AlphaRocketry

  A dance of death is taking place at the heart of a galaxy in the distant Universe. Some 10 billion light-years away, two supermassive black holes are locked in an orbit so tight that they will collide with each other and form one much larger black hole in the relatively short time of just 10,000 years. That equates to an orbital distance of just 0.03 light-years, around 50 times the average distance between the Sun and Pluto. Yet, so fast are they moving that it takes just two Earth years for the two objects to complete a binary orbit, compared to Pluto's 248 years. There are multiple reasons why supermassive black hole binaries are of interest to astronomers. Supermassive black holes are found at the centers of most galaxies, the nuclei around which everything else whirls. When two are found together, it indicates that two galaxies have come together. We know this process occurs, so finding a supermassive black hole binary can tell us what it looks like in the final ...

Successfully achieving nuclear fusion holds the promise of delivering a limitless, sustainable source of clean energy, but we can only realize this incredible dream if we can master the complex physics taking place inside the reactor. For decades, scientists have been taking incremental steps towards this goal, but many challenges remain. One of the core obstacles is successfully controlling the unstable and super-heated plasma in the reactor – but a new approach reveals how we can do this. In a joint effort by EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) research company DeepMind, scientists used a deep reinforcement learning (RL) system to study the nuances of plasma behavior and control inside a fusion tokamak – a donut-shaped device that uses a series of magnetic coils placed around the reactor to control and manipulate the plasma inside it. It's not an easy balancing act, as the coils require a huge amount of subtle voltage adjustments, up ...

The little chopper landed with NASA's Perseverance rover on the floor of Jezero Crater one year ago today (Feb. 18), tasked with showing that aerial exploration is possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere. Ingenuity did just that over the course of five pioneering flights last spring, becoming the first rotorcraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth. And then it kept on flying, racking up a total of 19 Red Planet sorties — and counting. NASA's Perseverance rover acquired this image of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter on the floor of Jezero Crater. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity flew to Mars on Perseverance's belly and deployed from the life-hunting, sample-caching rover six weeks after touchdown, on April 3, 2021. The helicopter then embarked on a month-long campaign that took powered flight beyond Earth. Ingenuity aced that technology-demonstrating mission, etching its name in the aviation histo...

What Is A Neutron Star? A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star which before collapse had a total mass of between  10  and  29  solar masses. It is a celestial body of very high density, composed primarily of neutrons (subatomic particles with no net electric charge, with a slightly larger mass than protons). Image source: Reddit They are the ancient remnants of stars that have reached the end of their journey through space and time. Despite their small diameters (about 20 kilometres), neutron stars have nearly  1.5  times the mass of our Sun. These small but mighty objects are incredibly dense. In other words, if you were to weigh it, a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh around a billion tonnes! How are Neutron Stars formed? To understand how neutron stars are formed, you first need to know the lifecycle of a star. A star is formed when a large amount of gas (mostly hydrogen) starts to collapse in on itself due to gravitational attr...

Russia is ready to reactivate its moon exploration agenda, a former Soviet Union enterprise that ended decades ago. The last in the series of pioneering Soviet robotic lunar missions was Luna 24, which sent about 6 ounces (170 grams) of moon material back to Earth in 1976. Russia's planned Luna 25 mission is set to kick-start a sequence of lunar outings that also involves Europe and China . For example, Russia intends to collaborate with China on the International Lunar Research Station, which is targeted to be operational by 2035. Russia's rekindling of its lunar exploration objectives would clearly be bolstered by the success of Luna 25 , a lander mission scheduled to launch  But how Russia and China's moon exploration plans will truly jell, and how this partnership might influence NASA's lunar "rebooting" via its Artemis program, are not clear.this July. Main Tasks Luna 25 is designed to operate on the surface of the moon for at least one year, ma...