The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses now feature support for multimodal AI -- without the need for a projector or $24 monthly fee. (We're looking at you, Humane AI.) With the new update, the Meta AI assistant will be able to analyze what you're seeing, and it'll give you smart, helpful answers or suggestions. The Verge reports: First off, there are some expectations that need managing here. The Meta glasses don't promise everything under the sun. The primary command is to say "Hey Meta, look and..." You can fill out the rest with phrases like "Tell me what this plant is." Or read a sign in a different language. Write Instagram captions. Identify and learn more about a monument or landmark. The glasses take a picture, the AI communes with the cloud, and an answer arrives in your ears. The possibilities are not limitless, and half the fun is figuring out where its limits are. [...]

To me, it's the mix of a familiar form factor and decent execution that makes the AI workable on these glasses. Because it's paired to your phone, there's very little wait time for answers. It's headphones, so you feel less silly talking to them because you're already used to talking through earbuds. In general, I've found the AI to be the most helpful at identifying things when we're out and about. It's a natural extension of what I'd do anyway with my phone. I find something I'm curious about, snap a pic, and then look it up. Provided you don't need to zoom really far in, this is a case where it's nice to not pull out your phone. [...]

But AI is a feature of the Meta glasses. It's not the only feature. They're a workable pair of livestreaming glasses and a good POV camera. They're an excellent pair of open-ear headphones. I love wearing mine on outdoor runs and walks. I could never use the AI and still have a product that works well. The fact that it's here, generally works, and is an alright voice assistant -- well, it just gets you more used to the idea of a face computer, which is the whole point anyway.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: On a slice of the ocean front in west Singapore, a startup is building a plant to turn carbon dioxide from air and seawater into the same material as seashells, in a process that will also produce "green" hydrogen — a much-hyped clean fuel.

The cluster of low-slung buildings starting to take shape in Tuas will become the "world's largest" ocean-based carbon dioxide removal plant when completed later this year, according to Equatic, the startup behind it that was spun out of the University of California at Los Angeles. The idea is that the plant will pull water from the ocean, zap it with an electric current and run air through it to produce a series of chemical reactions to trap and store carbon dioxide as minerals, which can be put back in the sea or used on land... The $20 million facility will be fully operational by the end of the year and able to remove 3,650 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, said Edward Sanders, chief operating officer of Equatic, which has partnered with Singapore's National Water Agency to construct the plant. That amount is equivalent to taking roughly 870 average passenger cars off the road. The ambition is to scale up to 100,000 metric tons of CO2 removal a year by the end of 2026, and from there to millions of metric tons over the next few decades, Sanders told CNN. The plant can be replicated pretty much anywhere, he said, stacked up in modules "like lego blocks...."

The upfront costs are high but the company says it plans to make money by selling carbon credits to polluters to offset their pollution, as well as selling the hydrogen produced during the process. Equatic has already signed a deal with Boeing to sell it 2,100 metric tons of hydrogen, which it plans to use to create green fuel, and to fund the removal of 62,000 metric tons of CO2.
There's other projects around the world attempting ocean-based carbon renewal, CNN notes. "Other projects include sprinkling iron particles into the ocean to stimulate CO2-absorbing phytoplankton, sinking seaweed into the depths to lock up carbon and spraying particles into marine clouds to reflect away some of the sun's energy." But carbon-removal projects are controversial, criticized for being expensive, unproven at scale and a distraction from policies to cut fossil fuels. And when they involve the oceans — complex ecosystems already under huge strain from global warming — criticisms can get even louder. There are "big knowledge gaps" when it comes to ocean geoengineering generally, said Jean-Pierre Gatusso, an ocean scientist at the Sorbonne University in France. "I am very concerned with the fact that science lags behind the industry," he told CNN.

A large-screen IMAX documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope "has just opened in 300 theaters across North America," write an anonymous Slashdot reader, noting that it's playing for one week only. "And it gets a rave review in Forbes." Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they've remained unseen by human eyes until now.

This is the promise of "Deep Sky," an extraordinary IMAX presentation that brings the universe's awe-inspiring mysteries closer than ever before. Directed by the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn and narrated by the equally acclaimed actress Michelle Williams, "Deep Sky" is a monumental journey through the cosmos, powered by the groundbreaking images captured by NASA's Webb Telescope... "Deep Sky" is more than a documentary about a space telescope; it's an immersive experience that invites audiences to see the universe as never before. Through the power of IMAX, viewers are transported across 13 billion years of cosmic history, to the very edges of the observable universe. Here, in stunning clarity, we witness the birth of stars, the formation of galaxies, and the eerie beauty of exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our own Sun. These images, beamed back to Earth by JWST, reveal the universe's vast beauty on a scale that seems only the giant IMAX screen can begin to convey...

What makes "Deep Sky" particularly captivating is its ability to render the incomprehensible beauty and scale of the universe accessible. The IMAX® experience, known for its breathtaking visuals and sound, serves as the perfect medium to convey the majesty of the cosmos.
The review says the film celebrates the achieve of thousands of people working across decades, "aiming to answer some of humanity's oldest questions: Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the vastness of space?"

The reviewer also spoke to JWST telescope scientist Matt Mountain — in another article applauding the film for "encapsulating the grandeur of space exploration on the IMAX canvas." In "Deep Sky," viewers are taken on a journey from the telescope's construction to its deployment and early operational phases. The documentary highlights the international collaboration and engineering marvels behind the JWST, featuring insights from key scientists and engineers who brought the telescope to life. The film aims to rekindle a sense of wonder about the universe and our place within it, emphasizing the human desire to explore and understand the cosmos.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance, and he shares his findings on Twitter (X) when the state breaks records. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before.

At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point on LinkedIn: "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight." On April 2, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) recommended 26 new transmission projects worth $6.1 billion, with a big number being devoted to offshore wind. In response, Jacobson predicted on April 4 that California will entirely be on renewables and battery storage 24/7 by 2035.

Andrew Jones reports via IEEE Spectrum: The European Space Agency will launch a mission late this year to demonstrate precision formation flying in orbit to create artificial solar eclipses. In a press conference last week, the agency announced details of the mission and the technology the orbiters will use to pull off its exquisitely-choreographed maneuvers. ESA's Proba-3 (PRoject for On-Board Autonomy) consists of a pair of spacecraft: a 300-kilogram Coronagraph spacecraft and a 250-kilogram Occulter. The pair are now slated to launch on an Indian PSLV rocket in September and ultimately enter a highly elliptical, 600-by-60,530-kilometer orbit. The aim, the agency says, is to move the separate spacecraft to some 144 meters apart, with the Occulter, as a disc, blocking out the sun.

Achieving this formation will allow the Coronagraph to study our star's highly ionized, extremely hot atmosphere -- but also demonstrate the technology as a precursor for more ambitious, future, formation-flying endeavors. [...] ESA has science objectives for Proba-3, using observations made in space to study solar astrophysics without any intervention of the Earth's atmosphere. The agency's Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun (ASPIICS) coronagraph will help to discern why the solar corona is significantly hotter than the Sun itself. This could further our understanding of the Sun and assist solar weather predictions. However, it is the precision formation flying that Proba-3 aims to demonstrate which could help unlock future breakthroughs. [...]

Precisely-controlled Occulter spacecraft could be used with space telescopes to block light from a star in order to directly detect potential orbiting planets, while a constellation of spacecraft can, through interferometry, create large-scale observatories, achieving large apertures and long focal lengths than possible with large solo satellites. Further applications include Earth observation, space-based gravitational wave detection, and a range of missions in which two or more spacecraft need to interact, such as rendezvous, docking, and in-orbit servicing.

As the moon blocked the view of the sun across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada on Monday, the celestial event managed another magnificent feat: It got people offline. From a report: According to Cloudflare, a cloud-computing service used by about 20 percent of websites globally, internet traffic dipped along the path of totality as spellbound viewers took a break from their phones and computers to catch a glimpse of the real-life spectacle.

The places with the most dramatic views saw the biggest dips in traffic compared with the previous week. In Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio -- states that were in the path of totality, meaning the moon completely blocked out the sun -- internet traffic dropped by 40 percent to 60 percent around the time of the eclipse, Cloudflare said. States that had partial views also saw drops in internet activity, but to a much lesser extent. At 3:25 p.m. Eastern time, internet traffic in New York dropped by 29 percent compared with the previous week, Cloudflare found.

The path of totality made up a roughly 110-mile-wide belt that stretched from Mazatlan, Mexico, to Montreal. In the Mexican state of Durango, which was in the eclipse zone, internet traffic measured by Cloudflare dipped 57 percent compared with the previous week, while farther south, in Mexico City, traffic was down 22 percent. The duration of the eclipse's totality varied by location, with some places experiencing it for more than four minutes while for others, it was just one to two minutes.

SonicSpike shares a report from Scientific American: A day after the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced that there were no signs of unsafe eclipse glasses or other solar viewers on the market in early March, astronomer and science communicator Rick Fienberg received an alarming call. Fienberg is project manager of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force, which is busy preparing for the total eclipse over North America on April 8. He's the creator of a list of vetted solar filters and viewers that will protect wearers' eyes as they watch the moon move in front of the sun. When a solar eclipse last crossed a major swath of the U.S. in 2017, Fienberg and his team spotted some counterfeit glasses entering the marketplace -- imitations that distributors claimed were manufactured by vetted companies. Testing at accredited labs indicated that many counterfeits were actually safe to use, however. This led the task force to describe such eclipse glasses as "misleading" but not "dangerous" in a March 11 statement meant to reassure the public.

But then Fienberg's phone rang. The caller was "a guy who had bought thousands of eclipse glasses from a distributor who had been on our list at one point," Fienberg says. "Those glasses were not safe. They were no darker than ordinary sunglasses." Legitimate eclipse glasses are at least 1,000 times darker than the darkest sunglasses you can buy. Fienberg contacted Cangnan County Qiwei Craft, a Chinese factory that he knew manufactured safe glasses and had -- in the past -- sold them to the distributor in question. But this time, Fienberg says, factory representatives told him they hadn't sold to that distributor in a long while. "That's when we switched from being concerned about only counterfeits to being concerned about actual fakes," Fienberg says. The AAS does not have a confident estimate of how many fake or counterfeit glasses are for sale out there. And though Fienberg doesn't think this is a widespread problem, the situation is an "iceberg kind of concern," he says, because there are likely more examples than the ones he knows about. While counterfeit glasses may still be safe to use, completely fake glasses could put wearers in serious danger. [...]

While lab tests are the best way to determine whether glasses meet the ISO standard, Fienberg says there is a three-part test people can do at home if they're concerned their eclipse viewers aren't up to the task. First, put your glasses on indoors and look around. The only things you should be able to see are very bright lights, such as a halogen bulb or a smartphone flashlight. Then, if the glasses pass the indoor test, bring them outside -- but don't look at the sun just yet. Look around: it should be too dark to see distant hills, trees or even the ground. If that second test is passed, keep the glasses on and quickly glance at the sun. You should comfortably see a bright, sharp-edged round disk. If your glasses pass all three tests, they are probably safe to wear. Still, Fienberg points out that it's best to use them for only a few seconds every minute or so during the eclipse; this cautious approach is how they're intended to be used. And if you don't trust your glasses for April's celestial event, you could try to find a reliable pair in the next two decades. "You only have to wait 20 years for another really good eclipse year in the [United] States," Fienberg says.

Decades of buried trash is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, at higher rates than previously estimated, the researchers said. From a report: These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The study measured methane emissions at about 20 percent of about 1,200 large, operating landfills in the United States. It adds to a growing body of evidence that landfills are a significant driver of climate change, said Riley Duren, founder of the public-private partnership Carbon Mapper, who took part in the study.

"We've largely been in the dark, as a society, about actual emissions from landfills," said Mr. Duren, a former NASA engineer and scientist. "This study pinpoints the gaps." Methane emissions from oil and gas production, as well as from livestock, have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Like carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas that's warming the world, methane acts like a blanket in the sky, trapping the sun's heat. And though methane lasts for a shorter time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is more potent. Its warming effect is more than 80 times as powerful as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that landfills are the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the United States, emitting as much greenhouse gas as 23 million gasoline cars driven for a year. Organic waste like food scraps can emit copious amounts of methane when they decompose.

Slashdot reader christoban writes: In what may be an issue for Sun-obscuring strategies to combat global warming, it turns out that during solar eclipses, low level cumulus clouds rapidly disappear, reducing by a factor of 4, researchers have found. The news comes from the science magazine Eos (published by the nonprofit organization of atmosphere/ocean/space scientists, the American Geophysical Union). Victor J. H. Trees, a geoscientist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and his colleagues recently analyzed cloud cover data obtained during an annular eclipse in 2005, visible in parts of Europe and Africa. They mined visible and infrared imagery collected by two geostationary satellites operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. Going to space was key, Trees said. "If you really want to quantify how clouds behave and how they react to a solar eclipse, it helps to study a large area. That's why we want to look from space...." [T]hey tracked cloud evolution for several hours leading up to the eclipse, during the eclipse, and for several hours afterward.

Low-level cumulus clouds — which tend to top out at altitudes around 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) — were strongly affected by the degree of solar obscuration. Cloud cover started to decrease when about 15% of the Sun's face was covered, about 30 minutes after the start of the eclipse. The clouds started to return only about 50 minutes after maximum obscuration. And whereas typical cloud cover hovered around 40% in noneclipse conditions, less than 10% of the sky was covered with clouds during maximum obscuration, the team noted. "On a large scale, the cumulus clouds started to disappear," Trees said... The temperature of the ground matters when it comes to cumulus clouds, Trees said, because they are low enough to be significantly affected by whatever is happening on Earth's surface...

Beyond shedding light on the physics of cloud dissipation during solar eclipses, these new findings also have implications for future geoengineering efforts, Trees and his collaborators suggested. Discussions are underway to mitigate the effects of climate change by, for instance, seeding the atmosphere with aerosols or launching solar reflectors into space to prevent some of the Sun's light from reaching Earth. Such geoengineering holds promise for cooling our planet, researchers agree, but its repercussions are largely unexplored and could be widespread and irreversible.

These new results suggest that cloud cover could decrease with geoengineering efforts involving solar obscuration. And because clouds reflect sunlight, the efficacy of any effort might correspondingly decrease, Trees said. That's an effect that needs to be taken into account when considering different options, the researchers concluded.
Another article on the site warns that "Planting Trees May Not Be as Good for the Climate as Previously Believed."

"The climate benefits of trees storing carbon dioxide is partially offset by dark forests' absorption of more heat from the Sun, and compounds they release that slow the destruction of methane in the atmosphere."

12P/Pons-Brooks, a Halley-type comet larger than Mount Everest and with a 71.3-year orbit, is expected to become visible to the naked eye in the coming weeks as it makes its closest approach to the sun on April 21. The Guardian reports: While some reports suggest 12P/Pons-Brooks was spotted as far back as the 14th century, it is named after the French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons who discovered it in 1812 and the British-American astronomer William Robert Brooks who observed it on its next orbit in 1883. Thought to have a nucleus about 30km (20 miles) in diameter, it is classed as a cryovolcanic comet, meaning it erupts with dust, gases and ice when pressure builds inside as it is heated. One such outburst last year caused it to brighten a hundredfold and garnered it the sobriquet of "the Devil Comet" after the haze that surrounds it formed a horned shape.

While the comet -- and its green tinge -- has already been spotted in the night sky, experts say it is expected to become even brighter in the coming weeks. "The comet is expected to reach a magnitude of 4.5 which means it ought to be visible from a dark location in the UK," said Dr Paul Strom, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick. "The comet moves from the constellation of Andromeda to Pisces. As it does so it passes by bright stars which will make it easier to spot on certain dates. In particular, on March 31 12P/Pons-Brooks will be only 0.5 a degree from the bright star called Hamal," he said. But Dr Robert Massey, the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, said even if the comet did become brighter it could still be difficult to see, adding that basic instruments such as small telescopes would greatly help.

"If you have a half-decent pair of binoculars, certainly attempt to look for it with those," said Massey, adding that apps that map the sky were also useful. The best views of the comet are currently to be found in the northern hemisphere. Massey said those who wanted to catch a glimpse should venture out on a clear evening and look low in the west-north-west as twilight came to an end. "You want to avoid haze, you want to avoid moonlight, you want to avoid light pollution."

A Toronto Sun columnist writes that two Canadian civil liberties groups are "sounding alarms" about the proposed new Online Harms Act (C-63): The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) say while the proposed legislation contains legitimate measures to protect children from online sexual abuse, cyber-bulling and self-harm, and to combat the spread of so-called "revenge porn," its provisions to prevent the expression of hate are draconian, vaguely worded and an attack on free speech... "[D]on't be fooled," said CCF executive director Joanna Baron. "Most of the bill is aimed at restricting freedom of expression. This heavy-handed bill needs to be severely pared down to comply with the constitution."

Both the CCLA and CCF warn the bill could lead to life imprisonment for someone convicted of "incitement to genocide" — a vague term only broadly defined in the bill — and up to five years in prison for other vaguely defined hate speech crimes. The legislation, for example, defines illegal hate speech as expressing "detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals," while legally protected speech, "expresses dislike or disdain, or ... discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends." The problem, critics warn, will be determining in advance which is which, with the inevitable result that people and organizations will self-censor themselves because of fear of being prosecuted criminally, or fined civilly, for what is actually legal speech.
"Both the CCLA and the CCF say the proposed legislation, known as Bill C-63, will require major amendments before becoming law to pass constitutional muster," according to the columnist.

Some specific complains:

• The CCF argues that the Bill "would allow judges to put prior restraints on people who they believe on reasonable grounds may commit speech crimes in the future."

• The CCLA adds that the proposed bill also grants authorities "sweeping new search powers of electronic data, with no warrant requirement," according to the Toronto Sun, and also warns about the creation of a government-appointed "digital safety commission" given "vast authority" and "sweeping powers" to "interpret the law, make up new rules, enforce them, and then serve as judge, jury, and executioner."

And in addition, the CCF points out under the proposed rules the Canadian Human Rights Commission "could order fines of up to $50,000, and awards of up to $20,000 paid to complainants, who in some cases would be anonymous."

"Findings would be based on a mere 'balance of probabilities' standard rather than the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt... The mere threat of human rights complaints will chill large amounts of protected speech."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

It was an idea first proposed by Archimedes, reports CNN. But now, "Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and a London Public Library award for his minuscule version of the contraption — a supposed war weapon made up of a large array of mirrors designed to focus and aim sunlight on a target, such as a ship, and cause combustion — according to a paper published in the January issue of the Canadian Science Fair Journal." For his 2022 science project, Sener recreated the Archimedes screw, a device for raising and moving water. But he didn't stop there. Sener found the death ray to be one of the more intriguing devices — sometimes referred to as the heat ray. Historical writings suggested that Archimedes used "burning mirrors" to start anchored ships on fire during the siege of Syracuse from 214 to 212 BC...

There is no archaeological evidence that the contraption existed, as Sener noted in his paper, but many have tried to recreate the mechanism to see if the ancient invention could be feasible. In Sener's attempt at the ray, he set up a heating lamp facing four small concave mirrors, each tilted to direct light at a piece of cardboard with an X marked at the focal point. In this project he designed for the 2023 Matthews Hall Annual Science Fair, Sener hypothesized that as the mirrors focused light energy onto the cardboard, the temperature of the target would increase with each mirror added.

In his experiment, Sener conducted three trials with two different light bulb wattages, 50 watts and 100 watts. Each additional mirror increased the temperature notably, he found... The temperature of the cardboard with just the heating lamp and the 100-watt light bulb and no mirrors was about 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius). After waiting for the cardboard to cool, Sener added one mirror and retested. The focal point's temperature increased to almost 95 F (34.9 C), he found. The greatest increase occurred with the addition of the fourth mirror. The temperature with three mirrors aimed at the target was almost 110 F (43.4 C), but the addition of a fourth mirror increased the temperature by about 18 F (10 C) to 128 F (53.5 C)...

Sener was not attempting to light anything on fire, as "a heating lamp does not generate anywhere near enough heat as the sun would," he said. But he believes that with the use of the sun's rays and a larger mirror, "the temperature would increase even more drastically and at a faster rate" and "would easily cause combustion."
The powerful weapon wouldn't work on cloudy days, Sener's paper points out, and even a moving ship might diminish its impact.

But in an interview with CNN, Sener calls Archimedes' death ray "a neat idea".

Andrew Jones reports via SpaceNews: The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) plans to launch four-meter and five-meter-diameter reusable rockets for the first time in 2025 and 2026 respectively, Wang Wei, a deputy to the National People's Congress, told China News Service March 4. The reports do not clearly identify the two rockets. CASC is known to be developing a new, 5.0m-diameter crew launch vehicle, known as the Long March 10. A single stick version would be used to launch a new-generation crew spacecraft to low Earth orbit and could potentially fly in 2025. A three-core variant will launch the "Mengzhou" crew spacecraft into trans-lunar orbit.

The rocket is key to China's plans to put astronauts on the moon before 2030. The Long March 10 lunar variant will be 92 meters long and be able to launch 27 tons into trans-lunar orbit. The 4.0-meter-diameter launcher could be a rocket earlier proposed by CASC's Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). That rocket would be able to launch up to 6,500 kg of payload to 700-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). It would notably use engines developed by the commercial engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian.

CASC's first move to develop a reusable rocket centered on making a recoverable version of the Long March 8. That plan appears to have been abandoned. SAST also plans to debut the 3.8m-diameter Long March 12 later this year from a new commercial launch site. While the Long March 10 has specific, defined uses for lunar and human spaceflight, the second reusable rocket would appear to be in competition with China's commercial rocket companies. While this suggests duplication of effort, it also fits into a national strategy to develop reusable rockets and support commercial ecosystems. The moves would greatly boost China's options for launch and access to space. It would also provide new capacity needed to help construction planned low Earth orbit megaconstellations.

It completed the most precise landing ever on the moon — albeit upside-down. And then it faced a "lunar night" lasting about two weeks where temperatures drop to -270 degrees Fahrenheit, reports the Times of India.

But then, "Despite not being designed for the extreme temperatures, SLIM surprised scientists by coming back to life after the two-week-long lunar night." More from Space.com: The lander woke up on February 26 during extremely hot temperatures of 212 Fahrenheit (100 Celsius) in its region and has been making contact here and there with Earth in the days since. Most recently, SLIM attempted observations with its multiband spectroscopic camera, but "it did not work properly," JAXA officials wrote. "This seems to be due to the effects of overnight," the update continued, referring to the frigid two-week-long lunar night that SLIM experienced before the sun shone near Shioli crater again. "But we will continue to investigate based on the data we have obtained for the next opportunity...."
"We received so much support for our operations after the lunar night," the agency posted on social media — adding "thank you!"

The Times of India reports that "JAXA officially announced SLIM's return to a dormant state on March 1, sharing an image of the lunar surface captured by the probe."

Above the photo, JAXA posted this hopeful message. "Although the probability of a failure increases with the repeated severe temperature cycles, SLIM operation will attempt to resume when the sun rises (late March). #GoodAfterMoon."

And Space.com notes that "Despite all, SLIM has met both main and extended mission objectives: Landing precisely on the moon, deploying two tiny rovers and conducting science with its navigation camera and its spectroscopic camera, particularly searching for signs of olivine on the surface."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

The desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune is plausible, says Alexander Farnsworth, a climate modeler at the University of Bristol in England. According to Science News, the world would be a harsh place for humans to live, and they probably wouldn't have to worry about getting eaten by extraterrestrial helminths. From the report: For their Arrakis climate simulation, which you can explore at the website Climate Archive, Farnsworth and colleagues started with the well-known physics that drive weather and climate on Earth. Using our planet as a starting point makes sense, Farnsworth says, partly because Herbert drew inspiration for Arrakis from "some sort of semi-science of looking at dune systems on the Earth itself." The team then added nuggets of information about the planet from details in Herbert's novels and in the Dune Encyclopedia. According to that intel, the fictional planet's atmosphere is similar to Earth's with a couple of notable differences. Arrakis has less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than Earth -- about 350 parts per million on the desert planet compared with 417 parts per million on Earth. But Dune has far more ozone in its lower atmosphere: 0.5 percent of the gases in the atmosphere compared to Earth's 0.000001 percent.

All that extra ozone is crucial for understanding the planet. Ozone is a powerful greenhouse gas, about 65 times as potent at warming the atmosphere as carbon dioxide is, when measured over a 20-year period. "Arrakis would certainly have a much warmer atmosphere, even though it has less CO2 than Earth today," Farnsworth says. In addition to warming the planet, so much ozone in the lower atmosphere could be bad news. "For humans, that would be incredibly toxic, I think, almost fatal if you were to live under such conditions," Farnsworth says. People on Arrakis would probably have to rely on technology to scrub ozone from the air. Of course, ozone in the upper atmosphere could help shield Arrakis from harmful radiation from its star, Canopus. (Canopus is a real star also known as Alpha Carinae. It's visible in the Southern Hemisphere and is the second brightest star in the sky. Unfortunately for Dune fans, it isn't known to have planets.) If Arrakis were real, it would be located about as far from Canopus as Pluto is from the sun, Farnsworth says. But Canopus is a large white star calculated to be about 7,200 degrees Celsius. "That's significantly hotter than the sun," which runs about 2,000 degrees cooler, Farnsworth says. But "there's a lot of supposition and assumptions they made in here, and whether those are accurate numbers or not, I can't say."

The climate simulation revealed that Arrakis probably wouldn't be exactly as Herbert described it. For instance, in one throwaway line, the author described polar ice caps receding in the summer heat. But Farnsworth and colleagues say it would be far too hot at the poles, about 70Â C during the summer, for ice caps to exist at all. Plus, there would be too little precipitation to replenish the ice in the winter. High clouds and other processes would warm the atmosphere at the poles and keep it warmer than lower latitudes, especially in the summertime. Although Herbert's novels have people living in the midlatitudes and close to the poles, the extreme summer heat and bone-chilling -40C to -75C temperatures in the winters would make those regions nearly unlivable without technology, Farnsworth says. Temperatures in Arrakis' tropical latitudes would be relatively more pleasant at 45C in the warmest months and about 15C in colder months. On Earth, high humidity in the tropics makes it far warmer than at the poles. But on Arrakis, "most of the atmospheric moisture was essentially removed from the tropics," making even the scorching summers more tolerable. The poles are where clouds and the paltry amount of moisture gather and heat the atmosphere. But the tropics on Arrakis pose their own challenges. Hurricane force winds would regularly sandblast inhabitants and build dunes up to 250 meters tall, the researchers calculate. It doesn't mean people couldn't live on Arrakis, just that they'd need technology and lots of off-world support to bring in food and water, Farnsworth says. "I'd say it's a very livable world, just a very inhospitable world."

Astronomers are investigating a star system 100 light-years away with six sub-Neptune planets in near-perfect orbital resonance, piquing the interest of scientists searching for alien technology, or technosignatures. Space.com reports: To be clear, no such evidence was found in the system, dubbed HD 110067. However, the researchers say they're not done looking yet. HD 11067 remains an interesting target for similar observations in the future. In our own tiny pocket of the cosmos, radio waves from satellites and telescopes beaming out in the plane of our solar system, meaning that if somebody outside our solar system watched Earth cross the face of our sun, they'd maybe be able to pick up a signal that coincides with the planet's transit.

HD 110067 is viewed edge on from Earth, so we are seeing the six planets in the plane of their system -- a view that gives us an excellent chance of picking up such a signal if there exists one, study co-author Steve Croft, a radio astronomer working with the life-searching Breakthrough Listen program at the University of California, Berkeley, told Space.com "Our technology in our own solar system has spread outside the habitable zone," Croft told Space.com. So technology-friendly civilization in HD 110067, if any, may have communication relays set up on multiple planets in the system, he said. "Even if it is a negative result, that still tells us something."

When HD 110067's discovery was announced, Croft and his team used the world's largest fully steerable telescope, the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, and searched the system for signs of alien technology. The researchers looked for signals that were continuously present when the telescope was pointed at the system and absent when directed away, the smoking gun of technosignatures local to HD 110067. But such signals are difficult to distinguish from natural sources of radio waves and humankind's own technological signals, such as radio waves beaming from cell phones connected to Wi-Fi, SpaceX's Starlink satellite network in low Earth orbit. This creates a haystack of signals in which researchers look for a needle of a potential extraterrestrial signal, said Croft. "I should add we don't know if there are needles in the haystack," he said. "We don't really know what the needles look like." The research has been published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS.

Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year "solar cycle," ranked an impressive X6.3. From a report: Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun. Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares.

Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence "space weather" across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day. All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did. High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth's ionosphere. That's a layer of Earth's atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground.

When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren't able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can't travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible. Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated "R3" or greater on a 1 through 5 scale. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a "wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth." Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.

Switzerland is advocating for a United Nations expert group to explore the merits of solar geoengineering. The proposal seeks to ensure multilateral oversight of solar radiation modification (SRM) research, amidst concerns over its potential implications for food supply, biodiversity, and global inequalities. The Guardian reports: The Swiss proposal, submitted to the United Nations environment assembly that begins next week in Nairobi, focuses on solar radiation modification (SRM). This is a technique that aims to mimic the effect of a large volcanic eruption by filling the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide particles that reflect part of the sun's heat and light back into space. Supporters of the proposal, including the United Nations environment program (UNEP), argue that research is necessary to ensure multilateral oversight of emerging planet-altering technologies, which might otherwise be developed and tested in isolation by powerful governments or billionaire individuals.

Critics, however, argue that such a discussion would threaten the current de-facto ban on geoengineering, and lead down a "slippery slope" towards legitimization, mainstreaming and eventual deployment. Felix Wertli, the Swiss ambassador for the environment, said his country's goal in submitting the proposal was to ensure all governments and relevant stakeholders "are informed about SRM technologies, in particular about possible risks and cross-border effects." He said the intention was not to promote or enable solar geoengineering but to inform governments, especially those in developing countries, about what is happening.

The executive director of the UNEP, Inger Andersen, stressed the importance of "a global conversation on SRM" in her opening address to delegates at a preliminary gathering in Nairobi. She and her colleagues emphasized the move was a precautionary one rather than an endorsement of the technology.

The brightest known object in the universe, a quasar 500tn times brighter than our sun, was "hiding in plain sight," researchers say. From a report: Australian scientists spotted a quasar powered by the fastest growing black hole ever discovered. Its mass is about 17bn times that of our solar system's sun, and it devours the equivalent of a sun a day. The light from the celestial object travelled for more than 12bn years to reach Earth. Australian National University scientists first spotted it using a 2.3-metre telescope at the university's NSW Siding Spring Observatory in Coonabarabran. They then confirmed the find using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope, which has a primary mirror of 8 metres. The findings by the ANU researchers, in collaboration with the ESO, the University of Melbourne, and France's Sorbonne Universite have been published in Nature Astronomy.

"For nearly a year now, a bizarre heating event has been unfolding across the world's oceans," reports Wired.

"In March 2023, global sea surface temperatures started shattering record daily highs and have stayed that way since..." Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. "It's really getting to be strange that we're just seeing the records break by this much, and for this long...." Unlike land, which rapidly heats and cools as day turns to night and back again, it takes a lot to warm up an ocean that may be thousands of feet deep. So even an anomaly of mere fractions of a degree is significant. "To get into the two or three or four degrees, like it is in a few places, it's pretty exceptional," says McNoldy.

So what's going on here? For one, the oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere...

A major concern with such warm surface temperatures is the health of the ecosystems floating there: phytoplankton that bloom by soaking up the sun's energy and the tiny zooplankton that feed on them. If temperatures get too high, certain species might suffer, shaking the foundations of the ocean food web. But more subtly, when the surface warms, it creates a cap of hot water, blocking the nutrients in colder waters below from mixing upwards. Phytoplankton need those nutrients to properly grow and sequester carbon, thus mitigating climate change...

Making matters worse, the warmer water gets, the less oxygen it can hold. "We have seen the growth of these oxygen minimum zones," says Dennis Hansell, an oceanographer and biogeochemist at the University of Miami. "Organisms that need a lot of oxygen, they're not too happy when the concentrations go down in any way — think of a tuna that is expending a lot of energy to race through the water."
But why is this happening? The article suggests less dust blowing from the Sahara desert to shade the oceans, but also 2020 regulations that reduced sulfur aerosols in shipping fuels. (This reduced toxic air pollution — but also some cloud cover.)

There was also an El Nino in the Pacific ocean last summer — now waning — which complicates things, according to biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. "One of our challenges is trying to tease out what these natural variations are doing in relation to the steady warming due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere."

But the article points out that even the Atlantic ocean is heating up — and "sea surface temperatures started soaring last year well before El Niño formed." And last week the U.S. Climate Prediction Center predicted there's now a 55% chance of a La Nina in the Atlantic between June and August, according to the article — which could increase the likelihood of hurricanes.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mrflash818 for sharing the article.