General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - January 2019

Jan 2019

Oct 15, 2021

William Shatner Becomes World's Oldest Space Traveler

Actor William Shatner soared aboard a Blue Origin rocket ship on a suborbital trip and landed in the Texas desert to become at age 90 the oldest person ever in space as U.S. billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos's company carried out its second tourist flight.
Shatner was one of four passengers to journey to the edge of space aboard the white fully autonomous 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters-tall) New Shepard spacecraft.

Oct 14, 2021

Germany Launches World's First Self-Driving Train

German rail operator, Deutsche Bahn and industrial group, Siemens launched the first automated & driverless train of the world.
The self-driving train was launched in the city of Hamburg, Germany.
This train is more punctual and energy efficient as compared to traditional trains.
The country has planned to add four such trains to the S-Bahn rapid urban rail network of northern city.
These trains will start carrying passengers from December on the existing rail infrastructure.
Other cities such as Paris have driverless metros on the other hand, airports often have automated monorail trains plying terminals. However, these trains run on exclusive single tracks while the Hamburg train will share tracks with other regular trains.

Oct 13, 2021

The Fastest-spinning White Dwarf ever Seen Rotates Once every 25 Seconds

The sun turns once a month and the Earth once a day, but a white dwarf star 2,000 light-years away spins every 25 seconds, beating the old champ by five seconds. That makes it the fastest-spinning star of any sort ever seen — unless you consider such exotic objects as neutron stars and black holes, some of which spin even faster.
The fast-spinning white dwarf, named LAMOST J0240+1952 and located in the constellation Aries, got in a whirl because of its ongoing affair with a red dwarf star that revolves around it. Just as falling water makes a waterwheel turn, so gas falling from the red companion star made the white dwarf twirl.

Oct 12, 2021

Pluto's Atmosphere is Starting to Disappear

Pluto's atmosphere is going through a strange transformation, scientists are finding.
The icy dwarf planet, which lies over 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) away from Earth in the Kuiper Belt, caught astronomers' attention as it passed in front of a star back in 2018.
With the star backlighting Pluto, the team of researchers was able to make observations of the dwarf planet and its atmosphere. With this unique view, they came to a surprising conclusion, which they describe in a new study.
The astronomers found evidence that Pluto's atmosphere is starting to disappear.
Using telescopes at multiple sites in both the U.S. and Mexico, the team observed Pluto and its thin atmosphere, which is primarily made of nitrogen, like that of Earth. Pluto's atmosphere is supported by the vapor pressure of ices on the dwarf planet's surface. So, if ice warms up on Pluto, it can dramatically alter the density of its atmosphere.
For about 25 years, Pluto has been moving farther and farther away from the sun, so its surface temperature has been going down. And with these recent observations, the researchers found evidence showing that Pluto's atmosphere is actually refreezing back onto its surface as the dwarf planet gets colder and colder.

Oct 10, 2021

Strange Solar System Object is part-asteroid, part-comet

Scientists have identified a rare solar system object with traits of both an asteroid and a comet.
The object, dubbed 2005 QN173, orbits like any other asteroid, but most such objects are rocks that don't change much as they loop through the solar system. Not so for 2005 QN173, which was first spotted in 2005 (hence the name), according to new research. Instead, it looks like a comet, shedding dust as it travels and sporting a long, thin tail, which suggests that it's covered with icy material vaporizing away into space — even though comets usually follow elliptical paths that regularly approach and retreat from the sun.

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