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SOUTH BEND — The city council gave a unanimously positive recommendation Monday night for two tax abatements that could put South Bend at the epicenter of the hydroponic produce market in Indiana, and possibly the Midwest, for years to come.

JEM Farms South Bend plans to spend as much as $178 million on greenhouses and logistical equipment to grow tomatoes and strawberries throughout the year on land at Calvert Street and Renewable Drive, adjacent to the South Bend Ethanol Plant.

That facility would be located on land owned by Ceres Partners, the agricultural investment group located just south of the University of Notre Dame campus and the original investors in Pure Green Farms.

A team of researchers from the University of Arizona has proposed a “Lunar Ark” for preserving samples of 6.7 million Earth species in the event of a global crisis.

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Continue reading “‘LUNAR ARK’: Scientists plan to build Noah’s Ark on the Moon to protect Earth’s biodiversity” »

NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunter is truly prolific.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has identified more than 5,000 potential alien worlds.

A Southwest Research Institute scientist measured the properties of ice-brine mixtures as cold as-145 degrees Fahrenheit to help confirm that salty water likely exists between grains of ice or sediment under the ice cap at Mars’ south pole. Laboratory measurements conducted by SwRI geophysicist Dr. David Stillman support oddly bright reflections detected by the MARSIS subsurface sounding radar aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter.

With a 130-foot antenna, MARSIS flies over the planet, bouncing radio waves over a selected area and then receiving and analyzing the echoes or reflections. Any near-surface liquid water should send a strong bright signal, whereas the radar signal for ice and rock would be much smaller.

Because conventional models assume the Mars south polar cap experiences temperatures much lower than the melting point of water, many scientists have questioned the presence of liquid water. Clay, hydrated salts and saline ices have been proposed as potential explanations for the source of the bright basal reflections. The Italian-led team investigating the proposed phenomena used previously published data, simulations and new laboratory measurements.

The photograph was captured by the probe’s WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument when the spacecraft traveled at a distance of 16.9 million miles from the sun, inside our star’s corona.

The image shows distinct jets of solar material, dubbed coronal streamers, seen to the left/center of the image.

The bright spot you see in the above image is Mercury.

NASA’s band-aid tool uses cells to heal in space.

NASA is testing a prototype device called Bioprint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter — or Bioprint FirstAid — to heal injuries sustained in space.

Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them. About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier elements. While hydrogen remains the most pervasive element in the Universe, it can be difficult to detect individual clouds of hydrogen gas in the interstellar medium (ISM).

This makes it difficult to research the early phases of star formation, which would offer clues about the evolution of galaxies and the cosmos. An international team led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) recently noticed a massive filament of atomic hydrogen gas in our galaxy. This structure, named “Maggie,” is located about 55,000 light-years away (on the other side of the Milky Way) and is one of the longest structures ever observed in our galaxy.

Continue reading “Astronomers Find the Biggest Structure in the Milky Way: Filament of Hydrogen 3,900 Light-Years Long” »

China’s artificial sun reached 158 million degrees Fahrenheit for 17 minutes and 36 seconds. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

China set a ground-breaking record with its “artificial sun,” which superheated plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor reached 158 million degrees Fahrenheit for 1,056 seconds (17 minutes, 36 seconds). This latest breakthrough brings the country one step closer toward its goal for unlimited clean fusion energy.

China’s EAST surpassed France’s Tore Supra tokamak record, set in 2003 when it superheated plasma in its coiling loop to identical temperatures for 390 seconds. Also, in May 2021, EAST set another record by running at 216 million F for 101 seconds. The fusion reactor achieved a peak temperature of 288 million Fahrenheit for 20 seconds during this experiment. In comparison, the sun’s core reaches approximately 27 million Fahrenheit.

Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Expedition 66 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Kayla Barron of NASA answered pre-recorded questions about life and work as astronauts on the orbital laboratory during an in-flight event Jan. 24 with students attending the Center for Early Childhood Education in Hollywood, California. Vande Hei and Barron are in the midst of long duration missions living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions as part of NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.

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