Multiple pharmaceutical companies have taken huge U.S. government grants to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 but some still plan to sell the vaccines for a profit once theyre ready.

AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna all took funding from the federal government in hopes of developing a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus, The New York Times reports. But Moderna which received $483 million in government funding and Pfizer, which didnt take government funds, said that they still expect to profit off the final product.

We will not sell it at cost, Moderna president Stephen Hodge said at a Tuesday Congressional hearing, according to the NYT.

At the same hearing, Pfizer Chief Business Officer John Young also made a vague statement about finding an appropriate, affordable price for the companys vaccine, but also clarified that the company would be making a profit.

No matter what Pfizer and Moderna end up deciding is an appropriate price, the NYT reports that lawmakers at the hearing were concerned that a for-profit system for coronavirus vaccines wouldbe too costly for too many people who need the shot.

I dont want to look back, and then have health equity be an afterthought, California Representative Dr. Raul Ruiz said. It has to be prioritized.

An effective coronavirus vaccine is considered a necessary preventative measure for restoring a semblance of normal life. If pharmaceutical companies are seeking to profit off of them, then they could be priced out of the hands of the people that need this most, Ruiz said.

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A new series of fascinating supercomputer-rendered animations put together by a team of researchers at Durham University show what would happen to an Earth-like planet with a thin atmosphere if it collided with another object.

The research could shed new light on how planets including our own Earth may have evolved during the early days of our solar system.

Space.coms Steve Spaleta combined the animations together into a killer video with epic accompanying music.

We know that planetary collisions can have a dramatic effect on a planets atmosphere, but this is the first time weve been able to study the wide varieties of these violent events in detail, said Jacob Kegerreis, a researcher at Durham University and lead author of a paper about the research published in the Astrophysical Journal last week, in a statement.

The simulations could help evaluate several hypotheses we have about the early evolution of nearby planets. In particular,its relevant to the prevailing theory that the formation of the Moon came about when planet about the size of Mars impacted with the Earth several billion years ago.

By analyzing the new simulations, the researchers found that a grazing impact, like the one hypothesized to have formed the Moon, led to much less atmosphere loss compared to a head-on collision.

A direct hit wouldve led to a complete obliteration of the atmosphere, taking some of the mantle with it. The findings indicate that the Earth probably only lost somewhere between ten and 50 percent of its atmosphere, depending on the kind of impact.

In spite of the remarkably diverse consequences that can come from different impact angles and speeds, weve found a simple way to predict how much atmosphere would be lost, Kegerreis said. This lays the groundwork to be able to predict the atmospheric erosion from any giant impact, which would feed in to models of planet formation as a whole.

This in turn will help us to understand both the Earths history as a habitable planet and the evolution of exoplanets around other stars, he added.

READ MORE: Supercomputer reveals atmospheric impact of gigantic planetary collisions [Durham University]

More on planetary collisions: New Theory: Life on Earth Came From Impact With Another Planet

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Watch These Brutal Simulations of Apocalyptic Planetary Collisions - Futurism

Nuka-Nepta

New research suggests that astronomers may have been entirely wrong about a class of exoplanets that they call mini-Neptunes.

These worlds, which were thought to be smaller versions just 2.4 Earth radii across of gas giants like Neptune, may actually be rocky exoplanets covered by thick, deeply-irradiated oceans, according to research by scientists at the Laboratoire dAstrophysique de Marseille. The study, published last month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, threatens to break down the barriers between two classes of exoplanets that astronomers previously thought were totally separate.

Studying exoplanets tends to involve a little bit of trickery. Researchers use various imaging techniques to figure out things like a worlds density, chemical composition, and whether it has an atmosphere. In the case of mini-Neptunes, most had assumed that their low density and mass meant they were coated in a thick, gassy atmosphere.

Instead, according to the study, some may have oceans of highly pressurized and heated supercritical liquid thats been irradiated by a powerful greenhouse effect. The ocean, just like a gas giants atmosphere, could account for the low density and mass of the exoplanets.

A separate study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics found that the same irradiated oceans could also exist on slightly-smaller, rocky super-Earth exoplanets, as their environments are capable of the same powerful greenhouse effect as the mini-Neptunes.

Much of their calculations still need to be tested and verified through more observations of exoplanets. But if it holds up, the findings suggest that the various worlds out there could be a lot more similar than we thought.

READ MORE: Could mini-Neptunes be irradiated ocean planets? [CNRS]

More on exoplanets: Astronomers Discover Intriguing, Extremely Earth-Like Exoplanet

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"Mini-Neptune" Exoplanets May Actually Be Covered in Radioactive Oceans - Futurism

Locked Up

Earlier this month, the code management platform GitHub sealed away its archive of open source software in an Arctic vault so deep that they say it could survive a nuclear blast.

The mildly-outlandish idea behind the move, Engadget reports, is to give a boost to future generations after a hypothetical civilization-ending catastrophe. Should that happen, whatever civilization emerges from the ashes wont have to start from scratch and could instead tap the knowledge of modern-day coders and engineers.

Its been almost a year since GitHub announced its plan to store the code in the Arctic World Archive, an abandoned Norwegian coal mine protected by hundreds of meters of permafrost. The cache is stored on a type of microfilm that can be read with a physical magnifying glass.

Also sealed in the same mine are Vatican records, movies, and a vast array of other digital archives. And theyre in good company: The Doomsday Seed Vault is located on the same island of Spitsbergen.

Its difficult to imagine a societal catastrophe thats just cataclysmic enough that the most pressing need for a new society is to recover lost software. But it doesnt hurt to have a copy backed up just in case.

Still, as Engadget reports, the most obvious benefit for archiving the open-source software may be for the developers involved: Anyone who contributed to a project that made its way into the Arctic World Archive gets to display a little badge next to their username on GitHub.

READ MORE: GitHub is done depositing its open source codes in the Arctic [Engadget]

More on arctic vaults: The Melting Arctic Is Releasing Poison, Disease and Nuclear Waste

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GitHub Just Sealed All Its Open Source Code in an Apocalypse-Proof Vault - Futurism

Black Box

Uber drivers in the UK are suing the company in a desperate bid to learn more about the ride-hailing apps algorithm, which governs their lives and income.

The core argument of the lawsuit, Business Insider reports, is that the companys decision to withhold personal data about drivers prevents them from understanding how the algorithm assigns them jobs and therefore impacts their livelihood. If it works, it could be a major win for gig-economy contractors trying to assert control over their work.

The App Drivers and Couriers Union, which is suing Uber on behalf of the drivers, argued that Uber violates GDPR when it tracks and monitors drivers by gathering data like late arrivals, cancellation records, and passenger complaints, according to BI.

Because the drivers cant access that data and arent told how its fed into the algorithm that decides their future ride assignments, the union claims that Uber is violating their digital privacy.

If the lawsuit succeeds and Uber drivers gain access to their records, it could set a lasting precedent for other gig workers who essentially report to and are managed by algorithms, BI reports.

With more power and authority granted to drivers, who Uber has repeatedly argued in court should not be considered employees, gig workers around the world could get a more important seat at the table.

READ MORE: Uber drivers are suing the company to better understand how they are managed by algorithms [Business Insider]

More on Uber: Uber Says Rides During Party Hours Are Keeping it Afloat

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Uber Drivers Are Suing to Learn How the Company's Algorithm Works - Futurism

The long-term effects that microgravity — the almost-total weightlessness experienced during near-Earth space travel — have on the human body are still largely unknown.

But scientists do have some bad news about what microgravity does to other living things. Ominously, it can make bacteria both more lethal and more resistant to antibiotics, University of Adelaide PhD student Vikrant Minhas wrote in The Conversation.

On top of that, bacteria brought to space were able to quickly mutate and adapt to their surroundings, nixing hope that dangerous pathogens might die off in the extreme conditions of space travel. The cells become smaller, Minhas writes, but also more numerous.

Questions remain about how bacteria might fare in microgravity versus true zero-gravity conditions. Scientists haven’t sorted out whether the changes are due to a specific, quantifiable change in gravitational pull or weightlessness in general. But they have figured out what changes are happening.

The trouble comes from bacteria’s ability to grow a biofilm — densely-packed colonies that stick to one another and to other surfaces — when subjected to microgravity, Minhas writes.

These biofilms that make the bacteria contained within more infectious while also protecting them from antibiotic treatments. And even more troubling for space travelers: The film can glom onto equipment or spacecraft controls and gradually degrade them.

This, Minhas writes, was a problem for the Mir Space Station: Bacterial colonies grew on a number of controls and instruments and threatened widespread malfunction.

“All of this has serious implications, especially when it comes to long-haul space flights where gravity would not be present,” Minhas writes. “Experiencing a bacterial infection that cannot be treated in these circumstances would be catastrophic.”

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Oh Great: Space Travel Makes Bacteria Even Deadlier

Researchers have found evidence of gigantic waves of sand, often referred to as “megaripples,” slowly moving around on the surface of Mars, as Science reports.

Megaripples aren’t unique to Mars; they can be found in deserts back here on Earth as well. But the Red Planet’s colossal sand dunes, believed to have formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, could be a sign that winds on Mars are even stronger than previously believed.

In a paper published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the team suggests that megaripples may be migrating thanks to small grains of sand knocking into larger grains, dragging them into motion.

The new research goes against current atmospheric models that largely suggest winds couldn’t be strong on Mars enough to move these mega sand structures. In other words, a thin atmosphere may allow for surprisingly strong winds.

Using images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the international team of scientists had a closer look. By focusing on two sites near the Martian equator, they analyzed a total of 1,100 megaripples.

Scientists previously believed that these megaripples on the Red Planet were first formed a long time ago, when a thicker atmosphere allowed for much heavier winds, and were now stationary.

But to their astonishment, they found that the megaripples do in fact appear to move — albeit at the slow pace of roughly 10 centimeters per Earth year. According to Science, that’s about as fast as megaripples in the Lut Desert in Iran.

The surprising takeaway: Winds could be strong enough after all, despite the thin Martian atmosphere. “A past climate with a denser atmosphere is not necessary to explain their accumulation and migration,” the team concluded in their paper.

And that’s bad news for future astronauts visiting the Red Planet, as windy conditions could end up messing with habitats and solar panels.

Nonetheless, it’s an astonishing new discovery about our planetary neighbor.

“We can now measure processes on the surface of another planet that are just a couple times faster than our hair grows,” Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who was not involved in the study, told Science.

READ MORE: Giant waves of sand are moving on Mars [Science]

More on Mars: NASA’s Next Rover Will Bring First-Ever Microphone to Mars

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Astronomers Say “Megaripples” Are Moving Across the Surface of Mars

Corrosive Evidence

The aviation industry is experiencing a massive drop in demand during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. That means thousands of commercial airliners are being put in storage, patiently waiting to take to the skies again — that is, if we’re ever willing to get in a plane again.

Having the jets grounded for so long may turn into a significant safety issue in the future, NPR reports. In a Thursday emergency air worthiness directive, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the inspections of 2,000 Boeing 737 airplanes — out of concern that disuse could cause their engine valves to corrode faster, possibly resulting in engine failure.

Just in. The FAA has issued an emergency airworthiness directive to all airlines who fly Boeing 737s. It says jets that have been in storage during the pandemic could have their engines suddenly fail. The FAA is ordering inspections after four incidents. pic.twitter.com/vVoA2j9tyT

— Pete Muntean (@petemuntean) July 24, 2020

Stuck Valves

Inspectors have already found evidence of corrosion on some of the valves. In a worst case scenario, that corrosion could lead to the valves getting stuck open and causing both engines to loser power — and even prevent them from restarting, according to the FAA’s directive.

“With airplanes being stored or used infrequently due to lower demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, the valve can be more susceptible to corrosion,” Boeing explained in a statement to NPR.

The issue is reportedly not related to Boeing’s 737 Max line of aircraft, which were involved in two deadly crashes in late 2018 and early 2019.

READ MORE: FAA Orders Thousands Of Boeing 737s To Undergo Emergency Inspections [NPR]

More on Boeing: Boeing Officially Halts Production of 737 Max Airliner

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FAA Warns That After Pandemic, Long-Grounded Jets Could Experience Engine Failure

It seems like more and more people are discovering the benefits that CBD oil can bring to the human body and mind. If you’ve been looking for a way to try it for yourself but haven’t been able to decide on the right product, these two single-serving CBD shots from B GREAT are a great place to start. The Relax Shot is designed to help you relax in order to get the rest you need, while the Focus shot is intended to help you stay alert and productive for hours.

If you regularly find yourself too wired to unwind at the end of the day, the B GREAT Relax Shot is a great way to bring yourself down to a more restful state. Intended as a gentle treatment for occasional sleeplessness, the passion fruit-flavored drink blends 20 mg of full-spectrum hemp with ingredients like Melatonin, Gingko Biloba, and Lavender Water, all of which work together to quiet your brain down and help you rest.

You can take either a half or a whole bottle just before bed and see if you don’t notice an easier and more relaxing transition into an all-natural good night’s sleep. Relax CBD Shots comes in boxes of 12 at $55 per box.

B GREAT Relax CBD Shots: 12 for $55

But there are also times when relaxation is the last thing you need. Specifically, the stereotypical “3 PM slump,” when all your body seems to want is a quick nap. When the nap isn’t an option, there are B GREAT Focus CBD Shots (also passion fruit flavored), which have 15 mg of full-spectrum hemp plus Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, ginseng root, and a little bit of caffeine, all with the aim of supporting your body’s ability to focus for hours at a time. It works without the jittery side-effects you can get from traditional and sugary energy drinks. Just take half a bottle for a “moderate energy” boost, and a whole bottle for the maximum, whenever you need it most during the day. The Focus Shot is priced identically to Relax Shot, at $55 per 12-bottle box.

B GREAT Focus CBD: 12 for $55

Both the Relax Shot and Focus Shot from B GREAT are made with 100-percent full-spectrum hemp sourced from within the USA. Each batch is lab-tested by an independent third party for quality and consistency, with no GMOs and no pesticides. And for anyone concerned about certain dietary restrictions, they’re both certified vegan and kosher. One of the key words behind the B GREAT business is “Traceability,” which means that you can find a batch number on every B GREAT label, which you can in turn use to track down the certificate of analysis for that individual product and see all the exact ingredients used to make it.

So if you’re looking for a better, more natural way to wind down at the end of the day, get a box of B GREAT Relax Shots for $55 from the B GREAT online store. And if a midday pick-me-up is more what you need, pick up a box of B GREAT Focus Shots for the same price.

This supplement has not been evaluated by the FDA, and is not intended to cure or treat any ailments. Do not take CBD products if you are allergic to any of the ingredients in the product you are consuming. Tell your doctor about all medicines you may be on before consuming CBD to avoid negative reactions. Tell your doctor about all medical conditions. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal products. Other side effects of CBD include: dry mouth, cloudy thoughts, and wakefulness. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of any drugs to the FDA. Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

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These Specialty CBD Shots Provide a Productive Day’s Work and a Productive Night’s Sleep

Tianwen-1

China has successfully launched its Tianwen-1 — roughly translated as “Heavenly Questions” — mission to Mars. The spacecraft, which is intended to hunt for life on the Red Planet, includes an orbiter, lander, and a rover.

A Long March 5 rocket took off from China’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site early Thursday morning local time, kicking off the country’s first mission to the Red Planet since its first failed attempt in 2011. It’s only the fourth time a Long March 5 rocket of this kind, a gigantic heavy lift launch system, has successfully made it off Earth, according to The Verge.

Long Commute

The mission is expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021.

China now has the chance to become only the second country in the world, after the US, to land a functional robotic spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Other attempts by Europe and the Soviet Union have had only limited success. Both of Europe’s attempts failed, while the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 spacecraft managed to land in 1971 — but failed less than two minutes after landing.

NASA has had substantially more success, having sent four robotic vehicles to the Martian surface to date.

Looking for Life

If the lander makes it to the surface intact, the Tianwen-1 rover will attempt crawl the Martian surface to study the planet’s geology. It will also attempt to find evidence of current and past life, map the surface, and examine the composition of Martian soil.

The news comes after the United Arab Emirates kicked off its own mission to Mars on July 19. The country will attempt to explore the Martian atmosphere and climate using a orbiting spacecraft called Hope.

It’s a hot summer for Mars missions, with NASA planning to launch its Perseverance Mars rover mission as early as July 30, weather permitting.

READ MORE: China successfully launches interplanetary mission to Mars with rover in tow [The Verge]

More on the three missions: Three Separate Countries Are Launching Mars Missions This Month

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China Just Launched a Mission to Hunt for Life on Mars

White House infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that it’s unlikely the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 will ever go away completely.

“It is so efficient in its ability to transmit from human to human that I think we ultimately will get control of it. I don’t really see us eradicating it,” Fauci told TB Alliance in an interview on Wednesday, as quoted by CNBC.

But not all is lost.

“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year,” Fauci added.

That scenario would be vastly preferable to today’s, with American casualties creeping back over 1,000 deaths per day.

“We’ll bring it down to such a low level that we will not be in the position we are right now for an extended period of time,” he said.

Fauci’s statements appear to contradict president Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the coronavirus will simply disappear.

“Well, the virus will disappear,” Trump told reporters just yesterday, as quoted by NBC. “It will disappear.”

Despite that optimism, the president’s tone has shifted considerably this week.

“It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump added. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is,”

The public’s trust in Trump’s statements about the virus has fallen considerably, with Americans still putting far more trust in what experts are saying, according to recent polls.

The reality is grim. In many ways, the United States couldn’t be further from defeating the virus. Cases are still soaring in several states, with a total number of confirmed cases about to cross the four million threshold. The total number of American deaths stands at more than 143,000.

“We are certainly not at the end of the game,” Fauci admitted in the TB Alliance interview. “Certainly we are not winning the game right now. We are not beating it.”

Fauci described how unique the situation is, with the coronavirus differing in many ways from previous viral epidemics, including SARS in the early 2000s.

“I have never seen infection in which you have such a broad range literally no symptoms at all in a substantial proportion of the population to some who get ill with minor symptoms to some who get ill enough to be in bed for weeks,” he said.

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No country has ever successfully sent a microphone to Mars. As a result, we’ve never heard the eerie sounds of the surface of Red Planet.

“Even if only a few minutes of Martian sounds are recorded from this first experiment, the public interest will be high and the opportunity for scientific exploration real,” famed astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in a 1996 letter to NASA, as quoted by the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy group.

But with NASA’s Perseverance mission launching in just a single week — if the weather plays along — that all may change. The agency’s next-gen Mars rover is outfitted with not just one but two microphones.

After the craft’s six month journey through the solar system, the two microphones attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover could finally offer us a tantalizing first: a chance to listen to what Mars actually sounds like.

One microphone, on Perseverance’s Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) system, was designed to make sure the rover makes it down to Mars unharmed. Thanks to accompanying video, we could soon, for the first time ever, get to watch — and listen to — a Mars landing.

The second is part of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, which builds on Curiosity’s ChemCam, a laser beam that heats and vaporizes rocks to determine what chemicals they’re made of.

The microphones could also tell us about the rover’s health.

“Hearing how the mast swivels, the wheels turn, or hearing how other instruments sound can also be an important engineering diagnostic tool,” said Greg Delory, the CEO and co-founder of space hardware company Heliospace and an advisor to the SuperCam team, in the statement.

Previous attempts at recording the sounds of Mars with a microphone quickly turned into an uphill battle with plenty of setbacks.

The Planetary Society, co-founded by Sagan in 1980, jumped into action in the mid-1990s to finally bring a microphone to Mars. Initially, the team was hoping to attach one to NASA’s Mars Polar Lander mission, set to launch in 1990.

They got to work and after raising $100,000, they came up with the Mars Microphone, the first crowdfunded scientific instrument to fly to another planet, according to the Society.

“The original Mars microphone we built was a smart little box, about 5 centimeters on each side, weighing 50 grams,” Delory said. “The microphone was built for extreme environments, and we tested it enough to know how robust it was.”

Unfortunately, a NASA committee dismissed the idea. A second chance to have it attached to France’s Netlander mission in 2007 cropped up, but the mission was canceled in 2004.

Several years later, a different microphone made its way all the way to Mars mounted to NASA’s Phoenix lander in 2008. In yet another unfortunate turn of events, the microphone had to be deactivated prior to the launch due to a technical glitch.

The closest the Earth has come to hearing the sounds of Mars was in December 2018, when NASA used InSight’s seismometer and air pressure sensor to capture something approximating sound. However, recordings had to be pitched and sped up to hear.

Let’s hope Perseverance makes it to Mars in one piece. Only then will be able to get to hear the sounds of an alien planet.

READ MORE: Perseverance microphones fulfill long Planetary Society campaign to hear sounds from Mars [Planetary Society]

More on Mars rovers: NASA’s Mars Rover Spent the Weekend Shooting a Weird-Looking Rock With a Laser

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Space War

Last week, Russia tested what U.S. military officials believe to be a dangerous new anti-satellite weapon.

In short, the Russian satellite Cosmos 2543 demonstrated that it’s capable of approaching another satellite in orbit and shooting it down, C4ISRNET reports. And that demo, amidst international talks about demilitarizing space, has the Pentagon concerned.

Nesting Dolls

The actual weapon worked sort of like a Russian nesting doll: Cosmos 2543 first deployed a sub-satellite that then launched a projectile at the relative speed of 250 kilometers per hour. There was no target, and the satellite was only near another Russian satellite for the demo, but U.S. military officials see the test as a show of force.

“This is further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems,” General John Raymond, Space Force Chief of Space Operations, said in a statement provided to C4ISRNET, “and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold U.S. and allied space assets at risk.”

“Hypocritical Advocacy”

The U.S. State Department sees the weapons test as a sign that space warfare is a growing threat worthy of greater attention, C4ISRNET reports. And officials couldn’t resist taking a jab at Russia along the way.

“This event highlights Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control, with which Moscow aims to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting its own counterspace program,” Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Chris Ford said in the statement.

READ MORE: Russia conducted anti-satellite test in space, says U.S. Space Command [C4ISRNET]

More on space warfare: The Pentagon Wants Sentinel Satellites To Deter Space Warfare

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Russia Just Tested a Military Satellite That Kills Other Satellites

420 Gecs

Tesla is about to get into the auto insurance game, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday.

On a call with investors, Musk said that Tesla is in the process of “building” what he called a “major insurance company,” Business Insider reports. By the end of the year, he hopes to have launched in a handful of U.S. states, generating premiums and rates for drivers based on data collected by their cars’ internal sensors.

Take Two

Tesla has actually tried to launch insurance before. In 2019, Tesla advertised an in-house insurance plan for drivers that would supposedly be 20 percent lower than competitors.

But Business Insider reports that those few customers who did get quotes in the hours before the insurance website was taken down said that their current plans were much cheaper. Needless to say, the program didn’t last long.

Personalized Rates

The big idea, Business Insider reports, is that by going to Tesla for both a car and insurance coverage, drivers would be able to get rates that actually match their behavior — like risky driving — at a personalized level.

“Ultimately, where we want to get to with Tesla Insurance is to be able to use the data that’s captured in the car, in the driving profile of the person in the car,” Musk said on the call, “to be able to assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer.”

READ MORE: Elon Musk says Tesla is creating a ‘major insurance company’ after its botched rollout in California last year [Business Insider]

More on Tesla: Tesla’s New Insurance Business Had 24 Hours of Hell

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Strange Metals

For the first time, scientists are saying that so-called “strange metals” could be a bizarre new state of matter.

According to new research published Wednesday in the journal PNAS by researchers at the Flatiron Institute and Cornell, there are even odd parallels between strange metals and black holes. Those unexpected similarities, they say, could help them probe previously unexplored realms of quantum physics.

Extreme Conditions

A metal’s electrical resistance, or how much it impedes the flow of electricity, is determined by a number of factors. But, according to the new research, if a superconducting metal — one that doesn’t impede electrical currents at all — is heated past the temperature at which it can still superconduct, it becomes a strange metal. At that point, its resistance is determined only by temperature and two fundamental constants — the same three factors that determine many qualities of a black hole.

“The fact that we call them strange metals should tell you how well we understand them,” Olivier Parcollet from the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics said in a press release. “Strange metals share remarkable properties with black holes, opening exciting new directions for theoretical physics.”

Odd Parallels

Several properties of black holes are determined by temperature and those same two fundamental constants, such how long a black hole merger will send out gravitational waves.

“The fact that you find this same scaling across all these different systems,” Parollet said, “from Planckian metals to black holes, is fascinating.”

READ MORE: Quantum physicists crack mystery of ‘strange metals,’ a new state of matter [Simons Foundation]

More on strange metals: Scientists Create “Strange Metal” Packed With Entangled Electrons

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Big Brain

Elon Musk, who long been notorious for warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence, has a message to the doubters among us: They’re not as clever as they think.

In the past, Musk has gone as far as to say that artificial intelligence is even more dangerous than nuclear war, Business Insider reports. One of his concerns is that AI will replace human workers. But he also frets that a Skynet-like AI will decide it no longer needs humans at all.

“I’ve been banging this AI drum for a decade,” Musk told Business Insider.

Cognitive Trap

Musk’s latest warning is that smart people who assume they could never be fooled by a machine are in effect lowering their guard to any AI trickery coming their way.

“We should be concerned about where AI is going,” Musk told Business Insider. “The people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart, because they can’t imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them. That’s the flaw in their logic. They’re just way dumber than they think they are.”

Alarm Bells

Musk’s fears aren’t always shared among his peers, especially since he sometimes makes them alongside unsupported claims to have seen dangerous, secret AI research that others don’t know about.

But the severity of his warnings aside, Musk’s solution seems reasonable: Greater regulation and oversight for AI development would be an important safeguard against abusive or irresponsible technology.

READ MORE: Elon Musk said people who don’t think AI could be smarter than them are ‘way dumber than they think they are’ [Business Insider]

More on Elon Musk: Reddit Co-founder Mocks Elon Musk’s Warnings About AI

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Elon Musk: If You Don’t Think AI Could Outsmart You, You’re an Idiot

Headless Horseman

Engineers in Japan have been hard at work building a gigantic, 60-foot humanoid robot modeled after those in the “Gundam” sci-fi franchise.

And while construction of the robot has slowed due to the coronavirus, it seems like progress is well under way. A recent video shows it taking its first tentative steps, Popular Mechanics reports, despite still missing its head.

The footage appears to be sped up, so it’s unclear how long the procedure took. While the robot managed to raise its right leg, it doesn’t appear to be putting any weight on it — meaning this was likely just a test for future walks.

Evening Stroll

The entire robot, including the head, will weigh about 25 tons and have 24 degrees of freedom, meaning it should be able to walk pretty much anywhere, according to Popular Mechanics.

It will also feature hands with fully articulated fingers and thumbs. A single hand, from fingertip to wrist, will stretch 6.5 feet.

The company behind the robot, Gundam Factory Yokohama, was planning to have a preview event this month, but it had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.

The robot was originally meant to go on display to the public in October. According to a notice on the company’s official website, that date has also been pushed back.

READ MORE: Watch Engineers Take Their 60-Foot-Tall Gundam for a Walk [Popular Mechanics]

More on the robot: Japan Is Building a Massive Walking Gundam Robot

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Watch a 60-Foot Mecha-Style Robot Take Its First Steps

The Departed

With the presidential election looming, current and recently-departed Facebook employees are reckoning with the many ways that they say the social media platform is damaging society.

Software engineer Max Wang left the company after seven years this month, BuzzFeed News reports. As he departed, he posted a 24-minute video and accompanying note urging his fellow employees to take a closer look at what Facebook was doing to the world.

“I think Facebook is hurting people at scale,” he wrote, BuzzFeed News reports. “If you think so too, maybe give this a watch.”

Airing Laundry

Workers have raised a long list of complaints against Facebook. For instance, BuzzFeed News reports that Facebook reportedly refused to match employee donations to black justice organizations as other tech corporations had.

Mark Zuckerberg, who like other Silicon Valley billionaires has made billions more since lockdown began, personally told employees that Facebook wouldn’t match donations due to the global recession.

Great Power, Etc.

On top of that, workers complained about how leadership refuses to tackle the spread of disinformation on its platform, which could threaten the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and others around the world.

“Social media has enough power to damage the fabric of our society,” engineer Dan Abramov wrote in an internal memo. BuzzFeed News reports. “If you think that’s an overstatement, you aren’t paying attention.”

READ MORE: “HURTING PEOPLE? AT SCALE” [BuzzFeed News]

More on Facebook: Expert: Online Disinfo Now Targeting COVID-19, Black Lives Matter

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Former Employee: “Facebook is Hurting People at Scale”

Over the past year, SpaceX has been launching hundreds of small broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of its Starlink constellation. The tally as of June: 540.

While the promise of reliable and fast satellite internet accessible from pretty much anywhere in the world sounds pretty promising, not everybody is happy. As it turns out, the tiny satellites are way brighter than anybody was expecting — and that’s bad news for astronomers.

Over the last couple of months, countless reports have emerged of frustrated astronomers having their observations ruined by Starlink satellites appearing as bright streaks of light.

In the latest instance, images taken of the spectacular NEOWISE comet by astrophotographer Daniel Lopez were “completely photobombed by Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites,” as Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer Julien Girard pointed out in a tweet.

17 30-second images of the comet added up by @cielodecanarias, completely photobombed by @elonmusk's #Starlink satellites. It's a few hundreds of them right now,there will be a few thousands in the near future. @SpaceX is committed to coating orienting them better but still…. pic.twitter.com/TYtTf5xwhc

— Julien Girard (@djulik) July 22, 2020

“If there are lots and lots of bright moving objects in the sky, it tremendously complicates our job,” Smith College astronomer James Lowenthal told The New York Times last November. “It potentially threatens the science of astronomy itself.”

They’re so bright, in fact, that some are visible to the naked eye. In fact, onlookers keep mistaking them for UFOs, according to news reports from December.

The brightness is due in part to the fact that the Starlink satellites are orbiting Earth at much closer distance than most — an operational altitude of roughly 550 kilometers, rather than the usual medium-Earth orbit (at 20,000 km) or geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km) used by other kinds of satellites, like those that provide GPS and communication services.

SpaceX has also claimed that they’re bright early on because they’re still climbing in orbit after launch, and will eventually spread out and become dimmer over a period of several months.

Luckily, SpaceX claims it’s working on a number of solutions.

Early attempts to paint the underside of each satellite with an anti-reflective coat of paint seem to have only been partially successful.

SpaceX is now trying out a new method: launching satellites with a cool pair of sunglasses.  The space company is planning to mount retractable sunshades, called “VisorSat,” to each of the satellites to block sunlight from hitting its reflective parts — the main reason they’re so bright — SpaceNews reported in May.

The company’s latest batch of Starlink satellites, which launched back in June, included a just single unit with such a sunshade. It’s still unclear if the solution will appease astronomers.

SpaceX’s most recent Starlink launch, 57 satellites each equipped with a VisorSat sunshade, had to be delayed due to weather earlier this month. The launch is now planned for July 29.

If no solution is found, astronomers could be struggling with bright Starlink satellites ruining their observations for many years to come. SpaceX already has permission from the Federal Communications Commission to launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites to bring global internet coverage to the world.

More on Starlink: SpaceX Is Now Taking Requests for Starlink Beta Testers

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SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites Ruined This Photo of the NEOWISE Comet

Middle Ground

A new study has both good and bad news for the future of the planet.

If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels double, things probably won’t get as bad as the doomsday, absolute worst-case projections some scientists have made — but, at the same time, we’ve already screwed the environment up too much for the best-case outcomes, Scientific American reports.

The study is “the most important climate science paper that’s come out in several years,” Texas A&M University’s Andrew Dessler, who didn’t work on the research, told SciAm.

Downstream Effects

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, doesn’t predict the future of carbon emissions — it’s still up to humanity to stop burning fossil fuels if we want to survive. Instead, it models how much global temperatures will rise as a result of increased emissions.

The study concluded that there’s a 66 percent chance the Earth will heat by 4.9 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s still devastating for civilization and the global ecosystem, but not quite as bad as some of the direst projections.

Cloud Cover

One of the biggest developments was figuring out how climate change will impact clouds, SciAm reports, which are shockingly important for keeping the planet cool. But Dessler says that honing these predictions isn’t really the point.

“It’s not clear to me how much we would gain from further decreases in the uncertainty,” Dessler told SciAm. “What this has done, in my opinion, is it’s really moved the game away from these questions about the physics of the climate system into questions about how are humans going to react to climate change.”

READ MORE: Worst- and Best-Case Scenarios for Warming Less Likely, Groundbreaking Study Finds [Scientific American]

More on climate change: Climate Change Is Eliminating Clouds. Without Them, Earth Burns

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Scientists: Climate Change Is Going to Suck, But It Won’t Be Armageddon