To find planets outside the Solar System, Webb’s main imager will stare at starlight. It’s already taken some test images in preparation for primetime.
A new method of carbon capture is being developed using microalgae grown in open-air, pond-based systems on coastal desert land. This can be achieved without the need for fresh water.
Time will tell if more effective strategies can be developed to manage space junk in the future. But, as you are about to find out, we may not want to clear up space entirely.
Some of these “dead” spacecraft may still function!
1. Voyager 1 and 2 are still going strong.
Continue reading “Meet some of the oldest ‘undead’ spacecraft that are still going strong” »
The latest “machine scientist” algorithms can take in data on dark matter, dividing cells, turbulence, and other situations too complicated for humans to understand and provide an equation capturing the essence of what’s going on.
Despite rediscovering Kepler’s third law and other textbook classics, BACON remained something of a curiosity in an era of limited computing power. Researchers still had to analyze most data sets by hand, or eventually with Excel-like software that found the best fit for a simple data set when given a specific class of equation. The notion that an algorithm could find the correct model for describing any data set lay dormant until 2009, when Lipson and Michael Schmidt, roboticists then at Cornell University, developed an algorithm called Eureqa.
Their main goal had been to build a machine that could boil down expansive data sets with column after column of variables to an equation involving the few variables that actually matter. “The equation might end up having four variables, but you don’t know in advance which ones,” Lipson said. “You throw at it everything and the kitchen sink. Maybe the weather is important. Maybe the number of dentists per square mile is important.”
Continue reading “‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data” »
Rooftop coatings can keep homes cool — like cooling paper that helps radiate heat away. Or they can trap heat inside, keeping homes warm.
But what is the optimal rooftop coating for homes with both a hot and cold season?
Scientists have come up with an answer: an all-season covering that keeps homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
