A little over two years ago, a shipping container-sized cylinder bearing Microsoft’s name and logo was lowered onto the ocean floor off the northern coast of Scotland. Inside were 864 servers, and their submersion was part of the second phase of the software giant’s Project Natick. Launched in 2015, the project’s purpose is to determine the feasibility of underwater data centers powered by offshore renewable energy.
Continue reading “Microsoft had a crazy idea to put servers underwater, and it totally worked”Soyuz makes a record-breaking 3-hour flight to the ISS
On 14 October 2020, Soyuz MS-17 transported three crew members of the Expedition 64 crew to the International Space Station with a record-breaking 3-hour flight. It was the 145th crewed flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. The crew consists of a Russian commander (Sergey Ryzhikov) and a Russian and American flight engineer (Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Kathleen Rubins).
Continue reading “Soyuz makes a record-breaking 3-hour flight to the ISS”How Sustainable Building Creates Affordable Housing
Housing costs are a crucial part of your household budget. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] describes housing affordability as anything 30% or less of your gross salary. Still, when calculating expenses, you must include insurance, taxes, and utilities into the final equation. As a result, anyone spending over 30% on their housing costs is considered burdened.
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NASA announced a new citizen science project called “Planet Patrol” which lets the volunteers help to find exoplanets using TESS Space Telescope (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data. It is similar to another NASA citizen science project, “Backyard Worlds”, where volunteers or the “citizen scientists” are checking telescope images the same way the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (February 4, 1906 – January 17, 1997) found Pluto, the original “Planet 9” in 1930. In this case, volunteers will collaborate with professional astronomers as they sort through a stockpile of star-studded images collected by NASA’s TESS Space Telescope (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).
Continue reading “NASA’s Planet Patrol Project lets the volunteers help to find exoplanets”How high one must be to see the curvature of the Earth?
At what altitude can you start seeing the curvature of the Earth? Can you see it, for example, on top of a skyscraper? Or atop a mountain? Or from a passenger plane? From a high-altitude balloon? From space only?
Most people don’t realize how large the earth is compared to the height of a mountain or the altitude of a passenger aircraft. It’s easy to think we’re really high up when we are atop a high mountain or in a passenger plane, but comparatively, even in the case of the plane (planes fly higher even the highest mountain on Earth – Mount Everest, commercial aircraft typically fly between 31,000 and 38,000 feet – about 5.9 to 7.2 miles – high), we’re just skimming the surface of our planet. So, how high do you have to be to see the curvature of the Earth?
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Run by a Dutch restoration specialist who remastering historic videos using Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Dutch Steam Machine (Dutchsteammachine) channel has published remastered Apollo Moon landing videos, as well as some other vintage space videos, and the results are astonishing.
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Back in 2018, using the onboard radar instrument MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding), European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter discovered an underground reservoir that is buried about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) under the ice. Now, in September 2020, scientists analyzing Mars Express data have discovered three more subglacial lakes on Mars or pools of liquid water buried under the ice in the south polar region of the red planet. Could they be an oasis for microbial life?
Continue reading “Subglacial lakes on Mars: an oasis for life?”Moon passing in front of Mars in this spectacular video
On September 6, 2020, French astrophotographer Thierry Legault (@ThierryLegault) went to the South of Lisbon to capture the event of the Moon passing in front of Mars. The result is this spectacular video, titled “Occultation of Mars by the Moon” by Legault himself.
Continue reading “Moon passing in front of Mars in this spectacular video”Snow Leopard: 20 Amazing facts about the “ghosts of the mountains”
The snow leopard (Panthera uncia), also known as the ounce, is a large cat and one of the five species classified in the genus Panthera, others being the lion (Panthera leo), tiger (Panthera tigris), jaguar (Panthera onca), and leopard (Panthera pardus). It is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. Here are 20 amazing snow leopard facts.
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Did you ever want to go to space? Become a “space hero”? Now you may have a chance.
When I was a kid, science-fiction TV shows were so popular. I grew up watchşng Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, etc. Back then, in the 1980s, the excitement arose from the Moon landing, and other progress in space exploration was still hot, and the year 2000 was the “distant future”. A lot of people were dreaming to go to space in at least the early 2Ks and as a kid interested in science and technology, I was no exception.
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