Latest Articles
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Aug- 2021 -28 AugustScience
Mountains of Data: An Unprecedented Climate Observatory Could Predict the Future of Water
Lead image: The SAIL site in Gothic, Colorado. Credit: Ken Williams/Berkeley Lab First-ever “bedrock-to-atmosphere” observation system could allow scientists to predict the future of water availability in the West. The “megadrought” impacting the Colorado River system this year has been devastating to the 40 million people who rely on it for water. But could this drought have been predicted? Will we be able to predict the next one? Mountain watersheds provide 60 to 90% of water resources worldwide, but there is still much that scientists don’t know about the physical processes and interactions that affect hydrology in these ecosystems. And…
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27 AugustSpace
Scientists puzzling out secrets of Venus’ 30-year-old ‘Giant Dark Cloud’
Lead image: An image of Venus taken by the infrared camera on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spacecraft Akatsuki on Sept. 5, 2016. (Image credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)) There are many strange things happening on Venus. Among them is a recognizable weather pattern that scientists now realize has persisted in the planet’s atmosphere for at least 30 years. Nicknamed the “Giant Dark Cloud,” scientists first noticed that feature in data gathered by an infrared camera aboard the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki, which has been orbiting Venus since 2015. The cloud is huge, spanning a third of the planet’s latitude…
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27 AugustSpace
Ripples in Space-Time Detected – Caused by the Death Spiral of a Neutron Star and a Black Hole
Lead image: Image from a MAYA collaboration numerical relativity simulation of an NSBH binary merger, showing the disruption of the Neutron Star. Credit: Deborah Ferguson (UT Austin), Bhavesh Khamesra (Georgia Tech), and Karan Jani (Vanderbilt) First Detection of Gravitational Waves From Black Holes Swallowing Neutron Stars For the first time, scientists have picked up the ripples in space-time caused by the death spiral of a neutron star and a black hole. University of Glasgow researchers played a key role in the international collaboration that made the detection possible. They contributed to the design of the detectors – the most sensitive…
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27 AugustSpace
What Goes Up Must Come Down: Helping Clean Up Space Junk With First-of-Its-Kind Mission Optimizer
Lead image: Illustration of ClearSpace-1, a planned active debris removal mission. Credit: ClearSpace SA Less than a year on from the UK Space Agency committing £1 million in funding to combat space debris, Fujitsu UK has successfully combined quantum-inspired computing and Artificial Intelligence to support the transformation of space debris removal. Fujitsu’s prototype – created in collaboration with the University of Glasgow, Amazon Web Services and Astroscale UK – will improve mission planning so that a single spacecraft can efficiently select which pieces of space debris to remove in one mission, and at a much faster rate than is currently…
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27 AugustNASA
NASA’s $10 Billion James Webb Space Telescope Has Successfully Completed Testing
Lead image: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab After successful completion of its final tests, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is being prepped for shipment to its launch site. Engineering teams have completed Webb’s long-spanning comprehensive testing regimen at Northrop Grumman’s facilities. Webb’s many tests and checkpoints were designed to ensure that the world’s most complex space science observatory will operate as designed once in space. Now that observatory testing has concluded, shipment operations have begun. This includes all the necessary steps to prepare Webb for a safe journey through the Panama…
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