Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jul 30
2023

L-72 Forecast: 80% Favorable for Antares Launch

The Wallops Range forecast issued today for the Tuesday, Aug. 1, launch of Northrop Grumman’s 19th resupply mission to the International Space Station puts weather at 80% favorable.

A weak area of high pressure will move off the coast Sunday evening, as a weak upper-level disturbance tracks toward the Wallops region with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms Monday morning through late Monday evening. The upper-level trough will remain over the Wallops Region Tuesday with a chance of an afternoon, sea breeze, pop-up shower or thunderstorms during the countdown. At this time, the primary concern for launch is a slight chance of cumulus clouds.

NASA commercial cargo provider Northrop Grumman is targeting 8:31 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 1, for the launch.

Jul 30
2023

Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy

A number of entrepreneurial groups have shared their strategies to turn the moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.

Jul 30
2023

Hubble watches extreme exoplanet being stripped by its star

A Neptune-sized planet orbits close enough to its star that it is bombarded by dramatic flares which cook the planet with radiation and strip its atmosphere.

Jul 30
2023

The Challenges of Building Human Habitats in Space

In October of 2021, NASA’s next-generation infrared observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will be launched. As the most advanced and complex space telescope ever built, the James Webb will characterize exoplanets, explore our Solar System, and address the deepest cosmological mysteries of all.

Jul 29
2023

NASA launches its own streaming platform

NASA+ will be a “no subscription required” streaming service for viewing rocket launches and NASA science, with app integration coming later this year.

Jul 29
2023

Watch for fireballs from two meteor showers in the coming days

Two meteor showers, the Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids, are both expected to peak during the evenings of July 30 and 31.

They will have to compete with a bright moon that’s 95% full, but the Alpha Capricornids may still produce some scintillating fireballs that could outshine the moon.

The Delta Aquariids, also called the Southern Delta Aquariids, will favor skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere, although they will still be visible in the Northern Hemisphere (especially across the southern US) but lower on the horizon, according to EarthSky.

Jul 29
2023

Neil deGrasse Tyson Breaks Silence On Webb Telescope’s Shocking New Image!

The stars have always held significance for humans, but it is only recently that we have begun to comprehend vast groups of them, or galaxies, in the far reaches of the universe. The Webb telescope was anticipated by everybody as a game-changer in the field of astronomy. And we knew exactly what we believed Webb would completely astound us with. However, its most recent findings have blown away the proportions of our expectations. The Webb Telescope, according to American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, has allowed us to glimpse ghosts from the past.

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Jul 29
2023

Episode 9: Solo — Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

New Patreon page! https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.

Blog post: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis…n-nothing/

It’s fun to be in the exciting, chaotic, youthful days of the podcast, when anything goes and experimentation is the order of the day. So today’s show is something different: a solo effort, featuring just me talking without any guests to cramp my style. This won’t be the usual format, but I suspect it will happen from time to time. Feel free to chime in below on how often you think alternative formats should be part of the mix. The topic today is “Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?”, or equivalently “Why Does the Universe Exist at All?” Heady stuff, but we’re not going to back away from the challenge.

What I have to say will roughly follow my recent paper on the subject, although in a more chatty and accessible style. It concerns ideas at the intersection of physics, philosophy, and theology, so tune in if you’re into that sort of thing.

Big news! After a number of people have asked, I have finally opened a Patreon account for people who would like to support Mindscape in some way. You can sign up to kick in a dollar or more per podcast episode, and in return you get 1) access to occasional Ask Me Anything episodes done exclusively for patrons, and 2) my undying gratitude. If the Patreon route is successful enough, I’ll forego having ads on the podcast — we’ll see how it goes.

Jul 29
2023

What is xAI, Elon Musk’s new AI company, and will it succeed?

Elon Musk has announced a new venture called xAI that plans to “understand the true nature of the universe”. Here’s what we know so far.

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Jul 28
2023

Spectacular New Einstein Cross Discovered Warping Space-Time

A massive galaxy has created a rare distortion in the path of light that has traveled billions of years to reach us from a more distant galaxy.

It’s called an Einstein cross – when the curvature of space-time around a massive foreground object splits the light behind it into four, like the points of a cross. Its confirmation and analysis adds to a slowly growing catalog of these rare alignments, which can help us better understand the more distant reaches of the Universe.

A paper detailing the system has been accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and is available on preprint resource arXiv.