Month: April 2025

Categories
GeekWire

New clues in the search for the roots of consciousness

Map of the brain, plus charts of brain activity
This map of the human brain highlights areas in the prefrontal cortex (green) and the visual cortex (blue) that are thought to be associated with consciousness. The graphs track readings of brain activity. (Adapted from Cogitate Consortium Graphic / Melloni et al. / Nature)

Seven years after they started, neuroscientists have published the results of a landmark study that was designed to determine which theory of human consciousness came closest to the mark — and those results are decidedly mixed.

The bad news is that neither of the leading theories held a clear advantage in explaining how consciousness arises. The good news is that researchers picked up new clues about where to look.

One of the leaders of the effort — Christof Koch, a meritorious investigator at the Seattle-based Allen Institute — said he was heartened by the state of the debate.

“Adversarial collaboration fits within the Allen Institute’s mission of team science, open science and big science, in service of one of the biggest, and most long-standing, intellectual challenges of humanity: the Mind-Body Problem,” Koch said in a news release. “Unraveling this mystery is the passion of my entire life.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Radian unveils plan for reusable re-entry vehicle

Illustration: Radian's R3V spacecraft making a fiery re-entry
An artist’s concept shows the R3V spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. (Radian Aerospace Illustration)

Seattle-based Radian Aerospace says it’s developing a reusable re-entry vehicle that can be used to test aerospace components under stressful conditions and then bring them back down to Earth.

The Radian Reusable Re-entry Vehicle, or R3V, is meant to advance technologies that the company is building into Radian One, its single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane.

Radian says the insights gained from R3V’s uncrewed test flights will inform critical elements of the Radian One mission platform, including aerodynamic performance, guidance and control, and the operability of subsystems such as propulsion and thermal protection.

For example, R3V will use Dur-E-Therm, a thermal protection material that Radian invented to withstand the stresses of atmospheric re-entry at hypersonic speeds.

R3V is under development in the Seattle area and could be ready for its first flight by early 2026, Radian says. In addition to blazing a trail for the spaceplane, R3V is expected to generate near-term revenue.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Amazon satellites go into orbit, boosting Starlink rivalry

Atlas V rocket launch with Project Kuiper satellites
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket sends Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites into space. (ULA Photo)

A powerful rocket sent the first batch of 27 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet network into low Earth orbit today, marking a milestone in the company’s multibillion-dollar bid to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

Today’s liftoff came nearly three weeks after the first attempt was scrubbed due to weather concerns. This time, the clouds and rain showers stayed far enough away for United Launch Alliance to launch its Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:01 p.m. ET (4:01 p.m. PT). ULA used its most powerful version of the Atlas, with five solid-rocket boosters attached to the first stage.

“Go Atlas … Go Centaur … Go KA-01,” launch managers declared in the final seconds before liftoff.

The rocket’s Centaur upper stage delivered Amazon’s satellites to an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers). In a posting to Threads, ULA said the satellites were deployed successfully. And in an online update, Amazon said its team “established contact with all 27 satellites, and initial deployment and activation sequences are proceeding nominally.”

The satellites will use their onboard electric propulsion systems to settle into their final intended orbits of 392 miles (630 kilometers) under the management of Project Kuiper’s mission operations team in Redmond, Wash.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
Cosmic Environment

Mati Carbon wins top prize in carbon removal competition

African farmers holding Mati Carbon sign
Mati Carbon partners with smallholder farmers in Africa. (Mati Carbon Photo)

The $50 million grand prize in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has gone to Mati Carbon — a nonprofit initiative that is pioneering an enhanced rock-weathering technology in India and Africa.

The XPRIZE program distributed a total of $100 million in prizes and support for competitors over the course of four years. Each of the teams was challenged to remove more than 1,000 net tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the final year of the competition. Mati Carbon and the runner-up teams all achieved the goal.

Carbon removal is one of the options for addressing the human-caused rise in CO2 levels and the resulting effects on global climate, ranging from rising sea levels and melting glaciers to hotter heat waves, more frequent flooding and other types of extreme weather. Natural vegetation does the best job of converting CO2 into oxygen, but researchers are also turning to technology for an assist.

Continue reading “Mati Carbon wins top prize in carbon removal competition”
Categories
Universe Today

Dazzling pictures celebrate Hubble’s 35 years in orbit

Four pictures from Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope's 35th-birthday presents include pictures of Mars, the Rosette Nebula, planetary nebula NGC 2899 and the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

This week brings the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th birthday — but instead of getting presents, the Hubble team is giving out presents in the form of four views of the cosmos, ranging from a glimpse of Mars to a glittering picture of a far-out galaxy.

It’s the latest observance of a tradition that goes back decades, in which NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute release pictures to celebrate the anniversary of Hubble’s launch into Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

Continue reading “Dazzling pictures celebrate Hubble’s 35 years in orbit”
Categories
GeekWire

Astronomers process test images at Rubin Observatory

Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera
The Rubin Observatory’s LSST Camera is the size of a small car. (Credit: Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / NSF / DOE / AURA / F. Munoz)

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has begun generating test images of the night sky, thanks to the Simonyi Survey Telescope and its giant camera as well as a data management team that includes scientists from the University of Washington.

Team members started taking on-sky engineering data with Rubin’s LSST Camera on April 15, according to an update posted to an online forum for the Rubin Observatory research community by Keith Bechtol, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“The Data Management system successfully transported and processed the 3-gigapixel images at the US Data Facility within about a minute of acquisition,” Bechtol wrote. “The distributed Rubin team was jubilant, taking a few moments to celebrate the first few data acquisitions, and then quickly got back to work.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
Universe Today

Lucy probe snaps closeup of weirdly shaped asteroid

Closeup of asteroid Donaldjohanson
NASA's Lucy probe captured this view of the asteroid Donaldjohanson from about 660 miles away. (NASA / Goddard / SwRI / JHUAPL / NOIRLab)

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft made a successful flyby of the second asteroid on its must-see list over the weekend, and sent back imagery documenting the elongated object’s bizarre double-lobed shape.

It turns out that asteroid Donaldjohanson — which was named after the anthropologist who discovered the fossils of a human ancestor called Lucy — is what’s known as a contact binary, with a couple of ridges in its narrow neck. In today’s image advisory, NASA compares the ridged structure to a pair of nested ice cream cones.

Continue reading “Lucy probe snaps closeup of weirdly shaped asteroid”
Categories
GeekWire

Texas boosts Interlune’s work with simulated moon dirt

Illustration: Interlune robotic harvester on the moon
An artist’s conception shows Interlune’s robotic harvester on the moon. (Interlune Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune has won a grant of up to $4.84 million from the Texas Space Commission to open a center of excellence at NASA’s Johnson Space Center focusing on simulated moon rocks and soil.

The center would be part of the Texas A&M University Space Institute, which is currently under construction on the grounds of the NASA center in Houston. Construction is due to be completed by September 2026.

Interlune was founded in 2020 with the aim of developing a system to harvest moon dirt, technically known as regolith, and extract resources for use on Earth. One of the key targets for extraction is helium-3, an isotope that can be used for applications ranging from quantum computing to fusion power. Helium-3 is much more abundant on the lunar surface than it is on Earth.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
Universe Today

Fresh findings revive debate about life on alien planet

Illustration: K2-18 b planet
An artist's conception shows the planet K2-18 b and its host star. (ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser)

Two new studies have sparked fresh debate about a faraway planet with a weird atmosphere. One of the studies claims additional evidence for the presence of life on the planet K2-18 b, based on chemical clues. The other study argues that such clues can be produced on a lifeless world covered with hot magma.

The hubbub illustrates how tricky it can be to determine whether life exists beyond Earth by looking for “biosignatures” with powerful telescopes — in this case, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. It also illustrates the potential pitfalls of reporting provocative results.

A study published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters attracted widespread attention when it reported that the chemical signatures of dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide had been found in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, which orbits a red dwarf star 124 light-years away from Earth. The findings were a follow-up to an earlier study published by the same researchers, which detected carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Continue reading “Fresh findings revive debate about life on alien planet”
Categories
GeekWire

All-female mission sends stars and scientists to space

Blue Origin New Shepard launch
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ship rises from its Texas launch pad. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Six women rode Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship today on a short suborbital space trip that was notable because of a crew that included pop superstar Katy Perry, morning TV host Gayle King — and Lauren Sanchez, the fiancée of the space venture’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos.

Liftoff from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas occurred on time at 8:30 a.m. CT (6:30 a.m. PT). Blue Origin streamed coverage of the nearly 11-minute mission via its website and YouTube.

The spacefliers marveled at the views, including a just-past-full moon that was hanging in a darkened sky. “Look at the moon,” one could be heard saying over an audio link. “Oh my God,” another replied.

After touchdown, both Perry and King knelt to kiss the ground. “What happened to us was not a ‘ride.’ This was a bona fide frickin’ flight.” King told an interviewer.

Get the full story on GeekWire