Webb Compare

Galaxy Cluster SMACS 0723 Webb Hubble Southern Ring Nebula Webb Hubble Stephan’s Quintet Webb Hubble Carina Nebula Webb Hubble

Check out 30-year-old advertising for Microsoft Excel. Seems to be able to do wonders in the elevator.

Later this year, Microsoft’s spreadsheet program turns 37 years old and here is a slightly older type of advertising for the program that is part […]

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SpaceX’s latest Starship booster test ends with an explosion

SpaceX has long been gearing up for the Starship’s first orbital test flight, but that significant milestone may be delayed yet again. A Super Heavy booster designed for its massive launch vehicle has exploded at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facility. According to NASA Spaceflight, which uploaded a video of the incident, the booster caught fire while the company was testing its Raptor engines. As Gizmodo notes, Super Heavy’s current prototype, the Booster 7, is equipped with 33 version 2 Raptor engines.

In response to NASA Spaceflight’s tweet about the explosion, Musk said it’s “actually not good” and that his team is assessing the damage. He also revealed that this issue was specific to the engine spin start test SpaceX had conducted — “Raptor has a complex start sequence,” he said as an aside — and that going forward, the company “won’t do a spin start test with all 33 engines at once.”

Several Starship rocket prototypes had exploded in the past due to various reasons before the company finally managed its first successful launch and landing sequence in May 2021. Some of the boosters exploded during ground testing, while others caught fire after Starship had already landed following test flights. It’s not just exploding Starships that had contributed to the heavy-lift space vehicle’s orbital test flight delay — the company’s plans also got held up by regulatory approvals. The FAA, for instance, kept extending its environmental review of SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site. Without that approval, the company can’t launch the Starship from the facility. The agency finally approved a final environmental assessment of the Starship launch proposal from Boca Chica in June. 

Last month, Musk said that Starship will be “ready to fly” in July, but this incident will likely affect the company’s timeline. In a tweet, Musk said the “[b]ase of the vehicle seems ok by flashlight” when they checked it out, but it remains to be seen how bad the damage was and how much it will affect the company’s plans for the vehicle’s first orbital flight.

数学界の最高栄誉「フィールズ賞」受賞者の頭脳と胸中、日本人数学者と賞の歴史

2人目の女性受賞者となったマリーナ・ビャゾウスカ教授（7月5日、ヘルシンキ）　Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva via REUTERS ＜フィールズ賞について概観するとともに、4人の受賞者の業績と人柄、数学に向き合うスタンスを紹介する。過去には3人の日本人が受賞＞ 国際数学連合（IMU）は5日、数学界で最も歴史と権威を持つ賞で…

First James Webb Space Telescope image shows ‘deepest’ view of the universe ever

After 14 years of development and six months of calibration, the James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to embark on its mission to probe the depths of our cosmos. On Monday, NASA and President Joe Biden shared the first colored image from the space telescope, showcasing a look at the early days of the universe.

According to NASA, “Webb’s First Deep Field” represents the sharpest and “deepest” image of the distant universe to date. What you see is a snapshot of a cluster of galaxies known as SMACS 0723 as they appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of all the galaxies pictured acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying the much more distant celestial bodies seen in the background. Some of the galaxies have never-before-seen features that astronomers will soon study to learn more about the history of our universe. NASA notes Webb’s First Deep Field doesn’t represent our earliest look at the universe. Microwave telescopes like the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) captured snapshots closer to the Big Bang but did not offer a view of stars and galaxies like the one captured by Webb.    

“Mr. President, if you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm’s length, that is the part of the universe that you’re seeing,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson told President Biden during Monday’s briefing. “Just one little speck of the universe.”

Getting to this historic moment has been a long road for NASA. When the JWST was first announced, the agency’s plan was to launch the telescope in 2007. After a redesign in 2005, NASA finally completed work on the project in 2016 and said the spacecraft would be ready to launch by 2018. In 2019, NASA completed assembly of the telescope, but then the pandemic hit, leading to further delays in testing and shipping. All told, those delays eventually led to the JWST project costing $10 billion. 

NASA’s decision to name its most advanced space telescope ever after former agency administrator James Webb has also been a source of controversy. Before Webb oversaw the Mercury, Gemini and early Apollo programs at NASA, he worked at the US State Department during a time when the agency fired hundreds of gay and lesbian personnel. In September, NASA said it would not change the name of the JWST. 

The image Biden shared today is only the first of a handful of photos NASA plans to share this week from the JWST. The rest of the initial slate will arrive tomorrow morning at 9:45PM ET when NASA hosts a press conference with Webb leadership. Live coverage of the event starts at 10:30AM ET on NASA TV, YouTube, Twitter and Twitch.

北半球でよく見られるキノコが「1万7000以上の性別」を持っている可能性があると判明

by Urmas Ojango 人間を含む多くの動物は生物学的にオスとメスの2つの性別を持っているとされていますが、中には4つの性別を持つ鳥も存在するなど、自然界の性別は2つだけではありません。新たな研究では、北半球で一般的に生息しているキノコがなんと「1万7000以上の性別」を持っている可能性があると報告されています…