A trio of clumsy Moon missions to start the year has me reflecting on humanity’s limited ability to explore and work in space.
This 2.6-metric-ton cargo pallet is now slated to naturally reach the Earth’s atmosphere between March 8 and 9, 2024.
DENVER—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) today announced that the Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG) has awarded Palantir USG, Inc. — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Palantir Technologies Inc. — a prime agreement for the development and delivery of the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground station system, the Army’s next-generation deep-sensing capability enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). The agreement, valued at $178.4 million, covers the development of 10 TITAN prototypes, including five Advanced and five Basic variants, as well as the integration of new critical technologies and the transition to fielding.
“This award demonstrates the Army’s leadership in acquiring and fielding the emerging technologies needed to bolster U.S. defense in this era of software-defined warfare. Building on Palantir’s years of experience bringing AI-enabled capabilities to warfighters, Palantir is now proud to deliver the Army’s first AI-defined vehicle” Post this
TITAN is a ground station that has access to Space, High Altitude, Aerial, and Terrestrial sensors to provide actionable targeting information for enhanced mission command and long range precision fires. Palantir’s TITAN solution is designed to maximize usability for Soldiers, incorporating tangible feedback and insights from Soldier touch points at every step of the development and configuration process. Building off Palantir’s prior work delivering AI capabilities for the warfighter, Palantir is deploying the Army’s first AI-defined vehicle.
How much oxygen does Jupiter’s moon, Europa, produce, and what can this teach us about its subsurface liquid water ocean? This is what a study published today in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how charged particles break apart the surface ice resulting in hydrogen and oxygen that feed Europa’s extremely thin atmosphere. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the geologic and biochemical processes on Europa, along with gaining greater insight into the conditions necessary for finding life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers used the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument onboard NASA’s June spacecraft to collect data on the amount of oxygen being discharged from Europa’s icy surface due to charge particles emanating from Jupiter’s massive magnetic field. In the end, the researchers found that oxygen production resulting from these charged particles interacting with the icy surface was approximately 26 pounds per second (12 kilograms per second), which is a much more focused number compared to previous estimates which ranged from a few pounds per second to over 2,000 pounds per second.
“Europa is like an ice ball slowly losing its water in a flowing stream. Except, in this case, the stream is a fluid of ionized particles swept around Jupiter by its extraordinary magnetic field,” said Dr. Jamey Szalay, who is a research scholar at Princeton University, a scientist on JADE, and lead author of the study. “When these ionized particles impact Europa, they break up the water-ice molecule by molecule on the surface to produce hydrogen and oxygen. In a way, the entire ice shell is being continuously eroded by waves of charged particles washing up upon it.”
Can the ancient past of Mars be unlocked from knowing the orientation of rocks? This is what a study published today in Earth and Space Science hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated bedrock samples that were drilled by NASA’s Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater on Mars to ascertain the original orientation of the rocks prior to the drilling, with the orientation potentially providing clues about Mars’ magnetic field history and the conditions that existed on ancient Mars.
What makes this study unique is it marks the first time such a method is being conducted on another planet. Additionally, while orienting 3D objects is common on Earth, Perseverance is not equipped to perform such tasks. Therefore, this method had to be conducted using angles of the rover’s arm and using identifiers from the ground, as well. The team notes how this method could be applied to future in-situ studies, as well.
“The orientation of rocks can tell you something about any magnetic field that may have existed on the planet,” said Dr. Benjamin Weiss, who is a professor of planetary sciences at MIT and lead author of the study. “You can also study how water and lava flowed on the planet, the direction of the ancient wind, and tectonic processes, like what was uplifted and what sunk. So, it’s a dream to be able to orient bedrock on another planet, because it’s going to open up so many scientific investigations.”
“I do think science fiction is responsive to discoveries in science. I think it’s sort of reflective of what was going on in science at the time that it was written,” said Dr. Emma Johanna Puranen.
What can science fiction influence science facts, specifically pertaining to exoplanets? This is what a recent study published in the Journal of Science Communication hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science investigated how new scientific findings influence science fiction. This study holds the potential to help researchers and the public better understand the intricate connection between science fiction and science facts, specifically pertaining to exoplanets, and how this link can influence science communication going forward.
For the study, the team conducted a quantitative analysis using a Bayesian network, which is a common statistical model on 142 science fiction projects, including Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, and Solaris, just to name a few, to ascertain how exoplanets are depicted in these projects. After running the Bayesian model, the researchers concluded that their findings indicated a trend towards scientific discoveries influencing science fiction. Additionally, these findings could influence science communication in terms of how exoplanets are depicted in science fiction going forward.
Continue reading “Exoplanets in Sci-Fi: Bridging the Gap Between Imagination and Reality” »
James Webb Space Telescope has captured data on “winds” coming from a planet-forming disk around a young star.
Explore the fascinating process of planet formation and the role of the James Webb Space Telescope in capturing groundbreaking images.
The ice-covered Jovian moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours – enough to keep a million humans breathing for a day.
Scientists with NASA ’s Juno mission to Jupiter have calculated the rate of oxygen being produced at the Jovian moon Europa to be substantially less than most previous studies. Published on March 4 in Nature Astronomy, the findings were derived by measuring hydrogen outgassing from the icy moon’s surface using data collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument.
The paper’s authors estimate the amount of oxygen produced to be around 26 pounds every second (12 kilograms per second). Previous estimates range from a few pounds to over 2,000 pounds per second (over 1,000 kilograms per second). Scientists believe that some of the oxygen produced in this manner could work its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean as a possible source of metabolic energy.
Scientists have revealed why some white dwarfs mysteriously stop cooling—changing ideas on just how old stars really are and what happens to them when they die.
White dwarf stars are universally believed to be ‘dead stars’ that continuously cool down over time. However, in 2019, data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Gaia satellite discovered a population of white dwarf stars that have stopped cooling for more than eight billion years. This suggested that some white dwarfs can generate significant extra energy, at odds with the classical ‘dead star’ picture, and astronomers initially were not sure how this could happen.
Today, new research published in Nature, led by Dr. Antoine Bédard from the University of Warwick and Dr. Simon Blouin from the University of Victoria (Canada), unveils the mechanism behind this baffling observation.
Throughout many branches of physics, a connection can be drawn between geometry and dynamics. In general relativity, for example, the motion of stars and planets is governed by the geometry of spacetime. In condensed matter, the motion of electrons in solids is influenced by the so-called quantum geometry, which describes how the electronic wave function evolves in momentum space. The quantum geometry can explain a wide range of observed phenomena, such as topological phases and quantum Hall effects, but it can also lead researchers to new electromagnetic responses. Guided by quantum-geometry predictions, Lujunyu Wang from Peking University and colleagues present experimental evidence of a new Hall effect, the magneto-nonlinear Hall effect, which is proportional to both an in-plane electric field and an in-plane magnetic field [1] (Fig. 1). The effect, which was isolated in a magnet with triangular symmetry, offers a new way to probe in the quantum geometry of materials.
Quantum geometry is a representation of the phase of the Bloch wave functions, which describe electronic behavior in a periodic potential. In the case of a two-level system, this phase can be represented by a unit vector in the momentum space of the electrons. In certain materials, this vector rotates as the momentum changes, an effect that can be characterized by two fundamental geometrical properties: the “quantum metric” and the “Berry curvature.” These two aspects of quantum geometry can describe many phenomena including surface currents in topological insulator and anomalous Hall effects in which the transverse Hall current occurs in the absence of an external magnetic field.
Recently, researchers have uncovered a connection between quantum geometry and nonlinear electromagnetic effects [2– 10]. Here, the nonlinearity is a higher-order response to the input electromagnetic fields. Nonlinear electrical transport is the foundation of applications such as rectification and wave mixing. Classically, the most well-known nonlinear device is a p-n junction. In quantum materials, nonlinear transport suggests novel device applications but also provides a powerful probe of the quantum geometry of the conduction electrons.
