News January 21, 2022 Boeing and the rest of the classic space companies have a lot of delays and cost overruns and now it has started to cost Boeing. Because of delays three launch contracts were given by NASA to SpaceX. It is nice to see for once maybe the worm is turning and NASA is getting fed up with all of this. It could be a good sign and I bet if this keeps up the old guard aerospace companies will take note, especially if contracts are enforced in the future. Something is happening with quantum computers. When classic computers were first used, they were very complicated devices which filled entire rooms and didn’t have as much power as a cell phone has today. As time went by, they got more advanced and smaller until they became what they are today. If we look at quantum computers which most scientists think are the wave of the future, they are very complicated, must be cooled to very low temperatures and rather large. Researchers are working on these problems and attempting to develop a much simpler design for these machines. One of the ways they propose to do this is to use bits of light called photons to carry the signals so the quantum computers using them do not need all that cooling equipment and they can be made smaller. One of the problems which will have to be solved using photons is how to connect what are called logic gates together to make this work. There is something about our solar system which scientists have discovered. They claim our solar system is wrapped in a protective bubble. The bubble is called the Heliosphere. Scientists believe that bubble is protecting us from much of the radiation in space coming from outside the solar system. That is only one of the theories however. One of the objects it protects us from according to scientists is cosmic rays. Scientists have been using a simulated model but it still raises a lot of questions. Perhaps, we will find out there are other oddities about our solar system we were unaware of. Black holes are fascinating to many in the field of science. One of the reasons is we cannot see into them and can only assume what happens when matter is swallowed. Astronomers were using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope known as the ESO VLT. They discovered two black holes which were the closest to each other ever found. One is 15.4 million times the mass of our sun while the other is 6.3 million times. What has made this sighting ever more interesting is they are moving closer to each other and it is said in the future they will become one black hole. It is interesting to speculate when they join with the increased gravitational pull what will happen inside the galaxy they are in which is NGC 7727. Scientists believed they had discovered the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. They were claiming it is caused by plaque in the brain. A new study says the real cause is the inability of brain cells to clean themselves. They say this causes an unhealthy buildup in the brain. They also say they have found about 20% of people have the plaque without any signs of dementia, making the idea of the plaque causing this seem wrong. Finding the exact cause of Alzheimer’s could finally lead to a cure in the future for this horrible disease. There seems to always be something new under the sun and sometimes it improves on things we have been using for a long time. Take ice for example. It has probably been used for many thousands of years one way or another. Today it is common to find ice cubes used in many different ways, but there is a problem, they melt and do not last long. Researchers have developed a new type of ice cube which never melts and can last up to 13 hours. It has the consistency of Jell-O. There is also another benefit, it can be refrozen and used again. It can also be cut into different shapes. Is Elon Musk and SpaceX getting too successful? In a recent article he was called the billionaire, which was used in a derogatory manner. It cited the head of the European Space Agency, ESA, as saying leaders of Europe have to stop facilitating Musk’s ambition to dominate the space economy. Talk about sour grapes. Maybe if the ESA would work as hard as SpaceX, they would get more business. We all know China has a rover on the moon. What you may not know is a square structure in the distance has been discovered which has been nicknamed the hut. Before you get too excited, I have to say it is probably nothing more than a large rock, but when I wrote this article the rover was too far to tell, but was heading toward it to find out. NASA is looking to use solar power for some future spacecraft. If you are a regular reader or read a lot of the news, you know about the DART mission. NASA is sending a rocket to crash into an asteroid to see if the course can be altered and if so, will use this method to defend the earth from asteroid hits. What you might not know is this mission is also a test mission and is testing the feasibility of using solar power for propulsion. This propulsion does have distance limits but for some places would probably work fine. The limit using our current technology seems to be reaching Jupiter, because after that we are too far from the sun. We have sent the Juno probe to Jupiter years ago and it used solar power to power it. It is thought this type of craft has the potential of reaching 65,000 mph. The Voyager space probe used a chemical rocket and is traveling at 38,000 mph. Solar sails can reach 1,860 miles per second which would revolutionize solar system travel. This is 111,600 mph. Wildfires have destroyed a lot of homes and have almost destroyed a 42 instrument telescope array, which was constructed to look for alien life. It is named the Allen Telescope Array or ATA and is located in Hat Creek, California. This means the array will always be in danger unless something is done to prevent all those fires like cleaning up the debris in the forests.
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