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The U.S. Says China is Stealing Military Spacecraft Technology

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

Pengyi Li from China attempted to smuggle sensitive spacecraft and military missile components out of the U.S. according to documents obtained by Quartz.

Tech Theft

China’s space industry is still in its early stages compared to the U.S., but the Department of Homeland Security suspects that China is trying to get ahead by stealing military space technology.

Pengyi Li, a Chinese national, attempted to smuggle sensitive spacecraft and missile components out of the U.S. according to documents obtained by Quartz — and got caught red-handed, thanks to a two-year undercover investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.

Sensitive Tech

U.S. agents sold Li specialized microchips and sensors, which require special export licenses, for more than $150,000, according to Quartz. And many of these sensitive parts are banned from sale in China, as they could be used in military satellites and missiles and give China an advantage.

The U.S. and China have been waging a bitter trade war in which a key issue has been theft of American intellectual property. According to Quartz, there were at least eight other prosecutions by the Department of Justice just like this one within the last ten years, suggesting a greater trend of sensitive technologies flowing overseas.

More on U.S.-China relations: Has a Space War Between US, China, Russia Already Started?

The post The U.S. Says China is Stealing Military Spacecraft Technology appeared first on Futurism.

A Derelict Space Habitat May Crash Into an Old Russian Satellite

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

There's a small chance that a defunct space habitat collides with a retired Russian satellite on Wednesday, illustrating the threat of space debris.

Crash Course

There’s a small chance that two derelict satellites, still orbiting the Earth, could crash into each other on Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday, the space habitat development company Bigelow Aerospace tweeted some troubling news. The Air Force sent them a heads up that their long-retired experimental habitat, Genesis II, might collide with an old Russian satellite named Cosmos 1300. While the odds of a crash are only 5.6 percent, it’s another troubling sign that Earth’s orbit is becoming dangerously crowded.

Today, we were notified by the US Air Force that there is a 5.6% chance that Genesis II will collide with dead Russian satellite Cosmos 1300 in 15 hours. Although this is a relatively low probability, it brings to light that low Earth orbit is becoming increasingly more littered. pic.twitter.com/l6McbDgRNo
— Bigelow Aerospace (@BigelowSpace) September 17, 2019

Ships Passing

Bigelow Aerospace followed up with a warning about the rapid proliferation of space junk, which was most recently illustrated when one of SpaceX’s numerous StarLink satellites nearly crashed into a European Space Agency observation satellite.

As more satellites — including those launched by Bigelow Aerospace itself — fill the sky and begin their inevitable transition to becoming space junk, low Earth orbit will increasingly become a minefield for current and future space station inhabitants.

“This proliferation, if not controlled in number, could become very dangerous to human life in low Earth orbit,” Bigelow Aerospace tweeted.

Future habitable space stations will face this reality and danger. This proliferation, if not controlled in number, could become very dangerous to human life in low Earth orbit.
— Bigelow Aerospace (@BigelowSpace) September 17, 2019

More on space junk: Watch a Harpoon Attached to a Satellite Spear a Piece of Space Debris

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Can an AI Scan Your Messages to Detect if Someone’s Flirting?

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

New apps use AI to scrutinize your texts and determine whether someone is really into you or if you might not be the best match.

Overanalyzing

For those who can never tell when someone’s flirting, some new AI apps might be able to help.

Apps are popping up to help romantics determine whether they’re actually compatible with a prospective partner, according to Wired. But using AI to scrutinize texts is a risky move, since reading comprehension is historically one of AI’s weaker subject areas — a problem Wired‘s Arielle Pardes ran into when she took the tech for a spin.

Algorithmic Romance

One app, called Mei, analyzes text conversations and provides a “compatibility score” with a potential mate. Pardes’ experience testing out the app yielded some off-base results — it was pretty good at determining when people were clearly incompatible, but seemed to overlook messages that Pardes described as “R-rated.”

Mei developer Es Lee told Wired that he wanted to help people pick up on the subtext of messaged conversations by training an algorithm on thousands of texts that were annotated to clarify what people were really saying.

Platonic Ideal

Another app, called Keigo, maps compatibility based on Meyers-Briggs personality types, according to Wired. Managing Director Teemu Huttunen told the magazine that the app could help people navigate all their interactions, romantic or not. Based on their tweets, Keigo told Pardes that she and Oprah Winfrey would probably be buds.

“To be honest, we were hoping that people would use this in other forms than just dating,” Huttunen said, “but the dating one is the most obvious.”

More on AI Romance: Here’s Where You Can Flirt With a Sexting AI Called Slutbot

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Tesla’s Model S Just Crushed Porsche’s Lap Time in Germany

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

According to a German magazine, the Tesla Model S just sliced an impressive 20 seconds off of Porsche's recent Nürburgring race track record.

20 Seconds Faster

The battle between Tesla and German automaker Porsche is heating up.

According to German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, a special variant of Tesla’s Model S just sliced an impressive 20 seconds off of Porsche’s all-electric Taycan sportscar’s lap time at Germany’s Nürburgring race track — escalating a high-profile spat in the world of electric cars.

Beat Down

Witnesses surveying the track measured a lap time of just 7 minutes and 23 seconds by hand — roughly 20 seconds faster than the Taycan’s 7 minutes and 42 seconds. The results have yet to be verified by on-site officials.

It’s also not clear how either vehicle differs from actual production cars under the hood. Neither carmaker published official specs of the vehicles that set the times as Teslarati points out.

Nürburg Drift

The tiff between Tesla and Porsche began when Elon Musk mocked the German carmaker for calling one of the versions of its all-electric sports car “Turbo” earlier this month, since an electric vehicle can’t take advantage of a turbocharger.

Ever since, Tesla has been coming after the German carmaker, going so far as to ship a specially modified Model S with a “Spaceballs”-themed “Plaid powertrain” to the same German race car track where Porsche recently set its record.

And you might be able to get your hands on one of these track-ready Model S sedans yourself. In a Tuesday tweet, Musk confirmed that a special “7 seat Model S Plaid variant” will go into production next fall.

More on Tesla and Porsche: Elon Musk: Tesla Model S Set a New Track Record in California

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A Giant Volcano on One of Jupiter’s Moons Is About to Erupt

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

On Jupiter's moon Io, the strongest volcano in the solar system is likely about to erupt within the next couple of days, according to new calculations.

Space Volcano

Loki, a volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io named after the Norse trickster god, is probably going to erupt within the next few days.

Io is a volatile world, pockmarked by active volcanos, the largest of which is Loki. If new calculations reported by Europlanet Society are correct, it’s due to go off any day now. If the scientists are correct, the findings could bring about a better understanding of the strongest volcano in the solar system.

Clockwork

Scientists have been making sense of Loki’s activity for decades, Space.com reported last month. The new calculations, which Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Julie Rathburn presented at a conference on Tuesday, can supposedly track eruptions down to the day.

And with a predicted cycle of 475 days between eruptions, Loki is running down the clock. The last eruption was in May 2018, which ended 474 days ago.

“We think that Loki could be predictable because it is so large,” Rathburn told Europlanet Society. “Because of its size, basic physics are likely to dominate when it erupts, so the small complications that affect smaller volcanoes are likely to not affect Loki as much.”

Prankster

Loki is characterized by a large lava lake that rhythmically erupts, solidifies, and erupts all over again, according to research from 2006. By watching that cycle for decades, scientists think they have a good grip on its lifecycle.

“However, you have to be careful because Loki is named after a trickster god and the volcano has not been known to behave itself,” Rathburn told Europlanet Society.

READ MORE: Is huge volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io about to erupt this month? [Europlanet Society]

More on Jupiter: Jupiter May Have Absorbed a Smaller Planet

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The Air Force Is Inviting Hackers to Breach a Satellite

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Danzig

After hackers revealed flaws in the F-15's cybersecurity, the Air Force plans to invite white hat hackers to probe an active satellite for vulnerabilities.

Welcome!

The Air Force will soon issue an unusual invitation to white-hat hackers: infiltrate and take control of a military satellite orbiting the Earth.

The news comes one month after the Air Force invited hackers — under close supervision — to ransack the F-15 fighter jet’s flimsily-secured software for vulnerabilities, Wired reports. The Air Force was reportedly so pleased with the results of that hack that it’s continuing the program next year, ending a long tradition of closing itself off from outside experts to improve its cybersecurity.

Higher Stakes

Soon, the Air Force will request submissions from hackers who think they can handle its next challenge: taking over an active satellite’s Earth-facing camera.

Hackers can either target the satellite itself or its terrestrial control station, Will Roper, Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told Wired.

“We will have opportunities for contestants to do both,” he said. “But what they’re going to do is try to take over the satellite by any means they find.”

Everybody Wins

During the F-15 hack, most of the problem areas reportedly came from specific components built by smaller contractors, Wired reports, which don’t have the resources to secure their products as well as bigger companies like Lockheed Martin might.

By collaborating with hackers who excel at finding security flaws, Roper told Wired that he hopes the entire military cybersecurity supply chain can be patched up.

More on cybersecurity: Hackers Are Stealing Sensitive Documents From The U.S. Military And Selling Them

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YouTube Influencers Are Mentally Collapsing From Stress

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

YouTube influencers feel constant pressure to churn out content, prompting some — including Christine Sydelko — to give up the gig.

Dark Underbelly

It’s easy to see why so many people — particularly kids — long to be YouTube influencers. Make a living just by posting videos of yourself on the internet? Sounds great!

But popular YouTuber Christine Sydelko wants people to know the job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In fact, she’s decided to quit the influencer game altogether, calling it “trivial,” “unfulfilling,” and the “main cause of [her] anxiety and depression” — a grim insider’s look at the toll a career in digital content can take on influencers’ mental health.

Abnormal Life

Sydelko started vlogging in 2015, and she now has 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. But despite her popularity, she tweeted on September 6 that she has decided to “quit the internet stuff.”

That post was preceded by a June tweet in which Sydelko noted the toll being an influencer was taking on her mental health and lamented her decision to forgo a “normal life.”

Breaking Point

Sydelko isn’t the first influencer to struggle under the weight of internet fame. In January, Insider published a story highlighting several YouTube influencers who experienced so much mental anguish, they felt a need to quit the site, too — at least temporarily.

“[YouTube] kind of is a machine and it makes creators believe that we have to pump out content consistently,” Lilly Singh told her 14 million YouTube subscribers in a November video announcing her own break, “even at the cost of our health and our life and our mental happiness.”

More on YouTube: Astronauts Are Out. American Kids Would Rather Be YouTubers.

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Watch SpaceX Test Its Crew Dragon’s Escape System

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

SpaceX just posted dramatic footage of its commercial space shuttle Crew Dragon undergoing hundreds of rigorous tests of its emergency abort system.

Abort! Abort!

SpaceX just posted dramatic footage of its commercial space taxi Crew Dragon undergoing rigorous tests of its emergency abort system.

The idea is that if something goes wrong with the rocket carrying the Crew Dragon to orbit, the module can engage its own thrusters to quickly escape the danger — and then coast down safely on a parachute.

Ahead of our in-flight abort test for @Commercial_Crew—which will demonstrate Crew Dragon's ability to safely carry astronauts away from the rocket in the unlikely event of an emergency—our team has completed over 700 tests of the spacecraft's SuperDraco engines pic.twitter.com/nswMPCK3F9
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 12, 2019

Ejector Button

The spacecraft is outfitted with eight SuperDraco engines, allowing it to cover half a mile in just 7.5 seconds during an emergency, reaching a top speed of 436 mph, according to a follow-up tweet. Parachutes ensure that the craft safely lands back on Earth after the system deploys.

But testing hasn’t always gone according to plan. The same engines were responsible for blowing up the first Crew Dragon capsule during a system test in April.

Last week, SpaceX tested the first stage of its Falcon 9 boosters that will be responsible for launching two NASA astronauts into orbit as part of Crew Dragon’s first-ever crewed test flight. When exactly that test flight will take place is still uncertain.

READ MORE: SpaceX on Twitter

More on Crew Dragon: SpaceX Confirms That Accident Destroyed Crew Dragon Capsule

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Watch a Robot Fish Fly by Shooting Water out of Its Rear

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

Researchers have created a robot fish that can

Fish out of Water

For environmental researchers, using robots to collect much-needed water samples can be tricky. The bot might have trouble navigating around trash while collecting samples from polluted waters, for example, or avoiding ice.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London have created a robot fish that can get around such obstacles — by propelling itself over them using a stream of water pushed out its rear end.

Full of Gas

The researchers detail their creation of the flying robot fish in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics on Wednesday.

According to the paper, the bot uses a combustion chamber that fills with surrounding water via a pump, the bot’s only moving part. The chamber also contains a small amount of calcium carbide powder, which, when combined with water, produces combustible acetylene gas.

An ignition system in the robot ignites this gas, forcing water out of the robot’s rear and sending it flying into the air, where it can glide for a remarkable distance of 85 feet.

Ocean Bound

The researchers have already tested their flying robot fish in a lab, a lake, and a wave tank.

They’re now looking to begin field trials of the bot to gauge its potential use for monitoring waters near offshore energy platforms and coral reefs — so if you’re in the ocean and see a strange looking “fish” flying through the air while water shoots out of its butt, don’t be alarmed.

READ MORE: Robot can launch out of the water and glide like a flying fish [New Scientist]

More on robot fish: Robot Fish Can Swim for 37 Hours With Blood-Powered Batteries

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Residents Are Trying to Flee Russian Town Where Snow Turned Black

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

People from the Russian town Kiselyovsk want to gain entry to Canada as environmental refugees. Coal mining operations in their town have made it unlivable.

Escape

Residents of the Russian town of Kiselyovsk have a simple request for Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: let us in.

That’s because the town, infamous for gray-black, coal-polluted snow has proven inhospitable for residents who now seek status as environmental refugees, according to CBC News. But because of complicated legal technicalities — fleeing pollution is seen differently from escaping climate change — experts say they don’t stand much of a chance.

Toxic

About 80 percent of Kiselyovsk’s population lives near an open-pit coal mine, according to Motherboard. As a result, the town’s water and food are highly contaminated. Cancer and tuberculosis are common, and the life expectancy has plummeted as toxic dust blankets the region.

All in all, it makes Canada look great.

“We chose Canada because the climate there is similar to our region,” an exodus organizer told a local newspaper, per CBC. “So that they [Russian authorities] wouldn’t say that we just wanted to move to warm countries.”

Unlikely

The residents have publicized their plea for asylum through a series of YouTube videos. But Canada typically doesn’t welcome environmental refugees, especially when other parts of Russia remain hospitable — a stance that Queens University law professor Sharry Aiken told Motherboard she finds outdated in the face of an increasingly-inhospitable planet.

“There is no question,” Aiken told Motherboard, “that our laws and policies will need to adapt to this new reality.”

More on refugees: New Research: Climate Change Causes Migration and Conflict

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This Startup Will Send DNA From Your Spit to the Moon for $99

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

LifeShip will send your DNA to the Moon for $99 — a whimsical undertaking that could also ensure humanity lives on even if Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Sticker Shock

A private trip to the Moon’s orbit could cost you anywhere from $35 million to $150 million. But now, one startup is saying it’ll charge just $99 to put you on the Moon.

Part of you, anyway.

In a newly published IEEE Spectrum story, LifeShip founder Ben Haldeman shares his startup’s plan to send human DNA to the Moon — a whimsical undertaking that could also ensure humanity lives on even if Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Spit Collector

The project will launch this fall with a Kickstarter campaign through which LifeShip will sell $99 kits that backers can use to collect samples of their spit.

LifeShip will then extract DNA from the saliva and preserve it in an “artificial amber” that will reach the Moon as part of a future Arch Mission journey.

“You provide a saliva sample and then we take your DNA, your source code, and preserve it up in space for eternity,” Haldeman told IEEE Spectrum.

Survival Unknown

“Eternity” might be a stretch, though.

While your DNA might land on the Moon through the LifeShip project, even Haldeman later notes that he isn’t sure how long it’ll survive once it reaches its lunar destination.

“We can’t guarantee a million years on the Moon but it should be up there for a while,” he told IEEE Spectrum. “It’s about archiving life and saving for the future but also the wonder of traveling into space and what could happen with this DNA in the future.”

READ MORE: This Startup Wants to Stash Your DNA on the Moon [IEEE Spectrum]

More on the Arch Mission: Israeli Moon Lander Is Carrying a Vast Backup of Human Knowledge

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FBI Investigation Targets Trump Booster Peter Thiel’s VC Firm

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

The FBI has reportedly begun investigating Mithril Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel.

Heightened Scrutiny

The FBI has turned its all-seeing eye toward Mithril Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel — an industry kingmaker who’s one of the most prominent supporters of the Trump administration in tech.

It’s unclear specifically what prompted the FBI to scrutinize the firm’s business practices, but Recode reports a host of possibilities ranging from questionable tax strategies to mismanagement of investors’ money — a shakeup, in either case, at the explosive intersection of tech and politics.

And My Axe

The FBI isn’t alone in its heightened scrutiny of Mithril, which borrows its name from a fictional metal in “Lord of the Rings.”

Also probing the company’s finances is Cambridge Associates, a prominent investment adviser for the mega-rich that has put millions of dollars into Mithril’s coffers, according to Recode. Cambridge is looking into whether the firm has been overly-selective with investments, choosing to sit on investors’ cash and collect higher management fees as a result.

All-Seeing Eye

While Thiel isn’t involved in day-to-day operations at Mithril, his money and reputation are inexorably linked with its performance.

That’s relevant because the firm is also dealing with low morale, per Recode, related to the dual investigations into its practices. It reportedly once collected staffers’ computers and phones in a bid to determine who’d been talking to the press and investigators — though a spokesperson told Recode that it was merely a “device upgrade.”

Disclosure: The Thiel Foundation previously provided grant funding to Futurism’s parent company, Singularity University.

More on Mithril Capital: The Next Head of the FDA May be a Man Who is Fighting a War Against Aging

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MIT Team “Accidentally” Invents Blackest Material in Existence

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

On Thursday, a team of MIT engineers reported that they’d created a material that absorbs 99.995 percent of light that reaches it — making it even blacker than Surrey NanoSystems’ mind-bending Vantablack, which absorbs 99.965 percent of light.

But perhaps even more remarkable than the light-absorbing capabilities of the new super black material is how the MIT team discovered it: by accident.

In an attempt to boost certain properties of electrically conductive materials, the MIT team removed the oxide layer from aluminum and began growing carbon nanotubes on it.

“I remember noticing how black it was before growing carbon nanotubes on it, and then after growth, it looked even darker,” researcher Kehang Cui told MIT News. “So I thought I should measure the optical reflectance of the sample.”

That’s when the team discovered that it had created the world’s new blackest material, which it detailed in a study published in the journal ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces on Thursday.

The MIT researchers almost immediately partnered with artist Diemut Strebe to coat a $2 million diamond in the material as part of an art exhibit that launched at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

The MIT team has since offered up the material to any interested artists. But the substance could have many applications beyond the artistic, such as helping astronomers remove unwanted glare from telescopes.

As black as this material is, though, researcher Brian Wardle doesn’t expect it to hold the title of blackest black forever.

“I think the blackest black is a constantly moving target,” he told MIT News. “Someone will find a blacker material, and eventually we’ll understand all the underlying mechanisms, and will be able to properly engineer the ultimate black.”

READ MORE: MIT engineers develop “blackest black” material to date [MIT News]

More on Vantablack: BMW Unveils a Car Coated in Vantablack

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A Driver Tricked Uber’s Algorithm, Sexually Assaulted a Passenger

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

After a horrifying case where an unauthorized Uber driver raped his passenger, the company says its inroducing human oversight to its driver-verifying tech.

Terrifying Flaws

In December 2018, a man driving an authorized Uber vehicle picked up an intoxicated woman leaving a Christmas party — and then brought her to his home and raped her. But the man, who The Age reports was sentenced to five and a half years in prison on Wednesday, was not an authorized Uber driver. Rather, he was able to easily fool Uber’s verification system by holding up a photo of a real driver.

In other words, the AI technology that Uber uses to verify that its drivers are who they claim to be — like Amazon delivery drivers, Uber contractors take a selfie when signing on — wasn’t sophisticated enough to spot a printed headshot. It’s a horrifying story that illustrates the perils of big tech offloading security to dodgy AI systems.

De-Automating

Uber told Business Insider that it deployed a fix in response to the December incident.

The company hired an undisclosed number of humans to review the driver-verifying selfies this year, it said — and also implemented better AI.

Higher Standards

Apparently, it works — The Age reports that drivers posting in online forums are talking less about operating scam rings and more about how difficult it is to get the system to approve a selfie.

But it all raises the question of why the improved security wasn’t in place from the start — the unauthorized driver may have been fooling Uber’s security protocols since 2016, according to The Age.

More on Uber drivers: Uber and Lyft Still Allow Racist Behavior, but Not as Much as Taxi Services

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Toyota Wants to Slather Solar Panels All Over Its Prius Hybrid

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

Japanese auto giant Toyota has partnered with a local energy company to test a Prius hybrid that's almost entirely covered in solar panels.

Going Solar

As electric cars become increasingly popular worldwide, there’s one renewable source of energy that could make them even more convenient and environmentally friendly: the Sun.

Japanese auto giant Toyota has partnered with a local energy company to test a Prius hybrid that’s almost entirely covered in solar panels, according to Bloomberg. The ambitious goal is to one day end the car’s dependence on charging stations entirely.

Trend Piece

Both Toyota and Hyundai have already released models, including the 2017 Prius, that feature solar panels on their roofs — but their ability to power the vehicle is extremely limited, since they only charge the batteries when the car is parked.

Since July, Toyota has been working on a brand-new design. It features special, much higher efficiency solar panels that are mounted on the hood, roof and even hatchback of the car, charging the car’s batteries even when it’s moving.

Panel Van

The new solar system could allow the Prius to cover 50 kilometers, four days a week, on solar alone, Bloomberg reports.

If the vehicle makes it to market, it wouldn’t be the only next-gen solar vehicle around. Dutch startup Lightyear revealed what it calls the world’s first long-range “solar car” back in June. The company is expecting to start deliveries in early 2021.

READ MORE: Toyota Is Trying to Figure Out How to Make a Car Run Forever [Bloomberg]

More on solar cars: Startup Unveils World’s First Long-Range “Solar Car”

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A Runaway Star Is Escaping a Black Hole at 1.2 Million MPH

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

Scientists just traced the path of a runaway star, first spotted in the 80s, back to its original home and learned it got cast away by a black hole.

It Follows

Back in the 1980s, astronomers spotted a runaway star speeding across the night sky at upwards of 1.2 million miles per hour.

Now, decades later, scientists say they’ve finally figured out which pocket of the galaxy the star once called home — and what it’s fleeing from: a giant black hole.

Home is Nowhere

The star, dubbed PG1610+062, has probably spent all this time escaping from a black hole, Live Science reports. Or, more technically, it likely passed near a mid-mass black hole and got whipped off course by its gravitational pull, like a galactic slingshot.

There’s something slightly off about that explanation, though. Namely, a black hole with the mid-range mass needed to launch the star at this particular speed has never been observed within the Milky Way, according to a press release about the research.

Cosmic Horror

The scientists calculated that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy couldn’t be responsible for the star’s wild ride — the numbers simply don’t add up unless the black hole is considerably smaller.

In other words, there may be undetected monstrous black holes lurking in the Milky Way.

“Now, PG1610+062 may provide evidence that [mid-mass black holes] could indeed exist in our galaxy,” Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg astronomer Andreas Irrgang said in the press release. “The race is on to actually find them.”

More on black holes: Spotted: A Black Hole That Shouldn’t Be Physically Possible

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Putin Critic Uses Drone to Save Hard Drives Before Police Raid

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

A critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin used a drone to fly his electronics out of his high-rise apartment prior to a police raid on his home.

Police State

On Thursday, Russian police targeted the home of Sergey Boyko, a known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as part of a widespread raid.

But Boyko was determined to prevent the officers from confiscating his electronics — so he used a drone to fly them out of his high-rise apartment via an open window.

Extraction Point

A companion in Boyko’s home at the time of the Russian raid recorded the whole thing, with Boyko later uploading the footage to YouTube.

“Done,” Boyko said in Russian at one point in the clip, according to a BBC News translation. “The evacuation has been carried out. The drone reached its destination.”

That destination remains unknown, but the BBC reported that Boyko said the drone carried a combination of hard disks, solid-state drives, and flash sticks, all of which contained “very important” information he didn’t want the police to get their hands on.

Russian Raid

In addition to Boyko’s apartment, Russian police stormed approximately 200 homes and offices on Thursday as part of a crackdown on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Russian nonprofit dedicated to exposing corruption in the nation’s government.

Boyko is a known ally of Navalny, but thanks to his quick drone escape, his electronics weren’t among the many computers and phones Russian police reportedly confiscated during Thursday’s raid.

More on drones: Russia’s Top Secret Heavy Strike Stealth Drone Takes Flight

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Airbus Planes Will Track How Often Passengers Go to the Bathroom

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

In an effort to personalize the experience of flying, Airbus is testing out a new Internet of Things platform that collects data like bathroom visits.

Bathroom Break

In the future, airplane bathrooms will never run out of toilet paper again.

At least, that’s Airbus’s excuse for a cursed-sounding new Internet of Things platform that collects a large amount of data about passengers, according to Bloomberg — including how often they go to the bathroom and how long they have to wait to pee.

Pee Tape

Airbus says it’s testing its “Airspace Connected Experience” tech in its experimental A350-900 Flight Lab aircraft.

The data collected includes “pre- and remote ordering of preferred meals, booking of private bin space, setting of individual seat positions, as well as a tailor-made inflight [entertainment] offer,” according to a press release. Oh yeah, and the pee thing.

Digital Trolleys

The big-picture vision is a system that can track the amount of free space available in overhead bins, make it easier for crew members to identify who ordered a vegan meal, and track obscure data points like how much soap and toilet paper are left in the crapper.

The platform will also give crew members access to the data through a mobile smart device — meaning they could get ahead of maintaining bathrooms that were in use far more than others and know when somebody needs help while inside the bathroom, according to Bloomberg.

READ MORE: The Next Generation of Aircraft Will Track Your Bathroom Visits [Bloomberg]

More on airplane tech: These Futuristic Airplane Seats Could Make Flying Economy Better

The post Airbus Planes Will Track How Often Passengers Go to the Bathroom appeared first on Futurism.

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Airbus Planes Will Track How Often Passengers Go to the Bathroom

Watch a Tesla Model X Blast Through Deep Flood Waters

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

A news reporter caught a Tesla Model X plowing its way down a flooded street in South Dakota, exiting the water seemingly no worse for wear.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

On Thursday, local news reporter Colton Molesky took to the streets of Mitchell, South Dakota, to report on the city’s dangerous flooding for the station KSFY.

While Molesky was filming his segment, a white Tesla Model X appeared down the street — and then plowed its way through the headlight-covering water, exiting the flooded street seemingly no worse for wear.

What NOT to do! This car in Mitchell tries to drive down a flooded street as @CMolesky reports LIVE. pic.twitter.com/Tv00CLUDYT
— Kamie Roesler (@KamieRoeslerTC) September 12, 2019

Bad Idea

This isn’t the first time a Tesla has been filmed in high water — in 2016, footage of a Model S owner in Kazakhstan using their car to float through a flooded tunnel hit the internet.

At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he definitely did not recommend that drivers use their Teslas as boats — and Molesky was quick to discourage others from following the South Dakota Tesla owner’s lead.

“We encourage people don’t do this,” he said in the clip. “Don’t do what you see right there. Very dangerous.”

More on the Model X: Watch a Tesla Model X Pull a Semi Truck Through Snow

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Watch a Tesla Model X Blast Through Deep Flood Waters

Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole Lets out Two Giant, Radioactive Burps

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Danzig

Scientists can finally take a closer look at the big, radioactive bubbles our galaxy's black hole burped out millions of years ago.

Table Manners

The supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy might be feeling a bit queasy — scientists say it “burped” out two gigantic bubbles of radioactive gases.

Scientists first caught a fleeting glimpse of the bubbles — tens of lightyears wide — in the 1980s, according to Business Insider. But thanks to the recently-constructed MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, astronomers could finally get a better look at the mysterious bubbles and learn more about what caused them.

Big Boom

The bubbles are an unusual outburst for our galaxy’s black hole — compared to other galaxies’ central black holes, ours is comparatively inactive, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

As such, the University of Oxford and Rhodes University astronomers behind the new survey suspect the bubbles are akin to cosmic indigestion — the black hole likely had a feeding frenzy when clumps of cosmic dust passed nearby millions of years ago, just to spew it all back out in the form of the giant bubbles.

Filtering Out

Millions of years later, the radio signals from the cosmic belch reached Earth, which is why scientists can detect them with the MeerKAT telescope.

“These enormous bubbles have until now been hidden by the glare of extremely bright radio emission from the [center] of the galaxy,” Fernando Camilo of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory said in a press release.

“Teasing out the bubbles from the background ‘noise’ was a technical tour de force,” he added.

More on space bubbles: Scientists Baffled by Giant Bubbles Sandwiching Our Galaxy

The post Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole Lets out Two Giant, Radioactive Burps appeared first on Futurism.

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