Month: May 2017

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5 revelations from ‘Artemis’ moon tale

The writer who made such a splash with “The Martian,” Andy Weir, is sharing the first chapter from “Artemis,” a crime caper set on the moon – and the thrills start hopping on the very first page.

You can get up to speed with the exploits of twentysomething porter Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara, thanks to an excerpt posted to the “Read It Forward” website. The story is set decades from now, when “Star Trek” is studied as intensely as Shakespeare.

To whet your appetite, here are five features of the future moon you’ll find out about in the excerpt.

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Elon Musk: I’ll dump Trump over climate pact

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has long voiced climate concerns. (Tesla via YouTube)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk says he’ll have no choice but to leave his posts on the White House’s advisory councils if President Donald Trump decides to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord.

Multiple news reports, attributed to unnamed administration officials, suggest that Trump is leaning toward doing just that – although there may be some added “caveats” that complicate the outcome.

Musk, a strong proponent of a revenue-neutral carbon tax, said he’s been urging the president to abide by the Paris pact, which calls on nations to reduce their carbon emissions in accordance with voluntary plans.

“Don’t know which way Paris will go, but I’ve done all I can to advise directly to POTUS [president of the United States], through others in WH [White House] and via councils, that we remain,” Musk tweeted.

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UPDATE: Trump nixed the pact, and Musk dumped Trump.

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Stratolaunch airplane emerges from its lair

Stratolaunch plane
An aerial view shows the Stratolaunch airplane outside its hangar for the first time. The twin-fuselage aircraft is the world’s largest airplane, measured by wingspan. (Stratolaunch Photo)

Six years after Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen started up Stratolaunch Systems, the billionaire’s air-launch venture brought its humongous twin-fuselage airplane out in the open for the first time today.

“Stratolaunch came out of the hangar for fuel testing,” Allen said in a tweet that featured an aerial photo of the plane. More pictures were posted to Stratolaunch’s website.

Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd said the plane’s emergence from its hangar at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port was part of a “major milestone in its journey toward providing convenient, reliable and routine access to low Earth orbit.”

The plane is designed to carry up to three Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rockets at a time into the air, and then set them loose to launch payloads into orbit.

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Drone vs. truck: Which is better for planet?

Horsefly delivery system
Workhorse Group’s HorseFly delivery system makes use of drones and trucks. (Workhorse via YouTube)

Delivering items with drones instead of trucks is likely to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for short-range trips, or on routes with few customers, according to a study conducted by transportation engineers at the University of Washington. The study, set for publication in Transportation Research Part D, suggests that trucks have the environmental advantage for longer-range trips and routes with lots of stops. Also, size matters.

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A robo-janitor for messy warehouse robots

Cleanup robot
A two-diagram sequence shows how an Amazon cleanup robot could open its robotic arms and pull a box into its storage pod. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

How does Amazon plan to keep automated warehouses free of debris? With automated cleanup robots, of course.

At least that’s a scenario laid out in a patent granted to the Seattle-based online retailer today. There’s no guarantee the cleanup robots will become a reality. But it makes a weird sort of sense to have robots pick up after messy robots.

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Purdue joins Microsoft on quantum mission

Purdue's Michael Manfra
Professor Michael Manfra heads Station Q Purdue, which is part of Microsoft’s campaign to create a topological quantum computer. (Purdue University Photo / Rebecca Wilcox)

Microsoft’s big bet to build a usable quantum computer based on two-dimensional quasiparticles just got bigger.

Purdue University says it has signed a five-year agreement with Microsoft to expand its role in an international quantum computing collaboration known as Station Q.

Microsoft announced last November that it was moving ahead with its Station Q campaign to build a working computer. The consortium now extends to Purdue as well as TU Delft in the Netherlands, the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, the University of Sydney in Australia, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Maryland.

Purdue has been working with Microsoft on quantum computing for more than a year, but the newly signed agreement deepens the connections at Station Q Purdue.

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U.S. military takes HoloLens to the next level

Marine Commandant tests HoloLens
Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller uses a HoloLens augmented-reality system to manipulate virtual objects during a demonstration at Camp Foster on Okinawa in April. (U.S. Marine Photo / Tayler P. Schwamb)

Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented-reality system is scoring victories with the U.S. military, which means the goggle-eyed headsets are more likely to pop up at a wargame near you.

Last November, the HoloLens system was incorporated into a platform known as the Augmented Immersive Team Trainer, which lets Marines plan missions and conduct “what-if” simulations while looking at a real or virtual terrain.

The experiment, conducted during training exercises at Camp Lejeune, N.C., worked so well that the Marines are now distributing HoloLens kits to 24 infantry battalions around the country.

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Trump puts quake alert on shaky ground

ShakeAlert graphic
A simulation shows the kind of alert that would be generated by an 8.0 quake. (PNSN via YouTube)

The Trump administration wants to eliminate federal support for the West Coast’s ShakeAlert earthquake warning system, but its backers in Congress won’t let it go without a fight.

“Defunding the earthquake early warning system isn’t just irresponsible – it’s dangerous,” Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., told GeekWire in an emailed statement.

“This is about giving people a warning of an earthquake or a tsunami.  A few precious seconds of warning can be the difference between life and death for a child in a school on the coast or a physician doing surgery in a local hospital,” Kilmer said. “This cut to public safety is just plain wrong, so we’re going to fight for a budget that doesn’t put people at risk.”

ShakeAlert was pioneered in California, but in April the monitoring and alert system was extended to Oregon and Washington state, where seismologists say there’s the potential for a catastrophic magnitude-9 quake nicknamed the Really Big One.

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Genetic code harnessed as digital circuitry

Biologically based circuit NOR gate
An artist’s conception shows connections between biologically based CRISPR-dCas9 NOR gates. (University of Washington Graphic)

Researchers from the University of Washington have taken advantage of synthetic biology to turn yeast cells into building blocks for digital information processing.

The experiment, described today in Nature Communications, turned the cells’ genetic code into NOR logic gates suitable for biologically based circuitry.

In digital circuitry that deals with ones and zeros, a NOR gate will produce a “1” output only if both inputs are “0.” To adapt yeast cells for digital processing, the UW team used a gene-editing method called CRISPR-Cas9 to replicate the interactions of ones and zeros with DNA and RNA molecules.

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Juno mission reveals surprises at Jupiter

Juno view of Jupiter south pole
This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles. The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles in diameter. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Betsy Asher Hall / Gervasio Robles)

NASA’s Juno orbiter has been sending back stunning pictures of Jupiter for months, but now the mission’s scientists are sharing their first peer-reviewed findings about the planet’s previously unseen polar storms and powerful magnetic field.

“The results from Juno’s initial close passes of Jupiter are understanding of this gas giant,” the Juno science team, led by principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, reports in the journal Science.

Bolton and his colleagues laid out those results today in a set of papers published by Science and Geophysical Research Letters, and in a NASA teleconference.

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