Metal Clouds

A bizarre class of exoplanets called hot super-Earths can appear particularly bright on sky surveys.

Astronomers had previously assumed that was because the light was reflecting off vast oceans of lava and glass on their surface, but a team of MIT scientists thinks the brightness comes from a totally-different but equally-weird phenomenon. Their research, published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal, suggests instead that the planets are so bright thanks to reflective clouds formed in a metal-rich atmosphere.

World Building

The lava ocean hypothesis was fairly well-accepted, but there was no experimental evidence to back it up. So the MIT team tried it out: They built miniatures of the exoplanets by melting rocks in the lab and seeing how bright the lava and glass was. The verdict? Not enough.

“We still have so much to understand about these lava-ocean planets,” MIT graduate student Zahra Essack who worked on the research, said in a press release. “We thought of them as just glowing balls of rock, but these planets may have complex systems of surface and atmospheric processes that are quite exotic, and not anything we’ve ever seen before.”

Creative Thinking

The experiment didn’t result in new proof for the metal-rich clouds. But it suggests that there has to be something else behind the exoplanets’ unusual luminosity, and the atmosphere seems like a good place to look.

“We’re not 100 percent sure what these planets are made of,” Essack said in the release, “so we’re narrowing the parameter space and guiding future studies toward all these other potential options.”

READ MORE: Lava oceans may not explain the brightness of some hot super-Earths [MIT]

More on exoplanets: Stunning Images Appear to Show a Planet Being Born

The post Super-Earth Exoplanets Could Have Bright-Shining Metallic Atmospheres appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Super-Earth Exoplanets Could Have Bright-Shining Metallic Atmospheres

Breaking Up

Scientists at CERN just saw the Higgs boson do something odd — as it decayed, it appeared to break down into an unexpected combination of particles.

This is the first time that they saw the Higgs boson — the particle believed to grant mass to other elementary particles ­— break down into a pair of muons, according to research shared this week at a high energy physics conference. The discovery further reinforces the Standard Model of physics, which has long been challenged by new particle discoveries.

Playing God

One of the best ways for physicists to study the Higgs boson is to observe how it dies. Typically, they’ve seen it decay into comparatively-heavy particles, but muons are far lighter and interact less with the field given off by the Higgs boson.

“[Our CERN team] is proud to have achieved this sensitivity to the decay of Higgs bosons to muons, and to show the first experimental evidence for this process,” CERN spokesperson Roberto Carlin said in a press release.

Next-Gen

Muons are second-generation particles. While atoms are made of first-generation particles like electrons, higher-generations only exist in high-energy environments — like a particle physics lab — and quickly decay. This is the first time scientists have seen the Higgs boson interact with any second-generation particles.

“The Higgs boson seems to interact also with second-generation particles in agreement with the prediction of the Standard Model, a result that will be further refined with the data we expect to collect in the next run,” Carlin said.

READ MORE: CERN experiments announce first indications of a rare Higgs boson process [CERN]

More on the Higgs boson: CERN Scientist on What Physicists Have Left to Discover After Higgs Boson

The post CERN Says the Higgs Boson Did Something Unexpected appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original:
CERN Says the Higgs Boson Did Something Unexpected

Walk With Spot

San Francisco-based startup Formant has developed tech that lets you remotely control a Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog from the comfort of your living room, CNET reports, right inside your browser. All you need is a stable internet connection.

The demonstration is mostly a way to showcase software that lets you control a variety of robots, from underwater drones to automated guided vehicles.

“Spot’s fantastic because it’s the first robot that can reliably navigate the world in a non-structured environment,” Jeff Linnell, CEO of Formant, told CNET.

Going for a Stroll

CNET reporter Lexy Savvides walked the robot dog from a mile away in her living room, using a PlayStation controller to steer it through a park in San Francisco. A human handler stayed by its side the entire time.

The robot dog went on sale for a cool $74,500 earlier this year and has been put to use at oil rigs, construction sites, and even hospitals during the ongoing pandemic.

To get a shot at controlling a robot dog for yourself, you’ll have to fill out a form on Formant’s website. The company is looking to test its software out on kids and others, who aren’t particularly into technology, according to CNET.

READ MORE: I walked Spot, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, remotely — and only crashed once [CNET]

More on Spot: Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog Is Going to Work on an Oil Rig

The post This Site Lets You Control an Actual Boston Dynamics Robodog With a PlayStation Controller appeared first on Futurism.

View original post here:
This Site Lets You Control an Actual Boston Dynamics Robodog With a PlayStation Controller

Russian officials claim to have developed a coronavirus vaccine that’s 100 percent effective, and officials say they’re trying it out on themselves and their family — but, worryingly, there’s no publicly-available evidence to suggest that it actually works.

Russia’s state-operated research facility, the Gamaleya Research Institute, says it’s ready for a phase 3 clinical trial that it wants to conduct on doctors and teachers, Quartz reports. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization (WHO) doesn’t seem to have data suggesting the experimental vaccine is that far along.

The Gamaleya Research Institute filed a small phase 1 study, but never published any results. Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, told a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates that the researchers want to begin a phase 3 trial in that country, but also that Russia wants to begin mass inoculation in September or October.

If the vaccine is approved for use — something CNN reports that the Gamaleya Institute hopes will happen by mid-August — Russia plans to distribute it to healthcare workers on the front lines.

Even if the vaccine flew through the earlier phases of clinical research, as Dmitriev claimed, a properly-conducted phase 3 clinical trial takes months.

WHO spokesperson Margaret Ann Harris told Quartz that the organization was aware that a Russian vaccine was entering phase 3, but didn’t elaborate on previous results or safety concerns.

But the lack of publicly available safety and efficacy data hasn’t stopped Russian officials from making extremely bold, questionable claims about the research.

“Based on Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials, we also show that 100 percent of about 100 people generated a very high level of antibodies,” Dmitriev told The National.

Dmitriev added that he and his parents already took the vaccine. Project director Alexander Ginsburg told CNN he injected himself with the vaccine as well.

The post Russian Officials Are Injecting Themselves With an Experimental COVID Vaccine appeared first on Futurism.

Read the rest here:
Russian Officials Are Injecting Themselves With an Experimental COVID Vaccine

Small But Mighty

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the electric car company is “highly likely” to produce a smaller version of its long-awaited Cybertruck for the European market, as Electrek reports.

When asked if there will be a smaller version for the EU on Twitter Tuesday morning, Musk responded “highly likely down the road.”

Scaled Down

One Twitter user suggested that “reducing width is more important than reducing length, at least when it comes to cities,” on Twitter, which Musk replied to with “true.”

The news comes after Tesla decided not to shrink the Cybertruck by three percent in May after Musk sat down with chief designer Franz von Holzhausen.

It’s still unclear how big a European Cybertruck will end up being — let alone if or when such a vehicle will ever roll off the lot.

Everything is Bigger in Texas

What is clear, as Electrek points out, is that the American pickup market dwarfs truck sales in Europe. Without a major market, it’s less likely Tesla will attempt to scale down the Cybertruck for the EU market.

“We’re really, fundamentally making this truck as a North American ass-kicker, basically,” Musk told Automotive News in an interview earlier this week. “The goal is to kick the most amount of ass possible with this truck.”

As of right now, over 200,000 people have signed up to reserve a Cybertruck, according to Musk — a number that may be subject to change, but still shows a healthy appetite for such a vehicle in the US.

READ MORE: Tesla is ‘highly likely’ to make smaller Cybertruck for Europe, says Elon Musk [Electrek]

More on the Cybertruck: Cybertruck Metal Can Be Etched, Heated Into a Rainbow

The post Elon Musk: “Highly Likely” Europe Will Get a Smaller Tesla Cybertruck appeared first on Futurism.

Follow this link:
Elon Musk: “Highly Likely” Europe Will Get a Smaller Tesla Cybertruck

Cosmic Acceptance

For cosmologist Katie Mack, understanding that the ways that the universe might die provides a sense of comfort and connection with everything around her.

Mack, a researcher at North Carolina State University, told BBC News that studying the ways the universe could theoretically end at any moment — or the distant future — gave her a strange sense of peace.

“There’s something about acknowledging the impermanence of existence that is just a little bit freeing,” Mack told BBC News.

All Connected

Mack argues that many people may feel that the universe is happening elsewhere. To them, everyday life isn’t really tethered to the goings-on of the cosmos.

“It kind-of made it personal, this idea that the whole universe has these processes going on all the time, but in principle they could happen to me: I’m in the universe, and I don’t have any protection from this stuff,” Mack told BBC News.

Mack added that with her new book, “The End of Everything,” she’s trying to “share that terror a little bit, which seems mean, but to help people have that more personal connection with what’s going on in the universe.”

Distant Future

Whether it’s heat death, vacuum decay, or any of the other theoretical ways that our universe could go bye-bye, Mack says that any of these scenarios are likely far into the future, if they happen at all.

“It’s probably not going to happen in the next, you know, trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years and so on,” Mack told BBC News. “But, technically, it could happen at any time.”

READ MORE: Katie Mack: ‘Knowing how the universe will end is freeing’ [BBC News]

More on the universe: A Complete Timeline of the Future of Our Universe

The post Physicist: Knowing How the Universe Will Die Comforts Me appeared first on Futurism.

Continue reading here:
Physicist: Knowing How the Universe Will Die Comforts Me

In a news conference, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley gave a first person account of what it’s like to come screaming back through the Earth’s atmosphere inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Behnken described the riveting events leading up to the splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, with up to four times the Earth’s gravitational force being exerted on their bodies.

“You can hear that rumble outside the vehicle,” he said. “And as the vehicle tries to control, you feel a little bit of that shimmy in your body.”

“It doesn’t sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all the puffs coming out of the thrusters and the atmosphere noise,” he added.

The NASA astronauts completed SpaceX and NASA’s Demo-2 mission on Sunday afternoon, marking the first time a for-profit group has successfully launched human astronauts into orbit inside a commercial spacecraft.

And it sounds like the mission went by without a hitch.

“We’re almost kind of speechless as far as how well the vehicle did and how well the mission went,” Hurley said during the conference.

Hurley said that he anticipated challenges with the vehicle during the mission, noting that there were plenty of issues with NASA’s retired Space Shuttle.

“The mission went just like the simulators, from start to finish, all the way,” he said. “There really were no surprises.”

Even while screaming through the atmosphere, “the vehicle was rock solid,” even when parachutes deployed.

Behnken described the separation events from the space capsule’s trunk section and parachute firings “very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat.”

“It was just a great relief at that point for both of us,” Behnken said referring to seeing water of the Atlantic splashing up against the water after landing.

“The pizza was waiting when we made it on board,” he added.

Hurley also addressed the fact that more than a dozen of private boaters showed up after splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico to greet the astronauts.

“We appreciate the folks wanting to participate in the event, but there are some safety aspects we’ll have to take a look at,” Hurley said. “It can’t happen like it did before.”

Hurley also addressed reports that the pair made prank calls while waiting inside the spacecraft.

“There was a real reason for it,” he said. “We wanted to get a test objective out of the way which was to call the core station at Hawthorne.”

But after being put on standby, the pair decided to call others as well.

“‘Hi this is Bob and Doug, we’re in the ocean,'” Hurley recalled saying. The pair also called their wives, who were together nearby.

Aside from several spacewalks, the pair had a fairly conventional stay on board the International Space Station — relatively speaking. Behnken gave an account how he told his son over the satellite phone, from on board the space station, how to take care of the family’s new puppy.

“To just share in that journey, that odyssey, that endeavor — as we named our ship — was just one of the true honors of my entire life,” Hurley said, noting the historical significance of the mission.

More on splashdown: Bored Inside Their Spacecraft, NASA Astronauts Made Prank Calls to Pass the Time

The post NASA Astronauts “Almost Speechless” At How Well SpaceX Crew Dragon Did appeared first on Futurism.

See more here:
NASA Astronauts “Almost Speechless” At How Well SpaceX Crew Dragon Did

And Now in HD

Yesterday evening at its testing facilities near Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX flew its gigantic SN5 Starship prototype to an impressive 500 feet.

And now, we get to watch the event not from a shaky camera set up miles away by onlookers — but in crispy high definition video, courtesy of SpaceX, recorded by drones surveying the incredible event and even inside the giant rocket itself.

Inside Look

The internal view even shows the self-stabilizing Raptor engine pumping out thrust by burning liquid methane and oxygen.

The video also shows side thrusters firing, ensuring that the water tower-like structure stays upright during flight.

Spider Legs

Towards the end of SpaceX’s video, Starship’s six stubby and telescopic legs can be seen swinging out from inside the chassis, ensuring the prototype can securely make its landing.

SpaceX has changed the design of the vehicle’s landing legs during development. Early versions, as shown in renders, resembled those found on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket boosters, extending from the rocket’s sides.

The leg design shown off in today’s video, however, differs greatly from Falcon 9’s, flipping down from attachment points inside Starship’s fuselage. They’re designed to allow landings on uneven ground — including the lunar and Martian surface.

“We’re working on new legs,” Musk wrote in a June tweet. “Wider stance & able to auto-level. Important for leaning into wind or landing on rocky & pitted surfaces.”

More on the launch: Incredible: Watch SpaceX Fly Full-Scale Starship Prototype to 500 Feet

The post Watch SpaceX’s Epic Starship Test Flight From Inside the Giant Rocket appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:
Watch SpaceX’s Epic Starship Test Flight From Inside the Giant Rocket

Lift-Off!

SpaceX has successfully flown its massive SN5 Starship prototype at its Boca Chica, Texas testing grounds to a planned height of 150 meters, or roughly 500 feet.

“Mars is looking real,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted in response to the news.

And it was quite the sight — a livestream showed the gigantic cylindrical stainless steel structure float up into the air, leaving a massive dust cloud behind. It then smoothly made its return journey downward.

“This looks simultaneously cool as hell and fucking ridiculous,” tweeted Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger.

LAUNCH! Starship SN5 has launched on a 150 meter test hop at SpaceX Boca Chica.

Under the power of Raptor SN27, SN5 has conducted what looks like a successful flight!

Listen to the SpaceXers cheer!

Mary (@BocaChicaGal) filming history!

Livestream: https://t.co/rUNxATy7VJ pic.twitter.com/p5UTRFd0gI

— Chris B – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) August 4, 2020

A Major Milestone

It’s a big milestone in SpaceX’s efforts to build a rocket capable of ferrying up to 100 passengers (or 100 tons of cargo) to the Moon and even Mars.

The massive fuel tank, the company’s sixth full-scale testing prototype, lifted off the ground, with only one of the company’s next-generation Raptor rocket engines roaring below.

Just so we're clear, SpaceX built a Mars rocket out of rolls of steel, in tents, in South Texas, in weeks. And the first time they flew it, it made a smooth launch, a controlled flight, and safely landed. This is truly remarkable.

— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) August 5, 2020

Despite today’s success, the SpaceX team still has a long way to go. The final version is designed to hold six Raptor engines and sport a massive nosecone on top. During today’s test, SN5 had a simulated payload mounted to the top of it to compensate for future payloads.

Long Time Coming

An earlier attempt on Monday had to be scrubbed. “Scrubbed for the day,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter yesterday from the Boca Chica control room. “A Raptor turbopump spin start valve didn’t open, triggering an automatic abort.”

The news comes after a series of preceding prototypes have crumpled like cans or exploded spectacularly in a giant fireball.

The SN5 prototype successfully completed a static fire test on July 30 leading up to today’s first hop.

A scaled-down version called “Starhopper” flew to 150 meters during a successful attempt in August 2019. “One day Starship will land on the rusty sands of Mars,” Musk quipped on Twitter at the time.

READ MORE: Prototype of SpaceX’s future Starship rocket flies short hop to 500 feet [The Verge]

More on Starship: SpaceX to Attempt First Full-Scale Starship Test Flight This Week

The post Incredible: Watch SpaceX Fly Full-Scale Starship Prototype to 500 Feet appeared first on Futurism.

Read more from the original source:
Incredible: Watch SpaceX Fly Full-Scale Starship Prototype to 500 Feet

Quantum Realm

A team of Chinese scientists put a new twist on the ancient game Go: They shrunk it down to the quantum scale.

In this new version, the classic black and white stones players use as game pieces were taken away and replaced by pairs of entangled photons, according to Phys.org. While the game is an unusual quantum experiment on its own, the researchers say that the work could herald a new era of quantum physics-based games.

The Rules

In a regular game of Go, players try to claim territory on a board and capture each other’s stones by surrounding them with their own. It’s an extremely complex game governed by extremely simple rules, which has made it a common target for AI researchers.

But in the quantum version, which is described in a paper shared on the preprint server ArXiv last month, the use of entangled photons introduces new layers of complexity and randomness.

Fake Out

The main difference between the two games is that now it matters whether an encircled photon is entangled with another or not. When a player places down two photons, they remain entangled until another photon is placed next to one of them. For as long as they’re entangled, neither photon can be captured.

And thanks to the tricky nature of quantum physics, a player won’t know whether a given photon is entangled with another until they try to capture it, adding a new element of chance and trickery that renders classic Go strategies useless.

READ MORE: Using entangled photons to play “quantum Go” [Phys.org]

More on Go: Human Go Champion Who Lost to AI Says Machines Cannot Be Defeated

The post Scientists Played a Game of Go at the Quantum Scale appeared first on Futurism.

View original post here:
Scientists Played a Game of Go at the Quantum Scale

Behold The Blanet

A team of scientists was studying how new exoplanets could form around black holes when they ran into a serious problem: figuring out what to call the class of theoretical worlds.

But fret not. They now have a name, ScienceAlert reports, and that dubious name is “blanet.”

Blanet Nine

The actual process, according to the Kagoshima University scientists behind the research submitted to The Astrophysical Journal for peer review last week, would be fairly similar to how regular planets form around stars, just under more extreme conditions.

As dust and gas whirl around a black hole, it could gradually clump together to form a new world — just so long as it’s far enough away to not get gobbled up by the black hole’s gravitational pull.

Blanet Of The Bapes

Though the processes of blanet and planet formation are fairly similar, the end results can be extremely different.

For instance, the research found that blanets could theoretically grow to be anywhere between 20 and 3,000 times more massive than Earth, which Science Alert notes is the highest possible mass a world can reach before it stops being a pla- sorry, a blanet, and is instead classified as a brown dwarf.

READ MORE: We Have Ploonets. We Have Moonmoons. Now Hold Onto Your Hats For… Blanets [Science Alert]

More on exoplanets: NASA Scientist Ponders Life on Planets Orbiting Black Holes

The post Astronomers Say That Planets Orbiting Black Holes Are Called “Blanets” appeared first on Futurism.

Read the rest here:
Astronomers Say That Planets Orbiting Black Holes Are Called “Blanets”

My Density

Astronomers have observed an unusual exoplanet, some 150 light-years from Earth, that’s far more dense for its size and age than thought possible. The discovery could force scientists to rethink how planets are formed.

The planet, dubbed K2-25b, orbits a young M dwarf star — the most common type of star in our galaxy — in the Hyades cluster, better known as the Taurus constellation. The planet orbits its star in just 3.5 Earth days.

And yet, scientists say, the planet packs 25 times the mass of Earth into a package smaller than Neptune, which has a diameter only about four times that of Earth. In other words, it’s really, really dense.

Chungus Planet

Conventional theories suggest that giant planets first form an ice-rock core of five to ten Earth masses, before shrouding themselves in a thick layer of gas, hundreds of times the mass of Earth, like Jupiter.

But K2-25b breaks this mold. “K2-25b is unusual,” Gudmundur Stefansson, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, and lead author of the paper, which was recently accepted into The Astronomical Journal, said in a statement. “The planet is dense for its size and age, in contrast to other young, sub-Neptune-sized planets that orbit close to their host star.”

“K2-25b, with the measurements in hand, seems to have a dense core, either rocky or water-rich, with a thin envelope,” he added.

Fair Diffuse

The discovery was made using highly sensitive telescopes that used an “Engineered Diffuser” — a $500 piece of equipment anybody can buy. This diffuser allows light from faraway stars to be spread over more pixels, giving observations more detail and precision.

In other words, thanks to the diffuser, smaller diameter telescopes can be used to make far more precise measurements of stars that otherwise would’ve required much larger telescopes.

READ MORE: Surprisingly dense exoplanet challenges planet formation theories [Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy]

More on dense stars: Star Blasts Own Planets Into Shattered Corpses, Devours Remains

The post Like Your First Quarantine Sourdough Attempt, This Exoplanet Is “Surprisingly Dense” appeared first on Futurism.

Read more here:
Like Your First Quarantine Sourdough Attempt, This Exoplanet Is “Surprisingly Dense”

Only two manmade objects have traveled beyond the far edges of the solar system: NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

Beyond the heliosphere, the bubble of space created by the Sun, lies the interstellar void of space between stellar systems in our galaxy.

For years, astronomers have suggested that the heliosphere is shaped like a comet, with a characteristically long tail that helps act like a shield that blocks incoming cosmic rays.

But according to new research, its shape could look far more peculiar than that: like a “deflated croissant,” according to a NASA statement. Less comet and more like a chewed up piece of gum, or maybe something vaguely biological from the movie “Annihilation.”

To construct the model, a team of astronomers took a closer look at data collected by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). The mission analyzed energetic neutral atoms as cosmic rays travel from the Sun and outwards towards the heliopause, the theoretical boundary past which solar winds can’t penetrate, some ten billion miles from Earth.

The team also considered data about charged particles being reflected towards the inner solar system, courtesy of NASA’s Cassini mission, as well as measurements from NASA’s New Horizons mission. Astronomers found that the further solar wind moved away from the Sun, it interacted with an increasing amount of material from interstellar space.

With all this data in hand, the team then got to work to come up with a 3D model of the heliosphere, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy in March.

The result looks far more peculiar than the elegant comet-like shape from conventional models. Two jets shoot out of the center of this “croissant,” caused by the solar magnetic field. The overall shape is far smaller, rounder, and narrower than the conventional model.

Knowing the shape of the heliosphere could prove to be helpful in figuring out whether other star systems could also be shielded by a similar bubble, and thereby harbor life. The heliosphere stops most galactic cosmic rays from penetrating through — the ones that get through can prove dangerous, particularly to astronauts.

Astronomers are hopeful that NASA’s upcoming Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) could shed more light on the actual shape of our solar system’s heliosphere. The probe, slated for launch in 2024, will attempt to measure how energetic particles behave and interact with solar wind.

READ MORE: Uncovering Our Solar System’s Shape [NASA]

More on the heliosphere: It’s Official: NASA Is Considering an Interstellar Mission

The post NASA Imaged the Bubble Around the Solar System and… Yikes appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
NASA Imaged the Bubble Around the Solar System and… Yikes

No Privacy

A group of 11 advocacy organizations, including Fight for the Future and Free Press Action, just signed a letter accusing Democratic Party leadership of throwing Americans’ online privacy under the bus by concealing potentially unauthorized mass surveillance by the FBI.

Specifically, the letter accuses party leaders including Congressman Adam Schiff and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of undermining negotiations to strengthen digital privacy and limit warrantless surveillance or browsing history seizures, Gizmodo reports. It suggests that federal law enforcement is continuing to conduct “dragnet” mass surveillance, even after the laws that allowed those practices expired.

Closed Doors

Particularly damning, Gizmodo reports, is the allegation that Schiff and Pelosi derailed closed-door negotiations among Democrats trying to stop warrantless surveillance in May.

Schiff, who’s the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, refused to back legislation that blocked Feds from accessing Americans’ internet activity without a warrant, claiming that it wouldn’t actually guarantee protection. Meanwhile, the advocacy groups behind the letter say it would have done its job just fine. The vote to approve the legislation ultimately failed.

Grace Period

The letter and Gizmodo’s reporting suggest that the FBI is continuing mass surveillance even though Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law that allowed it to do so, expired in March of this year. And members of Congress in the know, including Schiff, are allowing it to happen even without Congressional approval.

The letter says that Schiff’s statements suggest “the government may have secretly contorted the law to justify dragnet surveillance of the internet activity of people in the United States, regardless of their United States personhood.”

READ MORE: Adam Schiff Accused of Protecting a Suspected FBI Surveillance Dragnet [Gizmodo]

More on surveillance: The US Government Is Seizing Huge New Surveillance Powers

The post Democrats Accused of Letting Cops Access Americans’ Browsing Histories appeared first on Futurism.

More:
Democrats Accused of Letting Cops Access Americans’ Browsing Histories

One Expensive Doorstep

Mark Russell, the CEO of electric truck maker Nikola Motor Company, recently took aim at Elon Musk’s passion project, the Cybertruck — and he didn’t mince words about his most prominent competitor.

“A lot of people didn’t like the look of the Cybertruck, including me,” Russell told CNBC in a recent interview. “I think it looks like a doorstop, but they got lots of reservations for it, so more power to them.” Oh, the shade!

But credit where credit is due: Russell also revealed that his company was inspired by the Cybertruck to build its pickup truck competitor, the Badger.

“A year ago we didn’t believe we would be building a pickup truck,” he told CNBC. “We had built several off-road vehicle prototypes and had a concept for a pickup truck. We didn’t intend to do anything with it until we saw the Cybertruck.

The Badger

Nikola recently started taking reservations for the Badger, an electric pickup that can come with an optional hydrogen fuel cell for an extended range.

Nikola has risen to become a worthy competitor in recent months, at least in the eyes of investors. Share values for the Tesla competitor surged in June following a reverse merger, making it more valuable than both Ford and Fiat-Chrysler.

“Staggeringly Dumb”

Musk has been a vocal critic of hydrogen fuel cell technology in the past, striking up a feud between the two CEOs. “Fuel cells = fool sells,” Musk tweeted in June, mocking the carbon neutral fuel concept, adding that it’s “staggeringly dumb.”

The Cybertruck’s design was extremely divisive after it was first unveiled in November — and that’s not lost on Musk.

“If it turns out nobody wants to buy a weird-looking truck, we’ll build a normal truck, no problem,” Musk said on the “Daily Drive Podcast,” as reported by Teslarati on Monday.

READ MORE: Tesla Cybertruck gets shade from Nikola CEO: ‘I think it looks like a doorstop’ [Teslarati]

More on the feud: A Brief History of Elon Musk’s Festering Feud With Rival Automaker Nikola

The post Tesla Competitor Slams Cybertruck For Looking “Like a Doorstep” appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
Tesla Competitor Slams Cybertruck For Looking “Like a Doorstep”