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Category: space travel

Novel ferroelectric ultraviolet photodetector achieves near-10,000-fold speed increase

Researchers from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new ferroelectric ultraviolet photodetector material that overcomes the long-standing performance limitations of conventional photodetectors.

This breakthrough, published in Nature Communications, promises to enable next-generation optical detection with ultra-fast speed, high sensitivity, and low noise across a wide range of applications.

Photodetectors convert light signals into electrical currents and are fundamental to modern optoelectronics. They are essential for technologies such as high-speed optical communications, environmental monitoring, and space exploration. However, creating a material that possesses all three of these qualities has been a significant challenge.

NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries of the observable universe closer to cosmic dawn with the confirmation of a bright galaxy that existed 280 million years after the big bang. By now Webb has established that it will eventually surpass virtually every benchmark it sets in these early years, but the newly confirmed galaxy, MoM-z14, holds intriguing clues to the universe’s historical timeline and just how different a place the early universe was than astronomers expected.

“With Webb, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted, which is both challenging and exciting,” said Rohan Naidu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, lead author of a paper on galaxy MoM-z14 published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

Due to the expansion of the universe that is driven by dark energy, discussion of physical distances and “years ago” becomes tricky when looking this far. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers confirmed that MoM-z14 has a cosmological redshift of 14.44, meaning that its light has been travelling through (expanding) space, being stretched and “shifted” to longer, redder wavelengths, for about 13.5 of the universe’s estimated 13.8 billion years of existence.

Space Travel Is About to Change Forever — But How?

Space exploration is on the verge of a revolution. With new propulsion systems, upcoming missions to Mars and beyond, and theories that could one day take us to other star systems, the future of space travel is closer than ever.

But how will it actually happen? Will we ever leave our solar system? And is faster-than-light travel even possible?

In this video, we explore:
🚀 Where We Are Now – The progress we’ve made in space travel.
🌍 Mars & Beyond – The next steps for humanity’s expansion into space.
🌌 Interstellar Travel – Is It Possible? – The challenges of traveling beyond the solar system.
⚡ Future Propulsion Technologies – New ways to push past our current limits.
🌀 Warp Drives & Faster-Than-Light Travel – The theories that could change everything.

🚀 Space Travel Is About to Change Forever — But How? — Space Documentary.

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Will humanity ever reach another star, or are we trapped in our own cosmic neighborhood? 🌌👇

Continue reading “Space Travel Is About to Change Forever — But How?” | >

SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.

In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.

The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability.

Hot, Black Ice Might Be Responsible For Neptune’s Wild Magnetism

Inside the cores of ice giant planets, the pressure and temperature are so extreme that the water residing there transitions into a phase completely unfamiliar under natural conditions on Earth.

Known as ‘superionic water’, this form of water is a type of ice. However, unlike regular ice, it’s actually hot, and also black.

For decades, scientists thought that the superionic water in the core of Neptune and Uranus was responsible for the wild, unaligned magnetic fields that the Voyager 2 spacecraft saw when passing them.

Off-the-shelf kitchen chemistry could make Li–S batteries thinner

Demand is booming for batteries that are faster, thinner and cheaper. We want electric cars and bikes that travel further, devices that last longer, charge quicker and cost less. Today, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) set the benchmark. But after decades of research, this technology is approaching its limits, and each new gain is harder to achieve.

Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are a promising next-generation technology. They store far more energy than LIBs by weight and are made from cheap, readily available materials.

But here’s the catch. Current Li–S batteries take up around 1.5 to 2.0 times more space than LIBs. In other words, their volumetric capacities are much lower. That’s a serious bottleneck because in many real-world applications, space matters more than weight. From portable electronics, electric vehicles to aerospace systems, every inch of space matters.

Calm Space Studio

Invites you to drift through a calm, cosmic timeline—from our early beginnings to the dream of space exploration—framed by the idea of Kardashev civilization levels. The narration moves at a soft, unhurried pace, gently explaining what Type I, II, and III energy milestones mean, and exploring hopeful paths through science, cooperation, and new ideas. A soothing, sleep-friendly focus makes this a peaceful listen for winding down, inviting quiet curiosity about big questions without rushing to conclusions.å\.

How Fast Could You Get To Mars?

🚀 Zip to Mars in days, not months.
Future drives could turn the solar system into your backyard.

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What Is the Universe, Really? | Leonard Susskind

When we talk about the universe, we usually imagine space filled with galaxies, stars, and matter expanding endlessly in all directions. It feels natural to think of the universe as a vast container — a place where everything exists. But modern theoretical physics suggests that this picture may be deeply misleading.

In this video, we explore a more fundamental question: what is the universe really made of? Is it space? Matter? Energy? Or something far more abstract than our everyday intuition allows?

Drawing on ideas associated with Leonard Susskind, this long-form exploration challenges the assumption that the universe is a physical stage where reality takes place. Instead, physics increasingly points toward a universe defined not by objects and locations, but by information, relationships, and boundaries.

Black hole physics, quantum theory, and modern cosmology have forced scientists to rethink the foundations of reality. In some of the deepest descriptions of nature, space and time no longer appear as fundamental ingredients. What we experience as a three-dimensional universe may be an emergent structure — a convenient description rather than the true underlying reality.

Rather than focusing on equations, this video emphasizes intuition and conceptual understanding. Through thought experiments and simple analogies, we examine why the universe feels like a place, why that picture works so well at human scales, and why it may break down at the most fundamental level.

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