Earlier this month, Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez split the 2020 physics Nobel Prize for decades of work on black holes. Click here to learn more about their monumental achievement and about the history of our understanding of these exotic objects in space. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nobel-prize-3-astrophysicists-black-holess-penrose-genzel-ghez…
Tag: friction
Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets are melting
Several new studies released in recent weeks paint a dire picture of the ongoing melting of Earth’s freshwater ice sheets and glaciers, 99% of which are found in Greenland and Antarctica. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ice-sheets-glaciers-tearing-loose-worst-case-vulnerable…
How Tesla Improves the Range of Its Electric Cars
Car and Driver magazine explores what gives Tesla’s vehicles their comparatively long range. And apparently one factor is just “big batteries.
This may be obvious, but a battery that holds more energy should translate to more range, and Tesla has the largest battery packs out there… What isn’t always obvious is how much of a battery pack’s energy is usable versus its…
Open Source Proponents React to Google’s ‘Open Usage Commons’
Google’s announcement of a new open source initiative called the Open Usage Commons “caused some consternation among other open source proponents,” according to Diginomica: IBM’s reaction is typical. In a statement, the company said that “the creation of the Open Usage Commons (OUC) is disappointing because it doesn’t live up to the community’s expectation for open governance… Without this vendor-neutral approach…
Your Car Is Spewing Microplastics That Blow Around the World
rmdingler shares a report: When you drive, tiny bits of plastic fly off your tires and brakes. Now scientists have shown how all that road muck is blowing into environments like the Arctic. When the world fully transitions from cars that run on dinosaur juice to cars that run on electricity, humanity will have eliminated a major source of planet-warming carbon…
Halfway Through ISS Mission, NASA Astronauts Anticipate Their Ride Back to Earth
“They’ve been up there about a month now, floating around on the International Space Station, keeping tabs on their ride home,” reports the Washington Post: “Certainly, the highlight for both Doug and I was the initial arrival at space station, coming through the hatch again and being on board after several years of working on a new spacecraft,” Behnken said in…
What Comes After Zoom?
Analyst Benedict Evans writes: There will be video in everything, just as there is voice in everything, and there will be a great deal of proliferation into industry verticals on one hand and into unbundling pieces of the tech stack on the other. On one hand video in healthcare, education or insurance is about the workflow, the data model and the…
Saturn’s large moon Titan is drifting away 100 times faster than anyone knew
Saturn’s largest moon Titan is drifting away from the planet 100 times faster than previously thought, according to a new study from researchers in the U.S., France and Italy. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/saturn-moon-titan-drifting-away-100-faster…
Black holes are like a hologram
The theory of relativity describes black holes as being spherical, smooth and simple. Quantum theory describes them as being extremely complex and full of information. New research now proposes a surprising solution to this apparent duality. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/black-holes-are-like-a-hologram…
Theoretical breakthrough shows quantum fluids rotate by corkscrew mechanism
If a drop of creamer falls from a spoon into a swirling cup of coffee, the whirlpool drags the drop into rotation. But what would happen if the coffee had no friction—no way to pull the drop into a synchronized spin? …