If you watched 2001: Space Odyssey, you need to remember that scene where astronauts run on a giant wheel to practice and receive the daily dose of gravity. This wheel acts as a centrifuge, which simulates the force of gravity . Without gravity, the bones lose strength, the muscles become rickets, and the heart loses its conditioning. When astronauts return from long missions from the International Space Station, they are warned not to move after landing; they are loaded and then go through several weeks of reconditioning to gravity. This means that even if we had the spacecraft ready to travel for years and years in space, astronauts could not bear to spend all this time without gravity. Gravity chambers are critical for long space travel. But so far we have not been able to create any room that does not cause dizziness and nausea in its users. The problem with the wheels generating forces on the bodies is that all this movement creates a paired cross-vision, a hassle in the inner ear that makes you feel like you're somersaulting, and this causes nausea. Slow ignition To try to solve this problem, aerospace engineer Torin Clark conducted a rather funny experiment: he and his team put several volunteers to run on one of these centrifugal machines. The difference between this study and all the previous ones is that they started with rotations very slowly and progressed at different speeds, depending on the adaptation of each person. The advance has been customized. Each participant started with only one spin per minute and increased the speed only when he stopped feeling sick. Gradual acceleration did not happen quickly: they were acclimatized in 10 different sessions. This personalized advancement brought positive results for all participants. At the end of the tenth session, everyone rotated comfortably without feeling sick with an average of 17 revolutions per minute. This number is much higher than that obtained in any previous experiment. The results were published in the June issue of the Journal of Vestibular Research . The research was conducted at the University of Colorado in Boulder (USA). This shows that artificial gravity can be an optimistic option for the future of space travel. “As far as we know, virtually anyone can adapt to this stimulus,” says the researcher. 50 sessions In a similar study, the researchers increased the number of training sessions to 50 and concluded that people also adapt to multiple rotations per minute. Now they want to know how long the benefits of training last after the interruption of Sessions, and how much gravity an astronaut needs to fight the loss of bones and muscles.

Since the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was in lunar orbit in 2009, NASA scientists have been bombarding it with laser beams: their target is a reflector the size of a notebook placed on the surface of the probe, about 385,000 km from Earth. Finally, after almost 10 years of outgoing signals, this sort of mirror on the lunar orbiter has deigned to return a return signal, an important result that could help us evaluate the efficiency of some experiments on the moon since the end of the Apollo program. The bounce signal was picked up in 2018, but the research was only published now on Earth, Planets and Space. Adrift. It is the first time that a photon beam is successfully reflected by a lunar orbiter. On our satellite are already five reflective panels, positioned by the astronauts of the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 and brought to the moon by Soviet robotic rovers Lunochod 1 and 2, in 1970 and 1973. By sending a laser beam in the direction of the Moon and measuring the time taken by the photons to go back it is possible, note the speed of light, to measure with millimeter precision the distance Earth-Moon. This is how it turned out that our satellite moves away from the Earth at a speed of 3.8 cm per year, as a result of the gravitational attraction and the relative motions of the two bodies . The weight of years (and powders). Lunar reflectors also allow to monitor how the Moon moves as it rotates: it is in this way that it is understood that it has a fluid core, and if in the future it is found that inside that core there is also solid material, this could explain how the Moon fed its ancient, and now extinct, magnetic field. In short, having accurate measurements would allow to investigate the history and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, if it were not that with time, the reflectors on the moon are become less and less "reactive" - perhaps due to the presence of dust regolith on their surface, raised by the impacts of micrometeorites. The amount of light returned from the five experiments is now one-tenth of what we would expect to receive. And this is where LRO comes into play: by comparing the photons sent back by the probe reflector with those obtained by the lunar reflectors, we will be able to understand whether these have been damaged by dust. Get around the obstacle. Attempts to reach the LRO reflector with a laser beam of visible green light have long been in vain, mainly due to the interference effects exerted by the Earth's atmosphere. So the scientists collaborated with the Côte d'azur University in France, firing at the probe an infrared laser light, much more efficient in penetrating through the gaseous layers of the Earth's shell. It worked: on September 4, 2018, the laser station in Grasse, France, recorded the first return infrared light pulse from the lunar probe. Between 2018 and 2019 the team captured about 200 return photons, out of tens of thousands of pulses launched to the satellite: it seems little (it is) but it could be enough to answer, over time, the question about the accumulation of dust on lunar experiments.

In 1604 the light of a white dwarf exploded in a supernova reached the Earth: the phenomenon, quite normal for that type of object, occurs when a small and very dense star exceeds the so-called critical mass, tearing material from a companion star that revolves around it. . In that specific case, the explosion, coming from a distance of only 20,000 light years from the Earth and presumably occurred around 18,000 BC, was also visible to the naked eye for several months: the event was documented by various astronomers of the time, including which also Kepler - and from him the supernova took its name. The animation at the top of the page consists of a series of images taken by the Chandra telescope instruments over a period of 15 years, then processed in false colors. After more than four centuries, a group of astronomers wanted to analyze what remains of that explosion. The result surprised everyone: 400 years after the first supernova glow, the explosion is still booming. One might think that it is obvious, as space is empty and nothing should slow down the ejected material, but in reality it is the material which, interacting with itself (residual cohesive forces), slows down its run with the passage of time. The astronomers focused their research on 15 nodes of matter (agglomerates) in the huge amount of material ejected from the supernova. By analyzing them by X-rays thanks to the instruments of the Chandra Orbital Telescope (NASA), the researchers were able to establish that one of these agglomerations, faster than others, is moving outwards at 37 million kilometers per hour. Never before has there been material ejected from a supernova with such a speed, and scientists still cannot say whether this was caused by an extremely powerful explosion or by an unusual environment around the supernova. The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal, reveals that the average speed of the knots is 16 million kilometers per hour and that the shock wave expands to 24 million kilometers per hour; the study also established that the escape direction is asymmetrical, which can only mean that the explosion was not homogeneous. All of this suggests that Kepler's supernova was one of the most violent in evidence and that we will likely continue to see the expansion of the material continue for centuries, if not millennia.

At the speed of light (or almost). But the one recently tested at University College London exceeds the expectations of even the most demanding: in tests, British researchers have in fact reached the speed of 178 terabits, enough to download the entire Netflix catalog in just one second. The system uses an evolution of the optical fiber that transmits data using a wider slice of the light spectrum than that commonly used. Unsurpassed. The result was obtained using a mix of light signal amplification technologies that optimized the frequency, brightness and polarization, manipulating every single transmission frequency. The study was conducted in England and was attended by scholars from English universities with technicians from two companies in the sector, Xtera and KDDI Research. The speed reached by the British team is 20% higher than the previous record, set in Japan a few years ago, and is very close to the theoretical limit calculated in 1949 by the American mathematician Claude Shannon. But it is about 6 times higher than the 35 terabits per second achieved in the most modern datacenters. Low cost. This new technology is also particularly promising from an economic point of view: it can in fact be implemented on the existing fiber optic infrastructure simply by updating the signal amplifiers, at a cost of around 1000-2000 euros per kilometer. The installation of a new fiber in urban areas can instead reach the cost of 400,000 euros per kilometer.

At the center of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a black hole, Sagittarius A *, largely unknown and as mysterious as much of its surroundings. We know that there are like two huge gamma-ray bubbles in that region that extend above and below the galactic plane for about 50,000 light years in all. Called Fermi bubbles, they are the result of a mixture of very intense gas and cosmic rays. A recent, in-depth analysis of Fermi bubbles has brought to light something unknown to date: from inside, huge "lumps" of molecular gas move at very high speed and are expelled in completely unknown ways. The discovery of this surprising phenomenon is, for Naomi McClure-Griffiths (Australian National University), who participated in the research, something that could also have important repercussions on our Galaxy: because to give life to new stars, we need " material ", but if this is ejected, and therefore lost in large quantities, the Milky Way may no longer be able to generate it. The puzzles are numerous. First of all, it is not clear how Fermi bubbles formed in ours and in other galaxies. One hypothesis has it that they are the result of supernovae exploded near the central black hole of galaxies, another that they are what remains of a banquet of the black hole itself, which has incorporated the material that circulated around it and, consequently, produced gas emissions in large quantities. But even more mysterious is the presence of cold and very dense gas. Where does it come from? None of our simulation models, applied to what appears to be happening near the black hole, can give an explanation for the existence of this gas. Is Sagittarius A * ejecting the gas, or the thousands of massive stars near the center of the galaxy? "We don't know how the black hole or the formation process can produce this phenomenon," says the study's lead author, Enrico Di Teodoro (Johns Hopkins University). Something similar has also been observed in other galaxies "where, however, there are much more massive black holes and the number of stars forming in those regions is high, so it is easier to explain the presence of cold and dense material, as it comes from from the stars ". Unfortunately, however, those galaxies are very far away and it is not easy to observe the details. The Milky Way, on the other hand, allows us to better enter its heart and, by revealing the many secrets it still holds, it will also allow us to understand the evolution mechanisms of other galaxies in the Universe.

The dangerous asteroid 2011 ES4, which is at least 25 metres (82 feet) in diameter, will approach Earth on Tuesday, 2 September, according to NASA. The space rock will be closer to our planet than any other asteroid in the next decade - it is expected to come within 120,000 km of the Earth, which is significantly closer than the Earth-Moon distance (384,402 kilometres). The closest distance between 2011 ES4 and the planet will be at 16:12 GMT.

There is a link between the earthquakes that shake the Apennines and the presence of carbon dioxide in the aquifers: the samplings made in the last ten years show that CO2 reaches its maximum concentration on the occasion of intense seismic activity. For the first time, an analysis of geochemical and geophysical data collected from 2009 to 2018 was conducted The results of this research highlighted a correspondence between deep CO2 emissions and seismicity showing how, in periods of high seismic activity, peaks in the flow of deep carbon dioxide are recorded which gradually decrease as the seismic energy and the number of of earthquakes The data shows a correlation between the two phenomena, but we do not yet know if CO2 is a signal that announces the earthquake: to verify it, continuous monitoring will be attempted over time The study examined geochemical and geophysical data collected over ten years, including those relating to the great earthquakes of L'Aquila, Amatrice and Norcia. Although the temporal relationships between the occurrence of a seismic event and the release of CO2 are still to be investigated, it is hypothesized that the evolution of seismicity in the Italian Apennine area is modulated by the rising gas that derives from the fusion of portions of the plate plunge into the mantle ". This continuous production of carbon dioxide in depth and on a large scale (released mainly by volcanoes) favors the formation of high-pressure reservoirs in the earth's crust." Seismicity in mountain ranges - add the researchers and co-authors of the study - it could be related to the depressurization of these reservoirs and the consequent release of fluids which, in turn, activate the faults responsible for earthquakes. For a complete examination of the data, graphs and insights, consult the complete publication published in "SCIENCE ADVANCES" entitled "Correlation between tectonic CO2 Earth degassing and seismicity is revealed by a 10-year record in the Apennines, Italy" We hope that the peculiarities that emerged in the studies of the Italian Apennines are not a characteristic phenomenon of the geological area, but the turning point for predicting and preventing the disasters caused by earthquakes around the world.

There are three flashes of ultraviolet light on Mars every night NASA's MAVEN spacecraft found that three flashes of ultraviolet light are produced in the atmosphere of Mars every night. They are caused by the interaction between the heat of the Sun and the Martian vertical winds. Every night some areas of the sky of Mars pulsate with ultraviolet light. It was discovered thanks to one of the probes that currently rotate around the Red Planet: we are talking about the MAVEN, thanks to which NASA is studying the atmosphere of the Red Planet at various wavelengths. And precisely from observations conducted in the ultraviolet - the light invisible to the human eye, but visible with specially built instruments - it was discovered that during the night hours, especially in spring and autumn, the Martian atmosphere emits flashes 3 times with this wavelength. Vertical winds. Nick Schneider, of the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospher and Space Physics (LASP), explains that the MAVEN images shed light on some movements of the middle Martian atmosphere, a region so far difficult to study, where air currents carry gas. between the lowest and highest layers of the atmosphere. According to Schneider, these pulsations occur precisely when vertical winds favor the movement of gases to regions of higher density, thus accelerating the chemical reactions that produce nitrogen monoxide that fuels the ultraviolet glow. “This glow comes mainly from an altitude of about 70 kilometers; its brightest part has a diameter of about a thousand kilometers and reaches an intensity comparable to that of a terrestrial Northern Lights, ”explained Zac Milby, also from LASP. “Unfortunately, the phenomenon that produces ultraviolet light does not occur at wavelengths visible to humans and therefore to any astronauts who will colonize Mars. Too bad: the bright spots would intensify above their heads every night after sunset and would be seen darting across the sky at 300 kilometers per hour ». It all starts in the day. The number of waves and their speed indicate that the average atmosphere of Mars is linked to the daily warming caused by the Sun and the disturbances of the topography linked to the enormous volcanic mountains of the planet. The phenomenon, in fact, "begins" during the day, when molecules of carbon dioxide and nitrogen are "lacerated" by solar radiation. The circulation of the atmosphere then directs the atoms towards nocturnal regions, where the winds provide the atoms with the energy necessary to reform the initial molecules and from these reactions the emission of ultraviolet rays is generated. The process is summarized in the following graph:

The magnetic field guarantees life on our planet: what made it work for billions of years? Perhaps a feature of the Earth's core that was not thought of. Illustration: plumes of the Earth's magnetic field | Jurik Peter / Shutterstock One of the characteristics of our Planet is its magnetic field, neither too weak nor too intense: just what is needed to protect the surface of the Earth from charged particles of the solar wind and cosmic radiation. If the magnetic field were not there, life, as it appeared, would disappear in a short time. Today we know that this shield is produced by the motions of liquid iron, the most abundant element in the outer core of the Earth, which gives life to a geodynamo: a planetary dynamo which, originating an electric current, causes the appearance of a magnetic field as a consequence ... This description is a simplification, however, and hides questions for which geologists still have no answers. However, an international study (published in Nature Communications) could make us take a step forward in understanding the mechanism of the geodynamo: for the team, it would be the presence of elements lighter than iron in the Earth's core to allow the geodynamo, in the present as in the past. . The structure of the Earth and the motions of the mantle The structure of the Earth and the motions of the mantle, highlighted by the arrows. The arrows indicate the direction of motion of the mantle, which cools near the crust and partly exits the oceanic ridges and partly returns to the depths. The movement raises and lowers the oceanic crust by up to 2 kilometers. For further information: The paradox of the Earth's core. | Our Planet was formed from the accumulation of dust and gases that surrounded the protostar that would give rise to the Sun: in those early stages the heavier elements - such as iron - aggregated towards the center of what would become a planet, while the lighter ones were distributed and differentiated towards the outside, towards what would become the surface. This is why the Earth today has a chemical diversification passing from the crust to the mantle and up to the core, but there are no homogeneous zones: while the iron sank to form the core, it also dragged with it a part of light elements - such as oxygen, sulfur, carbon, hydrogen ... - whose presence is confirmed by seismographs that measure the way in which the seismic waves of mega earthquakes cross the planet. Little importance has been given to these elements in relation to the functioning of the geodynamo, powered, as has always been thought, exclusively by the heat of the inner core. According to this hypothesis, the energy emitted by the inner core is sufficient to keep the liquid iron of the outer core in motion, which thus generates the magnetic field. The new study wants to add a piece to this scenario: it hypothesizes that the lighter elements present in the outer core lower the threshold of the temperature necessary to keep liquid iron in motion, and that, without these elements, perhaps it would never have triggered the geodynamic effect, even with the same heat. The models used for the study have highlighted a scenario in which 8% of silica in the outer core would be sufficient to have the geodynamo in operation from the beginning of the planet's history to today. There are still no projections or models on the role of the other light elements, and this is what the next studies will focus on.

Solar activity affects large earthquakes An important discovery that seems to explain large-scale earthquakes brings us one step closer to predicting them. In the last fifty years the idea has been established that sometimes great earthquakes are connected and even subsequent to one another. If, as it seems, so it was, what is hidden in this correlation? Is it an internal or external factor to the planet? A possible answer comes from a team of researchers from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and the University of Basilicata who have highlighted a statistically significant relationship between solar activity and large earthquakes: the study, published in Nature , is based on the analysis of twenty years of data collected by the SOHO satellite (NASA / ESA, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) on the most intense solar flares and the consequent greater density of protons (high-energy particles) that invest the Earth, in relation to earthquakes of magnitude greater than 5.6 recorded in the database of the International Seismological Center (ISC-GEM) in the same period of time. "We started with the study of the data from the SOHO observatory, in stationary orbit with respect to the Earth and the Sun, about 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth", explains Vito Marchitelli (University of Basilicata), first author of the study: " satellite records the density and speed of the protons that hit the Earth, parameters that are the result of the intensity of solar activity. The comparison between the variation of these data and the seismicity on a world scale does not seem to leave any doubts: the correlation is evident and shows seismicity peaks within 24 hours from the peak of the proton flux. " "It must first of all be said that the observation of this strong correlation between proton density and earthquakes is in itself a very important discovery, because it allows us to understand that there is a common factor that influences seismicity on a global scale", explains Giuseppe De Natale (INGV of Naples). «The discharges generated by the excess electrical charge of the ionosphere would penetrate the large seismogenic faults, ie the geological structures that generate earthquakes, which are areas of high electrical conductivity. This can generate electric discharges in the quartz crystals, which abound in the rocks, generating a pulse of expansion or contraction of the mineral, and therefore of the whole rocks, depending on the polarity of the current. Such a strain impulse could destabilize faults that are already close to the breaking point, and therefore produce earthquakes. " In summary, the arrival of large streams of protons from the Sun produces electrical discharges in large faults, where electricity is easily transmitted, and this acts on some minerals such as quartz, which, by expanding or compressing, can give way to movement of a fault already subjected to high tension. This suggests that large earthquakes that occur almost in succession are related to the activity of the Sun. "Our work", affirms Paolo Harabaglia (University of Basilicata), "certainly does not question the main phenomenon that generates earthquakes, namely the tectonics and the movement of the earth's plates, but the contribution induced by the variations in charge due to solar activity can represent the destabilization factor for faults already close to the critical point. " Together with a better understanding of the structure of the Earth and many other important factors of geology and seismology, the discovery of this correlation could in fact bring closer the ability to estimate the probability of a major earthquake in regions of the world more prone than others. For specific details, consult the complete report on the NATURE Magazine

Astronomers detected the explosion of the supernova the 23rd February 1987, after the explosion it was not possible to detect the neutron star or even a blackhole it is formed. Today ALMA radio telescope detected signs of an hot star where it should be a neutron star if it has been kicked out at the supernova explosion event. If further observations will confirm it, it will be the youngest neutron star ever observed from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-alma-neutron-star-supernova-1987a.html

Apophis will be 30.000km close to Earth, Earth-Moon distance is 380.000km, in April 2029. It is probable it will collide with Earth in 2036. A huge effort is needed by all the world to study and plan a strategy to change the orbit of the asteroid to avoid the collision. https://www.space.com/asteroid-apophis-2029-flyby-planetary-defense.html

In 2017 a japanese team used cosmic rays called muons to 3D scan the great pyramid finding an unknown void. Egyptian archeologysts have been skeptics about this discovery, so a new campain of measures have been organized in order to check if the void is really there with a new muon detector inside the pyramid and a drone outside. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ202001110001.html

Two months after the executive order in which it confirmed its interest in the use of the Moon and, more generally, of all celestial bodies, including asteroids, for economic and industrial purposes, the American government published guidelines for the space exploration. The Artemis Accords document is presented and partially summarized on the NASA website, which headlines the page "principles for a safe, peaceful and prosperous future": little is known about the actual rules, which, when they will be signed by private space companies American and space agencies that want to participate in the Artemis program for the colonization of the Moon, will be, in the intentions of the Trump administration, the first foundation stone of a new set of rules that will bind those who want to go to the cosmos. The Artemis agreements seem to stem from the desire to regulate the race towards the new frontier and the exploitation of its resources, which, at least as an image, recalls the feverish times of the gold rush through the "wild west", in the mid-nineteenth century. This is because if until a few years ago the only ones to go to the stars were the astronauts of NASA, ESA and the Russian or Chinese space agencies, today more and more private companies are on the field, starting with SpaceX, which by force of things operate with different logic than government bodies. The Artemis Accords give the impression of being a cumbersome and binding American annotation to the Treaty on Extra Atmospheric Space (1967), which in turn had already been enriched by a Treaty on the Moon (1979). These two documents were born from the work of the United Nations Commission on the peaceful use of the extra-atmospheric space, in which 74 countries participate - not a single actor, however important - and which, since 1958, meets once a year . Artemis reaffirms the spirit of the various treaties created by the work of the UN commission, and it could not be otherwise, but above all it aims to impose technologies and standards on anyone who wants to participate in the banquet, private and government bodies, thus operating in blatant contradiction with the rules that tend to limit or regulate "prevailing positions" The US government reaches out to science and, in its Artemis Accords, plans to share all the data collected in the Cosmos; in addition, in order not to betray the memory of the past, the aim is to protect spatial areas of high historical value, such as the sites of the first moon landings of the 1960s and, of course, " The first impression". We hope to be able to participate as soon as possible in this international adventure that will write new pages of history. Asgardiani, forward with our ideas and projects.