Digging a Hole

Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, The Boring Company, has decided to host a fun competition, challenging the general public to dig a tunnel faster than a snail — one of the company’s own main goals.

The objective in the “Not-a-Boring Competition” is to come up with a tunneling solution that can dig a 30-meter (98 foot) tunnel with the equivalent opening of a circle with a .5 meter (19.7 inch) diameter.

Dig Faster

Prizes — the company has yet to reveal what they are — will be given out to teams that complete the tunnel in the quickest time and teams that dig with the most accuracy. The Boring Company will even send a tiny remote-controlled Tesla through the tunnel to test the driving surface.

The company is eyeing Spring 2021 to hold the event.

Tunnel to the Future

The Boring Company was first dreamed up by Musk to realize the dream of the Hyperloop, a futuristic mode of transport that involves shooting passenger pods through a vacuum tube.

As of right now, however, that dream has been downgraded to Tesla cars zipping through tunnels at considerable speeds.

So far, the company has shown off technology that could cut down the time and costs of digging tunnels for such a system considerably.

But demand has been sluggish. The company is only working on a handful of projects right now, including a tunnel system that connects various parts of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Inside those tunnels, autonomous electric vehicles will ferry up to 4,400 passengers per hour, at speeds of up to 249 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour), according to a May 2019 press release.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s Boring Company wants to hold its first tunneling competition [CNET]

More on The Boring Company: Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Didn’t Ask Homeowners Before Tunneling Under Them

The post Elon Musk’s Boring Company Announces Tunnel-Digging Contest appeared first on Futurism.

Continued here:
Elon Musk’s Boring Company Announces Tunnel-Digging Contest

When the coronavirus pandemic began, doctors quickly realized that the disease seemed to be hitting men harder — and killing them at higher rates — than it did women.

But even now, several months later, scientists still aren’t sure why that is, Wired reports. Researchers at Harvard’s GenderSci Lab are trying to get to the bottom of the complicated question, which was made even more difficult by the lack of standardized data and case reports about COVID-19.

“We began by just simply trying to look for the data, and we couldn’t find it,” Sarah Richardson, a history of science professor who runs the GenderSci lab, told Wired. “So we realized that we would have to assemble it on our own.”

That resulted in a data tracker, released last month, that breaks down coronavirus cases and fatalities in each U.S. state by sex. It also adjusts the rates by age to correct for each state’s varied demographics. With these new tools in hand, the team hopes they’ll be able to figure out which factors, whether they’re biological, cultural, environmental, or a combination of all three, are behind the disproportionate male death toll.

Scientists suspect estrogen may play a role in protecting against the coronavirus, but also that women may be more likely to have a doctor they see regularly than men — so the reason death rates vary by sex is likely far more complex than one isolated factor.

“Maybe there is some aspect of sex-linked biology playing into this, but it’s looking like it’s being swamped by contextual social factors,” Heather Shattuck-Heidorn, assistant director of the GenderSci Lab, told Wired. “The variability in death rates is immense.”

The post Scientists Still Don’t Know Why COVID-19 Hits Men and Women Differently appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post here:
Scientists Still Don’t Know Why COVID-19 Hits Men and Women Differently

Dusty Cloud

NASA just awarded substantial funding to Pioneer Astronautics, a company that claims it can gather up lunar regolith and turn it into usable oxygen.

Pioneer Astronautics is one of four companies to win funding through a newly-established Phase II round of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, TechCrunch reports. The company will split the total $17 million pot with three other firms ­— though the exact breakdown hasn’t been disclosed — because the space agency believes it could prove valuable to the fledgling Artemis program.

Space Alchemy

The plan — gathering up the Moon’s loose rocks and dust and abracadabra-ing some oxygen out of it — is less outlandish than it seems. Lunar regolith can be as deep as 15 meters in some regions of the Moon, and gasses like oxygen can get trapped down there amidst the rubble.

Pioneer Astronautics’ plan to extract and make use of that oxygen is still a difficult technological feat — hence the millions of dollars in funding — but there’s no actual wizardry involved.

Gas Bubble

This also isn’t Pioneer Astronautics’ first rodeo with NASA. The company has won several rounds of funding from the space agency, dating back to at least 2006 for its plan to scoop up Moon air.

At that point, NASA was interested in developing a supply of breathing air for astronauts, but a similar award in 2019 says the program could help provide oxides for batteries and launch vehicles. Either way, it poses a fascinating attempt to make lunar bases self-sustaining.

READ MORE: NASA injects $17M into four small companies with Artemis ambitions [TechCrunch]

More on Artemis: Congress Budget Denies NASA Full Funding for Moon Missions

The post NASA Pumps Funding Into Startup That Says It Can Harvest Oxygen From Lunar Regolith appeared first on Futurism.

See the article here:
NASA Pumps Funding Into Startup That Says It Can Harvest Oxygen From Lunar Regolith

Local Dialect

In science fiction, there’s something called a generation ship: a spacecraft that ferries humankind on a multiple-generation-long journey to brand new star systems or even galaxies.

The idea has also been touted here in the real world by those hell-bent on traversing the stars. But there’s a major problem with the concept, and we’re not talking about the countless generations doomed to be born and die for the sake of a mission they never agreed to — that’s a whole other thing. Rather, Universe Today points out that, if past is prelude, the language spoken on the ship would eventually evolve to the point that it seems incoherent back on Earth.

Lingua Astra

Language is a fluid, constantly evolving construct, where rules and conventions are gradually tossed out or updated, or even branched into new tongues. Assuming an interstellar journey takes ten generations, a linguistics study published in the journal Acta Futura in April concludes that the languages of Earth and the ship would drift so far apart that communication would become immensely difficult — perhaps even pointless.

“If you’re on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them,” University of Kansas linguistics professor Andrew McKenzie said in a press release.

Future History

McKenzie recommends reserving a few seats for linguistics experts — a translation algorithm, he thinks, could never keep up with the task of bridging the barrier for two independently-developing languages.

“There will be need for an informed linguistic policy on board that can be maintained without referring back to Earth-based regulations,” reads the paper.

READ MORE: Languages Will Change Significantly on Interstellar Flights [Universe Today]

More on interstellar travel: Scientists Are Planning a 1,000 Year Trip to Another Planet

The post On an Interstellar Flight, Language Itself Would Evolve appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original:
On an Interstellar Flight, Language Itself Would Evolve

Update: Kazakh officials are now pushing back against China’s claims — though questions remain. Here’s our latest story.

China’s embassy in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan has put out a statement warning of an “unknown pneumonia” that is reportedly even deadlier than the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the South China Morning Post reports.

“The death rate of this disease is much higher than the novel coronavirus,” read the warning to Chinese citizens in Kazakhstan, as quoted by the SCMP. “The country’s health departments are conducting comparative research into the pneumonia virus, but have yet to identify the virus.”

Pneumonia is an infection of either one or both lungs and is caused by either bacteria, viruses or fungi. The inflammation can make it difficult to breathe and in some extreme cases can be life-threatening.

The statement doesn’t include any details and doesn’t elaborate on the nature of the virus. COVID-19 has also been shown to cause severe pneumonia in both lungs for some patients.

Local media have been reporting a worrying uptick in pneumonia cases in a number of Kazakh cities since mid-June, as the SCMP reports, with as many as 500 reported patients across three locations, 30 of whom are in critical condition. Officials and the media in Kazakhstan, according to the SCMP, are saying the cases are just regular pneumonia.

Reported pneumonia deaths in June account for over a third of pneumonia deaths in the country since the beginning of the year, according to the embassy’s statement.

Kazakhstan hasn’t been immune to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. A state of emergency was declared in mid-March, with lockdowns lifted in mid-May. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned of a second wave this week on a televised address.

There have been over 250 COVID-19 deaths in the country of roughly 18 million residents so far, with just shy of 50,000 reported cases.

The post China Says There’s a New Disease That’s Even Deadlier Than COVID [UPDATED] appeared first on Futurism.

Excerpt from:
China Says There’s a New Disease That’s Even Deadlier Than COVID [UPDATED]

Air Bell

According to a new study by an international team of researchers, the Earth’s entire atmosphere vibrates much like a ringing bell — a low-pitched fundamental tone alongside higher-pitched “overtones.”

The discovery could help scientists better predict weather patterns and understand the makeup of our atmosphere.

“This finally resolves a longstanding and classic issue in atmospheric science, but it also opens a new avenue of research to understand both the processes that excite the waves and the processes that act to damp the waves,” co-author Kevin Hamilton, a professor at the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii, said in a statement.

Atmo Reso

The atmospheric resonances were first proposed at the beginning of the 19th century by French physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace, whose dynamic theory of ocean tides has since allowed scientists to predict deformations in a planet’s atmosphere.

The tones, according to Hamilton and his collaborators, are created by massive pressure waves that travel around the globe. Each wave corresponds to each of these different resonant frequencies.

“Our identification of so many modes in real data shows that the atmosphere is indeed ringing like a bell,” Hamilton said.

Wave Modes

The new study includes a detailed analysis of pressure observations spanning 38 years. The researchers found dozens of separate waves circling the Earth in a checkerboard pattern.

“For these rapidly moving wave modes, our observed frequencies and global patterns match those theoretically predicted very well,” lead author Takatoshi Sakazaki, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Science, said in the statement. “It is exciting to see the vision of Laplace and other pioneering physicists so completely validated after two centuries.”

READ MORE: New study detects ringing of the global atmosphere [University of Hawaii at Manoa]

More on Earth’s atmosphere: New Research: Earth’s Atmosphere Extends Well Beyond the Moon

The post Scientists Detect “Ringing” in the Earth’s Atmosphere appeared first on Futurism.

Here is the original post:
Scientists Detect “Ringing” in the Earth’s Atmosphere

Static Fire

SpaceX is planning the first test flight of its Starship prototype as soon as next week, Teslarati reports — if a Raptor rocket engine test slated for earlier in the week goes according to plan.

Workers are currently installing a Raptor engine on the prototype in question, SN5, in preparation for a rehearsal static fire test on Monday.

That’s according to recent road closure filings around the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, testing facilities, which describe a 150-meter launch of the prototype.

That initial test flight’s date is still subject to change, and SpaceX has yet to directly confirm the plans. The event also depends on the success of the Raptor engine static fire test. “Surely too soon?” commented NASA Spaceflight reporter Michael Baylor on Twitter.

Simulating Mass

A video uploaded to YouTube by NASA Spaceflight on Thursday showed SpaceX mounting a “mass simulator” on top of the SN5 prototype, likely an effort to simulate a payload during proceeding test flights.

A remaining question, as Teslarati points out, is that SpaceX has yet to test Starship’s mysterious landing legs, which differ greatly from the company’s tried-and-true Falcon 9 design.

The legs retract to the inside of the engine section rather than outside, as a visualized approximation in April showed. The sleek animation was later confirmed to be “very close” to what SpaceX is working on, according to Musk.

A lot can go wrong during testing, as we’ve seen with a number of preceding Starship prototypes — and that means we should expect further delays as well.

READ MORE: SpaceX’s first Starship flight (re)scheduled for next week [Teslarati]

More on Starship: Here’s How Many Shipping Containers You Could Fit Inside SpaceX’s Starship

The post SpaceX Is Planning Starship’s First Test Flight for Next Week appeared first on Futurism.

Originally posted here:
SpaceX Is Planning Starship’s First Test Flight for Next Week

According to an alarming statement by China’s embassy in Kazakhstan this week, a deadly “unknown pneumonia” is spreading in the country of 18 million people — with a mortality rate “much higher than the novel coronavirus.”

Unsurprisingly, the ominous news quickly spread worldwide.

But now Kazakh officials are firing back. A Facebook post by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health shows a screenshot of the SCMP article that broke the story, with the words “FAKE NEWS” stamped in red over the top.

“In response to these reports, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially declares that this information does not correspond to reality,” the statement read.

Specifically, CNN reports, Kazakh officials say they have been using an “unspecified” category to mark cases in which COVID-19 has been diagnosed by a medical professional, but which haven’t been confirmed by a laboratory test — a practice they say was adopted in response to World Health Organization guidelines.

In other words, the spike in pneumonia deaths in the country could end up being chalked up to a statistical quirk of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, rather than a new disease.

Confusingly, though, the Kazakh officials also acknowledged the existence of “viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology.”

For their part, Chinese officials seem confused by the update.

“We would also like to get more information,” a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters on Friday, as quoted by CNN. “China hopes to work together with Kazakhstan to fight the epidemic and to safeguard the two countries’ public health security.”

That’s a step back from the country’s verbiage yesterday, but only slightly.

“The country’s health departments are conducting comparative research into the pneumonia virus, but have yet to identify the virus,” read the warning to Chinese citizens in Kazakhstan on Thursday, as quoted by the South China Morning Post.

The statement pointed at peaking numbers of pneumonia-related deaths in three different Kazakh cities since mid-June. Registered cases of pneumonia in the country rose by a whopping 300 percent in June compared to June 2019, according to a Thursday briefing by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health.

To date, Kazakhstan has over 53,000 registered cases of COVID-19 and 264 deaths.

The post Kazakhstan Denies China’s Claim of Disease Deadlier Than COVID-19 appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:
Kazakhstan Denies China’s Claim of Disease Deadlier Than COVID-19

Lord of the Rings

Astronomers have found four distant, ring-shaped objects in space they say are unlike anything observed previously.

The rings, which Live Science likened to floating islands, have been temporarily named named “odd radio circles,” or ORCs, because they look like brightly glowing discs when viewed at radio wavelengths. Scientists can’t tell what they are, or even how far away they are from us, but they’re starting to explore some new hunches.

Orc Fortress

The ORCs are undetectable at infrared, x-ray, and the visible light spectrums, but were spotted at radio frequencies through a project called the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU), according to preprint research shared online last month.

“This is a really nice indication of the shape of things to come in radio astronomy in the next couple of years,” Kristine Spekkens, a Royal Military College of Canada astronomer who didn’t work on the study, told Live Science. “History shows us that when we open up a new [avenue of looking at] space to explore… we always find new and exciting things.”

Some Guesswork

The next step will be figuring out what these ORCs actually are — the astronomers behind the study have already ruled out supernovae, star formation, planetary nebulas, or gravitational lensing effects, Live Science reports.

Because visible galaxies are sitting in the center of two of the ORCs like a distant bullseye, the researchers think the bizarre rings could be shockwaves linked to some sort of galactic event. But right now, Live Science reports, any potential explanation is just an educated guess.

READ MORE: 4 mysterious objects spotted in deep space are unlike anything ever seen [Live Science]

More on space: Scientists Ponder Gory Mayhem of Zero-Gravity Surgery

The post Astronomers Baffled by Mysterious Ring-Shaped Objects in Deep Space appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
Astronomers Baffled by Mysterious Ring-Shaped Objects in Deep Space

Astronomers have created a 3D map of a cosmic structure so gigantic that it’s almost impossible to even comprehend.

The “South Pole Wall” is a flabbergasting 1.4 billion light years across and contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies, Live Science reports. That puts it on par with the Sloan Great Wall, the sixth largest cosmic structure ever discovered at 1.38 billion light-years across.

“The surprise for us is that this structure is as big as the Sloan Great Wall and twice as close, and remained unnoticed, being hidden in an obscured sector of the southern sky,” Daniel Pomarède from Paris-Saclay University and lead author of a paper about the research published in The Astrophysical Journal today, told The New York Times in an email.

“The discovery is a wonderful poster child for the power of visualizations in research,” co-lead Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii, told the Times.

To create their map of the South Pole Wall, the cosmographers had to use new sky surveys to peek past the “Zone of Galactic Obscuration,” an area in the southern part of the observable universe that’s obscured by the comparatively bright Milky Way.

The new research builds on a 2014 discovery by the same team of cosmographers of a supercluster of galaxies — with the Milky Way being one of approximately 100,000 galaxies contained within — called “Laniakea.”

To put the size of the South Pole Wall into perspective, our own Milky Way galaxy is a mere 52,850 light years across.

Counted in miles, the distance of the South Pole Wall end-to-end would end up have 21 zeroes attached to it. Estimates put the number of grains of sand on Earth at just 7.5 quintillion (18 zeros).

These gigantic structures are made up of countless clumps called “cosmic webs” floating inside enormous clouds of hydrogen gas. Outside these larger structures, there’s not a whole lot of stuff, as far as we know.

To make the discovery, the team came up with a new technique to measure the dizzying size of the South Pole Wall, which takes into account the velocity of galaxies as they exert gravitational forces on each other.

This new technique was even able to take dark matter into consideration, the mysterious stuff believed to make up approximately 85 percent of the matter in the universe. While dark matter remains a mystery, astronomers suggest it could be the scaffolding that determines the shape of these cosmic structures.

As of right now, the largest cosmic structure ever discovered is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which spans 10 billion light-years. Even then, the Wall accounts for only a tenth the size of the observable universe, which spans about 93 billion light years.

READ MORE: Astronomers discover South Pole Wall, a gigantic structure stretching 1.4 billion light-years across [Live Science]

More on super structures: Strange Theory: Entire Universe Structured by “Quantum Static”

The post Astronomers Discover Deep-Space “Structure,” 1.4 Billion Light Years Across appeared first on Futurism.

See more here:
Astronomers Discover Deep-Space “Structure,” 1.4 Billion Light Years Across

August 28

Elon Musk has announced that the mysterious computer-brain interface startup Neuralink, which he co-founded, will release an update on its progress on August 28.

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Musk wrote, referring to his greater ambitions to make sure humanity can keep up with advanced AI. “Neuralink mission statement.”

Skull Lasers

Context suggests that this could be a major reveal.

During a July 2019 livestream event, Neuralink announced details about its efforts to connect the human brain to computers. The idea is to implant flexible threads of electrodes into the brain, where they can pick up signals from neurons. These signals are then wirelessly transmitted to a computer nearby.

To implant these electrodes, Neuralink is planning to shoot tiny holes in the skull with lasers.

In a chat with Joe Rogan back in May, Musk claimed that “we may be able to implant a neural link in less than a year in a person I think.”

Still, it’s unclear exactly what Neuralink has been working on. In February, Musk promised that the upcoming version of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface device will be “awesome.”

AI Symbiosis

Earlier versions, Musk has said, will likely be aimed at restoring brain functionality for those with serious neurological disorders.

Later versions, if Musk has anything to do with it, will likely have far greater ambitions, including the concept of enhancing human cognition and “symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”

READ MORE: Elon Musk sets update on brain-computer interface company Neuralink for August 28 [TechCrunch]

More on Neuralink: Elon Musk: Neuralink Will Do Human Brain Implant in “Less Than a Year”

The post Elon Musk Teases Major Neuralink Reveal appeared first on Futurism.

Follow this link:
Elon Musk Teases Major Neuralink Reveal

Is there a ninth planet lurking beyond the orbit of Neptune?

Astronomers have been observing strange gravitational patterns of a cluster of bodies known as “trans-Neptunian objects,” or TNOs, that could be explained by the presence of  massive ninth planet in our solar system. The hypothetical planet, dubbed “Planet Nine,” would orbit our star at hundreds of times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

It’s been a contentious topic, with some writing off the odd behavior of TNOs as being caused by a cluster of much smaller space rocks. Others predict that such a planet would be five times the mass of the Earth, orbiting our star at about 400 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun.

Finally, there’s the possibility that Planet Nine is actually a teeny-tiny black hole left over from the Big Bang. So tiny, in fact, that it’d only measure about five centimeters across — basically impossible to see with any kind of telescope.

“There has been a great deal of speculation concerning alternative explanations for the anomalous orbits observed in the outer solar system,” explained Amir Siraj, a Harvard undergraduate student, in a statement. “One of the ideas put forth was the possibility that Planet Nine could be a grapefruit-sized black hole with a mass of five to 10 times that of the Earth.”

So which is it then? In a new paper accepted into the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Siraj, alongside a team of astronomers from Harvard University and the Black Hole Initiative outlined a newly developed method that could hopefully answer that question once and or all.

Their plan is to look for accretion flares given off as the tiny black hole gobbles up matter surrounding it. If they find some, it’d mean that Planet Nine is actually a black hole. “In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole,” Siraj said.

“Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment,” added Avi Loeb, professor of science at Harvard who was also involved in the research.

The team is placing their bets on the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission taking place at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Astronomers involved in the mission are hoping to answer questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter as well as the formation and properties of planets in our solar system.

“LSST has a wide field of view, covering the entire sky again and again, and searching for transient flares,” Loeb said. “Other telescopes are good at pointing at a known target, but we do not know exactly where to look for Planet Nine. We only know the broad region in which it may reside.”

According to Loeb, the LSST’s “unprecedented depth” will be able to spot even the smallest of flares.

It’s not the only attempt to uncover the mysteries behind Planet Nine. Most recently, a different team of astronomers announced it’s hoping to launch a fleet of thousands of “nanospacecraft” to search for the mysterious object.

Unfortunately, that vision is still a moonshot, with cost estimates breaking the $1 billion mark — that is, if it’s even feasible from a technological standpoint in the first place.

READ MORE: Scientists propose plan to determine if Planet Nine is a primordial black hole [Harvard]

More on Planet Nine: A Black Hole May Be Orbiting Our Sun. This Guy Wants to Find It.

The post Astronomers Want to Figure Out What the Hell Planet Nine Is Once and For All appeared first on Futurism.

Here is the original post:
Astronomers Want to Figure Out What the Hell Planet Nine Is Once and For All

It has been two months since Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief infectious disease expert at the White House, has been able to brief President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic.

In fact, Fauci says, the two haven’t even spoken to each other in a month.

Fauci told Financial Times in a dark, revealing interview that he last saw Trump on June 2. Lately, he’s had to merely pass messages along to the President. And while he’s “sure” the messages reach Trump’s desk, the President clearly isn’t heeding his warnings, as the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. continues to get worse.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have a serious ongoing problem, right now, as we speak,” Fauci told Financial Times. “What worries me is the slope of the curve. It still looks like it’s exponential.”

Part of the reason things have gotten so bad, Fauci explained in the interview, is that states lifted restrictions or allowed businesses to open before the coronavirus had become manageable in the area.

“I think we have to realize that some states jumped ahead of themselves,” Fauci said. “Other states did it correctly.”

But while Trump has urged states to reopen, is currently pushing for schools to resume in-person classes in the Fall, and otherwise flouted Fauci’s repeated warnings to government leaders, Fauci deflected when asked if Trump was “wrong.”

Instead, Fauci just said that’s the “famous question.”

The post Dr. Fauci Says Trump Hasn’t Talked to Him in a Month appeared first on Futurism.

See the rest here:
Dr. Fauci Says Trump Hasn’t Talked to Him in a Month