Free Republic

Using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, mission scientists have created flyover movies that offer spectacular new perspectives of the many unusual features that were discovered and which have reshaped our views of the Pluto system – from a vantage point even closer than the spacecraft itself. This dramatic Pluto flyover begins over the highlands to the southwest of the great expanse of nitrogen ice plain informally named Sputnik Planitia. The viewer first passes over the western margin of Sputnik, where it borders the dark, cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula, with...

“We are going to be observing the total solar eclipse with two aircraft, each carrying infrared and visible light cameras taking high definition video,” Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Principal Investigator on the project Amir Caspi told Universe Today. “These will be the highest quality observations of their kind to date, looking for fast dynamic motion in the solar corona.” Total solar eclipses provide researchers with a unique opportunity to study the solar corona – the ghostly glow of the Sun’s outer atmosphere seen only during totality. NASA plans a battery of experiments during the eclipse, including plans to intercept the...

Thanks to improvements in technology, small satellites – which are typically defined as those that weight less than 500 km (1,100 lbs) – can perform tasks that were once reserved for larger ones. ... Little wonder then why researchers are looking at various types of microthrusters to ensure that these satellites can maneuver effectively. ... MTU research team began conducting a study that considered ferrofluids as a possible solution. As noted, ferrofluids are ionic liquids that become active when exposed to a magnetic field, forming peaks that emit small amounts of ions. These peaks then return to a natural state...

The 99-million-year-old hatchling from the Cretaceous Period is the best preserved of its kind The remains of a baby bird from the time of the dinosaurs have been discovered in a specimen of 99-million-year-old amber, according to scientists writing in the journal Gondwana Research. The hatchling belonged to a major group of birds known as enantiornithes, which went extinct along with dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago. Funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council, this discovery is providing critical new information about these ancient, toothed birds and how they differed...

Despite the objections of local fishermen, the tritium-tainted water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will be dumped into the sea, a top official at Tokyo Electric says. “The decision has already been made,” Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., said in a recent interview with the media. Tritium typically poses little risk to human health unless ingested in high amounts, and ocean discharges of diluted volumes of tritium-tainted water are a routine part of nuclear power plant operations. This is because it is a byproduct of nuclear operations but cannot be filtered out...

Which is the real delusion — love or selfishness? This isn’t just a rhetorical question. It’s a question that gets at the heart of Western civilization’s moral and existential confusion. Are you most in sync with reality when you seek your self-interest first or when you “count others more significant than yourself” (Philippians 2:3)? Is love, and its resulting virtues, truly the highest moral good for humans, or is it really a grand illusion created by our genes to get us to behave in ways most likely to result in our genetic survival? In other words, does love really exist?...

Artificial intelligence software could generate highly realistic fake videos of former president Barack Obama using existing audio and video clips of him, a new study finds. Such work could one day help generate digital models of a person for virtual reality or augmented reality applications, researchers say. Computer scientists at the University of Washington previously revealed they could generate digital doppelgängers of anyone by analyzing images of them collected from the Internet, from celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger to public figures such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Such work suggested it could one day be...

The global warming fraud is based entirely on the practice of “adjusting” data. Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph was “adjusted” to “hide the decline,” most notably.  But every prediction of catastrophe, every ”hottest year ever” story depends on adjusting the actual data of surface temperatures. A recent scientific study of global average surface temperature reports and the CO2 endangerment finding has produced a remarkable graph that says it all, very clearly. James Delingpole of Breitbart spotted it and explains: The peer-reviewed study by two scientists and a veteran statistician looked at the global average temperature datasets (GAST) which are used by...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday witnessed the demonstration of sea water purification technology pioneered by Israel at a water desalination unit on Olga Beach in Haifa. Gal-Mobile is an independent, integrated water purification vehicle, designed to produce high-quality drinking water. It can be useful in natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, military use in difficult terrain and rural areas to provide drinkable water, the Indian Prime Minister’s Office said. “It can purify up to 20,000 litres per day of sea water and 80,000 litres per day of brackish/muddy or contaminated river water and...

The New Horizons space probe, which made headlines around the world in 2015 when it beamed back humanity’s best-ever views of Pluto, is currently hurtling through the outer reaches of the solar system on its way to a rendezvous with a lump of ice known as MU69. New Horizons won’t get to MU69 for another year and a half – the flyby is expected to occur on 31 December 2018 or 1 January 2019 – so the spacecraft is hibernating to preserve its energy. Meanwhile, scientists on Earth are doing everything they can to find out as much as possible...

An inflatable lunar/Mars analog habitat (ILMAH), simulated closed system isolated by HEPA filtration, mimics International Space Station (ISS) conditions and future human habitation on other planets except for the exchange of air between outdoor and indoor environments. The ILMAH was primarily commissioned to measure physiological, psychological, and immunological characteristics of human inhabiting in isolation, but it was also available for other studies such as examining its microbiological aspects. Characterizing and understanding possible changes and succession of fungal species is of high importance since fungi are not only hazardous to inhabitants but also deteriorate the habitats. ... The results of this...

The scientists created the ice by exposing ordinary water to a sudden, intense, laser-generated shock wave, and they observed the formation of the superdense phase of ice, called ice VII, using rapid X-ray pulses to document its nearly instantaneous phase change. The transformation took place at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Linac Coherent Light Source — the world's most powerful X-ray laser. "We're really excited about this work because it's the first diffraction evidence, or structural evidence, of seeing liquid water transform in real time, in situ, into a high-pressure crystalline phase," Arianna Gleason, lead author of the new work,...

Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time understood the importance of the design of a system. Commenting on the incredible power of levers he noted, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.” With a properly designed system almost anything is possible; with a poor one, almost nothing.

Mayak, Russian for ‘Lighthouse or Beacon,’ is a crowd-funded 3U CubeSat developed by a group called ‘Your Sector of Space’ with support from the Moscow State University of Mechanical Engineering to create an experimental mission for establishing an artificial star – the brightest object in the night sky aside from the Moon. Mayak is expected to deploy four triangular reflectors, each with a surface of 4m², forming a large tetrahedral reflector with a reflection coefficient of 95%. Based on pre-flight analysis, Mayak will reach an optical magnitude of -10 at the beginning of the flight – surpassing the brightness of...

The heaviest chemical element yet known to science. Governmentium (Gv) has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second....

Over the last half-billion years, scientists say there have been five mass extinction events on Earth in which a wide diversity of species on this planet suddenly died off. Now, there's growing evidence that a sixth mass extinction is unfolding, according to scientists who track species around the globe. In a new study, researchers say the current mass extinction is even "more severe than perceived" and amounts to "biological annihilation" affecting thousands of species.

You might have heard that North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile this week. Well, not in Russia! The Russian government is stubbornly insisting that the missile launched by North Korea on Tuesday morning was merely a medium-range ballistic missile, capable of traveling no more than a thousand kilometers or so. That’s what the Russian mission to the United Nations Security Council said on Thursday, anyway.

The cost of the F-35 jet program, already the most expensive U.S. weapons program ever, is estimated to climb further, according to figures to be submitted to Congress as soon as Monday. Total acquisition costs for Lockheed Martin Corp.’s next-generation fighter are expected to rise about 7 percent to at least $406.5 billion, according to figures in a draft document known as a Selected Acquisition Report. That would be a reversal after several years of estimates that have declined to $379 billion currently from a previous high of $398.5 billion in early 2014. F-35 program spokesman Joe DellaVedova didn’t immediately...

Vitamin A deficiency is one of the leading causes of children's deaths in Uganda - but scientists hope that a new superfruit could significantly lower the statistics It is also the leading cause of preventable blindness - and can significantly increase the risk of disease from severe infections. Now scientists in Australia have developed a revolutionary ‘super’ banana, rich in pro-vitamin A, which could save the lives of the hundreds of thousands of children who die from this deficiency every year. The golden-fleshed fruit was created by researchers from Queensland University of Technology, who have been growing the biofortified bananas...

Women actively infected with genital herpes during early pregnancy had twice the odds of giving birth to a child later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a study by scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The study is the first to provide immunological evidence on the role of gestational infection in autism, reporting an association between maternal anti-herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2) antibodies and risk for ASD in offspring. Results appear in mSphere, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "We...