Good for Life? Megatelescope Will Probe Newfound Worlds' Atmospheres

Telescopes around the world (and orbiting it) have turned their gazes to the seven Earth-size planets of the TRAPPIST-1 star system — but it's an upcoming megatelescope that could reveal whether any of them have life-friendly atmospheres.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in 2018, is sensitive enough to identify the chemical components of the planets' atmospheres as the worlds pass in front of their star, NASA officials said.

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We're on the Verge of a Gravitational Wave Astronomy Boom

A prototype space-based gravitational wave detector performed far better than expected during its trial run, raising prospects that a follow-on observatory to listen for echoes from the biggest crashes in the cosmos will be launched ahead of schedule.

LISA Pathfinder, which has been in orbit for a little more than a year, was intended to test if two small cubes could be kept in an extremely steady and measurable state of free fall. If successful, scientists could use the technique to detect ripples in space, a phenomenon first envisioned by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

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NASA Is About to Create the Coldest Place in the Known Universe

NASA is about to launch the coldest place on Earth - the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) - into orbit, where astronauts will use it to create never-before-seen conditions with temperatures 100 million times colder than the depths of space.

The Cold Atom Lab will hitch a ride on a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station, where it's hoped the super-chilled box will reveal strange new physics when atoms are cooled to a mere billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

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Inside NASA’s daring $8 billion plan to finally find extraterrestrial life

DEEP IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM—A darkness has spread over the grim, airless field of ice that threatens to swallow us. Night has come to the nightmare glacier. But then we see the shiny spacecraft, with its four gangly legs extending outward to find purchase on the jagged ice. Within, scientific instruments begin to blink on, one by one. Soon, they will start sniffing for any hint of life on this most alien and mysterious of worlds in the Solar System: the Jovian moon Europa.

Through the HoloLens each of us wears, we watch this simulation of what might happen about 15 years from now on the icy, forbidding moon. The otherworldly illusion is shattered when a voice booms out; it's John Culberson, a conservative Republican politician from Texas. He wants to know what happens if one of the blinking instruments fail. Not to worry, he is told, all of the spacecraft systems are redundant. “Good,” Culberson replies. “The immensity of what you’re doing is too important in human history. You don’t want to miss this chance.”

Europa truly does represent a singular chance. Crossing 800 million kilometers with a sizable, robust payload will require vast sums of money—there won’t be a second chance. But Europa represents a gamble in another sense, too. No one knows whether NASA will discover a frozen, dead world far from the Sun or if the organization will make the most profound of discoveries just below the ice.

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Test Track for Ultra-Fast 'Hyperloop' Transit System Unveiled

Though it sounds like a transportation system straight out of a science-fiction novel, the "Hyperloop" is inching closer to reality, and new images offer a first look at the Hyperloop One project's test track.

First envisioned by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, the Hyperloop is a transportation concept in which passenger-filled pods are accelerated through a low-pressure tube to their destination. The startup Hyperloop One (which is not affiliated with Musk) has begun construction of a full-scale test track, known as the DevLoop, in the Nevada desert.

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It's Official: Time Crystals Are a New State of Matter, and Now We Can Create Them

Earlier this year, physicists had put together a blueprint for how to make and measure time crystals - a bizarre state of matter with an atomic structure that repeats not just in space, but in time, allowing them to maintain constant oscillation without energy.

Two separate research teams managed to create what looked an awful lot like time crystals back in January, and now both experiments have successfully passed peer-review for the first time, putting the 'impossible' phenomenon squarely in the realm of reality.

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Brainlike computers are a black box. Scientists are finally peering inside

Last month, Facebook announced software that could simply look at a photo and tell, for example, whether it was a picture of a cat or a dog. A related program identifies cancerous skin lesions as well as trained dermatologists can. Both technologies are based on neural networks, sophisticated computer algorithms at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence (AI)—but even their developers aren’t sure exactly how they work. Now, researchers have found a way to "look" at neural networks in action and see how they draw conclusions.

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In an Unexplained Case, Brain Activity Has Been Recorded as Much as 10 Minutes After Death

Doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit have stumbled on a very strange case - when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead.

For more than 10 minutes after doctors confirmed death through a range of observations, including the absence of a pulse and unreactive pupils, the patient appeared to experience the same kind of brain waves (delta wave bursts) we get during deep sleep. And it's an entirely different phenomenon to the sudden 'death wave' that's been observed in rats following decapitation.

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Harvard Physicists Just Proposed That Mystery Radio Bursts Are Powering Alien Spaceships

Are alien radio beams causing one of the most mysterious signals from space? A new study by Manasvi Lingam and Avi Loeb at Harvard says that fast radio bursts (FRBs) could come from extraterrestrial radio beams being used as beacons or to power alien light sails.

The source of FRBs, which are milliseconds-long but incredibly bright pulses of radio waves, have intrigued and mystified astronomers for years – and this isn’t the first time aliens have been suggested.

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Special steel inspired by bone is more resistant to cracking

Getting close to the bone is sometimes exactly the right strategy. Mimicking the crack-resistant properties of bone has delivered two new types of steel, which could improve safety in construction and transport applications.

Steel is ubiquitous: we use it in everything from cars and aircraft to power plants and bridges. It’s affordable and its alloys can be easily tailored for specific applications.

But it is also vulnerable to scratching, which can lead to the development of microcracks that spread over time until the material fails. The changes in air pressure that an airplane is subjected to over its lifetime, for example, can lead to metal fatigue, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

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The US Government Has Issued NASA a Demand - Get Humans to Mars by 2033

Both chambers of Congress just passed the NASA Authorisation Act of 2017. With this transformative development, the space agency got a lot more than just $19.508 billion in funding. They also got a very clear mandate: Get humanity to Mars.

To be clear, Mars has been in the works for some time; however, the 2017 Act places a strong emphasis on this goal, making it the focal point of NASA's long-term plans. In the document, congress asserts that the space agency is to get humans "near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s".

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The clearest image of Saturn's sixth largest moon Enceladus ever taken. One of the top candidates for hosting alien life.

Credit: NASA
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Scientists Just Took a Big Step Towards Creating Artificial Life

Scientists have taken a major step forward in developing complex artificial life, by successfully synthesising six out of 16 yeast chromosomes – the molecular structures that carry genes.

This means they're more than one-third of the way to being able to build their own custom-made yeast genomes from scratch, which would be a huge moment in the field of developing lab-made lifeforms.

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Your brain fills gaps in your hearing without you realising

Noise is everywhere, but that’s OK. Your brain can still keep track of a conversation in the face of revving motorcycles, noisy cocktail parties or screaming children – in part by predicting what’s coming next and filling in any blanks.

New data suggests that these insertions are processed as if the brain had really heard the parts of the word that are missing.

“The brain has evolved a way to overcome interruptions that happen in the real world,” says Matthew Leonard at the University of California, San Francisco.

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Scientists Have Found Some Much-Needed Clues About the Genetic Cause of Social Anxiety

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) can be a debilitating condition, but like many mental health disorders, researchers aren't sure where the genetic basis of the condition lies, or how the environment plays a role in triggering the symptoms - and that makes it particularly difficult to diagnose and treat.

But new research has provided more evidence that a gene involved with the transport of serotonin - a neurotransmitter that contributes to feelings of wellbeing - could increase the risk of the disorder.

"There is still a great deal to be done in terms of researching the genetic causes of this illness," says one of the researchers, Andreas Forstner from the University of Bonn.

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Growing Potatoes on Mars Could Actually Work, Says NASA-Backed Experiment

In the 2015 blockbuster movie The Martian, a fictional botanist-turned-astronaut gets stranded on Mars, forcing him to "science the shit" out of his dire situation.

Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) survives by fertilising Martian soil with his faeces, slicing up potatoes, and planting the cuttings in the soil. This eventually grows him enough food to last hundreds of days.

Growing potatoes and other food on Mars is not just a sci-fi curiosity. Now, a NASA-backed "Potatoes on Mars" experiment is showing that Watney's fictional feat might actually be possible.

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SpaceX on Twitter: Falcon 9 on Pad 39A. Launch window for @EchoStar XXIII opens early tomorrow morning at 1:34am EDT.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/841331499961991169

Submitted March 13, 2017 at 05:54PM by FutureMartian97
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Scientists Have Created an Artificial Retina Implant That Could Restore Vision to Millions

Scientists have developed a retinal implant that can restore lost vision in rats, and are planning to trial the procedure in humans later this year.

The implant, which converts light into an electrical signal that stimulates retinal neurons, could give hope to millions who experience retinal degeneration – including retinitis pigmentosa – in which photoreceptor cells in the eye begin to break down, leading to blindness.

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Did you knowingly commit a crime? Brain scans could tell

The number of years someone spends behind bars can hinge on whether they were clearly aware that they were committing a crime. But how is a judge or jury to know for sure? A new study suggests brain scans can distinguish between hardcore criminal intent and simple reckless behavior, but the approach is far from being ready for the courtroom.

The study is unusual because it looks directly at the brains of people while they are engaged in illicit activity, says Liane Young, a Boston College psychologist who was not involved in the work. Earlier research, including work by her, has instead generally looked at the brains of people only observing immoral activity.

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Scientists Have Found the Spot in Your Brain That Makes You Itch When Others Scratch

Much like yawning, scratching can be a contagious behaviour, set off simply by watching another person relieve an itch.

Scientists have now found that mice share the same response, and the discovery could help us identify the brain circuitry responsible for causing us to feel another's irritation.

Previous research on socially contagious behaviours has both supported and rejected the idea that feeling a need to yawn or scratch when others do is linked to our sense of empathy, leaving the cause behind such an innate urge unexplained.

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