95357015
submission
JoeRobe writes:
A few weeks ago an interstellar asteroid, now named "Oumuamua", was discovered passing through our solar system. Being the first interstellar asteroid to ever be observed, a flurry of observations soon followed. This week, an accelerated article in Nature reveals that Oumuamua is more bizarre than originally though: it is elongated, with a 10:1 aspect ratio, and rapidly rotating. This conclusion is based upon comparisons of its time-dependent light curve to those from 20,000 known asteroids.
29069745
submission
JoeRobe writes:
For the first time in 30 years, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. These are the first licenses to be issued since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The pair of facilities will cost $14 billion and produce 2.2 GW of power (able to power ~1 million homes). They will be Westinghouse AP1000 designs, which are the newest reactors approved by the NRC. These models passively cool their fuel rods using condensation and gravity, rather than electricity, preventing the possibility of another Fukushima Daiichi-type meltdown due to loss of power to cooling water pumps.
26502742
submission
JoeRobe writes:
Researchers at Harvard have developed a pneumatically-controlled rubber robot that combines undulation and quadrupedal "crawling", allowing it to maintain a low profile while moving. In a paper in published in PNAS, they describe it as "A soft robot, composed exclusively of soft materials (elastomeric polymers), which is inspired by animals (e.g., squid, starfish, worms) that do not have hard internal skeletons." The robot is solely powered by relatively low pressures (10 psi), and controlled by 5 pneumatic actuators. The research was funded by DARPA.
