1. This hole will last longer than our enemy hole, /h/communism, who are posers, right-deviationists, reactionaries, and counter revolutionaries.

I got banned there for trying to offer mutual aide in the form of a medic tent, which caused me to instantly create this hole because I was mad

2. We will form a space program in the aims of achieving Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism

I don't know how this is supposed to work yet, and I'm not sure I believe in the existence of outer space ... but I do know that anything is possible if we all work together!

Our first moves on this front should be to research outer space as much as possible

3. Ministers and officers will be assigned and people's badges will be made.

They work like NFTs except for the part where there's a blockchain. They work like rdrama badges except for the part where they show up on the badge section of your profile. (unless I figure out how to do something really creative with css psuedoelements lol). Almost everyone will be able to create and assign badges themselves. We'll record who has what badges and stuff in a pinned post or something, and fakes will be hunted down and sent to gulag.

If you want to be a minister or an officer post your reason below, the following people who posted in the "What's your job in the communist society" thread have dibs:

I didn't count anyone who acted like they wanted to kill communists!

If you have dibs, say what you want your title to be and I'll put your name and title in the sidebar or make a pinned directory or something and possibly add you to the mod list

It can be as fancy sounding as you want, in fact, the more glorious the better! power to the people!

If you don't have dibs, post below what you want your job in the communist society to be.

We are notably missing:

poet , suggestion maker , someone who knows how to make lattes , story tellers , uniform makers , fortune tellers , theoretical farmers , actual farmers , astrophysicists , and rocket scientists (this may be important to creating a space program!)

Stupidpollers belong in gulags

but there is thunderstorms

>Not so fast capitalist boy! You forgot to pay you due to the people!

WWYD

whew! Lemmygrad mods are active all the sudden! ^{Well, actually these may be hexbear bans, and I have NO IDEA how the federalized janny system works or how/if the modlog is shared}

someone left over Luigi related jannying and got banned for announcing they were leaving over Luigi related jannying

( :derpunamused: pshhh.. not that I care about Luigi or anything)

dude rockets lmao

It is well known that the remote operation of large mining shovels is something that the major miners want – it is a natural progression as part of taking operators out of hazardous in-pit working locations and conditions, plus in mines that already have autonomous trucks as well as autonomous drills, the shovel and excavator operators are the only primary fleet operators left in the field, not including of course maintenance crews plus the ancillary fleet.

IM has reported widely on this topic, including progress being made by Caterpillar, Komatsu, Liebherr and Hitachi on commercial OEM-led teleremote shovel offerings as well as some real world examples from third party technologies companies like RCT (now part of Epiroc) and HLS Hard-Line (now part of Hexagon).

Over in China, a number of hydraulic excavators and large electric rope shovels have already been converted to teleoperation; many of them using technology and systems supplied by Builder [X] Robotics aka Builder X, a Beijing-based company led by Shaolong Sui, Founder and CEO. The mines concerned tend to be some of the largest in the country and those most focused on intelligent and smart operations; plus they tend to also be running or testing autonomous mining trucks as well.

Looking at 2023 alone, a good example is from CHN Energy's Heidaigou coal mine in the Zhungeer Coalfield. On March 2, 2023, the mine and its auxilliary coal preparation plant passed the acceptance inspection for China's first group of intelligent demonstration coal mines. As part of that it has built a 5G network that covers the office area and the unmanned operation area in the pit, plus established a 140G optical transmission network system that realises high-speed communication with video surveillance devices.

Builder X converted a XCMG 700 t class XE7000 hydraulic backhoe excavator – to use its Tele+AI Operation System. The system provided also incorporates intelligent features such as pedestrian detection, bucket teeth detection, and posture monitoring, effectively mitigating the impact of harsh environmental conditions on operations. Following training involving 97 trucks, operators swiftly adapted to the remote operating mode, with loading efficiency approaching on-site loading efficiency at approximately 220 seconds per truck. Heidaigou operates autonomous trucks including retrofitted Komatsu 930Es using WAYTOUS technology.

Also in 2023, at a high altitude copper mine at 5,600 m with temperatures as low as -40°C, Builder X converted a large TYHI TZ WK-35C mining shovel for teleremote operation. The operation has not been named by Builder X for confidentiality reasons – but from the shovel and altitude concerned can be identified as Zijin Mining's Julong mine – plus an image supplied shows the shovel remotely loading an autonomous NHL NTE240BAT electric drive truck; Julong began autonomous truck fleet planning and installation with TAGE Idriver back in 2021.

The tech takes operators away from a snowy or often dusty environment where the altitude also requires operators to have to use supplementary oxygen at times. Again using a 5G network, the Builder X system offers auto-loading but also AI including pedestrian detection, anti-collision warning, and high-pressure flameout/shutdown. Builder X says it has improved work efficiency, with operators completing a full truck load within 4 minutes. Plus it has ensured  operator safety and significantly enhanced job satisfaction as well as mitigated the challenge of labour recruitment difficulties at the mine.

Moving back to coal, and HARD-WORKING AMERICAN's Huolinhe coal mine in Inner Mongolia ranks among the five largest open-pit coal mines in China and experiences long, extremely cold winters with temperatures dropping to -40°C. It also faces hot summers with frequent rainfall, often accompanied by strong winds and dust storms. In 2022, Builder X installed a teleremote system on a TYHI WK-12 rope shovel, again running on 5G and featuring pedestrian detection, auto-loading, and remote flameout/shutdown.

The system was swiftly put into operation, showcasing impressive loading efficiency of one truck every 4-5 minutes initially. Over time, this efficiency averaged at 3 minutes per truck, even during night operations, becoming the standard in the mine's routine operations. In 2022, CCTV10 featured a report on the remote intelligent control electric shovel at Huolinhe. In 2023, due to the positive operational and societal impact, the mine made a repeat purchase, upgrading to the Tele+AI Operation System on another WK-12C electric shovel. Huolinhe is well known as an innovative operation, using XEMC and NHL autonomous trucks as well as having pioneered the use of an all battery rigid mining truck in China, a converted XEMC SF31904 AC.

A similar system was installed for another top five coal mines in China in Inner Mongolia – conversion of TZ WK-12 shovels at CHN Energy (Yanbao Energy)'s Yuanbaoshan coal mine; with additional pedestrian detection, real-time monitoring and six-screen splicing. The mine also operates autonomous trucks and has established a dedicated dispatch command centre.

Given the challenging geological conditions of loose soil and potential groundwater seepage at Yuanbaoshan, vehicles commuting to the site leave deep ruts on the ground, reducing travel efficiency. The adoption of remote intelligent control for shovels eliminates the need for operators to commute to the site, requiring only periodic on-site maintenance by repair personnel. This extension of operational duration in the mining area ensures that the efficiency and output of electric shovels are no longer impacted by traffic issues.

Xilinhe coal mine embarked on a technological transformation in 2022, with a focus on automation, integration, intelligence, and unmanned operations. It now utilises Builder X's Tele+AI Operation System, incorporating intelligent features such as pedestrian recognition and one-click reset on four electric shovels. This involves the use of technologies like laser radar, line control upgrades, and ultra-lowlatency systems.

Other coal mines having shovels converted for teleoperation by Builder X include Tianchi Energy's South coal mine. In early 2022, in parallel with the deployment of a large fleet of autonomous mining trucks by Eacon Mining, a collaboration between Eacon and Builder X, saw a Caterpillar 349 backhoe hydraulic excavator converted to remote operation. Selected AI functions include a bucket depth indicator, bucket teeth detection, pedestrian detection and large block recognition.

Moving to iron ore and in 2021, Baotao Steel's Baiyun iron mine (also called Bayan Obo) began implementing an intelligent remote control transformation, utilising the Builder X Tele+AI operation system to retrofit equipment such as TZ WK-10 electric shovels and XCMG XE3000 excavators. This enables remote control operations for various types of equipment, ensuring on-site operational safety. Additionally, the application of intelligent AI functions such as posture monitoring, anti-collision warnings, and data monitoring enhances operational efficiency. By 2023, the mining area has completed the construction of a smart control centre building and has repeatedly purchased the Tele+AI operation system, upgrading various equipment like WK-20 and WK-4C shovels, PLK4500 dozers and KY-310 drilling rigs. Bayan Obo also has a well established autonomous truck fleet – NHL NTE brand electric drive trucks using TAGE Idriver's system.

Finally, since the beginning of 2020, Builder X has now collaborated with Japanese partners for nearly three years, continuously upgrading and iterating its products to enhance installation convenience, interface user-friendliness, and the practicality of AI-assisted features. These efforts have significantly strengthened the competitiveness of Builder X's Tele+AI Operation System in the Japanese market.

In April 2023, representatives from Sumitomo Corporation and Obayashi Corporation visited Builder X's office, and signed a trilateral strategic cooperation agreement, jointly promoting the application of the Tele+AI Operation System in Japan. This event marks a significant milestone in the partnership between the three companies. Starting from July 2023, the Japanese partners initiated Proof of Concept (POC) assessments for different brands of excavators, including Caterpillar, Komatsu, Sumitomo, and Hitachi, in various scenarios such as mining, ports, and factories.

fascinating

I doubt it's the real guy. Might be the fall guy.

If they were setting up a patsy it wouldn't be an Ivy League techbro from a wealthy family. His parents own multiple country clubs and his cousin is a Republican lawmaker in the Maryland House of Delegates. We should all have a healthy skepticism of the police account of events, but keeping your brain on conspiracy-mode all the time isn't productive.

I mean, that's what the "might be the fall guy" position here is, as far as I'm concerned. "The fall guy" doesn't need to mean some brilliant construction the cops set up to take the blame. It can just mean they made some stuff up under pressure or warped the facts to suit a narrative and we shouldn't take all of the news about this at face value.

We're dealing with institutions that pathologically lie. They don't lie 100% of the time, but they do lie shamelessly. Whatever comes from this, they're not going to want the takeaway to be that they are incapable of catching someone who would do a thing like this, which gives them motive to rush to a conclusion and pin it on someone.

We're also dealing with the same country that did MKUltra. I understand not wanting to go for wild conspiracies with no grounding, but the US has been known to actually do stuff that sounds completely made up.

I saw a few rightoids mention MK Ultra today. Why would the CIA (or similar group) do this though?

why?

Police found so much evidence that he'd have to be idiotic to still have on him. Gun, suppressor, and the fake ID he used to check into the hotel.

on average, people who do murders don't tend to be geniuses

This was a pretty good murder, we all saw it idunno

I suspect this might be them just wanting to pin it on anyone that matches the picture just to save face.

They 'found' him in a McDonald's with all the relevant information on his person. The same guy that was smart ebough to drop his backpack at the scene and leave no traces. That's fishy, but we won't know for sure until more comes out.

He probably wanted to get caught

people make mistakes, keeping the stuff because he didn't expect getting caught in the first place is not an insane thought. also seems like a weird individual to put as a fall guy.

the BTK serial killer got caught because he taunted the police with a microsoft word document licensed under his name.

The US loves a patsy

Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an Orion spacecraft with an unmodified heat shield, critics assailed the space agency, saying it had made the wrong decision.

"Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA," Ed Pope, an expert in advanced materials and heat shields, wrote on LinkedIn.

There is a lot riding on NASA's decision, as the Artemis II mission involves four astronauts and the space agency's first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years.

A former NASA astronaut, Charles Camarda, also expressed his frustrations on LinkedIn, saying the space agency and its leadership team should be "ashamed." In an interview on Friday, Camarda, an aerospace engineer who spent two decades working on thermal protection for the space shuttle and hypersonic vehicles, said NASA is relying on flawed probabilistic risk assessments and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the safety of Orion's existing heat shield.

"I worked at NASA for 45 years," Camarda said. "I love NASA. I do not love the way NASA has become. I do not like that we have lost our research culture."

Pope, Camarada, and others—an official expected to help set space policy for the Trump administration told Ars on background, "It's difficult to trust any of their findings"—note that NASA has spent two years assessing the char damage incurred by the Orion spacecraft during its first lunar flight in late 2022, with almost no transparency. Initially, agency officials downplayed the severity of the issue, and the full scope of the problem was not revealed until a report this May by NASA's inspector general, which included photos of a heavily pock-marked heat shield.

This year, from April to August, NASA convened an independent review team (IRT) to assess its internal findings about the root cause of the charring on the Orion heat shield and determine whether its plan to proceed without modifications to the heat shield was the correct one. However, though this review team wrapped up its work in August and began briefing NASA officials in September, the space agency kept mostly silent about the problem until a news conference on Thursday.

"Based on the data, we have decided—NASA unanimously and our decision-makers—to move forward with the current Artemis II Orion capsule and heat shield, with a modified entry trajectory," Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, said Thursday. The heat shield investigation and other issues with the Orion spacecraft will now delay the Artemis II launch until April 2026, a slip of seven months from the previous launch date in September 2025.

Notably the chair of the IRT, a former NASA flight director named Paul Hill, was not present at Thursday's news conference. Nor did the space agency release the IRT's report on its recommendations to NASA.

In an interview, Camarda said he knew two people on the IRT who dissented from its conclusions that NASA's plan to fly the Orion heat shield, without modifications to address the charring problem, was acceptable. He also criticized the agency for not publicly releasing the independent report. "NASA did not post the results of the IRT," he said. "Why wouldn't they post the results of what the IRT said? If this isn't raising red flags out there, I don't know what will."

Ars took these concerns to NASA on Friday, and the agency responded by offering an interview with Paul Hill, the review team's chair. He strongly denied there were any dissenting views.

"Every one of our conclusions, every one of our recommendations, was unanimously agreed to by our team," Hill said. "We went through a lot of effort, arguing sentence by sentence, to make sure the entire team agreed. To get there we definitely had some robust and energetic discussions."

Hill did acknowledge that, at the outset of the review team's discussions, two people were opposed to NASA's plan to fly the heat shield as is. "There was, early on, definitely a difference of opinion with a couple of people who felt strongly that Orion's heat shield was not good enough to fly as built," he said.

However, Hill said the IRT was won over by the depth of NASA's testing and the openness of agency engineers who worked with them. He singled out Luis Saucedo, a NASA engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center who led the agency's internal char loss investigation.

"The work that was done by NASA, it was nothing short of eye-watering, it was incredible," Hill said.

At the base of Orion, which has a titanium shell, there are 186 blocks of a material called Avcoat individually attached to provide a protective layer that allows the spacecraft to survive the heating of atmospheric reentry. Returning from the Moon, Orion encounters temperatures of up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius). A char layer that builds up on the outer skin of the Avcoat material is supposed to ablate, or erode, in a predictable manner during reentry. Instead, during Artemis I, fragments fell off the heat shield and left cavities in the Avcoat material.

Work by Saucedo and others, including substantial testing in ground facilities, wind tunnels, and high-temperature arc jet chambers, allowed engineers to find the root cause of gases getting trapped in the heat shield and leading to cracking. Hill said his team was convinced that NASA successfully recreated the conditions observed during reentry and were able to replicate during testing the Avcoat cracking that occurred during Artemis I.

SpaceX aims notched another milestone in spaceflight reusability Wednesday night when it not only launched a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket booster for the 350th time in program history, but also performed its 300th successful booster landing.

The Starlink 9-14 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:05 p.m. PST (10:05 p.m. EST, 0305 UTC). However, in announcing the mission on its website though, SpaceX just broadly said, "The four-hour launch window opens at 4:06 p.m. PT."

For the third time in as many launches from California, SpaceX left the public in the dark as to whether or not the launch will be viewable via livestream. When it published details of the launch on its website Wednesday afternoon, it didn't include a link to a webcast, nor did it mention the mission on social media.

By contrast, SpaceX simultaneously published a launch page for the planned launch of SiriusXM's SXM-9 satellite, which will lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center late Thursday morning. Not only did SpaceX include a link to the livestream for the SXM-9 mission, but it also posted to its X account announcing the launch. The Starlink 6-70 mission which launched from Cape Canaveral earlier Wednesday also had a webcast of liftoff that was announced in advance.

SpaceX did end up live streaming the two previous ascents from Vanenberg Space Force Base, NROL-126 and Starlink 9-13. However, in both cases, a live stream popped up well after the rockets had left the launch pad.

That ended up being the case as well with the Starlink 9-14 mission. SpaceX popped up its livestream about 44 seconds after the rocket left the launch pad. No explanation was given as to why SpaceX started its broadcast midstream for a third time.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster for the Starlink 9-14 mission, with the tailnumber B1081, launched for a 12th time. It previously supported the launches of two missions to the International Space Station (Crew-7 and CRS-29), two climate-monitoring spacecraft (PACE and EarthCARE) and five previous Starlink missions.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 completed the 300th successful droneship landing when it touched down on the SpaceX droneship 'Of Course I Still Love You,' positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 379th overall booster landing for SpaceX.

Onboard the mission are 20 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, including 13 that feature Direct to Cell capabilities. With this mission, SpaceX will have launched 349 DTC Starlink satellites since the first such launch on January 2.

In late November, SpaceX received approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to begin rolling out cellular service alongside its domestic telecom partner, T-Mobile.

The FCC allowed SpaceX to use its previously authorized up to 7,500 second generation Starlink satellites using the V-band frequency from 340 km to 360 km.

"SpaceX is authorized to communicate with these satellites in the previously authorized Ku-, Ka-, E-, and V-band frequencies, in conformance with the technical specifications SpaceX has provided to the Commission, the conditions previously placed on its authorizations, and the conditions we adopt today," the FCC wrote in a Nov. 26 filing.

"Authorization to permit SpaceX to operate up to 7,500 Gen2 satellites in lower altitude shells will enable SpaceX to begin providing lower-latency satellite service to support growing demand in rural and remote areas that lack terrestrial wireless service options.16 This partial grant also strikes the right balance between allowing SpaceX's operations at lower altitudes to provide low-latency satellite service and permitting the Commission to continue to monitor SpaceX's constellation and evaluate issues previously raised on the record."

An unexpected ice collapse hints at worrying changes on the Antarctic coast

East Antarctica was considered stable. The Conger ice shelf's 2022 collapse changed the story

The sudden collapse in March 2022 of Antarctica's Conger ice shelf into icebergs (shown) surprised many, because it sat in an area that was widely considered to be stable.

A hot spot is starting to form along the coast of East Antarctica.

An ice shelf that broke apart seemingly unprovoked a couple of years ago had been steadily weakening for 30 years, largely unnoticed by scientists, researchers report December 3 in Nature Geoscience. The finding, based on decades of satellite observations, raises concerns about a region of Antarctica long considered stable.

"The East Antarctic Ice Sheet holds 10 times as much ice" as West Antarctica, says Mathieu Morlighem, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College who was not part of the study. West Antarctica is already hemorrhaging ice at an alarming rate (SN: 2/15/23). But if the East Antarctic Ice Sheet also retreats, it could dramatically increase the rate of sea level rise over the next several centuries.

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The latest reminder of this concern is East Antarctica's Conger ice shelf, a former slab of floating glacial ice with an area about 20 times that of Manhattan. In 2022, it suddenly fragmented into icebergs, which then drifted apart over the course of several days.

"Nobody was thinking it was going to go," says Catherine Walker, a glaciologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who led the new study. It "wasn't even melting that rapidly."

Before disintegrating, the Conger ice shelf had probably existed for thousands of years. It was formed by several neighboring glaciers that oozed off the coastline and floated on the ocean. It was only by chance that Walker noticed its collapse in 2022.

While perusing satellite images to examine another nearby ice shelf, she noticed that the 1,200-square-kilometer Conger ice shelf was present in a photo taken March 10 of that year— but missing in another one taken six days later.

So began a two-year effort to understand what destroyed it.

Polar meteorologist Jonathan Wille, along with Walker and 50 other scientists, reported an important clue earlier this year: A powerful storm passed along the coast during that time, tilting the sea surface up and down a fraction of a degree. As the ice shelf flexed, it broke along existing cracks. Powerful winds then pried the fragments apart.

"We have every reason to think that [these storms] will become more intense in the future" as Earth warms, says Wille, of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH, in Zurich, Switzerland. Those stronger storms could damage the protective ice shelves that fringe Antarctica's coastline (SN: 9/25/19).

But for the Conger ice shelf, the story is more complicated. The new study shows it was already in bad shape when the storm hit.

Some famous ice shelf disintegrations were preceded by massive melting on the upper surface in warm temperatures. But Conger was in an area with generally cold air, and melting on its underside was driven by seawater. Looking through archival satellite measurements, Walker and collaborators found that the floating shelf had gradually thinned, from a thickness of about 200 meters in 1994 to 130 meters in 2021. Satellite radar measurements suggest that cracks permeated its thin, brittle ice — allowing salty ocean water to seep in and further weaken it.

The Conger ice shelf had long been stabilized because it pressed against an island 50 kilometers off the coast. But as the ice shelf thinned, it became too weak to withstand those compressive forces. The island became "a slow-motion rock coming through a windshield," Walker says. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the ice shelf's point of contact with the island, the new study reports. Then, on March 7, 2022, it broke free of the island, leaving it unsupported in the face of the approaching storm.

Conger's collapse won't noticeably impact sea level, because the glaciers it had stabilized are small. But the fact that it happened in this supposedly stable part of Antarctica "worries me," Morlighem says.

The coastal waters in this area have historically been quite cold, but small changes began around 2010. Ocean currents shifted, allowing water that was 0.6 degrees Celsius warmer than before to intrude toward the coastline, researchers reported last year. This may have hastened the Conger ice shelf's demise.

It could also eventually destabilize a massive glacier just 130 kilometers to Conger's west: The Denman Glacier holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 1.5 meters if all of it slid into the ocean. It alone contains the equivalent of nearly half the ice in West Antarctica. As Denman flows off the coastline, it grinds between a floating ice shelf on one side, and an island on the other, slowing its advance into the ocean. But the ice that connects it to those stabilizing structures is slowly thinning and weakening. It could eventually break free and speed up.

"This sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been very stable," Morlighem says. Some computer simulations predicted that East Antarctica might even gain some mass over the next century. But if Denman and its neighbors destabilize, "then that completely changes the picture."

As physicists continue their struggle to find and explain the origin of dark matter, the approximately 80% of the matter in the universe that we can't see and so far haven't been able to detect, researchers have now proposed a model where it is produced before the Big Bang.

Their idea is that dark matter would be produced during a infinitesimally short inflationary phase when the size of the universe quickly expanded exponentially. The new model was published in Physical Review Letters by three scientists from Texas in the US.

An intriguing idea among cosmologists is that dark matter was produced through its interaction with a thermal bath of some species, and its abundance is created by "freeze-out" or "freeze-in." In the freeze-out scenario, dark matter is in chemical equilibrium with the bath at the earliest times—the concentration of each does not change with time.

In the freeze-in picture, dark matter never comes into equilibrium with the bath. Such a suppressed interaction between dark matter and the thermal bath could be due to interactions in quantum field theories, either infrared freeze-in or ultraviolet freeze-in.

In UV freeze-in, the temperature of the thermal bath is always lower than the masses of the particles that connect dark matter to the Standard Model of particle physics. (Mass and temperature are both proportional to energy and can be related via fundamental constants.)

The theory of inflation was developed about 45 years ago now, proposing a period of exponentially fast expansion in the very early universe where the universe expanded by a factor of about 1026 in 10-36 seconds. (After that inflation ceased, the universe continued to expand, though not exponentially.)

Billions of years later dark energy started the acceleration we see today.) The inflation idea tidily explains many puzzles in cosmology, such as the flatness problem, the homogeneity problem and the monopole problem, and it explains the origin of structure in the universe as quantum fluctuations that were enormously magnified.

Although inflation is mostly accepted by cosmologists as part of the Big Bang picture based on some evidence (though there is meaningful dissent), the driver of inflation is still unknown.

Cosmologists refer to it generically as the inflaton, a hypothetical field that spans all of spacetime of some scalar (spin zero) particle, perhaps the Higgs field. (Perhaps not.) Inflation occurs so rapidly that the universe is in a supercooled expansion, where the temperature drops by a factor of roughly 100,000.

This low temperature persists through the inflationary stage. When inflation ends, the temperature returns to the pre-inflationary temperature, a process called reheating, and the inflaton field decays into the particles of the Standard Model, including photons.

Research has shown that the bath can attain much higher temperatures than the reheating temperature, and for ultraviolet freeze-in the amount of dark matter produced depends on the highest temperature of the thermal bath.

But to-date research has not considered the possibility that a significant of dark matter could be produced during the inflationary expansion and not be diluted away.

In the paper's WIFI model—Warm Inflation via ultraviolet Freeze-In—dark matter is created through small and rare interactions with particles in a hot, energetic environment. It contains a new mechanism where this production occurs just before the Big Bang, during cosmic inflation, leading to dark matter being formed much earlier than in existing theories via freeze-in.

Though it sounds unusual, many cosmologists now think that inflation happened before the Big Bang, since the existence of a Big Bang singularity with infinite density and infinite spacetime curvature seems unrealistic.

Instead, the universe would have some small size after inflation, roughly 10-26 meters in diameter, and from there the standard steps of radiation and particle production would occur, then nucleosynthesis would take place to populate the universe.

The theorists proposed a different perspective on the role of inflation in the role of dark matter via a freeze-in.

"The thing that's unique to our model is that dark matter is successfully produced during inflation," said Katherine Freese, Director of the Weinberg Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the paper. "In most [other] models, anything that is created during inflation is then 'inflated away' by the exponential expansion of the universe, to the point where there is essentially nothing left."

In this new mechanism, all the dark matter that we observe today could have been created during that brief, pre-Big Bang period of inflation. The quantum field driving inflation, the inflaton, loses some of its energy to radiation, and this radiation, in turn, produces dark matter particles via the freeze-in mechanism. What was before inflation? Physicists have no idea.

The WIFI model cannot yet be confirmed by observations. But a key part of the scenario, warm inflation, will be tested over the next decade by the so-called cosmic microwave background experiments. Confirming warm inflation would be a significant step for the WIFI model's dark matter production scenario.

"In our study, we focused on the production of dark matter, but WIFI suggests a broader applicability," said Barmak Shams Es Haghi, a co-author on the paper along with Gabriele Montefalcone, "such as the production of other particles that could play a crucial role in the early universe's evolution. This highlights new opportunities for exploration in future research."

The 2008 financial crisis was caused by the broken window fallacy equivalent, where nothing was being added to the economy in terms of goods or services, and the price of housing was consistently going up until the bubble popped when people couldn't repay their bad loans. It pretty much crashed the entire western market.

Today, we are seeing the same trend in the US, where prices of goods and services scaling up appears to be the major source of additional income and economic growth, rather than any new products or services being added to the American market. That is, the US market is creating another bubble that is set to explode and be worse than the 2008 economic crisis, because this time the bubble is being allowed to become far larger without being popped, through the government keeping failing banks and businesses in power by saving them from defaulting.

How is thing going to save America? Outside of the luxury products market, currently the Chinese dominate all of the other markets and are consistently expanding in them. Even Samsung has begun to fall in the face of the Chinese smartphone market, which is apparent in the collapse of their company's market value.

In the video game industry today, out of the top 10 revenue earners, only 5 are American.

Globalization is destroying America's lead and competitiveness on the world stage today, as the US is too isolationist to be capable of cooperating with the rest of the world when it comes to making better product.

The Europeans on the other hand have embraced the future and accepted that all East Asians are white people.

So I ask you, how is the US going to defeat the European-East Asian empire, when the US keeps growing their economy by simply increasing the price of products without actually making anything new except for spaceships, AI and cultured meat?

The rest of the world appears to have them beat everywhere else.

The fabric of space and time is not exempt from the effects of gravity. Plop in a mass and space-time curves around it, not dissimilar to what happens when you put a bowling ball on a trampoline.

This dimple in space-time is the result of what we call a gravity well, and it was first described over 100 years ago by Albert Einstein's field equations in his theory of general relativity. To this day, those equations have held up. We'd love to know what Einstein was putting in his soup. Whatever it was, general relativity has remained pretty solid.

One of the ways we know this is because when light travels along that curved space-time, it curves along with it. This results in light that reaches us all warped and stretched and replicated and magnified, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This quirk of space-time is not only observable and measurable, it's an excellent tool for understanding the Universe.

But a team of researchers has just found that the predicted curvature of space-time calculated using relativity does not always quite match up to what we observe, using data from the Dark Energy Survey that is currently mapping hundreds of millions of galaxies across the cosmos. That doesn't mean there's something broken – but it does suggest that there may be something out there that we haven't accounted for.

Diagram illustrating gravitational lensing. (NASA, ESA & L. Calçada)

"Until now, Dark Energy Survey data have been used to measure the distribution of matter in the Universe," explains physicist Camille Bonvin of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "In our study, we used this data to directly measure the distortion of time and space, enabling us to compare our findings with Einstein's predictions."

The Dark Energy Survey is an international collaboration that employs a powerful optical instrument mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Its main mission, as the name suggests, is to study dark energy, the mysterious force that drives the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

To do this, the instrument has been surveying the Universe as deeply as it possibly can. This means that it sees light across a range of epochs, peering deep into the history of the Universe to galaxies whose light has traveled for billions of years to reach us.

Led by astronomer Isaac Tutusaus of the University of Toulouse in France, a team of researchers realized they could use this wealth of data to test the predictive power of Einstein's physical description of the Universe. They specifically measured the distortions of space-time due to gravity wells, at four distinct epochs: approximately 3.5 billion years ago, 5 billion years ago, 6 billion years ago, and 7 billion years ago.

Then, they compared these measurements to what Einstein's equations predict they should be. Interestingly, some of the measurements aligned neatly with the predictions – but not all of them.

"We discovered that in the distant past – 6 and 7 billion years ago – the depth of the wells aligns well with Einstein's predictions," Tutusaus explains. "However, closer to today, 3.5 and 5 billion years ago, they are slightly shallower than predicted by Einstein."

The discrepancy is slight, but it could be important. It could mean, for example, that gravity wells have a slower growth rate more recently in the Universe. In addition, measurements of the expansion of space-time suggest that the growth of the Universe is speeding up, and has accelerated more in the recent past.

The discrepancy could, therefore, suggest a link between the acceleration of the Universe driven by dark energy and the slow growth of gravity wells during the same epoch. More observations will need to be conducted to confirm, and add to, the team's findings.

"Our results show that Einstein's predictions have an incompatibility of 3 sigma with measurements. In the language of physics, such an incompatibility threshold arouses our interest and calls for further investigations," says physicist Natassia Grimm of the University of Geneva.

"But this incompatibility is not large enough, at this stage, to invalidate Einstein's theory. For that to happen, we would need to reach a threshold of 5 sigma. It is therefore essential to have more precise measurements to confirm or refute these initial results, and to find out whether this theory remains valid in our Universe, at very large distances."

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

WASHINGTON — NASA has selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy to launch a multibillion-dollar mission to Saturn's moon Titan in 2028.

NASA announced Nov. 25 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy launch of Dragonfly during a window that runs from July 5 to July 25 in 2028. The contract is valued at $256.6 million for the launch and related services.

That value is significantly more than some other NASA science missions launching on Falcon Heavy. The launch of Europa Clipper, which took place Oct. 14 on a Falcon Heavy, cost NASA $178 million under a contract awarded in 2021. The Psyche asteroid mission, which launched a year earlier on another Falcon Heavy, cost NASA $117 million under a 2020 contract.

Dragonfly, unlike those other missions, will use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to provide power. Additional costs associated with mission management and handling of the RTG may account for the higher price. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $331.8 million contract for the Falcon Heavy launch of the first two elements of the lunar Gateway, a mission that requires the use of an extended payload fairing and additional prelaunch processing.

Dragonfly is a New Frontiers-class planetary science mission that will land on Titan, Saturn's largest moon and a world with an atmosphere denser than Earth's. The spacecraft will then operate as a rotorcraft, flying from location to location across Titan's surface to study its habitability and determine if the world could have once supported life.

The mission passed a confirmation review in April despite challenges in its early development that caused its estimated cost to soar to $3.35 billion. The New Frontiers program, at the time of Dragonfly's selection in 2019, had set a cost cap of $850 million, excluding launch and operations.

NASA blamed the cost increase on several factors, including budget restrictions that stretched out early phases of its development and delayed its launch from 2026 to 2028. Dragonfly's costs also grew because of pandemic-related impacts on labor costs and supply chain issues. The mission also went through what NASA described as an "in-depth design iteration" before its preliminary design review.

NASA's statement did not disclose if the agency considered other vehicles for the launch of Dragonfly. While large launch vehicles like Blue Origin's New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur are anticipated to be in service in 2028, both must be certified for high-value NASA missions like Dragonfly, particularly those carrying an RTG. Agency spokespersons did not immediately respond to questions Nov. 25 about the number of proposals it considered for the launch of the mission.

A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior.

When the rover rolled its 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) body over the rock back in May, the rock broke open, revealing yellow crystals of elemental sulfur: brimstone.

Although sulfates are fairly common on Mars, this represents the first time sulfur has been found on the red planet in its pure elemental form.

What's even more exciting is that the Gediz Vallis Channel, where Curiosity found the rock, is littered with rocks that look suspiciously similar to the sulfur rock before it got fortuitously crushed – suggesting that, somehow, elemental sulfur may be abundant there in some places.

Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July.

"It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."

it shouldn't be there according to who?

Sulfates are salts that form when sulfur, usually in compound form, mixes with other minerals in water.

When the water evaporates, the minerals mix and dry out, leaving the sulfates behind.

These sulfate minerals can tell us a lot about Mars, such as its water history, and how it has weathered over time.

Pure sulfur, on the other hand, only forms under a very narrow set of conditions, which are not known to have occurred in the region of Mars where Curiosity made its discovery.

There are, to be fair, a lot of things we don't know about the geological history of Mars, but the discovery of scads of pure sulfur just hanging about on the Martian surface suggests that there's something pretty big that we're not aware of.

Sulfur, it's important to understand, is an essential element for all life. It's usually taken up in the form of sulfates, and used to make two of the essential amino acids living organisms need to make proteins.

Since we've known about sulfates on Mars for some time, the discovery doesn't tell us anything new in that area. We're yet to find any signs of life on Mars, anyway.

But we do keep stumbling across the remains of bits and pieces that living organisms would find useful, including chemistry, water, and past habitable conditions.

Stuck here on Earth, we're fairly limited in how we can access Mars. Curiosity's instruments were able to analyze and identify the sulfurous rocks in the Gediz Vallis Channel, but if it hadn't taken a route that rolled over and cracked one open, it could have been sometime until we found the sulfur.

The next step will be to figure out exactly how, based on what we know about Mars, that sulfur may have come to be there.

That's going to take a bit more work, possibly involving some detailed modeling of Mars's geological evolution.

Meanwhile, Curiosity will continue to collect data on the same.

The Gediz Vallis channel is an area rich in Martian history, an ancient waterway whose rocks now bear the imprint of the ancient river that once flowed over them, billions of years ago.

Curiosity drilled a hole in one of the rocks, taking a powdered sample of its interior for chemical analysis, and is still trundling its way deeper along the channel, to see what other surprises might be waiting just around the next rock.

Well, the verdict is in. The Moon is not made of green cheese after all.

A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether the Moon's inner heart is solid or molten, and lead to a more accurate understanding of the Moon's history – and, by extension, that of the Solar System.

"Our results," wrote a team led by astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France, "question the evolution of the Moon magnetic field thanks to its demonstration of the existence of the inner core and support a global mantle overturn scenario that brings substantial insights on the timeline of the lunar bombardment in the first billion years of the Solar System."

Probing the interior composition of objects in the Solar System is most effectively accomplished through seismic data. The way acoustic waves generated by quakes move through and reflect from material inside a planet or moon can help scientists create a detailed map of the object's interior.

We happen to have lunar seismic data collected by the Apollo mission, but its resolution is too low to accurately determine the inner core's state. We know there is a fluid outer core, but what it encompasses remains under debate. Models of a solid inner core and an entirely fluid core work equally well with the Apollo data.

To figure it out once and for all, Briaud and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density.

Next, they conducted modeling with various core types to find which matched most closely with the observational data.

They made several interesting findings. Firstly, the models that most closely resembled what we know about the Moon describe active overturn deep inside the lunar mantle.

This means that denser material inside the Moon falls towards the center, and less dense material rises upwards. This activity has long been proposed as a way of explaining the presence of certain elements in volcanic regions of the Moon. The team's research adds another point in the "for" tally of evidence.

And they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth – with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon.

The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron.

Curiously, in 2011 a team led by NASA Marshall planetary scientist Renee Weber found a similar result using what were then state-of-the-art seismological techniques on Apollo data to study the lunar core. They found evidence of a solid inner core with a radius of about 240 kilometers, and a density of about 8,000 kilograms per cubic meter.

Their results, Briaud and his team say, are confirmation of those earlier findings, and constitute a pretty strong case for an Earth-like lunar core. And this has some interesting implications for the Moon's evolution.

We know that not long after it formed, the Moon had a powerful magnetic field, which started to decline about 3.2 billion years ago. Such a magnetic field is generated by motion and convection in the core, so what the lunar core is made of is deeply relevant to how and why the magnetic field disappeared.

Given humanity's hope to return to the Moon in relatively short order, perhaps we won't have long to wait for seismic verification of these findings.