General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

Jun 10, 2022

NASA to Study UFOs Despite 'Reputational Risk'

NASA is launching a study of UFOs as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science. The space agency announced that it is setting up an independent team to see how much information is publicly available on the matter and how much more is needed to understand the unexplained sightings. The experts will also consider how best to use all this information in the future. NASA's science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen acknowledged the traditional scientific community may see NASA as "kind of selling out" by venturing into the controversial topic, but he strongly disagrees.
NASA considers this a first step in trying to explain mysterious sightings in the sky known as UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena. The study will begin this fall and last nine months, costing no more than $100,000. It will be entirely open, with no classified military data used.

Jun 09, 2022

China Releases World's 'most Detailed' Map of Moon

China released a new comprehensive geologic map of the moon, the "most detailed" to date, which is expected to make a vital contribution to scientific research, exploration and landing site selection on the Earth's only natural satellite. Chinese scientists from multiple research institutes and universities have created the high resolution topographic map based on data from China's lunar exploration Chang'e project and other data and research findings from international organisations. The map includes 12,341 impact craters, 81 impact basins, 17 rock types and 14 types of structures, providing abundant information about geology of the moon and its evolution.
The new comprehensive geologic map of the moon is to a scale of 1:2,500,000, the "most detailed to date". Previously, the USGS Astrogeology Science Centre had released a moon map to a scale of 1:5,000,000 in 2020.

Jun 07, 2022

China Launches Six-month Space Mission

China successfully launched three astronauts on a six-month mission to complete the construction of the country's space station currently orbiting the Earth. The Shenzhou-14 spacecraft carrying astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe was lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
The Shenzhou 14 crew will spend six months on the Tiangong station, during which they will oversee the addition of two laboratory modules to join the main Tianhe living space that was launched in April 2021.
The station will operate in low-Earth orbit at an altitude between 340 to 450 kilometres. Once completed, it will have a lifespan of 10 years, but experts believe it could last more than 15 years with appropriate maintenance and repairs.

Jun 05, 2022

Astronomers Discover 116,027 New Variable Stars

Variable stars are celestial objects whose brightness waxes and wanes over time, especially if observed from our perspective on Earth. In the study, Dr. Christy and colleagues analyzed data from ASAS-SN as well as from ESA's Gaia mission, the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and the AllWISE catalog. They used a machine learning algorithm to generate a list of 1.5 million candidate variable stars from a catalog of about 55 million isolated stars. Afterward, they whittled the number of candidates down even further. Of the 1.5 million stars they studied, 378,861 turned out to be real variable stars.
More than half were already known to the astronomy community, but 116,027 of them proved to be new discoveries, including over 111,000 periodic variables and 5,000 irregular variables.

Jun 04, 2022

Indian-origin Engineer's UK Team Creates E-skin that Can Feel 'Pain'

A team of researchers led by an Indian-origin engineer in the UK has created an electronic skin capable of feeling "pain" and according to them it could help create a new generation of smart robots with human-like sensitivity. The discovery marks a real step forward in work towards creating large-scale neuromorphic printed e-skin capable of responding appropriately to stimuli. The development of the electronic skin is described as the latest breakthrough in flexible, stretchable printed surfaces from the University of Glasgow's Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) Group.
Scientists were working for decades to build artificial skin with touch sensitivity. One widely-explored method is spreading an array of contact or pressure sensors across the electronic skin's surface to allow it detect when it comes into contact with an object.

Instagram's New Feature to Help Find Missing Children

Instagram launched an 'alert' feature to help find missing children. The photo-sharing app has partnered with various organisations globally to set up the feature. The feature will display details about missing children on users' Instagram feed if they are in a specific area where an active search is taking place. The alerts on the Meta-owned platform will include details such as a child's photo, description, and location of the abduction. Instagram will show users alerts based on information like their IP address and location services (if it is turned on).
In addition to the photo and video sharing platform, Amber Alerts are available on Facebook since 2015. Instagram has started rolling out the alerts feature, and it will be available in 25 countries in the coming weeks, it said, adding that it is working to bring them to more countries.

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