Monthly Archives: March 2021

An amazing discovery: the first glowing sharks known to science.Glow-In-the-Shark

A team of researchers in New Zealand have discovered yet another mystery lurking in the deepest, mostly unexplored depths of our planets oceans: three species of sharks that can glow in the dark, NBC reports.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science last week, the researchers found for the first time that the kitefin shark, the blackbelly lanternshark, and the southern lanternshark are all able to give off a bioluminescent glow.

The kitefin in particular is of interest to the team. The shark is now the largest luminous underwater animal known to science, and can grow to almost six feet in length. It stalks its prey, which are smaller sharks and fish as well as some crustaceans, almost 1,000 feet below sea level, in a region often referred to as the twilight zone.

The researchers, collaborating with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Wellington, New Zealand, suggest that the sharks emit a blue glow in order to camouflage themselves. The glow allows them to not be backlit by the otherwise bright light emanating from above.

We already know that many other aquatic species including squids and jelly fish can glow in the dark, but its the first time scientists have been able to prove that some species of shark can do so as well.

The study sheds light on how little we still know about the vastness of the deep sea and the occurrence of luminous organisms in this zone, as the researchers write in their paper.

One big mystery remains, however: the researchers have yet to figure out why the kitefin shark glows, since unlike the other two species identified in the paper, it has almost no natural predators. One theory is that it might be emitting a glow to light up the ocean floor to make hunting for its prey easier.

READ MORE: Sharks that glow in the dark? Scientists discover luminous deep-sea predators off New Zealand [NBC News]

Read more:
Scientists Discover Glow-in-the-Dark Sharks - Futurism

SpaceX's robodog "Zeus" is on patrol.Strutting Around

SpaceX came closer than ever before to a successful Starship test launch on Wednesday evening, just to see the SN10 prototype explode in a gigantic fireball minutes after an otherwise-successful landing.

A day later, SpaceX is still in cleanup mode, with teams of workers retrieving various rocket parts and picking up after the explosion. But the company also got a helping hand from Zeus, SpaceXs Boston Dynamics robodog, which Ars Technica photographer Trevor Mahlmann spotted on the scene, surveying the explosion site.

SpaceX has previously used the $75,000 robot dog to inspect test sites or other areas that arent safe for humans, according to SpaceExplored.

Zeus can safely check on gas leaks or other hazards, especially those related to SpaceXs slew of exploded Starship prototypes, and has been rewarded with its own doghouse near the Boca Chica, Texas launch pad.

Last week, Zeus was spotted bounding around the SpaceX landing pad, though its not clear exactly what it was up to.

But presumably its a bit busier this time around, as it sniffs around the explosion to help SpaceX make sense of what went wrong and how to pick up the pieces.

More on the SN10 launch: SpaceXs Third Starship Prototype Lands, Explodes Minutes Later

See more here:
There's a Robodog Walking Around the Site of the SpaceX Starship Explosion - Futurism

SpaceX is trying a new strategy.Third Time

SpaceX is ramping up to launch its third full-scale Starship rocket this week but this time, the company will attempt a new strategy.

The prototype, called SN10, could be rocketing high into the sky from its launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas as early as Wednesday afternoon, Teslarati reports, according to flight restrictions announced by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

This time, the strategy will be different. Both predecessors attempted to use only two out of their three Raptor engines to slow their descent before landing and both exploded when they slammed into the ground.

With SN10, though, SpaceX is igniting its third engine for landing. With all three lit, the idea is that the rockets onboard computers will have enough time to select the two enginesit needs to burn to make a safe landing, depending on the angle of its descent.

In other words, SN10 will have more redundancy to make sure it has time to figure out which engines to fire in order to land safely. Three lit engines will reduce possible points of failure and ensure the prototype has the best chance of sticking its landing.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed in early February that all three of SN9s Raptor engines not just two should have been ignited to eliminate possible points of failure, something that SpaceX was too dumb to do, according to Musk. In fact, one of the two engines SN9 was using for landing failed to ignite as well.

Following some back and forth and an investigation into the companys safety practices, SpaceX finally received permission from the FAA to fly the 165-foot stainless steel rocket late last month.

SN10 did, however, hit a snag during testing. Its second triple-Raptor static fire test had to be delayed due to an issue with one of the rockets engines. A speedy engine swap brought the space company back on schedule, completing the second test fire within just 48 hours of the first, according to Teslarati.

Will SN10 come crashing back down to Earth? Its hard to tell. In mid-February, following SN9s epic fireball, Musk tweeted that theres a 60 percent chance its successor will land successfully.

READ MORE: SpaceX gears up for Starships first triple-engine landing attempt [Teslarati]

More on Starship: Elon Musk: Starship Floating Launchpad to Start Operation by End of Year

Read the original here:
There's Something Very Different About Tomorrow's Starship Test - Futurism

Defense Against the Dark Arts (In Space)

A new report released Friday shined a light on the growing need for the US space defense system.

Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies called attention to the lack of defenses to guard against yes threats in space, in a new report published on Feb 26. Titled Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space: Protecting Space Systems from Counterspace Weapons, the study warns of the vulnerabilities of the United States current satellite infrastructure that belligerent nations could potentially exploit.

While space weapons might seem like a more recent development (with initiatives such as the US Space Force), weapons have been prevalent in orbit since the Cold War. Militarization initiatives have included arming satellites with ballistic missiles.

As a result, nations have begun to invest in technology such as missiles, jammers, lasers, and cyberattack systems to take down these satellites.

What we wanted to do with this report is look at the other side of the equation, CSIS analyst and co-author of the report Todd Harrison told Space News. Yes, we see all these threats to space systems, but what do you do about it?

The report recommends a number of ways for the US government to protect its satellites orbiting Earthand they can be broken down into two categories: passive and active defenses.

Passive defenses make our satellites and other infrastructure harder to target or better capable of withstanding attacks, according to the report. They include things like awareness systems that warn of impending attacks and dangers to satellites.

Active defenses focus on taking out the threat directly. Think the best defense is a good offense. It includes measures like lasers to disrupt incoming anti-satellite weapons, as well as spacecraft that physically intercept and capture threatening satellites.

The report is an interesting, if slightly scary, look into the ever-growing militarization of space. With the Biden administrations blessing of the US Space Force, it wouldnt be unreasonable to expect investment into orbital weapons and defense systems if not the idea of them flying into orbit a little more in the future.

READ MORE: Report: Space weapons are a fact of life, but there are many ways to counter them [Space News]

More on related: The White House Says That Space Force Has Its Full Support

Read more:
Study: The US Needs To Build More Space Weapons - Futurism

Its hard to believe that Marine Serre, the 29-year-old French designer whose work was featured in Beyoncs Black is King visual album and who kicked off Paris Fashion Week with perhaps the most human, immersive, fully realized digital activation of the entire fashion month, founded her brand only three years ago.

Not only does she have a widely recognizable logo that has nothing to do with her initials (its a moon print), not only was she upcycling long before it became a trend (and sensed the need for face masks long before they were a medical necessity), but she has her own ideology: ecofuturism.

Sounds like a movement, doesnt it? But what does it even mean?

In theory, it means exalting nature and the idea of rebirth; replacing the machine worship of the futurists with veneration for the earth. In fashion, its a terrific collection.

Or, to be specific: a book, a documentary and clothes that looked awfully appealing to wear.

Eschewing her past apocalyptic visions of the natural disaster we may have wrought clothes for the wasteland; the pods of humanity that will be left after the storm Ms. Serre created filmed vignettes of family and friends going about their lives (cooking, gardening, playing on tire swings) while wearing her reworked leather greatcoats and trousers and repurposed knitwear, lacy shirts made from old household linen, and lilac suiting from regenerated moir.

A virtual wormhole was built into each of the scenes, so with a click you would suddenly find yourself in the back story of the garment: the ateliers and scrap factories where the goods get made, watching the team deconstruct and reconstruct the raw materials, giving them new life.

If a chimera was real, this is what it would look like. And that offers hope not just for the planet and our festering piles of stuff, but fashion itself.

Maybe because they have less to lose, or maybe because they have little allegiance to the fashion system that was, much of the most provocative work this season is being made by a new generation of designers. Its the kind of work that jolts you out of the haze of hours spent zombielike in front of various Zooms and makes you start to think not just about the problems of now, but about whats next.

Ms. Serre may be at the forefront, but shes not alone.

Theres Thebe Magugu, from South Africa, who takes the idea of fashion storytelling to a new level in guerrilla films that use clothes to teach cultural truths this time about the new embrace of traditional faith healing among his urbanized millennial peers. Working with the director Kristin-Lee Moolman, he etched out a story of gang warfare and spiritual union told in both action and cloth. Safari suiting was made from textiles created to mimic the straw mats a friend used to throw bones (complete with said bone). A black jacket was scarified along the spine with Braille threads reading, What you do to your ancestors, your children will do to you.

Then theres the Vaquera gang, Claire Sullivan, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee, whose work has grown from blowing raspberries at the establishment to nimbly skewing tropes of aspiration, elitism and gender. This season that meant blowing them out and decontextualizing them, so that satin undies, flamenco flounces and baggy sweats demand a rethink.

And Eckhaus Latta, where Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, working bi-coastally (she in Los Angeles, he in Brooklyn) cut holes in sequin shirts and skirts, shredded denim, snapped (or not) quilted nylon up the side and otherwise used shape to gently confront just how much weve come undone.

Not that the disrupters who came before are fading into the torpor of comfortable maturity.

Dries Van Noten, one of the last members of the Antwerp Six (the group of Belgian designers that shook up fashion in the late 1980s and 1990s) still on the official Paris schedule, swapped moody romance for an exhalation of pent-up energy, frustration and desire. Forty-six dancers and models, one or two at a time, writhed, twisted and collapsed on a darkened stage in a visceral mash-up of masculine tailoring and feminine clich: sugar-sweet Valentine-pink sequins and slithery duchesse silks in boudoir pastels were paired with no-nonsense dark overcoats; crushed taffeta was scanned and superimposed on wool; marabou fuzzed out the lines.

It was a powerhouse of a collection, as was that of Rick Owens, the dark prince of Paris, whose roots lie in the underbelly of the California dream, and who titled his show Gethsemane, after the garden in Jerusalem where Jesus prayed before the final reckoning (as the show notes read). Because the last year, they went on, was almost biblical in its drama.

And so was Mr. Owenss collection, filmed live on a pier on the Lido, in front of his house in Venice.

Fog rolled across the water as the models streamed forth in puffer robes that framed attenuated insect silhouettes with skinny metallic leggings or sequined thongs atop cashmere body suits. Exaggerated down sleeves (like duvets for the arms) slipped off the shoulders and flopped down far below the fingers; fluted, shredded gowns suggested decaying notions of royalty and pilgrimage.

It was gorgeous and alarming in equal measure, connecting to the aggression of Mr. Owenss January mens wear show (some of the bomber jackets and coats were lifted straight off that runway without being downsized for the female form) but with a sense of communion that dangled the promise of something more.

I know were supposed to be all about hope and moving forward, but the menace has not disappeared, Mr. Owens said before the show, talking over FaceTime from Venice.

On the other hand, he added cheerfully, good has triumphed over evil so far. Thus turns the fashion cycle of life.

See more here:
The Avant-Garde Is Alive and Well and Making Fashion - The New York Times

"Warming up for a marathon of science."Wake Up

Its been 14 days since NASAs Mars rover Perseverance landed on the Martian surface.

Over that period, the lonely rover has been able to stretch and get ready for show time.

This week Ive been doing lots of health checkouts, getting ready to get to work, NASA tweeted from the rovers official Twitter account on Wednesday. Ive checked many tasks off my list, including instrument tests, imaging, and getting my arm moving.

Warming up for a marathon of science, the six-wheeled rover tweeted.

Perseverance, lovingly nicknamed Percy by the media, is decked out with a host of sophisticated scientific instruments to look for signs of ancient life in the surrounding Jezero Crater, a region suspected to be an ancient, dried up river delta.

Some of those instruments are attached to a seven-foot robotic arm. The arm has five degrees of freedom thanks to specially designed actuators. At the end of its arm is the turret, which carries scientific cameras, mineral and chemical analyzers for studying the past habitability of Mars, according to NASAs website.

The arm also holds a drill designed to extract core samples. Some of these samples will be packaged up to be returned to Earth during a later mission to Mars.

Its exciting to see Perseverance jump into action. It wont be long until the rover will be able to send back its first set of invaluable scientific data.

Stay tuned: NASA will be holding a press conference tomorrow at 3:30 pm EST for an update.

READ MORE: Perseverance rover flexes its arm on Mars for the 1st time [Space.com]

More on Perseverance: All the Easter Eggs NASA Engineers Left on the Mars Rover

Read more here:
NASA's Mars Rover "Percy" Stretches Its Arm for the First Time - Futurism