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hubie writes:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.

The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.

The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not to worry. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won't be until the year 2031.

The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.

"This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system," said David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and co-author of the new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is."

The comet has an orbital period of about three million years and has been falling towards the Sun for the last million. This observation gives valuable insight into the size distribution of comets in the Oort Cloud and hence its total mass, estimates for which vary widely.

Also see the NASA press release video.

Journal Reference:
Man-To Hui (許文韜), et. al.,Hubble Space Telescope Detection of the Nucleus of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac626a)

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hubie writes:

China is planning its first satellite mission to search the Milky Way for exoplanets orbiting stars just like the Sun. The mission goal is to find the first Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star just like the Sun. Such a planet, called an Earth 2.0, would have the right conditions for liquid water and have the potential to harbor life. Although more than 5000 exoplanets were found with NASA's Kepler telescope before it ran out of fuel in 2018, none fit the definition of an Earth 2.0.

Exoplanets are found by looking for stellar brightnesses to dim as a planet passes in front. An Earth 2.0 candidate would have an orbital period of about a year and would thus pass in front of its star once a year. You want about three passes to get a decent determination of the oribit, so you need to be observing the same stars for more than three years. The Kepler mission suffered a failure early in its mission that prevented staring at the same spot for long periods of time, so it wasn't possible to determine precise orbits for the explanets it discovered. This new mission will search the same patch of sky with more telescopes gather more data to allow orbits to be calculated.

With Earth 2.0, astronomers could have another four years of data that, when combined with Kepler's observations, could help to confirm which exoplanets are truly Earth-like. "I am very excited about the prospect of returning to the Kepler field," says Christiansen, who hopes to study Earth 2.0's data if they are made available.

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upstart writes:

The Senate bill that has Big Tech scared:

If you want to know how worried an industry is about a piece of pending legislation, a decent metric is how apocalyptic its predictions are about what the bill would do. By that standard, Big Tech is deeply troubled by the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

The infelicitously named bill is designed to prevent dominant online platforms—like Apple and Facebook and, especially, Google and Amazon—from giving themselves an advantage over other businesses that must go through them to reach customers. As one of two antitrust bills voted out of committee by a strong bipartisan vote (the other would regulate app stores), it may be this Congress' best, even only, shot to stop the biggest tech companies from abusing their gatekeeper status.

But according to the tech giants and their lobbyists and front groups, the bill, which was introduced by Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, respectively the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be a disaster for the American consumer. In an ongoing publicity push against it, they have claimed that it would ruin Google search results, bar Apple from offering useful features on iPhones, force Facebook to stop moderating content, and even outlaw Amazon Prime. It's all pretty alarming. Is any of it true?

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upstart writes:

Huge Impact May Be Why The Moon's Near And Far Sides Differ So Much:

When spacecraft first journeyed around the Moon, something unexpected was revealed: the far side has almost none of the lava flows we call seas or maria, which dominate what we can see from Earth.

For almost 60 years, astronomers have sought to explain the discrepancy with many different theories. A new model proposes the answer lies in the Moon's largest and deepest impact crater.

The lunar seas are the result of immense lava flows that erupted recently enough they have not been completely covered in craters. The puzzle is why there were so many more such eruptions on one hemisphere than the other.

A new study in the journal Science Advances proposes that the formation of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin triggered a heat plume in the lunar interior that produced the imbalance. The SPA is among the Solar System's largest impact basins, with a metal structure beneath that may be the asteroid that formed it. The SPA is not as well known as smaller lunar craters, both because it's on the far side, and its immense age (4.3 billion years) means subsequent impacts have partially obscured it.

[...] For much of the time since the absence of seas on the far side was discovered, attempts to explain the difference centered on the relationship of the two hemispheres to Earth. Examples include efforts to explain how Earth's gravitational field could have produced greater activity on the lunar near side, or the planet's bulk blocked incoming asteroids, reducing cratering.

However, if the study authors are right, it's all a coincidence, a consequence of where the impact that caused the SPA happened to take place.

Journal Reference:
Matt J. Jones, et. al., A South Pole–Aitken impact origin of the lunar compositional asymmetry, (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm8475)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Eric Weinstein is well known for captivating and thought-provoking opinions in theoretical physics and has commented on Bitcoin maximalism.

In one statement in 2021, Weinstein referred to Bitcoiners as "the logical saviors of physics," outlining his conversation focusing on the physics behind the protocol.

The conversation painted a not-so-evident framing of centralization that inevitably leads to Bitcoin changing the world.

Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and host of "The Portal" podcast, took the main stage at Bitcoin 2022 to discuss fixing the monetary systems of humanity. Weinstein was joined by Abraham (Avi) Loeb, an Israel-American theoretical physicist and professor of science at Harvard University.

Weinstein has been known to have interesting views when it comes to Bitcoin. One Twitter thread from 2021 got particularly interesting when Weinstein was asked to become a Bitcoiner by another user, to which he replied, "No. Your job is to liberate physics. Mine, to liberate you."

Weinstein continued to write, "I would however come to any credible meeting about freeing Satoshi's genius from the loss of anonymity to the ledger that is the blockchain."

That comment reads as adversarial, yet in the same tweet, Weinstein stated, "Bitcoiners are the logical saviors of physics." This takes us to his conversation with Loeb at Bitcoin 2022, the aforementioned "credible meeting" at which they discussed not only the possibility of Bitcoin's success, but the need for it to save us all.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/eric-weinstein-and-avi-loeb-breaking-physics-and-changing-the-world

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upstart writes:

World's first LED lights developed from rice husks:

Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. Scientists searching for a scalable method to fabricate quantum dots have developed a way to recycle rice husks to create the first silicon quantum dot (QD) LED light. Their new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way.

[...] "Since typical QDs often involve toxic material, such as cadmium, lead, or other heavy metals, environmental concerns have been frequently deliberated when using nanomaterials. Our proposed process and fabrication method for QDs minimizes these concerns," said Ken-ichi Saitow, lead study author and a professor of chemistry at Hiroshima University.

[...] Aware of the environmental concerns surrounding the current quantum dots, the researchers set out to find a new method for fabricating quantum dots that has a positive environmental impact. Waste rice husks, it turns out, are an excellent source of high-purity silica (SiO2) and value-added Si powder.

upstart writes:

Chipotle Sets To Debut Chip-Making Robots To Mitigate Labor Shortage:

Chipotle Mexican Grill is experimenting with a new tortilla chip robot that would help it offset labor shortages amid the Great Resignation.

Miso Robotics CEO Michael Bell told Fox News' Neil Cavuto Friday that his company partnered with Chipotle to develop a chip-making robot as the fast-food company struggles with the current labor shortage. He said, "automation is the solution."

[...] So far, tests at Chipotle's innovation lab in Irvine, California, have gone great. The robot, named "Chippy," is set to debut at an undisclosed location in southern California.

Chippy has proven itself to follow Chipotle's tortilla chip recipe accurately.

[...] This is just another example of how the labor shortage is ushering in investment in automation by major corporations to displace low-skill/low-wage human workers. At this rate, by the end of this decade, one would suspect many fast-food restaurants would have some to all of their kitchens automated, a move to drive down costs.

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upstart writes:

Using tweets to predict real-time food shortages:

The sentiments and emotions expressed in tweets on Twitter can be used in real time to assess where supply chain disruptions due to a pandemic, war or natural disaster may lead to food shortages, according to researchers at Penn State and the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. They found that food security-related tweets that expressed anger, disgust or fear were strongly correlated with actual food insufficiency in certain U.S. states early in the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings can potentially be used to develop a low-cost early warning system for identifying where food-security interventions are most needed, according to the researchers.

"The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related supply-chain disruptions prompted worldwide concerns about food access and availability, and many people took to social media to express these concerns," said Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural and regional economics at Penn State and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD). "We wanted to see if real-time tweets could be used to identify specific states or regions facing food supply or insecurity problems."

Goetz said that rather than looking only at the number of tweets related to food insufficiency, he and his colleagues wanted to know how people actually felt about their food situation. Using artificial intelligence, they identified the sentiments and emotions associated with the tweets, which allowed them to separate tweets expressing concerns about the food supply from those expressing relief or contentment.

upstart writes:

Researchers home in on possible "day zero" for Antikythera mechanism:

The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over a century ago. Much progress has been made in recent years to reconstruct the surviving fragments and learn more about how the mechanism might have been used. And now, members of a team of Greek researchers believe they have pinpointed the start date for the Antikythera mechanism, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv repository. Knowing that "day zero" is critical to ensuring the accuracy of the device.

"Any measuring system, from a thermometer to the Antikythera mechanism, needs a calibration in order to [perform] its calculations correctly," co-author Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece told New Scientist. "Of course it wouldn't have been perfect—it's not a digital computer, it's gears—but it would have been very good at predicting solar and lunar eclipses."

upstart writes:

Amazon RDS Vulnerability Led to Exposure of Credentials:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday announced that it recently addressed a vulnerability in Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) that could lead to the exposure of internal credentials.

Amazon RDS is a managed database service that offers support for several database engines, including Amazon Aurora, AWS's own database engine, which offers support for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

The addressed security issue was identified in the Aurora PostgreSQL engine, more specifically in the third-party open-source PostgreSQL extension "log_fdw," which allows a user to leverage the SQL interface to access the database engine log, as well as to build foreign tables.

[...] The log_fdw extension, AWS also notes, is pre-installed in both Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. A privileged, authenticated user able to trigger the bug could use the leaked credentials to gain elevated access to database resources.

"They would not be able to use the credentials to access internal RDS services or move between databases or AWS accounts. The credentials could only be used to access resources associated with the Aurora database cluster from which the credentials were retrieved," AWS notes.

The researcher reported the vulnerability to Amazon on December 9, 2021. An initial patch was released on December 14, but roughly three months were needed to deploy the fix to all customers.

The company updated both Aurora PostgreSQL and RDS for PostgreSQL to resolve the issue and also deprecated a series of minor versions, preventing users from creating new instances with those versions.

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upstart writes:

Qualcomm completes Arriver acquisition to bulk up software prowess in ADAS, self-driving vehicles:

Qualcomm wrapped up its acquisition of Veoneer's advanced driver assistance/self driving vehicle software arm on Monday, highlighting the San Diego company's bid to become a key technology supplier to automakers as it diversifies beyond smartphones.

Financial details regarding the complex transaction were not available. Qualcomm plans to discuss the terms during its quarterly earnings conference call later this month.

But the acquisition of Veoneer's Arriver software division positions Qualcomm to compete head-to-head against industry leader Mobileye in the camera-based autonomous driving and vehicle safety technologies market.

[...] Qualcomm already is a significant silicon supplier to automakers, with sales topping $1 billion last year. The company has a $13 billion backlog of pending orders.

This pipeline, however, is centered on technologies that provide 4G/5G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, navigation and entertainment, vehicle diagnostics and digital dashboards.

Recently, Qualcomm added Snapdragon Ride to its automotive product line-up. It delivers Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and limited self-driving features.

To date, Snapdragon Ride customers include General Motors, BMW, Ferrari and Renault. Arriver was a Qualcomm partner before the acquisition.

With this deal, Qualcomm isn't aiming to deliver full-fledged driverless capabilities known as Level 4/Level 5 autonomy—at least not yet.

Instead, it is targeting Level 2+ and Level 3 autonomy. That means motorists remain behind the wheel but gain ADAS safety features and limited self-driving functionality.

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upstart writes:

Elon Musk isn't joining Twitter's board of directors after all:

Elon Musk's stint on Twitter's board of directors has ended before it even began. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has scrapped plans to buff his resumé with a seat on Twitter's board, though his status as the company's biggest shareholder will still give him some influence over the platform.

The change in plans was announced by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on Sunday night. In an internal note he subsequently posted to Twitter, Agrawal stated that Musk had directly discussed joining Twitter's board with them, and that the board had offered him a seat, but that he pulled out at the last minute on the day he was to be officially appointed.

[...] "We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance," Agrawal continued. "Elon's appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board."

Though Agrawal did not provide a reason why Musk backed down, and Musk has not commented publicly, it's reasonable to speculate that the restrictions placed on Twitter's board members may have been a contributing factor.

upstart writes:

Researchers discover novel way to inhibit key cancer driver, other mutated genes:

CU Boulder researchers have discovered a new way to inhibit the most commonly mutated gene underlying human tumor growth, opening the door to new therapeutic strategies for cancer and a host of other diseases.

The discovery, published April 5 in the journal Cell Reports, marks an important step forward in the decades-long quest to target transcription factors (TFs), a notoriously hard-to-block class of proteins which, when mutated or dysregulated, can disrupt cell function and drive illness.

"This class of proteins represents one of the most high-impact therapeutic targets in biomedicine," said senior author and biochemistry Professor Dylan Taatjes. "We provide a completely new strategy for blocking transcription factor function that could have broad applications to many diseases, including and beyond cancer."

[...] "A decades-long goal has been to target drug transcription factors directly," said Taatjes. "Here we have found a way to get the functional equivalent without actually targeting the transcription factor but Mediator instead. And, importantly, this does not negatively affect other transcription factors in the cell."

Taatjes stressed that the work is a proof-of-concept study, and that much more research must be done before such a strategy could become implemented in the clinic.

Ultimately, he said the approach could be applied to many other TFs that have been implicated in disease, opening the door to new treatment strategies for everything from heart disease to neurological disorders.

Journal Reference:
Benjamin L. Allen et al, Suppression of p53 response by targeting p53-Mediator binding with a stapled peptide, Cell Reports (2022). (DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110630)

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upstart writes:

Activision Blizzard's new full-time jobs come with a bit of union busting:

Hours after announcing it would convert over 1,000 temporary and contract QA employees to full time and provide a minimum pay of $20 per hour, Activision Blizzard is stating that Raven Software QA workers will not be part of that deal. According to a report from Bloomberg, the QA testers at Raven Software who recently organized as the Game Workers Alliance will not be able to take advantage of the new pay minimum — something Activision Blizzard failed to mention upfront when it sent the initial news to media outlets. Excluding organizing employees from company-wide benefits seems to be Activision Blizzard's latest move against the burgeoning labor movement going on at the company.

[...] In addition to that statement, Activision Blizzard also provided The Verge with a copy of the email that Brian Raffel, Raven Software studio head, sent out to employees.

[...] The email seems expertly crafted to have a chilling effect on the Game Workers Alliance's continued efforts to establish the company's first union. Phrasing like "through direct dialogue with each other, we improved pay, expanded benefits, and provided professional opportunities" sends the message that organizers' union activities have prevented them from enjoying the benefits the company is extending to others.

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upstart writes:

Trend says hackers have weaponized SpringShell to install Mirai malware:

Researchers on Friday said that hackers are exploiting the recently discovered SpringShell vulnerability to successfully infect vulnerable Internet of Things devices with Mirai, an open source piece of malware that wrangles routers and other network-connected devices into sprawling botnets.

When SpringShell (also known as Spring4Shell) came to light last Sunday, some reports compared it to Log4Shell, the critical zero-day vulnerability in the popular logging utility Log4J that affected a sizable portion of apps on the Internet. That comparison proved to be exaggerated because the configurations required for SpringShell to work were by no means common. To date, there are no real-world apps known to be vulnerable.

Researchers at Trend Micro now say that hackers have developed a weaponized exploit that successfully installs Mirai. A blog post they published didn't identify the type of device or the CPU used in the infected devices. The post did, however, say a malware file server they found stored multiple variants of the malware for different CPU architectures.

"We observed active exploitation of Spring4Shell wherein malicious actors were able to weaponize and execute the Mirai botnet malware on vulnerable servers, specifically in the Singapore region," Trend Micro researchers Deep Patel, Nitesh Surana, and Ashish Verma wrote. The exploits allow threat actors to download Mirai to the "/tmp" folder of the device and execute it following a permission change using "chmod."

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