Octopus Overlords

NASA wrote:After an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory, Webb’s previously revised 2019 launch window now is targeted for approximately May 2020.

Ltaief and Gratadour are using two of our DGX-1 AI supercomputers — one with Tesla P100 GPUs and the other with Tesla V100 GPUs — to run many simulations in parallel and make changes in real time.

“Using the DGX-1, it takes only a few seconds to simulate the observation of several galaxies,” said Ltaief. “A few years ago it would take days to do that.”

Ten years ago, an Arizona astronomer spotted an asteroid that was headed straight for Earth. Swiftly he summoned the help of colleagues and casual stargazers, who tracked the space rock as it exploded in the sky, raining shrapnel down on the Nubian desert in Sudan. Students from the University of Khartoum volunteered to search for fragments, ultimately recovering more than 600 pieces of the meteorite now known as Almahata Sitta. It was the first time scientists had ever traced an asteroid in the sky to a rock they could hold in their hands.

But that is not even the coolest thing about Almahata Sitta. Not nearly.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications reports that the meteorite contains tiny diamonds — yes, diamonds. Those diamonds contain even tinier impurities called “inclusions.” And within those inclusions are signatures of a long-lost planet as large as Mars — a 4.5 billion-year-old relic that was destroyed during the earliest days of the solar system.

At 2 AM on Sunday morning (AEST time) astronomers at the Steward Observatory Catalina Station in Arizona spotted an asteroid hurtling towards Earth at 106,497 km/h. Called 2018 GE3, it was estimated to be up to 110 metres in diameter, which is the same length as an average FIFA soccer field. Scientists quickly calculated that it would pass us the following day, but only just. And actually 2018 GE3 would turn out to be the largest known asteroid to ever drift so close to Earth, and this particular rock's first visit since 1930.

The next day it tore past without incident, brushing within 192,317 km of our upper atmosphere. And sure, that sounds like a healthy margin for error, but keep in mind that space is infinite and the moon is just 400,000 kilometers away.[/url]

When they turned on the system but dampened the power going to the actual drive so essentially no microwaves were bouncing around, the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust—something it should not have done if it works the way the NASA team claims.

The researchers have tentatively concluded that the effect they measured is the result of Earth’s magnetic field interacting with power cables in the chamber, a result that other experts agree with.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu May 24, 2018 5:34 pm So build it and take it to orbit.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Jul 11, 2018 11:12 am Found a new video on magnetars. They are a type of neutron star that has become SUPER magnetic. The core of Earth is about 25 Gauss. The surface is like 0.5 Gauss. A magnetar is over a quadrillion Gauss. Thats enough magnetism to tear you apart at the atomic level at over 620 miles away from it.

SOMETIMES A SEARCH for one thing presents the chance to look for something else. If you're like me, that something else is usually something small: Rummaging in the couch cushions for the TV remote might prompt you to dig for spare change. Two birds, one stone, etc. But if you're astronomer Scott Sheppard, the second bird occasionally turns out to be a doozy.

Or several doozies. Like, say, a dozen previously unknown moons orbiting Jupiter, the discovery of which was announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union.

"We just wanted to be as efficient as possible," says Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. Since 2012, he and his team have been using the Dark Energy Camera—an exquisitely sensitive instrument the size of a small car, mounted to Chile's Blanco 4-m telescope—to search for celestial bodies at the fringes of the solar system. But early last year, the researchers realized that the DECam would soon survey a patch of sky that overlapped perfectly with Jupiter. They decided to adjust their instruments to look not only for distant objects well past Neptune and erstwhile-planet Pluto, but relatively close ones in the vicinity of the gas giant. You know, while they were in the neighborhood.
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Within days they'd spotted close to two dozen candidates. Then came more than a year of waiting. They needed time for follow-up observations, to see which of the space rocks moved like moons (i.e. in predictable orbits) and which did not. "The most exciting moment came in May of this year, when 12 of the objects showed up where we expected them to," Sheppard says. Tuesday's announcement makes it official: Sheppard and his colleagues have discovered 12 new objects orbiting Jupiter, bringing the grand total of known Jovian satellites to 79.

Researchers have found evidence of an existing body of liquid water on Mars.

What they believe to be a lake sits under the planet's south polar ice cap, and is about 20km (12 miles) across.

Previous research found possible signs of intermittent liquid water flowing on the martian surface, but this is the first sign of a persistent body of water on the planet in the present day.

Lake beds like those explored by Nasa's Curiosity rover show water was present on the surface of Mars in the past.

However, the planet's climate has since cooled due to its thin atmosphere, leaving most of its water locked up in ice.

The result is exciting because scientists have long searched for signs of present-day liquid water on Mars, but these have come up empty or yielded ambiguous findings. It will also interest those studying the possibilities for life beyond Earth - though it does not yet raise the stakes in the search for biology.

The discovery was made using Marsis, a radar instrument on board the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express orbiter.

S2 is one member of a star cluster that surrounds Sagittarius A*. These stars reach mind-boggling speeds when they approach the black hole - S2 comes very close to Sagittarius A* every 16 years.

Astronomers followed S2 before and after it passed close to the black hole on 19 May 2018, tracking its progress hour-by-hour.

When S2 passed by the black hole at a distance just 120 times that of the Earth from the Sun, it reached an astonishing orbital velocity of 8,000 km/s. That corresponds to about 2.7% of the speed of light.

The astronomers found that light from the star was indeed stretched to longer wavelengths by the very strong gravitational field of Sagittarius A*.

The results were perfectly in line with the theory of general relativity - and not explained by Sir Isaac Newton's ideas - which exclude such a shift.

a distance just 120 times that of the Earth from the Sun