observations

Mars may have seen dry and wet season cycles and thus, may have been habitable at some point in its past, according to scientists.Analysis of mud crack patterns on the early Martian surface, observed by NASA's Curiosity Rover, suggest an irregular or episodic presence of water, meaning water could have been present for a time and then evaporated.The process may have repeated until mud cracks formed, the scientists from France, US and Canada said in their study."These exciting observations of mature mud cracks are allowing…

United Arab Emirates (UAE) Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi poses for a selfie while taking photos of Earth from the International Space Station. Credit: NASAOn the <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>International Space Station</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>The International Space Station (ISS) is a large spacecraft in orbit around the Earth that serves as a research laboratory and spaceport for international…

Recently introduced ChatGPT functions represent a huge leap forward that lets ChatGPT use your local files, data, and system services. So, if you supply proper functions to ChatGPT, you can ask it something like “Email Kate Bell with birthday greetings” and see a new email message pop up with correct email address, correct subject and generated email text with birthday best wishes.     Pretty cool, right?   I spent some time experimenting with ChatGPT functions, and I would like to share some notes,…

A set of remote South Atlantic islands, the Falkland Islands, peek through the clouds as the space station orbits 270 miles above Earth off the coast of South America. The Russian segment of the International Space Station can be seen to the right of the image, while a pair of solar arrays are partially shown on the left. Credit: NASAThe <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>International Space Station</div><div…

Life and death are part of a cycle. When an animal dies, its body decays, releasing important nutrients into the ground. Those nutrients then help birth other life in the form of plants and microorganisms. It seems that may also be the case for the cosmos, too, as new Webb observations of supernovas could teach us more about how young, early galaxies get fuel for star and planet formation. Supernovas are the deaths of stars and are some of the largest bursts of energy and light released in our universe,…

Image of Saturn and some of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument on June 25, 2023. In this monochrome image, NIRCam filter F323N (3.23 microns) was color mapped with an orange hue. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Tiscareno (SETI Institute), M. Hedman (University of Idaho), M. El Moutamid (Cornell University), M. Showalter (SETI Institute), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), H. Hammel (AURA); image processing by J. DePasquale (STScI)<span class="glossaryLink"…

Physicists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have made the first observation of the directed flow of hypernuclei, rare nuclei containing at least one hyperon, in particle collisions. Hyperons, which contain a “strange” quark, are believed to be abundant in neutron stars, one of the universe’s densest objects. By simulating these conditions in the laboratory, researchers aim to understand the interactions between hyperons and nucleons.Particle collisions offer a new way to study interactions of hyperon…

Credit: Steve Rintoul, Author provided Antarctica sets the stage for the world's greatest waterfall. The action takes place beneath the surface of the ocean. Here, trillions of tons of cold, dense, oxygen-rich water cascade off the continental shelf and sink to great depths. This Antarctic "bottom water" then spreads north along the sea floor in deep ocean currents, before slowly rising, thousands of kilometers away.…

By David L. Chandler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology May 25, 2023A machine-learning method developed at MIT detects internal structures, voids, and cracks inside a material, based on data about the material’s surface. On the top left cube, the missing fields are represented as a gray box. Researchers then leverage an AI model to fill in the blank (center). Then, the geometries of composite microstructures are identified based on the complete field maps using another AI model (bottom right). Credit: Jose-Luis…

A recent study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications has revealed that 19% of U.S. academics, or individuals they know, have witnessed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), while 37% have expressed interest in researching such phenomena. The survey encompassed 1,460 academics across 14 disciplines from 144 U.S. universities, recording a 4% response rate.A survey reports that 19% of U.S. academics have witnessed or know someone who has witnessed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), and 37% show interest…