It’s all relative
Betelgeuse could have a sun-sized companion star
that orbits it about as soon as each 2,100 days, astronomy author Lisa Grossman reported in “Betelgeuse’s invisible buddy.”
The story describes Betelgeuse as “the pink big that marks Orion’s left shoulder.” Reader Chris Jespersen wrote: “I usually see Betelgeuse on Orion’s proper shoulder…. Am I mistaken?”
That is really a matter of perspective, Grossman says. The traditional Greeks thought the Orion constellation resembled the determine of a hunter. Many individuals agree that this celestial hunter faces Earth. Betelgeuse represents what’s thought of the hunter’s proper shoulder, which is on the determine’s left from the angle of Earth, she says.
Sharing reflections
The 2024 Nobel Prizes honored analysis in biology and AI, together with foundational work on synthetic neural networks, which allow machine studying and different tech advances, Science Information employees reported in “2024 Nobel Prize winners introduced.”
Reader Jeremy Brown contemplated the rise of AI. “Synthetic neural networks could scare off some individuals, however it captivates the remainder of us who see its practically limitless potential for unlocking the secrets and techniques of the universe and ourselves,” Brown wrote. “We’ve an extended option to go earlier than a neural community may surpass our personal [brain],” Brown continued, however the expertise may assist people meet varied wants in drugs and analysis.
Brown additionally expressed common appreciation for Science Information: “Thanks so very a lot for bringing science to us who’re incarcerated. This publication aids us, and we have now shaped casual examine teams on the sciences on the whole in my residing quarters,” Brown wrote. “I reside in a dormitory setting and am a facilitator and a squad chief for our academic program known as A New Course Motion. This publication has opened new neural pathways in my dendrites and is holding us all up-to-date on the most recent physics, astronomy, biology, archaeology!”
What about waste?
Tech firms together with Google and Amazon are investing in small nuclear reactors for his or her power wants. The shift could assist propel the proliferation of nuclear energy, touted as a supply of dependable “inexperienced” power, senior physics author Emily Conover reported in “Nuclear power entices Large Tech.”
Reader Susanne Kjemtrup-Lovelace questioned how the waste produced by these small reactors might be managed.
Nuclear waste disposal continues to be a thorny situation. For now, spent nuclear gas is generally saved in dry casks on the websites of nuclear energy crops. After a long time of native opposition halted plans for a storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada in 2010, the U.S. authorities made little progress towards an answer for years.
However now, the federal government is working towards an interim storage facility that may consolidate waste till a long-term geologic repository is established. Since 2015, the U.S. Division of Power has been growing a “consent-based” course of, centered on discovering a group keen to just accept a facility. “It could be very exhausting to start out constructing superior reactors in a universe the place the federal government was nonetheless doing nothing,” says nuclear engineer Kathryn Huff of the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
