Month: March 2021

The more scientists study it, the weirder Uranus gets.

The newest mystery to add to the planet’s repertoire? Astronomers have detected X-rays from the strange world — and while some of the signal may be reflected emissions from the sun, some appear to be coming from the planet itself, according to a NASA statement.

That’s according to new research that analyzed observations of Uranus gathered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2002 and 2017.

Related: Photos of Uranus, the tilted giant planet

Plenty of solar system objects emit X-rays — everything from Venus to Saturn to moons of Jupiter, the scientists write in a paper describing their research. In fact, of the solar system’s planets, only little-studied Uranus and Neptune were missing from the list. 

The team of astronomers were particularly drawn to study Uranus in X-rays because the planet’s alignments are quite jumbled: the planet lies on its side and the axis of its magnetic field is akimbo from both the orbital plane and the spin axis. The skewed axes may trigger particularly complicated auroras, which can emit X-rays.

So the scientists decided to dig into the scant Chandra observations of Uranus — just three segments of data, one from August 2002 and two from November 2017. The 2002 and 2017 observations also come from different instruments on the telescope, and in the 2017 data, the researchers can’t clearly mark which X-rays come from the planet itself and which from elsewhere in the detector’s view.

All that means that the scientists, as usual, want more observations. But according to the researchers, both patches of data appear to show X-ray emissions from the strange planet — and more than would be expected solely from the planet’s atmosphere scattering off X-ray emissions from the sun.

If some of the X-rays the researchers detected are indeed coming from Uranus itself, rather than reflected emissions from the sun, a few phenomena could be at play, the scientists wrote. Saturn’s rings produce X-ray fluorescence when hit by charged particles from the sun, and Uranus’ two sets of rings may do the same. Or, the X-rays may come from auroras on Uranus, as they do on Jupiter, although scientists aren’t positive what would trigger the auroras themselves.

Scientists hope that future observations by Chandra may help determine what’s happening at Uranus. Missions yet to launch may also be able to study the planet’s X-ray emissions, particularly the European Space Agency’s Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), due to launch in 2031, or the Lynx X-ray Observatory mission that NASA is considering for launch after its Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

The research is described in a paper published today (March 31) in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

It seems like everyone is making money off of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, those digital artworks that have been labeled the next investment mania. Everyone, that is, except for you. It’s the same feeling you had when you realized GameStop’s stock was a thing and you missed the boat sailing toward easy riches. Bitcoin, too—had we only kept our silly mining utilities on our PCs running 24/7 a decade ago.

But the latest get-rich craze is now upon us. Now you, too, can own a digital asset that’s legitimized by the blockchain: wild and wacky items like a column from The New York Times ($584,000), 81 Deadmau5 images ($50,000), or you-know-who ($501,000). (Yes, someone paid seven Teslas’ worth for an “authentic” version of that pop-tart cat, whatever authentic means here.)

There are a lot of issues surrounding NFTs: what you’re actually getting for your money, what you can do with that item, what it means when a million duplicates of your original also exist in the real world, what it means when the source of your expensive NFT (like a popular digital trading-card site, for example) no longer exists in ten years, the copyright issues involved when someone creates an NFT of someone else’s idea or work, the environmental issues related to the energy cost of playing in the blockchain…the list goes on.

If you don’t care about any of this and you just want to learn how to make your own NFT to either get rich quick or have a little fun, you might be surprised to find just how easy it is. And, spoiler, it ain’t free—at least, not if your NFT sells.

Listing an NFT is as easy as eBay

I’ll start with an assumption: that you want to create your NFT on the Ethereum network (ETH), which is where most people are playing nowadays. As a result, you’ll have to pay for gas—an amount that varies by network congestion, designed to cover the cost of your computations on the blockchain. In other words, you’re blocked from using a script to crank out 100,000 NFTs in the hopes that you can sell a small handful to make some cash. Rinse, wash, repeat; you would be paying a small fortune for that scenario—unless you switch to an a service like OpenSea.

“The new collection manager allows creators to make NFTs without any upfront gas cost, as the NFT isn’t transferred on-chain until the first purchase or transfer is made.

We call this lazy minting. It unbundles the on-chain issuance of your NFTs from the metadata.”

Back to creating. To keep this easy, we’ll create an NFT on Mintable, one of the “household names” of NFT marketplaces that makes it simple to launch your own item into the blockchain without paying gas to launch the listing. Start by creating a free account on the service, which will require you to enter a verification code sent to your email address. Easy.

Next, create a MetaMask Wallet to use with the service—where your digital currencies will live. You’ll start by installing a browser extension:

To set up a new MetaMask wallet, you’ll need to submit a password. You’ll get a “seed phrase” in return, which is a list of 12 random words. Write that down somewhere; it’s your backup code that will let you into your wallet in case you ever misplace said password. You’ll then have to confirm said seed phrase to continue:

Once you’ve done that, your wallet is good to go:

Head back to Mintable and click on “Mint an item.” You’ll be asked to pick whether the NFT already exists in your wallet (it doesn’t), or whether you’re creating a new one (you are). Mintable will default to a gasless NFT—remember, that’s where you can upload anything you want, and it won’t enter the blockchain (and incur fees) until it’s sold or transferred. If you want to do things the “old-fashioned way,” click the slider over to Advanced mode, where you’ll be able to select the transaction model instead. (Hello, upfront fees.)

You won’t have to connect your MetaMask wallet to begin filling out the details for a gasless NFT. But you might as well save your self a step and click on the big purple “Connect a Wallet” link in the site’s upper-right corner. After a few clicks, you’ll be set.

As for the NFT, your screen will look like this:

Fill out the details, add your file, add any preview images you want to use, throw in a description, and select whether you want the item’s copyright to transfer over once a sale is made. You can then set a fixed price for the item, set up an auction, or choose a hybrid of both. And that’s about it; it’s as easy to list as an eBay item.

It costs money to make (or lose) money

No matter what platform you’re using, make sure you’ve done your homework and you fully understand what you’re getting into and what you’ll be charged to sell NFTs. That includes gas fees, any transaction fees a service takes as part of an operational cost (like eBay), and how commissions for future secondary sales work. What do you get? What does the service get? You might very well end up losing money even if you make a successful sale, which is going to be difficult enough itself.

But, hey, that’s the nature of the game. It’s a hot market right now if you can get the right goods, but it can have just as much of an impact in reverse for people caught up in the hype cycle with little to show for it. Good luck to you, fortune-seeker.

Scientists may have finally made a complete digital model for the Cosmos panel of a 2,000-year-old mechanical device called the Antikythera mechanism that’s believed to be the world’s first computer.

First discovered in a Roman-era shipwreck by Greek sponge divers in 1900, the fragments of a shoebox-size contraption, once filled with gears and used to predict the movements of heavenly bodies, has both baffled and amazed generations of researchers ever since. 

The discovered fragments made up just one-third of a larger device: a highly-sophisticated hand-powered gearbox capable of accurately predicting the motions of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the sun, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses — displaying them all relative to the timings of ancient events such as the Olympic Games.

Related: Photos: Ancient Greek shipwreck yields Antikythera mechanism

Yet despite years of painstaking research and debate, scientists were never able to fully replicate the mechanism that drove the astonishing device, or the calculations used in its design, from the battered and corroded brass fragments discovered in the wreck.

But now researchers at University College London say they have fully recreated the design of the device, from the ancient calculations used to create it, and are now putting together their own contraption to see if their design works. 

“Our work reveals the Antikythera Mechanism as a beautiful conception, translated by superb engineering into a device of genius,” the researchers wrote on March 12 in the open-access journal Scientific Reports. “It challenges all our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.”

Why recreate Antikythera?

The researchers wanted to recreate the device because of all the mystery surrounding it, as a way to possibly get to the bottom of so many questions. In addition, nobody had ever created a model of the so-called Cosmos that reconciled with all of the physical evidence.

“The distance between this device’s complexity and others made at the same time is infinite,” co-author Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at UCL, told Live Science. “Frankly, there is nothing like it that has ever been found. It’s out of this world.”

The intricate gears that made up the device’s mechanism are of a scale you could expect to find in a grandfather clock, but the only other gears discovered from around the same period are the much larger ones that went into things like ballistas, or large crossbows, and catapults. 

This sophistication brings up a lot of questions about the manufacturing process that could have made such a uniquely intricate contraption, as well as why it was discovered as the only known device of its kind on an ancient sunken ship off the island of Antikythera.

Related: The 20 most mysterious shipwrecks ever

“What is it doing on that ship? We only found one-third; where are the other two [thirds]? Have they corroded away? Did it ever work?” Wojcik said. “These are questions that we can only really answer through experimental archaeology. It’s like answering how they built Stonehenge, let’s get 200 people with some rope and a big stone and try to pull it across Salisbury Plain. That’s a bit like what we’re trying to do here.” 

Making the first computer

To create the model, the researchers drew on all of the past research on the device, including that of Michael Wright, a former curator at the Science Museum in London, who had previously constructed a working replica. Using inscriptions found on the mechanism and a mathematical model of how the planets moved that was first devised by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, they were able to create a computer model for a mechanism of overlapping gears that fit inside a just barely 1-inch-deep (2.5 centimeters) compartment. 

Related: Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism came with a user guide

Their model recreates each gear and rotating dial to show how the planets, the sun and the moon move across the Zodiac (the ancient map of the stars) on the front face and the phases of the moon and eclipses on the back. It replicates the now-outdated ancient Greek assumption that all of the heavens revolved around the Earth.

Now that the computer model has been made, the researchers want to make physical versions, first using modern techniques so they can check that the device works, and then employing the techniques that could have been used by the ancient Greeks. 

“There’s no evidence that the ancient Greeks were able to build something like this. It really is a mystery,” said Wojcik. “The only way to test if they could is to try to build it the ancient Greek way.”

“And there’s also a lot of debate about who it was for and who built it. A lot of people say it was Archimedes,” Wojcik said. “He lived around the same time it was constructed, and no one else had the same level of engineering ability that he did. It was also a Roman shipwreck.” Archimedes was killed by Romans during the Siege of Syracuse, after the weapons he invented failed to prevent them from capturing the city.

Mysteries also remain as to whether the ancient Greeks used similar techniques to make other, yet-to-be-discovered, devices or whether copies of the Antikythera mechanism are waiting to be found. 

“It’s a bit like having a TARDIS appear in the Stone Age,” said Wojcik, referring to Doctor Who’s time-traveling spacecraft. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Rumors surrounding a potential Nintendo Switch revision continue to pile up, this time with indications that the new console might feature hardware with Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) support.

A report from Bloomberg cites sources close to the project that confirm the new Switch revision will feature a new SoC (system on chip) from Nvidia. The new chip will feature better CPU performance and additional memory, which could help the Switch reach the proposed 4K output that previous reports have implied it will feature.

Perhaps the biggest addition is DLSS, which is reportedly supported by this new SoC. DLSS has been exclusive to PC, with Nvidia using the upscaling technology to drastically increase performance at higher resolutions with little to no impact on visual quality. DLSS would certainly make a mobile device like the Nintendo Switch more capable of reaching resolutions higher than its native 720p display, and inch closer to 4K when docked.

Previous reports from Bloomberg have suggested that the new Switch will also feature a bigger 7-inch display, this time with an OLED panel instead of LCD. This should improve image quality while also improving battery life, with the report suggesting that the display will fit within the current design of the Switch. Nintendo has repeatedly avoided confirming the existence of this new hardware revision, but reports suggest it is being prepared for launch this year, with production starting in June. Nintendo declined to comment on Bloomberg’s report, too.

The Nintendo Switch is still a roaring success for Nintendo, with the console selling strong during 2020 thanks to popular titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Monster Hunter Rise is the next big release for the console, with the action game launching on March 26.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Concerns over the potential harms of 5G technology are overblown, according to two large new reviews of research recently published by scientists in Australia. Both found no clear evidence that the type of radiofrequency energy used by 5G mobile networks poses any danger to human health.

5G is the next generation of wireless communication. It enables faster speeds and lower latency than LTE, and while we’re already seeing that in action on 5G phones, it’ll take years before 5G’s potential to transform industries like autonomous cars becomes a reality.

That delayed promise hasn’t stopped some people from warning that 5G will only accelerate the harms purportedly caused by our existing use of wireless technology. The evidence for any health risks from our cell phones today isn’t particularly strong, but it’s still something scientists are keeping an eye on. In particular, there have been many studies in the lab and on animals trying to figure how varying levels of radiofrequency energy could possibly affect the body, including the sort of energy that would be emitted by 5G networks.

The two new papers are the work of researchers from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Both were published this week in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology and are billed as the first reviews to focus on 5G specifically.

Aside from looking at animal and lab experiments, one review also analyzed epidemiological studies of radar, which uses the same sort of RF (low-level energy fields above 6 gigahertz to as high as 300 GHz) that 5G is expected to rely on. Their conclusions, based on reviewing data from over 100 studies, should be reassuring.

“In conclusion, a review of all the studies provided no substantiated evidence that low-level radio waves, like those used by the 5G network, are hazardous to human health,” said Ken Karipidis, assistant director of assessment and advice at ARPANSA, in a statement released by the agency.

The second review, which focused on RF energy specifically in the millimeter wave (MMW) band, which 5G will use, also found no link between low levels of MMW exposure and health effects. According to the researchers, both findings are just more evidence that cell phones today and in the near future will continue to emit levels of RF well below the safety thresholds established by the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) that have been adopted worldwide.

Some studies did find plausible biological effects from this sort of RF exposure. But importantly, these studies usually weren’t replicated by other, similar experiments. Overall, most of the studies they reviewed were deemed to be low quality, Karipidis and his team concluded.

All that said, these reviews won’t be the final word on vetting the safety of 5G and cell phone radiation in general. And the researchers hope their work will help strengthen the ongoing research looking into it.

“We recommend that future experimental studies improve their design with particular attention to dosimetry and temperature control and that future epidemiological studies continue to monitor long-term health effects in the population related to wireless telecommunications,” said Karipidis.