![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F236x%2F68%2F99%2F15%2F68991517188c78b3ee6742da63e0917c.jpg&width=540&mix=9f897-pin-images")
Columbia lilies on Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, Washington (© Dennis Frates/Alamy) 2016-07-08 [www.bing.com/search] ![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn1.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F07%2FTNW-Javascript-Bundle-796x398.jpg&width=540&mix=3106b-technology")
!["13601299_1792047774380875_1171869391_n"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08163912%2F13601299_1792047774380875_1171869391_n.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
Facebook has announced it is developing wireless internet access hardware and software that can be used in areas where the current infrastructure doesn't support connectivity.
OpenCellular is designed to tackle the problem of 4bn people around the world still not having basic internet access, while 10% of the world's population live outside the range of cellular activity, according to the United Nations' Broadband Commission.
The hardware is currently the size of a shoe box and can support up to 1,500 people as far as 10km away.
Due to the system's computing and storage, it can be used as a network-in-a-box or purely as a cellular access point, meaning that it can be customised to provide internet access in the form of 2G, LTE or Wi-Fi.
It has also been adapted to take in multiple input power sources, including PoE (power-over-ethernet), solar, DC, external batteries (seal lead acid) and internal battery (lithium-ion).
In order to withstand extreme weather conditions such as high winds and rugged climates, the OpenCellular device has sensors to monitor temperature, voltage and current, and can be deployed by one person at a range of heights from a pole a few metres off the ground to a tall tower or tree.
Facebook's main goal in developing the technology is to make it affordable for operators and entrepreneurs to deploy networks in places where coverage is currently minimal or non-existent.
The social media company has said it will open-source the hardware and software design, making it freely available and more cost-effective for existing and potential operators.
In a post on his Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg writes: “OpenCellular is the next step on our journey to provide better, more affordable connectivity to bring the world closer together.”
The system is currently being tested in labs at Facebook HQ in California. So far it has been able to send and receive text messages, make voice calls and use 2G data connectivity.
!["13571114_640532859430941_2062712453_n"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08163910%2F13571114_640532859430941_2062712453_n.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
!["13602279_1640204232965130_1667121936_n"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08163914%2F13602279_1640204232965130_1667121936_n.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
Images from OpenCellular
The post Facebook creates wireless internet system for developing world appeared first on Design Week.
From Game of Thrones-inspired castle estates to spiralling pink robo-slides, this year's graduate architecture shows offer a window to escapist fantasy lands
Architects might be known for wearing black, as if in permanent mourning for the lives they once had, and for spending months searching for the perfect shade of grey. But judging by this year's student shows, that monochromatic hegemony is under threat: the next generation appears to be plotting a psychedelic revolution.
Continue reading...Merseyside comes alive with art and Antony Gormley laments the ‘termites' nests' of today's cityscapes. All that and more in your weekly art dispatch
Colour and Vision
This exploration of visual experience across the natural world has everything from fossils of the first creatures to develop eyes in the ancient seas to an installation about the Newtonian spectrum. Science and art come together in what should be a mind-expanding show.
• Natural History Museum, London, 15 July-6 November.
Forget New York, let alone Tokyo: as reader Greg Whistance-Smith points out, the wildly popular Japanese anime show Mobile Suit Gundam has rather bizarrely chosen quiet Edmonton, Alberta as the backdrop for its two-part season finale
One of the peculiar honours shared by the world's major cities is a knack for getting destroyed on screen. Residents of London, New York and Los Angeles have seen their cities fantastically ruined by natural and manmade disasters alike. None have experienced this quite as frequently as Tokyo: radioactive monsters, giant robots, supernatural forces and earthquakes have taken turns smashing the city in films and television shows for the past 60 years. Meticulously depicting a city's demise is, if nothing else, a declaration of its importance: these places are worth destroying.
In Edmonton, a quiet city at the northwestern tip of the Canadian prairies, those images of mass destruction seem exhilaratingly foreign. Edmonton is often forgotten not just in discussions of cities but in discussions of Canadian cities; or else it is humorously acknowledged as a place with endless winters and harsh, Soviet-like architecture. Those half-truths noted, the city nevertheless has its gems, among them an incredible river valley, one of the world's biggest universities (the University of Alberta), and a thriving arts scene, including the world's second largest fringe festival after Edinburgh. It's one of the youngest cities on the continent, with a median age of 36.5, and the northernmost city of more than 1 million people.
!["2.]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F06181242%2F2.-Festival-Entrance-627x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
D&AD's New Blood Pencil 2016 winners have been revealed, after being selected from a list of entrants from a total of 58 different countries.
The winners were announced at an awards ceremony at Village Underground, London last night, to coincide with the final day of the D&AD New Blood Festival.
To apply, entrants needed to be in full-time or part-time education, recent graduates or under the age of 23.
Applicants were tasked with designing their projects for a particular brief by various brands, such as Dr. Martens: Celebrate Dr. Martens' Unique Brand Using Radio's Unique Platform.
From the entries, the judges chose two overall Black Pencil and four White Pencil Winners. A further 24 young creatives were awarded a Yellow Pencil, with 58 being given a Graphite Pencil and 111 a Wood Pencil.
Paul Drake, D&AD Foundation director says: “D&AD New blood is all about inspiring the next generation, which is where our ‘Win One, Teach One' mantra really comes to life.”
“Winning a New Blood pencil is a huge turning point in a young creative's career. Not only are they recognised for being the best at what they do, but they get access to a wealth of contacts and advice from professional award Pencil winners and industry experts alike.”
We've rounded up the winning entries below.
James Wuds, Bottles of Squash
Brief by Dazed: Declare Independence in 15 Seconds
!["dazed"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102230%2Fdazed-800x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
James Wuds decided to interpret Dazed's brief by portraying “the feeling of being a teenager” in a series of short black and white video clips.
The videos capture the moments when you are not yet old enough to get away from your parents but are in the midst of your search for identity. Or as Wuds describes it: ‘fizzy drinks and bottles of squash”.
Jonny Kanagasooriam, creative strategy director, Dazed Media, describes Bottles of Squash as a “truly excellent stand out piece of work. Funny, poignant, cool and accomplished.”
Polina Hohonova, Retro Serif
Brief by Monotype: Use the Power of Typography to Activate Your Cause
!["retroserif"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102238%2Fretroserif-800x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
Retro Serif seeks to revive a lost Russian language. Hohonova has used letters such as I, Ѳ and Ѣ that were abolished by the Communist Party after the Russian Revolution in 1917, due to their association with “High Russia” and the now defunct Tsarist regime.
Reviving these characters is a protest against the prescribed dictatorship of the language.
Craig Oldham, creative director & founder of Office of Craig Oldham, says: “Rarely does a piece of work have the potential to inspire change and have such a profound impact on culture and society.”
Laurens Grainger and Matt Kennedy, Every Minute Matters
Brief by Amnesty International/WPP: Break Barriers Between Young Adults and Amnesty International
!["ASS-NBA-02122131678-2016_3000x2400_Every-Minute-Matters_1"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102214%2FASS-NBA-02122131678-2016_3000x2400_Every-Minute-Matters_1-887x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
These students from School of Communication Arts 2.0 have come up with a campaign for Amnesty International that allows young adults who only call home every two weeks on average to donate their wasted monthly phone minutes to refugees who, without a credited SIM card, are unable to call home at all.
Every Minute Matters would allow these minutes to be transferred onto an Amnesty International SIM card, which would then be distributed at refugee camps around the world.
Chloe Lam and Ryan Ho, Ford Fu
Brief by Ford: Team Up With Ford To Mobilise City-Wide Change
!["fordfu"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102234%2Ffordfu-800x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
In response to Ford's brief, the two Falmouth University students targeted Shanghai's ageing population, which make up over a third of the city's overall population.
Using Ford's InfoCycle and E-Boke technology, with one click Ford Fu tokens send a GPS check-in to an older person's loved one, while two clicks calls a taxi and a third alerts emergency services.
Kegan Greenfield, Better Together
Brief by Monotype: Use the Power of Typography to Activate Your Cause
!["ASS-NBA-01323128766-2016_3000x2400_Better-Together_1"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102208%2FASS-NBA-01323128766-2016_3000x2400_Better-Together_1-800x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
The Chelsea College Art students have given a simple, modern update to the Moon Type that was designed by William Moon for visually impaired people back in 1845.
The new version Moon Two is a hybrid of the original typeface and Roman script. It aims to bridge the gap for children with normal sight and those who are visually impaired, who are often required to choose either visual language or a tactile alternate during the early stages of education.
Elisa Beretta, Rosita Rotondo, Alessandro, Prestia, Massimo Mazzucca and Giulia D'agosta, Human Filter
Brief by WWF: Activate A Global Conservation Community
!["ASS-NBA-00181119312-2016_1280x720_Human-Filter_1"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com%2Fcentaur-wp%2Fdesignweek%2Fprod%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F08102202%2FASS-NBA-00181119312-2016_1280x720_Human-Filter_1-890x500.jpg&width=540&mix=22833-design")
Students from the Academy of Communication Foundation in Milan, Italy are hoping to tackle air pollution with their project for WWF.
Their proposal is simple by washing clothes with a photocatalytic water solution, people are able absorb the same amount of nitric oxide produced by a car every day.
A WWF organised marathon that aims to spread the message could turn every runner who participates into a “human filter”.
See the full list of winners here.
The post D&AD New Blood 2016 reveals Pencil award winners appeared first on Design Week.
Bowie hated it. Peep Show besmirched it. The London suburb may get a bad rap in popular culture, but now there is the chance to see a different side
David Bowie absolutely hated the place while Kirsty MacColl hoped it might one day be blown up. But the National Trust profoundly disagrees it wants people to love Croydon.
The organisation, best known as custodian of some of Britain's most beautiful country houses, is turning its gaze on to the 60s and 70s high rise office blocks of a London suburb that always seems to spark extreme opinions.
Continue reading...A new public art installation, The BFG Dream Jar Trail, opens across the UK on Saturday. Celebrities were tasked with coming up with a dream to inspire and improve children's lives, which was then made into a sculpture and popped into a jar. These will be displayed round the country through the summer before being auctioned for Save the Children. We let the light in on some of the best …
Continue reading...Merseyside comes alive with art and Antony Gormley laments the ‘termites' nests' of today's cityscapes. All that and more in your weekly art dispatch
Colour and Vision
This exploration of visual experience across the natural world has everything from fossils of the first creatures to develop eyes in the ancient seas to an installation about the Newtonian spectrum. Science and art come together in what should be a mind-expanding show.
• Natural History Museum, London, 15 July-6 November.
Merseyside comes alive with art and Antony Gormley laments the ‘termites' nests' of today's cityscapes. All that and more in your weekly art dispatch
Colour and Vision
This exploration of visual experience across the natural world has everything from fossils of the first creatures to develop eyes in the ancient seas to an installation about the Newtonian spectrum. Science and art come together in what should be a mind-expanding show.
• Natural History Museum, London, 15 July-6 November.
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designboom.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F08%2Fjason-briggs-grotesque-porcelain_designboom_001.jpg&width=540&mix=0b54d-art")
the objects express strong sexual references—at once abstract, but laced with figurative forms and life-like textures, bordering on being pornographic.
The post jason briggs' grotesque porcelain objects are surrealistically erotic appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
David Hockney | Jorge Otero-Pailos | Liverpool Biennial | David Bomberg | Etel Adnan
Britain's most famous living painter is a master of the portrait, capturing entire decades and states of mind in such iconic works as Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy and Beverly Hills Housewife. His new series 82 Portraits And 1 Still-Life paints a picture of the 21st century through portraits of friends including architect Frank Gehry and artist John Baldessari. Everyone poses in the same lemon-yellow upholstered chair as Hockney eyeballs them in often delicious detail.
Continue reading...
To find ET, we must open our minds beyond a deeply-rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods and deploy new tools. Never before has so much data been available in so many scientific disciplines to help us grasp the role of probabilistic events in the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. These data tell us that each world is a unique planetary experiment. Advanced intelligent life is likely plentiful in the universe, but may be very different from us, based on what we now know of the coevolution of life and environment.
The SETI Institute Director of Research, proposed a broader, multidisciplinary approach to the SETI search, beyond radio and optical modalities, in an article published today in the journal Astrobiology. “Are we alone in the Universe?” is the provocative question that inspires the scientific search for life beyond Earth. Today, we know definitively of only one planet that hosts life, and that is Earth. How can we find life, and in particular, intelligent life beyond our world?
“Alien Mindscapes A Perspective on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” authored by Nathalie A. Cabrol, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, suggests the need for a sea change in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, where the full complement of physical, biological, computer and social sciences are deployed in a quest to look for life as we do not know it.
Led by pioneers such as Frank Drake and Jill Tarter, SETI the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence commenced in the 1960's using radio astronomy to listen for signals from ET. Today, both radio and optical SETI searches seek signals generated by technology similar to ours. There are compelling reasons to continue with these endeavors, but equally compelling reasons to broaden the search criteria and expand the existing methodologies.
In her paper's call to action, Cabrol promotes the establishment of a Virtual Institute with participation from the global scientific community. The new SETI Virtual Institute will integrate our new knowledge to understand who, what, and where ET can be, and step beyond the anthropocentric perspective. New detection strategies generated by this approach will augment our chances of detection by identifying new survey targets. The purpose is to expand the vision and strategies for SETI research and to break through the constraints imposed by imagining ET to be similar to ourselves. This new endeavor will probe the alien landscapes and mindscapes, and expand our understanding of life in the universe.
“The timing is right for SETI research around the world to open a new chapter in its history. The SETI Institute is taking the lead on this new path,” says Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute. “In the coming months, we will invite the US and international research communities to contribute to a new scientific roadmap for SETI. We will explore resources for the development of a Virtual Institute and an intellectual framework for projects focused on the advancement of knowledge on extraterrestrial intelligence.”
The Daily Galaxy via SETI Institute
Image credit: The artist's impression at the top of the below shows what it would look like from an exoplanet 10,000 light-years away in its home galaxy. (Beijing Planetarium / Jin Ma)
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Eff%2FTheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond%3Fd%3DyIl2AUoC8zA&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FTheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond%2F%7E4%2F2qXLLs52ATM&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
If you thought Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, was a strange world with its two suns in the sky, imagine this: a planet where you'd either experience constant daylight or enjoy triple sunrises and sunsets each day, depending on the seasons, which happen to last longer than human lifetimes.
Such a world has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, using direct imaging. The planet, HD 131399Ab, is unlike any other known world - on by far the widest known orbit within a multi-star system.
Located about 340 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, HD 131399Ab is believed to be about 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date, and one of very few directly imaged planets. With a temperature of 850 Kelvin (about 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit or 580 degrees Celsius) and weighing in at an estimated four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly imaged exoplanets.
"HD 131399Ab is one of the few exoplanets that have been directly imaged, and it's the first one in such an interesting dynamical configuration," said Daniel Apai, an assistant professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences who leads a research group dedicated to finding and observing exoplanets at the UA.
"For about half of the planet's orbit, which lasts 550 Earth-years, three stars are visible in the sky, the fainter two always much closer together, and changing in apparent separation from the brightest star throughout the year," said Kevin Wagner, a first-year PhD student in Apai's research group and the paper's first author, who discovered HD 131399Ab. "For much of the planet's year the stars appear close together, giving it a familiar night-side and day-side with a unique triple-sunset and sunrise each day. As the planet orbits and the stars grow further apart each day, they reach a point where the setting of one coincides with the rising of the other - at which point the planet is in near-constant daytime for about one-quarter of its orbit, or roughly 140 Earth-years."
Wagner identified the planet among hundreds of candidate planets and led the follow-up observations to verify its nature.
The planet marks the first discovery of an exoplanet made with SPHERE, one of the world's most advanced instruments dedicated to finding planets around other stars. SPHERE, which stands for the Spectro-Polarimetric High-Contrast Exoplanet Research Instrument, is sensitive to infrared light, making it capable to detect the heat signatures of young planets, along with sophisticated features correcting for atmospheric disturbances and blocking out the otherwise blinding light of their host stars. The instrument is part of the Very Large Telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
Although repeated and long-term observations will be needed to precisely determine the planet's trajectory among its host stars, observations and simulations seem to suggest the following scenario: At the center of the system lies a star estimated to be eighty percent more massive than the sun and dubbed HD 131399A, which itself is orbited by the two remaining stars, B and C, at about three-hundred AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, equals the average distance between the earth and the sun). All the while, B and C twirl around each other like a spinning dumbbell, separated by a distance roughly equal to that between our sun and Saturn.
In this scenario, planet HD 131399Ab travels around the central star, A, in an orbit about twice as large as Pluto's if compared to our solar system, and brings the planet to about one-third of the separation of the stars themselves. The authors point out that a range of orbital scenarios is possible, and the verdict on long-term stability of the system will have to wait for planned follow-up observations that will better constrain the planet's orbit.
"If the planet was further away from the the most massive star in the system, it would be kicked out of the system," Apai explained. "Our computer simulations showed that this type of orbit can be stable, but if you change things around just a little bit, it can become unstable very quickly."
Planets in multi-star systems are of special interest to astronomers and planetary scientists because they provide an example of how planet formation functions in these more extreme scenarios. While multi-star systems seem exotic to us in our orbit around our solitary star - multi-star systems are in fact just as common as single stars.
"It is not clear how this planet ended up on its wide orbit in this extreme system, and we can't say yet what this means for our broader understanding of the types of planetary systems out there, but it shows there is more variety out there than many would have deemed possible," Wagner said. "What we do know is that planets in multi-star systems are much less explored, and potentially just as numerous as planets in single-star systems."
The Daily Galaxy via University of Arizona
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FTheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond%2F%7E4%2FkuPoWfWM5xc&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
This animated video shows a gaseous planet with three suns and a mass four times that of Jupiter. Located 320 light years away in the constellation of Centaurus, the planet, discovered by an international team of astronomers and known as HD 131399Ab, orbits around only the brightest of the three stars which is thought to be around 80% more massive than our own sun
Continue reading...
Several recent news stories have reported that a mysterious anomaly in Cassini's orbit could potentially be explained by the gravitational tug of a massive new planet in our solar system, lurking far beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"An undiscovered planet outside the orbit of Neptune, 10 times the mass of Earth, would affect the orbit of Saturn, not Cassini," said William Folkner, a planetary scientist at JPL. Folkner develops planetary orbit information used for NASA's high-precision spacecraft navigation. "This could produce a signature in the measurements of Cassini while in orbit about Saturn if the planet was close enough to the sun. But we do not see any unexplained signature above the level of the measurement noise in Cassini data taken from 2004 to 2016."
While the proposed planet's existence may eventually be confirmed by other means, mission navigators have observed no unexplained deviations in the spacecraft's orbit since its arrival there in 2004, according to mission managers and orbit determination experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"Although we'd love it if Cassini could help detect a new planet in the solar system, we do not see any perturbations in our orbit that we cannot explain with our current models," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL.
Scientists have been looking for Planet X for 100 years. The possibility that it's real got a big boost recently when researchers from Caltech inferred its existence based on orbital anomalies seen in objects in the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region of comets and other larger bodies beyond Neptune. In January of 2016, Caltech researchers announced that they found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the su
The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet's existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.
Brown notes that the putative ninth planet—at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto—is sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it "the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system."
"Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there," says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. "For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system's planetary census is incomplete."
A recent paper predicts that, if data tracking Cassini's position were available out to the year 2020, they might be used to reveal a "most probable" location for the new planet in its long orbit around the sun. However, Cassini's mission is planned to end in late 2017, when the spacecraft -- too low on fuel to continue on a longer mission -- will plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The Daily Galaxy via http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and Caltech
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FTheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond%2F%7E4%2FKPvvpCEj8ek&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
!["Moving]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm8.staticflickr.com%2F7367%2F28090785201_683262931e_m.jpg&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
This ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the moving heart of the Crab Nebula.
While many other images of the famous Crab Nebula have focused on the filaments in the outer part of the nebula, this image shows the very heart of the Crab Nebula including the central neutron star — it is the rightmost of the two bright stars near the centre of this image.
The rapid motion of the material nearest to the central star is revealed by the subtle rainbow of colours in this time-lapse image, the rainbow effect being due to the movement of material over the time between one image and another.
Read more here.
Credit: ESA/NASA
Marathon journey across solar system concludes with 35-minute rocket burn
Nasa's Juno mission is spending its first week in orbit around Jupiter. This giant planet is more than 11 times the diameter of Earth.
Having travelled for more than 1.7bn miles through the solar system, Juno was captured by Jupiter's gravity at 03:18 GMT on 5 July after an engine burn that lasted 35 minutes.
Related: Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft ready for Pluto fly-by
Continue reading...NASA's Science Program Support Office posted a photo:
!["AWMA]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm8.staticflickr.com%2F7487%2F28122628836_05d7d9f8a6_m.jpg&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy")
Air and Waste Management Association Annual Conference and Exhibition
New Orleans, LA
June 20 - 23, 2016
Giant gas ball four times the mass of Jupiter is in a three-star system. It swings around one, but sees sunrises and sunsets from all three. Take that Tatooine
A gaseous planet with three suns and a mass four times that of Jupiter has been spotted by astronomers.
Located 320 light years away in the constellation of Centaurus the planet, known as HD 131399Ab, goes one better than Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine in the film Star Wars, which famously boasted two sunrises.
Continue reading...![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2F66.media.tumblr.com%2Ffe988844971d5bc69a6f619c3ef262a6%2Ftumblr_o9ykl7s7Ak1rlkdy0o1_500.gif&width=540&mix=219b9-gifs")
314
Oliver Burkeman says it's hard to bark orders at a machine without feeling like the kind of obnoxious person who barks orders at waiters
I became highly confused the first time I used the Amazon Echo, a voice-activated “smart home assistant” that sits in the corner and responds to the name Alexa as in “Alexa, play some music!” or “Alexa, how many ounces in a kilogram?” Partly, this was because the only person I know who owns an Echo is herself called Alexa, and she was home at the time. But that aside, it's hard to bark orders at a machine without feeling like the kind of obnoxious person who barks orders at waiters. That is, unless you start young. “We love our Amazon Echo… but I fear it's also turning our daughter into a raging asshole,” the Silicon Valley investor Hunter Walk fretted recently. Alexa doesn't need you to say please or thank you; indeed, she responds better to brusque commands. “Cognitively, I'm not sure a kid gets why you can boss Alexa around, but not a person,” Walk wrote. How's a four-year-old supposed to learn that other household members aren't simply there to do her bidding, when one (electronic) household member was designed to do exactly that?
Such worries will grow more urgent as we interact with more convincingly humanesque devices. As the tech writer John Markoff puts it: “What does it do to the human if we have a class of slaves which are not human, but that we treat as human?” Most of us would agree with Immanuel Kant that it's unethical to treat others as mere means to our own ends, instead of ends in themselves. That's why slavery damages the slaveholder as well as the slave: to use a person as if they were an object erodes your own humanity. Yet Alexa (like Google Home, and Siri, and the rest) trains us to think of her as both human yet solely there to serve. Might we start thinking of real humans that way more frequently, too?
Continue reading...Shooter, who was killed with bomb on robot device during standoff, was reportedly upset over recent killings of black men by law enforcement
The gunman who opened fire on police in Dallas said he wanted to kill white police officers and expressed anger at a recent spate of shootings by police before he was killed, it was revealed on Friday.
Related: Dallas protest shooting: five police officers dead and standoff over live
Continue reading...
!["ASASSN-15lh_artist"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygalaxy.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b7c879225b970b-800wi&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy" "\"ASASSN-15lh_artist\"")
!["050713_trinary_sunset_02"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygalaxy.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8341bf7f753ef01bb091c9fae970d-800wi&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy" "\"050713_trinary_sunset_02\"")
!["6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b7c830ceb2970b-800wi"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygalaxy.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b8d202f928970c-800wi&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy" "\"6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b7c830ceb2970b-800wi\"")
!["91882main_craft1-browse"]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygalaxy.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8341bf7f753ef01bb091caa96970d-800wi&width=540&mix=d4e49-astronomy" "\"91882main_craft1-browse\"")