article concludes, "and I
feel certain that if NASA managers saw that gaping hole in Columbia's wing, they
would've tried.

"We will never know for sure, but I do know how so many of us on the ground
failed to do our jobs during that mission. It still haunts me."


CNN broadcasts the last two episodes of its four-part series Space Shuttle
Columbia: The Final Flight tonight at 9 p.m. EST (time-delayed on the west coast
until 9 p.m.PST). CNN's web site offers a "preview" of its live TV offerings
here.

The news episodes (along with past episodes) will also be available on-demand
starting Monday — "for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and
mobile apps." It's also available for purchase on Amazon Prime.



173517080 story


AI COULD EXPLAIN WHY WE'RE NOT MEETING ANY ALIENS, WILD STUDY PROPOSES
(SCIENCEALERT.COM) 315

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 14, 2024 @04:33AM from the
blaming-the-Singularity dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from ScienceAlert: The Fermi Paradox is
the discrepancy between the apparent high likelihood of advanced civilizations
existing and the total lack of evidence that they do exist. Many solutions have
been proposed for why the discrepancy exists. One of the ideas is the 'Great
Filter.' The Great Filter is a hypothesized event or situation that prevents
intelligent life from becoming interplanetary and interstellar and even leads to
its demise....

[H]ow about the rapid development of AI?

A new paper in Acta Astronautica explores the idea that Artificial Intelligence
becomes Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) and that ASI is the Great Filter.
The paper's title is "Is Artificial Intelligence the Great Filter that makes
advanced technical civilizations rare in the universe?"
"Upon reaching a technological singularity, ASI systems will quickly surpass
biological intelligence and evolve at a pace that completely outstrips
traditional oversight mechanisms, leading to unforeseen and unintended
consequences that are unlikely to be aligned with biological interests or
ethics," the paper explains... The author says their projects "underscore the
critical need to quickly establish regulatory frameworks for AI development on
Earth and the advancement of a multiplanetary society to mitigate against such
existential threats."

"The persistence of intelligent and conscious life in the universe could hinge
on the timely and effective implementation of such international regulatory
measures and



173516862 story


FUSION EXPERIMENT DEMONSTRATES CHEAPER STELLERATOR USING CREATIVE MAGNET
WORKAROUND (PPPL.GOV) 41

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:33AM from the fun-with-fusion
dept.
Popular Science reports that early last week, researchers at the U.S. Energy
Department's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory revealed their new "MUSE"
stellarator — "a unique fusion reactor that uses off-the-shelf and 3D-printed
materials to contain its superheated plasma."

The researchers' announcement says the technique suggests "a simple way to build
future devices for less cost and allow researchers to test new concepts for
future fusion power plants." Stellarators typically rely on complicated
electromagnets that have complex shapes and create their magnetic fields through
the flow of electricity. Those electromagnets must be built precisely with very
little room for error, increasing their cost. However, permanent magnets, like
the magnets that hold art to refrigerator doors, do not need electric currents
to create their fields. They can also be ordered off the shelf from industrial
suppliers and then embedded in a 3D-printed shell around the device's vacuum
vessel, which holds the plasma.

"MUSE is largely constructed with commercially available parts," said Michael
Zarnstorff, a senior research physicist at PPPL. "By working with 3D-printing
companies and magnet suppliers, we can shop around and buy the precision we need
instead of making it ourselves." The original insight that permanent magnets
could be the foundation for a new, more affordable stellarator variety came to
Zarnstorff in 2014. "I realized that even if they were situated alongside other
magnets, rare-earth permanent magnets could generate and maintain the magnetic
fields necessary to confine the plasma so fusion reactions can occur,"
Zarnstorff said, "and that's the property that makes this technique work." [...]

In addition to being an engineering breakthrough, MUSE also exhibits a
theoretical property known as quasisymmetry to a higher degree than any other
stellarator has before. It is also the first device completed anywhere in the
world that was designed specifically to have a type of quasisymmetry known as
quasiaxisymmetry. Conceived by physicist Allen Boozer at PPPL in the early
1980s, quasisymmetry means that although the shape of the magnetic field inside
the stellarator may not be the same around the physical shape of the
stellarator, the magnetic field's strength is uniform around the device, leading
to good plasma confinement and higher likelihood that fusion reactions will
occur. "In fact, MUSE's quasisymmetry optimization is at least 100 times better
than any existing stellarator," Zarnstorff said.

"The fact that we were able to design and build this stellarator is a real
achievement," said Tony Qian, a graduate student in the Princeton Program in
Plasma Physics, which is based at PPPL.
Also covered by Gizmodo. Thanks to Slashdot reader christoban for sharing the
news.



173505938 story


73-YEAR-OLD CLIFFORD STOLL IS NOW SELLING KLEIN BOTTLES (BERKELEY.EDU) 46

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 13, 2024 @01:34PM from the
after-the-Cuckoo's-Egg dept.
O'Reilly's "Tech Trends" newsletter included an interesting item this month:
Want your own Klein Bottle? Made by Cliff Stoll, author of the cybersecurity
classic The Cuckoo's Egg, who will autograph your bottle for you (and may
include other surprises).
First described in 1882 by the mathematician Felix Klein, a Klein bottle (like a
Mobius strip) has a one-side surface. ("Need a zero-volume bottle...?" asks
Stoll's web site. "Want the ultimate in non-orientability...? A mathematician's
delight, handcrafted in glass.")

But how the legendary cyberbreach detective started the company is explained in
this 2016 article from a U.C. Berkeley alumni magazine. Its headline? "How a
Berkeley Eccentric Beat the Russians — and Then Made Useless, Wondrous Objects."
The reward for his cloak-and-dagger wizardry? A certificate of appreciation from
the CIA, which is stashed somewhere in his attic... Stoll published a
best-selling book, The Cuckoo's Egg, about his investigation. PBS followed it
with a NOVA episode entitled "The KGB, the Computer, and Me," a docudrama
starring Stoll playing himself and stepping through the "fourth wall" to double
as narrator. Stoll had stepped through another wall, as well, into the numinous
realm of fame, as the burgeoning tech world went wild with adulation... He was
more famous than he ever could have dreamed, and he hated it. "After a few
months, you realize how thin fame is, and how shallow. I'm not a software
jockey; I'm an astronomer. But all people cared about was my computing."

Stoll's disenchantment also arose from what he perceived as the false religion
of the Internet... Stoll articulated his disenchantment in his next book,
Silicon Snake Oil, published in 1995, which urged readers to get out from behind
their computer screens and get a life. "I was asking what I thought were
reasonable questions: Is the electronic classroom an improvement? Does a
computer help a student learn? Yes, but what it teaches you is to go to the
computer whenever you have a question, rather than relying on yourself. Suppose
I was an evil person and wanted to eliminate the curiosity of children. Give the
kid a diet of Google, and pretty soon the child learns that every question he
has is answered instantly. The coolest thing about being human is to learn, but
you don't learn things by looking it up; you learn by figuring it out." It was
not a popular message in the rise of the dot-com era, as Stoll soon learned...

Being a Voice in the Wilderness doesn't pay well, however, and by this time
Stoll had taken his own advice and gotten a life; namely, marrying and having
two children. So he looked around for a way to make some money. That ushered in
his third — and current — career as President and Chief Bottle Washer of the
aforementioned Acme Klein Bottle company... At first, Stoll had a hard time
finding someone to make Klein bottles. He tried a bong peddler on Telegraph
Avenue, but the guy took Cliff's money and disappeared. "I realized that the
trouble with bong makers is that they're also bong users."

Then in 1994, two friends of his, Tom Adams and George Chittenden, opened a shop
in West Berkeley that made glassware for science labs. "They needed help with
their computer program and wanted to pay me," Stoll recalls. "I said, 'Nah,
let's make Klein bottles instead.' And that's how Acme Klein Bottles was born."
UPDATE: Turns out Stoll is also a long-time Slashdot reader, and shared comments
this weekend on everything from watching the eclipse to his VIP parking pass for
CIA headquarters and "this CIA guy's rubber-stamp collection."

"I am honored by the attention and kindness of fellow nerds and online friends,"
Stoll added Saturday. "When I first started on that chase in 1986, I had no idea
wrhere it would lead me... To all my friends: May you burdens be light and your
purpose high. Stay curious!"



173504228 story


JAPANESE ASTRONAUTS TO LAND ON MOON AS PART OF NEW NASA PARTNERSHIP
(SPACENEWS.COM) 17

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 13, 2024 @06:00AM from the what-to-expect
dept.
Under a new agreement between the U.S. and Japan, the first non-American on the
Moon as part of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign will be a Japanese
astronaut. SpaceNews reports: At an event in Washington, NASA Administrator Bill
Nelson and Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama signed an agreement regarding an additional
Japanese contribution to Artemis, a pressurized lunar rover called Lunar
Cruiser. NASA will deliver the rover to the moon, which the agencies said should
take place ahead of the Artemis 7 mission scheduled for no earlier than 2031.
NASA will also provide two seats on future Artemis lunar landing missions to
astronauts from the Japanese space agency JAXA, the first agency other than NASA
to secure spots on landing missions.

The Japanese rover will support extended expeditions from Artemis landing sites
that are beyond the range of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle that three American
companies are developing for NASA under contracts announced April 3. The rover
is designed to accommodate two astronauts for up to 30 days, with an overall
lifetime of 10 years. The announcement, though, offered no details about when
the Japanese astronauts would fly to the moon. "It depends," Nelson said at an
April 10 briefing when asked about schedules, noting that the two countries
"announced a shared goal for a Japanese national to land on the moon on a future
NASA mission assuming benchmarks are achieved."

"No mission has been currently assigned to a Japanese astronaut," added Lara
Kearney, manager of NASA's extravehicular activity and human surface mobility
program, at the briefing. The implementing agreement (PDF) said several factors
will go into crew assignments, including progress on the pressurized rover, or
PR: "The timing of the flight opportunities will be determined by NASA in line
with existing flight manifesting and crew assignment processes and will take
into account program progress and constraints, MEXT's request for the earliest
possible assignment of the Japanese astronauts to lunar surface missions, and
major PR milestones such as when the PR is first deployed on the lunar surface."
The assumption among many in the industry, though, is that at least one of the
astronauts will fly before the rover is delivered, and possibly as soon as the
Artemis 4 mission, the second crewed landing, in the late 2020s.



« Newer Older »



SLASHDOT TOP DEALS







SLASHDOT TOP DEALS

Close





SLASHDOT DEALS





SLASHDOT POLL


FAVORITE UNIT OF LENGTH?




yard, still sticking to it meter kiloparsec furlong nanomoreorlessmeter mille
passuum Anther option for which this poll is too short huh ? I live on zero
dimensions, you insensitive clod !"
vote now
Read the 8 comments | 3850 votes


LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE HAS ALREADY VOTED FROM THIS IP. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VOTE
PLEASE LOGIN AND TRY AGAIN.


FAVORITE UNIT OF LENGTH?

0
Percentage of others that also voted for:




 * view results
 * Or
 * 
 * view more

Read the 8 comments | 3850 voted



MOST DISCUSSED

 * 244 comments NASA Veteran Behind Propellantless Propulsion Drive Announces
   Major Discovery
 * 144 comments Should Automakers Feel Threatened by China's Exports of Electric
   Cars?
 * 130 comments Could the Earth's Record Hot Streak Signal a New Climate Era?
 * 88 comments Sell or Be Banned: Anti-TikTok Bill Passed by US Representatives
 * 81 comments EU: Meta Cannot Rely On 'Pay Or Okay'


FIREHOSE

 * GPT-4 can exploit real vulnerabilities by reading security advisories
 * Canada's Disastrous ArriveCan App Received a Procurement Award
 * The legendary Zilog Z80 CPU is being discontinued after nearly 50 years
 * Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger Speaks Out
 * Firefox Nightly expands to Linux on ARM64


THIS DAY ON SLASHDOT

2011 Why Does the US Cling To Imperial Measurements? 2288 comments 2010
Extremists Warn South Park Creators Over Muhammad In a Bear Suit 1131 comments
2008 Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity 1766 comments
2005 Microsoft Abandons Gay Rights Bill 2304 comments 2004 LUG Pres Resigns Over
Military Linux Use 1361 comments


SOURCEFORGE TOP DOWNLOADS

 * TrueType core fonts 2.2B downloads
 * Notepad++ Plugin Mgr 1.5B downloads
 * VLC media player 899M downloads
 * eMule 686M downloads
 * MinGW 631M downloads

Powered By

sf

Slashdot
 * Today
 * Saturday
 * Friday
 * Thursday
 * Wednesday
 * Tuesday
 * Monday
 * Sunday

 * Submit Story

> Memory fault - where am I?

 * FAQ
 * Story Archive
 * Hall of Fame
 * Advertising
 * Terms
 * Privacy Statement
 * About
 * Feedback
 * Mobile View
 * Blog
 * Privacy Choices
 * Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information


Copyright © 2024 Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved.
×


YOUR PRIVACY CHOICES (DO NOT SELL/SHARE/TARGET)

Under some U.S. Privacy Laws, consumers have the right to opt-out of processing
of personal info for "targeted advertising," and activities that are classified
as "sale" and/or "sharing." To submit an opt-out request that will apply to
personal information collected by cookies and other tracking technologies
("cookie PI"), move the toggle below to the left and click "Confirm My Cookie PI
Choice."

We will apply the opt-out to cookies that may implicate "sale", "sharing," or
"targeted advertising." There are other cookies, such as essential cookies and
other cookies operated by "service providers" or "processors" to which we do not
apply the opt-out. You must exercise your preferences on each of our websites
you visit, from each browser you use, and on each device that you use. If you
clear or block cookies, your preferences will no longer be effective, and you
will need to enable them again via this tool. In addition, this tool only has
the capability of applying your opt-out to cookies.

To submit an opt-out request as to non-cookie PI (such as email address):

 * If you are logged into your account, we will also apply your cookie PI
   opt-out request to non-cookie PI such as email address. You do not need to
   take further action to apply your opt-out to non-cookie PI.
 * If you are not logged into an account, you must opt-out separately. Please
   click on the "Non-Cookie PI Opt-Out" button below to access our webform.

For more information regarding our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy
Policy and U.S. State Privacy Policy.

NON-COOKIE PI OPT-OUT FORM
Opted-out Opted-in (default)

CONFIRM MY COOKIE-PI CHOICE

Close



Close
SLASHDOT

Working...