Science

WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch conducted the first powered flight of its Talon vehicle March 9, reaching “high supersonic” speeds in the uncrewed test. The Talon-A vehicle, designated TA-1, took off attached to the company’s Roc aircraft from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 10:17 a.m. Eastern according to flight tracking data. The plane

Snails have an unusual way of walking that has now been replicated in a robot Zuzha/Shutterstock A mucus-excreting robot with a single large foot can effectively imitate the way snails crawl over surfaces – even steeply inclined ones. “I always say that snails are like Michael Jackson to me. You don’t see how they move,

Seismic signal that pointed to alien technology was actually a passing truck – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here

WASHINGTON — Congress has passed a final fiscal year 2024 spending bill that provides, in some cases, significantly less funding than requested for civil space programs. The Senate passed a spending bill March 8 that combined six separate spending bills, including those for commerce, justice and science (CJS) and transportation. The House passed the bill

Children at a temporary shelter in Rafah, in southern Gaza Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua/Alamy The situation in Gaza is rapidly devolving into the worst humanitarian crisis in modern memory, and international health organisations have no long-term plans for addressing the territory’s post-war needs. More than three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, half of whom are children, are

Mystery of why inkjet-printed paper curls finally solved – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin expects to launch the first version of its Blue Moon lunar lander, a precursor to a future crewed lunar lander it is developing for NASA, in 2025. In an interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” broadcast March 3, John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin,

When answering questions posed in Chinese, French, German or Russian, large language models seem to process the queries in English, which could create cultural issues Read the original article here

Space-borne atoms herald new tests of Einstein’s equivalence principle – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here

WASHINGTON — Kurs Orbital, an Italian startup developing technology for in-space satellite servicing, announced March 7 it has secured $4 million in seed funding. Based in Turin, Italy, Kurs was co-founded in 2021 by former director of Ukraine’s space agency Volodymyr Usov. The company relocated to Italy in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine and set

Vortices on Jupiter, captured by NASA’s Juno mission in 2022 NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift Stunning patterns in Jupiter’s atmosphere have been replicated more accurately than ever before in the lab – using a rotating tub filled with water. Michael Le Bars at Aix-Marseille University in France and his colleagues wanted to know how the swirls and whorls

Tackling climate change while improving human wellbeing – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here

WASHINGTON — A company developing cislunar navigation systems has won a grant to test its technology on an upcoming commercial lunar lander mission. Rhea Space Activity announced March 6 it won a $750,000 NASA grant through the agency’s TechFlights solicitation to fly two of its Jervis Autonomy Module (JAM) units on a lunar lander mission

New Orleans is at greater risk of further floods than we thought because of ground subsidence William A. Morgan/Shutterstock Sea levels are rising faster than expected in coastal cities in the US, largely due to land sinking as a result of the extraction of underground water and fossil fuels. That means, by 2050, up to

Battle for the skies: US insists GMT and TMT telescopes must vie for funding – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here

WASHINGTON — A small satellite mission funded by the U.S. Space Force to provide weather data from low Earth orbit launched to orbit March 4. This marked the Space Force’s second attempt to deploy the weather-imaging mission, a year after the initial satellite failed to separate from the launch vehicle. The Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Weather Systems

A screenshot from Starcraft II Blizzard Games The US Army Research Laboratory is exploring whether OpenAI’s technology can improve battle planning – although only in the context of a military video game. The US military has already explored using AI technologies to analyse battlefield images and even identify targets for airstrikes – but it only

Intelligent solutions streamline radiotherapy treatment planning – Physics World Skip to main content Close search menu Discover more from Physics World Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors Read the original article here