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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Europe’s largest local authority faces a $15.58 million (£12 million) bill for manually auditing accounts which should have been supported by an Oracle ERP systems installed in April 2022.

The £3.2 billion ($4.1 billion) budget authority has become infamous for its ERP project disaster, which has seen its switch from legacy SAP software to cloud-based Oracle Fusion, a customer win co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison once flaunted to investors.

The delayed project left the council without auditable accounts, and without security features, along with costs climbing from around £20 million to as much as £131 million. The IT problems contributed to the Birmingham City Council becoming effectively bankrupt in September last year.

A report from external auditors stated the council will not have a fully functioning cash system until April next year, three years after it went live on an Oracle ERP, and will have to wait until September 2025 for a fully functioning finance system.

Yesterday, Mark Stocks, head of public sector practice at external auditors Grant Thornton, told councillors that officials had told him the new accounting “out-of-the-box” system might not be ready until March 2026, nearly four years after the failing customized system first went live.

The lack of a functioning accounting system was making it costly and time consuming to produce a full audit, the auditors concluded after exploratory work.

[...] Problems with the customized ERP system were multiple, but cash management, bank reconciliation and accounts receivable were of particular concern. The council has bought third-party software — CivicaPay/Civica Income Management — as the replacement for the banking system.

Stocks said officials had been working hard to improve the current Oracle system, and said he did not “lose that message.”

Nonetheless, serious issues continue. “You're not going to have a fully functioning finance system and cash system [until] April next year. The actual financial ledger could be April 2026. That's really difficult from a finance officer point of view [and] it's particularly difficult from an external audit point of view to draw a conclusion on your accounts,” he said.

Original Submission

Editor's note: Due to the extensive use of buzzwords, the submitter questions whether this was written by a human or not, but perhaps those who are knowledgeable in network architecture can comment on whether this idea is as revolutionary as TFA suggests.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A research team has proposed a revolutionary polymorphic network environment (PNE) in their study, which seeks to achieve global scalability while addressing the diverse needs of evolving network services. Their framework challenges traditional network designs by creating a versatile “network of networks” that overcomes the limitations of current systems, paving the way for scalable and adaptable network architectures.

A recent paper published in Engineering by scientists Wu Jiangxing and his research team introduces a theoretical framework that promises to transform network systems and architectures. The study tackles a critical issue in network design: how to achieve global scalability while meeting the varied demands of evolving services.

For decades, the quest for an ideal network capable of seamlessly scaling across various dimensions has remained elusive. The team, however, has identified a critical barrier known as the “impossible service-level agreement (S), multiplexity (M), and variousness (V) triangle” dilemma, which highlights the inherent limitations of traditional unimorphic network systems. These systems struggle to adapt to the growing complexity of services and application scenarios while maintaining global scalability throughout the network’s life cycle.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers propose a paradigm shift in network development—an approach they term the polymorphic network environment (PNE). At the core of this framework lies the separation of application network systems from the underlying infrastructure environment. By leveraging core technologies such as network elementization and dynamic resource aggregation, the PNE enables the creation of a versatile “network of networks” capable of accommodating diverse service requirements.

Through extensive theoretical analysis and environment testing, the team demonstrates the viability of the PNE model. Results indicate that the framework not only supports multiple application network modalities simultaneously but also aligns with technical and economic constraints, thus paving the way for scalable and adaptable network architectures.

Reference: “Theoretical Framework for a Polymorphic Network Environment” by Jiangxing Wu et al., 28 February 2024, Engineering. DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2024.01.018

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new study published in Science Advances reveals a surprising twist in the evolutionary history of complex life. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how complex organisms may have acquired some of their genes and highlights the dynamic interplay between viruses and their hosts.

The study focused on a microbe called Amoebidium, a unicellular parasite found in freshwater environments. By analyzing Amoebidium's genome, the researchers led by Dr. Alex de Mendoza Soler, Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, found a surprising abundance of genetic material originating from giant viruses—some of the largest viruses known to science. These viral sequences were heavily methylated, a chemical tag that often silences genes.

[...] "These findings challenge our understanding of the relationship between viruses and their hosts," says Dr. de Mendoza Soler. "Traditionally, viruses are seen as invaders, but this study suggests a more complex story. Viral insertions may have played a role in the evolution of complex organisms by providing them with new genes. And this is allowed by the chemical taming of these intruders DNA."

Furthermore, the findings in Amoebidium offer intriguing parallels to how our own genomes interact with viruses. Similar to Amoebidium, humans and other mammals have remnants of ancient viruses, called endogenous retroviruses, integrated into their DNA.

While these remnants were previously thought to be inactive "junk DNA," some might now be beneficial. However, unlike the giant viruses found in Amoebidium, Endogenous retroviruses are much smaller, and the human genome is significantly larger. Future research can explore these similarities and differences to understand the complex interplay between viruses and complex life forms.

More information: Luke A. Sarre et al, DNA methylation enables recurrent endogenization of giant viruses in an animal relative, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado6406

Original Submission

hubie writes:

CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago, but no one noticed:

A widespread Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue on Windows PCs disrupted operations across various sectors, notably impacting airlines, banks, and healthcare providers. The issue was caused by a problematic channel file delivered via an update from the popular cybersecurity service provider, CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike confirmed that this crash did not impact Mac or Linux PCs.

It turns out that similar problems have been occurring for months without much awareness, despite the fact that many may view this as an isolated incident. Users of Debian and Rocky Linux also experienced significant disruptions as a result of CrowdStrike updates, raising serious concerns about the company's software update and testing procedures. These occurrences highlight potential risks for customers who rely on their products daily.

In April, a CrowdStrike update caused all Debian Linux servers in a civic tech lab to crash simultaneously and refuse to boot. The update proved incompatible with the latest stable version of Debian, despite the specific Linux configuration being supposedly supported. The lab's IT team discovered that removing CrowdStrike allowed the machines to boot and reported the incident.

A team member involved in the incident expressed dissatisfaction with CrowdStrike's delayed response. It took them weeks to provide a root cause analysis after acknowledging the issue a day later. The analysis revealed that the Debian Linux configuration was not included in their test matrix.

"Crowdstrike's model seems to be 'we push software to your machines any time we want, whether or not it's urgent, without testing it'," lamented the team member.

This was not an isolated incident. CrowdStrike users also reported similar issues after upgrading to RockyLinux 9.4, with their servers crashing due to a kernel bug. Crowdstrike support acknowledged the issue, highlighting a pattern of inadequate testing and insufficient attention to compatibility issues across different operating systems.

To avoid such issues in the future, CrowdStrike should prioritize rigorous testing across all supported configurations. Additionally, organizations should approach CrowdStrike updates with caution and have contingency plans in place to mitigate potential disruptions.

Source: Ycombinator, RockyLinux

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

At the end of a small country road in Denmark is the "Enorm" factory, an insect farm set up by a Danish woman who wants to revolutionize livestock feed.

Jane Lind Sam and her father, Carsten Lind Pedersen, swapped pigs for soldier flies and created a 22,000-square-metre (237,000 square feet) factory where they intend to produce more than 10,000 tonnes of insect meal and oil a year.

The factory, which opened in December 2023, is the largest of its kind in northern Europe, and its products will initially be used by farmers for animal feed and, perhaps in the future, for human consumption.

The two entrepreneurs are making products that will be "substituting other, maybe less climate-friendly products", Lind Sam, co-owner and chief operations officer, explained to AFP.

They hope to contribute to the evolution of agriculture in a country where the sector's climate impact is under scrutiny.

[...] Under turquoise fluorescent lights, millions of black flies buzzed inside some 500 plastic cages, where they lay hundreds of thousands of eggs every day.

Inside the facility, it was impossible to escape the roar of insects who incessantly lay eggs throughout their 10-day lifespan.

"The female fly lays its eggs in this piece of cardboard," Lind Sam explained as she pulled out a sheet with a honeycomb pattern at the bottom of one of the cages.

About 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of eggs are produced per day. A single gram corresponds to about 40,000 eggs.

From these eggs come some of tomorrow's feeder flies, but also the future maggots which, once they have become pupae, will be transformed.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/spaceballs-sequel-amazon-mgm-mel-brooks-josh-gad-1235017862/

"Spaceballs" the t-shirt! "Spaceballs" the coloring book! "Spaceballs" the....sequel?

Yup. A source told IndieWire that Amazon MGM Studios is currently in early development on a sequel to "Spaceballs." Mel Brooks is returning to produce the feature, a direct follow-up to his 1987 "Star Wars" spoof. Josh Gad is also on board to star in and also produce what we'll call "Spaceballs 2."

[...] Josh Greenbaum, who directed "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar" and this year's documentary "Will & Harper," is attached to direct the sequel. He's working from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad. Samit and Hernandez are known for working on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," "Pokemon Detective Pikachu," and the upcoming "Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy."

[...] "Spaceballs" from 1987 starred Brooks, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, the late John Candy as the Chewbacca parody Barf, and Bill Pullman as the hero Lone Starr. In classic Brooks fashion the film mercilessly ripped off "Star Wars" and featured everything from heroes fighting with pseudo lightsabers extending from rings, characters using the "Schwartz" to save the day, and even Brooks playing a Yoda parody, Yogurt, who shamelessly plugged fourth-wall-breaking "Spaceballs" merchandise.

The film made $38 million worldwide but has become part of the canon of staples for Brooks acolytes. Brooks recently wrote the Hulu series "History of the World: Part II," a sequel to his 1981 sketch film. That series also featured Gad in one episode playing Shakespeare.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/dirty-diaper-resold-on-amazon-ruined-a-family-business-report-says/

A feces-encrusted swim diaper tanked a family business after Amazon re-sold it as new, Bloomberg reported, triggering a bad review that quickly turned a million-dollar mom-and-pop shop into a $600,000 pile of debt.

Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, told Bloomberg that Amazon is supposed to inspect returned items before reselling them. But the company failed to detect the poop stains before reselling a damaged item that triggered a one-star review in 2020 that the couple says doomed their business after more than 100 buyers flagged it as "helpful."

"The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains," the review said, urging readers to "see pics."
[...]
Amazon says that it prohibits negative reviews that violate community guidelines, including by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality. Other one-star reviews for the same product that the Barons seemingly accept as valid comment on quality, leaving feedback like the diaper fitting too tightly or leaking.
[...]
But Amazon ultimately declined to remove the bad review, Paul Baron told Bloomberg. The buyer who left the review, a teacher named Erin Elizabeth Herbert, told Bloomberg that the Barons had reached out directly to explain what happened, but she forgot to update the review and still has not as of this writing.

"I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life got busy and I never did," Herbert told Bloomberg.

Her review remains online, serving as a warning for parents to avoid buying from the family business.
[...]
On Amazon's site, other sellers have complained about the company's failure to remove reviews that clearly violate community guidelines. In one case, an Amazon support specialist named Danika acknowledged that the use of profanity in a review, for example, "seems particularly cut and dry as a violation," promising to escalate the complaint. However, Danika appeared to abandon the thread after that, with the user commenting that the review remained up after the escalation.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Opioids, like morphine, are effective painkillers but have led to widespread addiction and serious side effects like respiratory depression, notably seen in the U.S. opioid crisis that claimed nearly 645,000 lives from 1999 to 2021. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have identified a potential alternative, aniquinazolin B, from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans, which binds to opioid receptors and could replace opioids with fewer undesirable effects, after rigorous testing including over 750,000 calculations per substance using the MOGON supercomputer.

Opioids, recognized for their significant pharmacological effects, have long been used as effective painkillers. Morphine, a notable example first isolated and synthesized in the early 19th century, provides crucial relief for patients in the final stages of severe illness.

However, when opioids are used inappropriately they can cause addiction and even the development of extremely serious undesirable effects, such as respiratory depression. In the USA, opioids were once widely promoted through the media and, as a consequence, were often prescribed to treat what were in fact mild disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were nearly 645,000 cases of mortality due to opioid overdose in the United States between 1999 and 2021.

And the opioid crisis has arrived in Germany, too. The main problem is street drugs and the fact that the synthetic opioid heroin, in particular, is cut with other, cheaper opioids, such as fentanyl. While a dose of 200 milligrams of heroin is fatal, just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill. In 2022, more than 1,000 people in Germany died as a result of the consumption of opioids.

Governments have introduced measures to contain this epidemic. However, opioid addiction rates are high. Others suffer from extreme pain that needs to be alleviated. There is thus an urgent need for safe analgesics. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) – with the financial support of the Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – have now made progress towards this goal.

“A natural product called aniquinazolin B that is isolated from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans stimulates the opioid receptors and could possibly thus be used instead of opioids in the future,” explained Roxana Damiescu, a member of the research team headed by Professor Thomas Efferth.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

North Korean nukes look like disco balls, olives, and peanuts, according to a group of scientists and researchers who study nuclear weapons. Newly released research puts the DPRK’s devastating stockpile of quirkily named nightmare machines at around 50. And it could get that number up to 130 by the end of the decade.

The world’s nuclear powers are cagey about the exact nature of their nukes. It’s a weapon you want everyone to know you have, but you don’t necessarily want them to know how many.

Enter the Federation of American Scientists [FAS], a U.S. nonprofit that attempts to use science to make the world a better place. One of its big projects is the Nuclear Notebook, a constantly updating list of the world’s nuclear weapons. Cataloging world-ending weapons is a challenge in countries like France and the U.S. which have certain amounts of transparency around their arsenals. In North Korea, it’s almost impossible. Almost.

North Korea was not always as closed as it is now. International officials did once visit the country and knowledge from those visits gave the FAS critical information that it used to suss out what, exactly, the DPRK is capable of. North Korea also does a lot of media events that create pictures and videos that help experts figure out the size of its arsenal. Kim Jong-un loves to pose with nukes and launchers in parades.

“Using these resources and other open sources, including commercial satellite imagery and publicly available reports from the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, analysts at independent organizations have been able to examine industry networks, locate key facilities, and map North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle to generate estimates of fissile material stockpiles and production—all of which are key factors in assessing the size, sophistication, and status of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal today,” the FAS said in its latest nuclear notebook.

In its research, the FAS identified three kinds of North Korean warheads which it gave nicknames. There’s the disco ball, which the DPRK first showed off in 2016. Supposedly, this is a single-stage implosion nuke. Basically, it’s a big silver ball with a bit of nuclear material surrounded by high explosives. The implosion of the high explosives would trigger the nuclear explosion. This is similar to the nuclear device detonated at the Trinity site in Oppenheimer.

In 2017, Kim Jong Un posed with what the FAS dubbed the peanut. This is supposedly a two-stage thermonuclear device. A thermonuclear device consists of a series of nuclear explosions that feed off each other and generate a massive blast. FAS said in its report that the peanut might not be a thermonuclear weapon at all, however. This could be a device filled with tritium, which would improve the efficiency of a single-stage device.

In 2023, the DPRK unveiled photos of what the FAS called the olive. The small warhead appeared to be a single-stage nuke similar to the disco ball but designed to fit inside a variety of delivery systems. “North Korea’s display of different devices demonstrates an aspirational progression toward more sophisticated and efficient warhead design,” the FAS said in its research.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA and Boeing engineers are evaluating results from last week’s engine tests at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico as the team works through plans to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test from the International Space Station in the coming weeks.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

For a detailed overview of the test plans, listen to a replay of a recent media teleconference with NASA and Boeing leadership:

“I am extremely proud of the NASA, Boeing team for their hard work in executing a very complex test series,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “We collected an incredible amount of data on the thruster that could help us better understand what is going on in flight. Next, our team has moved into engine tear downs and inspections which will provide additional insight as we analyze the results and evaluate next steps.”

Integrated ground teams also are preparing for an in-depth Agency Flight Test Readiness Review, which will evaluate data related to the spacecraft’s propulsion system performance before its return to Earth. The date of the agency review has not yet been solidified.

NASA and Boeing leadership plan to discuss the testing and analysis work in detail during a media briefing next week. More information on the briefing will be made available soon.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google will soon make its own contribution to the problem of link rot by shutting down the Google URL Shortener service in 2025.

The Google URL Shortener was launched in 2009 as an attempt to make lengthy links manageable by feeding them into Google's shortener, which spat out shorter ones in the form of https://goog.gl/*. Nine years later, Google decided to pull the service and direct users to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) instead.

At the time, Google said, "All existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination."

However, as of August 25, 2025, any links built with the Google URL shortener in the form of https://goog.gl/* won't return a response.

It'll be a slow death for the service. From August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will show an interstitial page for a percentage of users warning that the link's days are numbered. As the shutdown date nears, that percentage will increase.

Once shutdown happens, the links will simply return a 404 response.

The interstitial links could be a headache in their own right since there is every chance they could interfere with a redirect flow. And this is why Google's advising engineers to transition those goog.gl links as quickly as possible.

But transition them to where? Google's earlier advice to move to FDL might have sounded good in 2018, but the company has since deprecated the functionality, and on August 25, 2025, the service will stop working, alongside the Google URL Shortener.

The challenge facing engineers is tracking down all the places where an affected link might be used; Link Rot – where links that might have once worked but now return a 404 – has become an increasing problem as the World Wide Web has matured. Decisions such as Google's will only serve to make the problem worse.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/crowdstrike-fixes-start-at-reboot-up-to-15-times-and-get-more-complex-from-there/

We're updating our story about the outage with new details as we have them. Microsoft and CrowdStrike both say that "the affected update has been pulled,"
[...]
If rebooting multiple times isn't fixing your problem, Microsoft recommends restoring your systems using a backup from before 4:09 UTC on July 18 (just after midnight on Friday, Eastern time), when CrowdStrike began pushing out the buggy update. Crowdstrike says a reverted version of the file was deployed at 5:27 UTC.

If these simpler fixes don't work, you may need to boot your machines into Safe Mode so you can manually delete the file that's causing the BSOD errors. For virtual machines, Microsoft recommends attaching the virtual disk to a known-working repair VM so the file can be deleted, then reattaching the virtual disk to its original VM.
[...]
Before you can delete the file on those systems, you'll need the recovery key that unlocks those encrypted disks and makes them readable (normally, this process is invisible, because the system can just read the key stored in a physical or virtual TPM module).

This can cause problems for admins who aren't using key management to store their recovery keys, since (by design!) you can't access a drive without its recovery key. If you don't have that key, Cryptography and infrastructure engineer Tony Arcieri on Mastodon compared this to a "self-inflicted ransomware attack," where an attacker encrypts the disks on your systems and withholds the key until they get paid.

And even if you do have a recovery key, your key management server might also be affected by the CrowdStrike bug.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

106 rare crocodile eggs are found in Cambodia, the biggest such discovery in 20 years:

PNOMH PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Conservationists in Cambodia found 106 eggs of rare Siamese crocodile species in a western Cambodian wildlife sanctuary, officials said Thursday, calling it the biggest discovery in the last 20 years, giving new hope for the world's rarest crocodile species' survival in the wild.

The group discovered the species eggs in Cardamom National Park in May. Between June 27 and 30, a total of 60 eggs were successfully hatched, according to a joint statement issued by the ministries of agriculture and environment along with the conservation group Fauna & Flora.

"This discovery indicates that the area is a key habitat for wild crocodiles, providing hope for the species recovery," the statement said.

The area and the young reptiles have been under the protection of Cardamom National Park Wildlife Sanctuary rangers, it added.

The crocodile species was once widespread across Southeast Asia but is now listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It had all but disappeared by the 1990s due to a combination of poaching, habitat destruction and crossbreeding with other crocodile species.

Cambodian environment minister, Eang Sophalleth, said his ministry is working on the conservation and habitat restoration of these critically endangered Siamese crocodiles.

"The Siamese crocodiles play an important role in the ecosystem and the discovery of the five nets successfully hatching 60 eggs reflects that the Cardamom National Park is a safe and suitable habitat for this species," Sophalleth said in Thursday's statement.

It's believed only about 1,000 Siamese crocodiles remain in the wild, with more than 300 of them in Cambodia.

In 2017, wildlife researchers found six eggs in Sre Ambel district in the southern province of Koh Kong as they were exploring for tracks and signs of the reptile. Later in September 2021, eight hatchlings were found by conservationists in a river in the Srepok wildlife sanctuary in eastern Cambodia which raised hopes for its survival in the wild.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and RIKEN have discovered that ferromagnetism can be induced by increasing particle motility in quantum systems, where repulsive forces between atoms maintain the order.

Researchers Kazuaki Takasan and Kyogo Kawaguchi from the University of Tokyo, along with Kyosuke Adachi from RIKEN, Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, have shown that ferromagnetism, an ordered state of atoms, can be induced by increasing particle motility and that repulsive forces between atoms are sufficient to maintain it.

The discovery not only extends the concept of active matter to quantum systems but also contributes to the development of novel technologies that rely on the magnetic properties of particles, such as magnetic memory and quantum computing. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

Flocking birds, swarming bacteria, cellular flows. These are all examples of active matter, a state in which individual agents, such as birds, bacteria, or cells, self-organize. The agents change from a disordered to an ordered state in what is called a “phase transition.” As a result, they move together in an organized fashion without an external controller.

“Previous studies have shown that the concept of active matter can apply to a wide range of scales, from nanometers (biomolecules) to meters (animals),” says Takasan, the first author. “However, it has not been known whether the physics of active matter can be applied usefully in the quantum regime. We wanted to fill in that gap.”

[...] “It was surprising at first to find that the ordering can appear without elaborate interactions between the agents in the quantum model,” Takasan reflects on the finding. “It was different from what was expected based on biophysical models.”

The researcher took a multi-faceted approach to ensure their finding was not a fluke. Thankfully, the results of computer simulations, mean-field theory, a statistical theory of particles, and mathematical proofs based on linear algebra were all consistent. This strengthened the reliability of their finding, the first step in a new line of research.

“The extension of active matter to the quantum world has only recently begun, and many aspects are still open,” says Takasan. “We would like to further develop the theory of quantum active matter and reveal its universal properties.”

Reference: “Activity-induced ferromagnetism in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems” by Kazuaki Takasan, Kyosuke Adachi and Kyogo Kawaguchi, 26 April 2024, Physical Review Research. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023096

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The European Space Agency has begun work on a planetary defence mission that will intercept an asteroid predicted to come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029.

The Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES) mission targets asteroid 99942, aka Apophis, which is about 375 meters wide – the length of 30 giant squid – and expected to pass closer to Earth than some geosynchronous satellites.

"Astronomers have ruled out any chance that the asteroid will collide with our planet for at least the next 100 years," explained the ESA, which added that another rock of this size typically would not approach so closely for another 5,000 to 10,000 years.

This fly-by is therefore an opportunity to observe Apophis in the hope doing so helps humanity to learn how future visitors of this sort might be deflected.

The ESA's Space Safety program – its team dedicated to gathering and publishing info about threats from space – green-lit initial work on the mission on Tuesday, meaning the agency can "kickstart mission prep using current resources," according to ESA director general Josef Aschbacher.

[...] Should the mission receive full support, Ramses will launch in April 2028, rendezvous with Apophis beginning in February 2029, and accompany it through its flyby set to occur two months later. Researchers will use the opportunity to study the effect of Earth's gravity on the asteroid.

"All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface," explained France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) director Patrick Michel.

A suite of scientific instruments will do the "watching" by measuring asteroid shape, surface, orbit, rotation and orientation before and after the flyby, as well as asteroid composition, interior structure, cohesion, mass, density, and porosity.

ESA expects measuring those properties will reveal some secrets on how best to knock a future object off course, and perhaps also offer insights into the formation of the Solar System.

Original Submission