Tag: science
Saturn’s ocean moon looks more hospitable to subsurface life than we thought
Mars isn't our only neighbor that may harbor life. The odds have risen that Saturn's moon Enceladus may, too. On Wednesday, scientists published a paper outlining the increasing complexity of molecules emitted from beneath the moon's surface. "We now have all elements required for Enceladus to harbour life," the ESA's…
Read More
Microsoft claims a ‘breakthrough’ in AI chip cooling
AI is an enormous energy drain, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions at a time when the planet desperately needs progress in the opposite direction. Although most of that comes from running GPUs, cooling them is another significant overhead. So, it's worth noting when a company of Microsoft's stature claims to…
Read More
Ambrosia Sky is an essay on death masquerading as a sci-fi cleaning sim
Dalia is a death cleaner. Death cleaning, as we know it, is the process of sanitizing and tidying the spaces where people take their final breaths, sometimes long after their bodies have begun to decompose. It’s a job here on Earth in the year 2025, but Dalia’s version of death…
Read More
New Webb image shows star formation as glittering, craggy peaks
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pa If "chaos is a ladder," then brilliant stars forming from discordant gas and dust are the ultimate example of that. The James Webb telescope has imaged one of the more dramatic stellar nurseries in the galaxy called Pismis 24, showing swirling dust and…
Read More
IBM and NASA made an open-source AI model for predicting solar weather
Last year, the most powerful geomagnetic storm in 20 years hit Earth. It produced stunning aurora displays in parts of the US that are normally too far south to see them. Normally, such storms are a headache for energy providers. In 1989, for example, the Canadian province of Québec suffered…
Read More
Why on Earth would NASA build a nuclear reactor on the Moon?
"Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon" is not a headline I imagined reading before last week. Sure, as a sci-fi loving nerd, I could see a future where nuclear power played a role in permanent Moon settlements. But the idea of NASA building a 100-kilowatt microreactor there in…
Read More