SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 7, 2023--

The German government expects Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to give the go-ahead for the construction of a €10

Saturn’s rings might disappear pretty soon astronomically speaking, according to new research. A new analysis of data captured by NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited the planet between 2004 and 2017, has revealed new insights into when the seven rings were formed and how long they might last. During Cassini’s Grand Finale, when the spacecraft completed 22 orbits in which it passed between Saturn and its rings, the researchers observed that the rings were losing many tons of mass per second, which means the rings will only be around another few hundred million years at most. “We have shown that massive rings like Saturn’s do not last long,” said Paul Estrada, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and a coauthor of the studies, in a statement. “One can speculate that the relatively puny rings around the other ice and gas giants in our solar system are leftover remnants of rings that were once massive like Saturn’s. Maybe some time in the not-so-distant future, astronomically speaking, after Saturn’s rings are ground down, they will look more like the sparse rings of Uranus.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Saturn’s rings are made mostly of ice but have a small amount of rocky dust created by broken asteroid fragments and micrometeoroids colliding with the rings. The research also found that the rings appeared long after Saturn’s initial formation, and were still forming when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. “Our inescapable conclusion is that Saturn’s rings must be relatively young by astronomical standards, just a few hundred million years old,” said Richard Durisen, professor emeritus of astronomy at Indiana University Bloomington and lead author of the studies in a statement. “If you look at Saturn’s satellite system, there are other hints that something dramatic happened there in the last few hundred million years. If Saturn’s rings are not as old as the planet, that means something happened in order to form their incredible structure, and that is very exciting to study.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Nintendo is developing a film based on its hugely popular "The Legend of Zelda" franchise, the Japanese gaming giant announced, as it bids to capitalize on the blockbuster...

Weeks after its international launch, Worldcoin is drawing the attention of privacy regulators around the world

Apple's launching a new operating system soon, and it's probably going to be called "xrOS."

European Union states have given final approval to a sweeping set of beefed-up cryptocurrency rules, giving the 27-nation bloc a global lead in regulating the freewheeling sector

Furby, the babbling ball of fur once pegged as a security threat by the NSA, is ready for its comeback.

A stark new discovery has revealed that cannibalism was a common practice in Europe to commemorate the dead 15,000 years ago. Research from London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) found human remains at a famed Paleolithic site in Cheddar Gorge that appeared to have bite marks across 100 of the bones. Scientists believe this is sufficient evidence of cannibalism in the Magdalenian group. "We interpret the archaeological evidence that cannibalism was practised on multiple occasions across northwest Europe over a short period of time as an indication that such behaviour was part of a funerary behaviour among Magdalenian groups, and not simply practised out of necessity," Dr Silvia Bello, paleoanthropologist and principal researcher said in a statement. Postdoctoral researcher William Marsh went on to say that the study contextualised the area by reviewing all sites "attributed to the Magdalenian culture." "During the terminal time period of the Palaeolithic, you actually see a turnover in both genetic ancestry and funerary behaviour, indicative of population replacement as Epigravettian groups migrated northwards," he said, as per IFL Science. "We believe that the change in funerary behaviour identified here is an example of demic diffusion where essentially one population comes in and replaces another population and that brings about a change in behaviour." Fast forward to 2023, and now people are having their bodies frozen in hopes they can "wake up" in the future. Cryonics "is the practice of preserving humans and animals at cryogenic temperatures in the hope that future science can restore them to a healthy living condition as well as rejuvenate them," according to the National Library of Medicine. "At present cryonics can only be performed after pronouncement of legal death of the cryonics subject." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Tesla Inc.’s Dojo supercomputer may add as much as $500 billion to the company’s market value through faster

Coal and natural gas production hubs in Australia, one of the top exporters of the fossil fuels, should

LONDON & NEW YORK & HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 8, 2023--