Solar System: 10 Things To Know This Week

I Don’t Want To Work By Zach Allia | More

January is national Braille literacy month. Did you know that Braille actually started out as military code developed so the French soldiers could read important messages without light? In fact, the code was known as night writing. It was the schoolboy Louis Braille who developed the more streamlined version of the alphabet used today. #WorldBrailleDay

What Jobs Will the Robots Take?

It is an invisible force that goes by many names. Computerization. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Technology. Innovation. And, everyone’s favorite, ROBOTS.

Whatever name you prefer, some form of it has been stoking progress and killing jobs—from seamstresses to paralegals—for centuries. But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in “a decade or two," according to a new paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, discussed recently in The Economist. The question is: Which half?

Another way of posing the same question is: Where do machines work better than people? Tractors are more powerful than farmers. Robotic arms are stronger and more tireless than assembly-line workers. But in the past 30 years, software and robots have thrived at replacing a particular kind of occupation: the average-wage, middle-skill, routine-heavy worker, especially in manufacturing and office admin.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

What is the point of space exploration?

This month in space

Astronomical & Astrological Events in November 🌌

November 1st: Moon at Aphelion; Jupiter conjunct Haumea

November 2nd: Saturn square Chiron; Moon conjunct Eris

November 3rd: Jupiter quintile Pluto

November 4th: Full Moon in Taurus; Taurids Meteor Shower

November 5th: Mercury enters Sagittarius; Moon at Perigee; Taurids Meteor Shower

November 7th: Venus enters Scorpio

November 10th: Moon conjunct Ceres; Last Quarter Moon in Leo

November 11th: Saturn trine Uranus; Venus conjunct Haumea

November 13th: Venus conjunct Jupiter

November 14th: Close approach of the Moon and Mars; Moon conjunct Makemake

November 16th: Moon conjunct Haumea and Venus

November 17th: Leonids Meteor Shower

November 18th: New Moon in Scorpio; Mars conjunct Makemake; Leonids Meteor Shower

November 20th: Moon conjunct Mercury; Moon at Perihelion 

November 21st: Sun enters Sagittarius; Moon at Apogee

November 22nd: Neptune Direct; Jupiter sesquiquadrate Chiron; Moon conjunct Pluto; Mercury at Greatest Brightness

November 24th: Mercury at Greatest Eastern Elongation

November 26th: First Quarter Moon in Aquarius

November 28th: Mercury at Dichotomy; Mercury conjunct Saturn

November 30th: Moon conjunct Eris

Surprisingly erratic X-ray auroras discovered at Jupiter

ESA and NASA space telescopes have revealed that, unlike Earth’s polar lights, the intense auroras seen at Jupiter’s poles unexpectedly behave independently of one another.

Auroras have been seen in many places, from planets and moons to stars, brown dwarfs and a variety of other cosmic bodies. These beautiful displays are caused by streams of electrically charged atomic particles – electrons and ions – colliding with the atmospheric layers surrounding a planet, moon or star. Earth’s polar lights tend to mirror one another: when they brighten at the North pole, they generally brighten at the South pole, too.

The same was expected of auroras elsewhere, but a new study, published today in Nature Astronomy, reveals that those at the gas giant Jupiter are much less coordinated.

The study used ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatories to observe the high-energy X-rays produced by the auroras at Jupiter’s poles. While the southern auroras were found to pulse consistently every 11 minutes, those at the planet’s north pole flared chaotically.

“These auroras don’t seem to act in unison like those that we’re often familiar with here on Earth,” says lead author William Dunn of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK, and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA.

“We thought the activity would be coordinated through Jupiter’s magnetic field, but the behaviour we found is really puzzling.

“It’s stranger still considering that Saturn – another gas giant planet – doesn’t produce any X-ray auroras that we can detect, so this throws up a couple of questions that we’re currently unsure how to answer.

“Firstly, how does Jupiter produce bright and energetic X-ray auroras at all when its neighbour doesn’t, and secondly, how does it do so independently at each pole?”

With the data at hand, William and colleagues identified and mapped X-ray hot spots at Jupiter’s poles. Each hot spot covers an area half the size of Earth’s surface.

As well as raising questions about how auroras are produced throughout the cosmos, Jupiter’s independently pulsing auroras suggest that there is far more to understand about how the planet itself produces some of its most energetic emissions.

Jupiter’s magnetic influence is colossal; the region of space over which the Jovian magnetic field dominates – the magnetosphere – is some 40 times larger than Earth’s, and filled with high-energy plasma. In the outer edges of this region, charged particles ultimately from volcanic eruptions on Jupiter’s moon, Io, interact with the magnetic boundary between the magnetosphere and interplanetary space. These interactions create intense phenomena, including auroras.

“Charged particles have to hit Jupiter’s atmosphere at exceptionally fast speeds in order to generate the X-ray pulses that we’ve seen. We don’t yet understand what processes cause this, but these observations tell us that they act independently in the northern and southern hemispheres,” adds Licia Ray, from Lancaster University, UK, and a co-author.

The asymmetry in Jupiter’s northern and southern lights also suggests that many cosmic bodies that are known to experience auroras – exoplanets, neutron stars, brown dwarfs and other rapidly-rotating bodies – might produce a very different aurora at each pole.

Further studies of Jupiter’s auroras will help to form a clearer picture of the phenomena produced at Jupiter; auroral observing campaigns are planned for the next two years, with X-ray monitoring by XMM-Newton and Chandra and simultaneous observations from NASA’s Juno, a spacecraft that started orbiting Jupiter in mid-2016.

ESA’s Juice will arrive at the planet by 2029, to investigate Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. It, too, will observe the auroras and in particular the effect on them of the Galilean moons.

“This is a breakthrough finding, and it couldn’t have been done without ESA’s XMM-Newton,” adds Norbert Schartel, ESA project scientist for XMM-Newton.

“The space observatory was critical to this study, providing detailed data at a high spectral resolution such that the team could explore the vibrant colours of the auroras and figure out details about the particles involved: if they’re moving fast, whether they’re an oxygen or sulphur ion, and so on.

“Coordinated observations like these, with telescopes such as XMM-Newton, Chandra and Juno working together, are key in exploring and further understanding environments and phenomena across the Universe, and the processes that produce them.”

Cambridge University scientists have identified a chemical in the brain that blocks unwanted thoughts, offering a new avenue to treat neurological disorders. http://ift.tt/2lXzefU

Awe inspiring pictures of Jupiter as seen by Juno

Jupiter as seen by Juno

It takes the American beaver 24 hours to learn to swim after being born. Learn more about beavers and how they shape the world around them.

Today is the birthday of the renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Doctors grimly estimated that he wouldn't make it past his twenties, and today he turns 76 - and still one of the sharpest minds in the world. Happy birthday Stephen!