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Submission + - SPAM: James Webb telescope hit by large micrometeoroid

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NASA’s new powerful space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, got pelted by a larger than expected micrometeoroid at the end of May, causing some detectable damage to one of the spacecraft’s 18 primary mirror segments. The impact means that the mission team will have to correct for the distortion created by the strike, but NASA says that the telescope is “still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements.”

Despite the strike, NASA remained optimistic in its post about JWST’s future. “Webb’s beginning-of-life performance is still well above expectations, and the observatory is fully capable of performing the science it was designed to achieve,” according to the blog. Engineers can also adjust the impacted mirror to help cancel out the data distortion. The mission team has done this already and will continue to tinker with the mirror over time to get the best results. It’s a process that will be ongoing throughout JWST’s planned five to 10 years of life as new observations are made and events unfold. At the same time, NASA warns that the engineers will not be able to completely cancel out the impact of the strike.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Microplastics Found In Freshly Fallen Antarctic Snow For First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microplastics have been found in freshly fallen snow in Antarctica for the first time, which could accelerate snow and ice melting and pose a threat to the health of the continent’s unique ecosystems. The tiny plastics — smaller than a grain of rice — have previously been found in Antarctic sea ice and surface water but this is the first time it has been reported in fresh snowfall, the researchers say. The research, conducted by University of Canterbury PhD student, Alex Aves, and supervised by Dr Laura Revell has been published in the scientific journal The Cryosphere.

Aves collected snow samples from the Ross Ice Shelf in late 2019 to determine whether microplastics had been transferred from the atmosphere into the snow. Up until then, there had been few studies on this in Antarctica. “We were optimistic that she wouldn’t find any microplastics in such a pristine and remote location,” Revell said. She instructed Aves to also collect samples from Scott Base and the McMurdo Station roadways – where microplastics had previously been detected — so “she’d have at least some microplastics to study,” Revell said. But that was an unnecessary precaution – plastic particles were found in every one of the 19 samples from the Ross Ice Shelf. “It’s incredibly sad but finding microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow highlights the extent of plastic pollution into even the most remote regions of the world,” Aves said.

Aves found an average of 29 microplastic particles per litre of melted snow, which is higher than marine concentrations reported previously from the surrounding Ross Sea and in Antarctic sea ice. Samples taken from immediately next to the scientific bases on Ross Island, Scott Base and McMurdo Station threw up larger concentrations – nearly three times that of remote areas. There were 13 different types of plastic found, with the most common being PET – the plastic commonly used to make soft drink bottles and clothing. Atmospheric modelling suggested they may have travelled thousands of kilometres through the air, however it is equally likely the presence of humans in Antarctica has established a microplastic ‘footprint’, Revell said.
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Submission + - SPAM: UK Four-Day Week Pilot Begins: Employees Get 100% of the Pay For 80% of the Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The biggest ever four-day working week pilot is set to begin in the UK, with over 70 companies and 3,300 workers ready to take part. The trial will result in no loss of pay for employees, based on the principle of the 100:80:100 model. Employees will receive 100 percent of the pay for 80 percent of the time in exchange for a commitment to maintaining 100 percent productivity.

An impressive list of companies are taking part in the trial from a wide range of sectors including banking, care, online retail, IT software training, housing, animation studios, hospitality and many more. The pilot is running for six months and is being organized by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with leading think tank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College. [...] Researchers will work with each participating organization to measure the impact on productivity in the business and the wellbeing of its workers, as well as the impact on the environment and gender equality. Government-backed four-day week trials are also due to begin later this year in Spain and Scotland.
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Submission + - Are the world's most powerful supercomputers operating in secret? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: A new supercomputer called Frontier has been widely touted as the world’s first exascale machine – but was it really? Although Frontier, which was built by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, topped what is generally seen as the definitive list of supercomputers, others may already have achieved the milestone in secret.

Some owners prefer not to release a benchmark figure, or even publicly reveal a machine’s existence. Simon McIntosh-Smith at the University of Bristol, UK points out that not only do intelligence agencies and certain companies have an incentive to keep their machines secret, but some purely academic machines like Blue Waters, operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are also just never entered.

Submission + - Small modular reactors will generate more waste than conventional ones (stanford.edu)

Submitted by SoftwareArtist
SoftwareArtist writes: A new study from Stanford and the University of British Columbia has bad news for the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Nuclear reactors generate reliable supplies of electricity with limited greenhouse gas emissions. But a nuclear power plant that generates 1,000 megawatts of electric power also produces radioactive waste that must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. Furthermore, the cost of building a large nuclear power plant can be tens of billions of dollars. To address these challenges, the nuclear industry is developing small modular reactors that generate less than 300 megawatts of electric power and can be assembled in factories. Industry analysts say these advanced modular designs will be cheaper and produce fewer radioactive byproducts than conventional large-scale reactors. But a study published May 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reached the opposite conclusion. “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study,” said study lead author Lindsay Krall, a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). “These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”

Comment Re:Lithium limited? (Score 2, Informative) 211

by Hadlock (#30375864) Attached to: Silicon As the New Lithium

depends. right now were're surface mining lithium salts from exposed salt flats. theres no telling how many rich veins of lithium salts are hiding in valleys or near aquifers. i'm sure someone is working on that, but until someone runs analysis on where those veins might be i doubt anyone could tell you. more than likely battery technology will move beyond lithium long before (100 years?) we run out of lithium "ore" you can just shovel off the ground and into the back of a truck (Seriously, do a google image search for "lithium ore" - they literally shovel it right off the ground into piles, and later into pickup trucks)

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