The AFL Grand Final is Australia’s most-watched sporting event of the year, so it's fair

China plans to craft policies to accelerate the build-out of nationwide computing infrastructure, seeking to lay the digital

The Euclid space telescope has revealed its first full-colour images, showing the universe as it has never been seen before. The five images, taken by the European Space Agency’s newly launched flying observatory, show the shining lights of distant galaxies. Scientists hope they will also prove useful in better understanding those galaxies, which includes some of the most massive structures in the known universe. Many of the galaxies have never been seen before. And much of the information in them could help explain mysteries such as dark energy and the expansion of the universe. The images released on Tuesday include one of the Perseus cluster of galaxies which shows 1,000 galaxies belonging to the cluster, and more than 100,000 additional galaxies further away in the background. Many of these faint galaxies were previously unseen, and some of them are so far that their light has taken 10 billion years to reach us. Another image captures the spiral galaxy IC 342, nicknamed the Hidden Galaxy, because it is difficult to observe as it lies behind the busy disc of our Milky Way, and so dust, gas and stars obscure our view. One of the new pictures is of globular cluster NGC 6397 - the second-closest globular cluster to Earth, located about 7,800 light-years away. Globular clusters are collections of hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity. These faint stars tell us about the history of the Milky Way and where dark matter is located. To create a 3D map of the universe, Euclid will observe the light from galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. The first irregular dwarf galaxy that Euclid observed is called NGC 6822 and is located just 1.6 million light-years from Earth. And the fifth image shows a panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the constellation Orion. Scientists hope to find many dim and previously unseen Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as young brown dwarfs and baby stars, in this new observation. Professor Carole Mundell, ESA director of science, said: “Dark matter pulls galaxies together and causes them to spin more rapidly than visible matter alone can account for; dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe. “Euclid will for the first time allow cosmologists to study these competing dark mysteries together. “Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.” Rene Laureijs, the ESA’s Euclid project scientist, said: “We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. “They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby universe. “Now we are ready to observe billions of galaxies, and study their evolution over cosmic time.” Euclid was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July 1. Named after the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, the two-tonne probe made its way towards an area in space known as the second Lagrange point, where the gravitational forces of Earth and the sun are roughly equal - creating a stable location for the spacecraft. The UK has contributed £37 million towards the £850 million mission, with scientists playing key roles in designing and building the probe and leading on one of the two scientific instruments on board. Dr Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency, said: “These first colour images showcase Euclid‘s enormous potential, giving us incredibly sharp images of galaxies and stars, and helping us understand more about the impacts of dark matter and dark energy on the universe. “The UK has played an important role in the mission, leading on the development of the visible imager (VIS) instrument and on key elements of the data processing pipeline, funded by the UK Space Agency. “And this is just the start - UK researchers will be using Euclid data for many years to come to make significant new scientific discoveries about the composition and evolution of the cosmos.” Additional reporting by Press Association Read More Euclid space telescope releases first full-colour images of cosmos First full-colour images of universe captured by Euclid telescope revealed Watch again: ESA reveals first full-colour images of ‘dark universe’ from Euclid Tim Peake: Possibility of all-UK space mission a ‘very exciting development’ Strange purple light phenomenon ‘Steve’ spotted across UK skies Nasa sending VR headset up to ISS to treat astronaut’s mental health

The NBA 2K24 countdown is on as fans only have to wait 18 more days until NBA 2K24 releases on Friday, Sept. 8, 2023 on all current and next-gen platforms.

An apparent cyberattack forced the Philadelphia Inquirer to close its office through Tuesday, the newspaper's spokesperson Evan Benn told CNN in an email on Monday.

The floor of Crawford Lake in Ontario acts like a storybook, preserving Earth’s recent history in chronological order. Crawford Lake reveals the activities of local Iroquoian communities from the late 13th to 15th centuries, all the way through to the present day. This is because Crawford Lake is a meromictic lake, meaning that the dense bottom layer of water does not mix with the less dense upper layers. “The isolated bottom layer of water remains under disturbed, enabling the accumulation of clearly laminated valves which record precise information about the time during which they were deposited,” according to the Anthropocene Working Group. Experts have nominated Crawford Lake as representation for the start of the Anthropocene epoch, a proposed new geological era characterised by significant changes to the planet’s surface as a result of human behaviour. The Anthropocene is yet to be officially accepted as a unit of geologic time, but in 2016 a working group under the guidance of an International Commission on Stratigraphy subcommittee agreed that human behaviour has left scars so deep that they will remain evident even into the distant future. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter One of the most notable markers of the Anthropocene is the appearance of plutonium, a radioactive material that appeared in the mid-20th century as a result of hydrogen bomb tests. “The presence of plutonium gives us a stark indicator of when humanity became such a dominant force that it could leave a unique global ‘fingerprint’ on our planet,” explained Professor Andrew Cundy, Chair in Environmental Radiochemistry at the University of Southampton and member of the Anthropocene Working Group. “In nature, plutonium is only present in trace amounts. But in the early-1950s, when the first hydrogen bomb tests took place, we see an unprecedented increase and then spike in the levels of plutonium in core samples from around the world. We then see a decline in plutonium from the mid-1960s onwards when the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty came into effect.” Agreeing on a simple measure that defines the boundary between chapters in Earth’s history is just the first step. This measure requires agreement among scientists on a single location to define the boundaries. Known as the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point, or a golden spike, plays a crucial role in standardising these borders between epochs. The Anthropocene Working Group has been evaluating potential golden spike sites, from Oued Akrech, Morocco, to Alano di Piave, Italy. After spending three years assessing the qualities of a dozen potential golden spikes for the Anthropocene, finally the AGW has landed on Crawford Lake. “Crawford Lake is so special because it allows us to see at annual resolution the changes in Earth history throughout two separate periods of human impact on this small lake,” micropalaeontologist Francine McCarthy of Brock University in Canada, a voting member of the AGW, said at a press briefing. The lake’s unique properties, such as its small size, depth, and lack of water mixing create sediments that precisely record environmental changes over the past millennia. To officially establish the Anthropocene in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the golden spike at Crawford Lake must undergo a series of voting by various commissions and unions. If successful, it will mark the moment when human activities permanently altered the planet. 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.

Someone could soon be at risk of dying or being injured by a falling satellite every other year, according to a new report. By 2035, if SpaceX’s Starlink space internet satellites continue to grow in number, then they some 28,000 pieces of them will be falling from the sky each year, according to a report from the Federal Aviation Authority. The chance of one surviving its fall to the ground and injuring or killing someone would be 0.6 per year, it said – which would make it likely to happen once every two years. They could even pose a risk to aircraft, it said. The probability of an aircraft being downed by a satellite would be 0.0007 per year by 2035, the report claimed. The report was commissioned amid increasing concern about falling space debris, and the vast collection of material that has been put into space in recent years. Companies such as SpaceX are launching more and more satellites each years, and experts have warned that there is a danger of collisions both in space as well as on the ground. The new report aimed to evaluate the risk posed by that falling space debris. It also suggests that some of the danger could be limited with more regulation. But it notes that the FAA does not have any power over launches that happen outside of the US. As with many of the problems in space, the world currently lacks an international approach to space debris, new satellites and the dangers that those objects might pose. The report primarily looked at the constellation of satellites that have been launched and are planned by SpaceX, for instance. The company has launched 5,000 such satellites already, and plans to increase that dramatically, and SpaceX represents over 85 per cent of the risk posed to people on the ground, the FAA’s report said. But it did not look at other networks of satellites planned in other countries. Recent reports have suggested that China is planning its own huge constellation of satellites that will also offer their own space internet, named Guowang, for example. SpaceX has said that the analysis used to calculate the number is “deeply flawed” and based on false assumptions about the danger posed by its satellites. The company’s satellites are more likely to burn up on entry than the report assumed, the company’s principal engineer David Goldstein wrote in a letter to the FAA, according to a report from Space News. Read More PlayStation announces brand new version of the PS5 ChatGPT founder says bitcoin is ‘super logical’ next step for tech Google to trial AI in UK traffic light systems to reduce stop-and-go emissions

Minuscule traces of metal from space junk that's designed to be disposable are invisibly polluting the Earth's atmosphere, a new study has found. In recent times, spacecrafts launched into space have been designed so that they fall out of orbit and fall back down to Earth after their intended use. So instead of the materials crashing on land, they can burn up in the upper atmosphere. Although the debris of rockets and satellites burn up when re-entering the planet's atmosphere, the consequences of metal vapour being left behind currently remain unknown. But given the amount of space exploration taking place, the amount of metal vapour is expected to rise in the years to come. Physicist Daniel Murphy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has led a team of researchers to investigate what effects this metal vapour could have as well as its impact over time and this study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as per Science Alert. He listed "iron, silicon, and magnesium from the natural meteoric source" as the current refractory material in stratospheric particular. Murphy has warned how this composition could be affected by the metal vapour from space junk. "However, the amount of material from the reentry of upper-stage rockets and satellites is projected to increase dramatically in the next 10 to 30 years," he wrote. "As a result, the amount of aluminum in stratospheric sulfuric acid particles is expected to become comparable to or even exceed the amount of meteoric iron, with unknown consequences for inclusions and ice nucleation." To find out if metal vapour remained, Murphy and his team took and analyzed 500,000 stratospheric aerosol droplet samples to see if they had traces of spacecraft metals. Aerosols contain sulfuric acid droplets made from the oxidation of the carbonyl sulfide gas and in the atmosphere, this can appear naturally or as a pollutant. Metal and silicon traces can be found in these droplets too, acquired from meteors which vaporize upon atmospheric entry. Around 20 metals were discovered from this research, and while some metals had similar ratios to the vaporizing meteors, other metals such as lithium, aluminium, copper, and lead exceeded the anticipated amounts. Particles from vaporized spacecraft were found in 10 per cent of stratospheric aerosols over a certain size while other common spacecraft metals such as niobium and hafnium were also present. Consequently, these traces of spacecraft particles could affect how water freezes into ice in the stratosphere, and stratospheric aerosol particles could change in size. Due to more space exploration planned in an "era of rapid growth" for the industry, the researchers predict "the percentage of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles that contain aluminum and other metals from satellite reentry will be comparable to the roughly 50 per cent that now contain meteoric metals." Sign up to 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.

A meteor exploded over the Atlantic Ocean at a force comparable to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War. While this may sound like a scary prospect, there is nothing to worry about as this asteroid did not actually hit the Earth. The debris burned up at a height of around 31 kilometres above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil, experts say. Data from NASA showed that the meteor appeared to release the equivalent energy of around 12,000 tonnes of TNT - that's approximately 12 kilotons of explosive power. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Similarly, the Hiroshima Bomb detonated with an approximate energy of 15 kilotons – that is, 15 thousand tonnes of TNT equivalent. This force caused devastation in the Japanese city and killed at least 80,000 people instantly, with tens of thousands dying later due to radiation exposure. Although 12 kilotonnes does sound like a lot, there have also been other explosions that have had a higher number than this. One example is the 450 kilotons of explosive energy (0.45 megatons) released as a result of the Chelyabinsk meteor back in 2013 - 26 to 33 times as much energy as the Hiroshima Bomb. The house-sized asteroid exploded 14 miles above the ground and generated a shock wave that blew out windows over 200 square miles and damaged some buildings. Over 1,600 people were injured in the blast, mostly due to broken glass, according to NASA. Elsewhere, amazing footage captures the moment a meteor crashes into the moon and, scientists discover a secret planet hiding in our solar system. 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.

New generations of PCI Express tech—the interface used across PC parts—are already on the way.

Nasa has “inadvertently” lost contact with Voyager 2, its pioneering spacecraft. The space agency said that it had sent a series of planned commands to the probe on 21 July. But those moves left Voyager 2 pointing in the wrong direction: its antenna is now pointing two degrees away from Earth, and so it has lost contact with its engineers. It cannot either receive commands or send back data, Nasa said. Ordinarily, it would do so by establishing contact with the Deep Space Network, or DSN, which is a set of ground-based antennas that allow for communications with distant spacecraft. But the data being sent by Voyager 2 is not reaching that network. Voyager 2 is now floating on its own, almost 20 billion kilometres from Earth. Nasa still hopes to be able to re-establish contact with the probe, however. It is programmed to automatically reset its orientation a number of times each year, to push its antenna back to Earth. The next reset is expected to happen on 15 October, Nasa said. Until then, the space agency expects the probe to “remain on its planned trajectory during the quiet period”, it said. As its name suggests, Voyager 2 was part of a pair, both of which were launched in 1977. Voyager 1 is floating even further from Earth – at 24 billion kilometres – and Nasa says it is continuing to operate as normal. The Voyager programme brought with it a host of records: Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune, and together they are the only spacecraft made by humans to ever have entered interstellar space. Even almost 50 years since they were launched, the pair of Voyager spacecraft have continued to send back useful and important information to Nasa for examination by scientists on Earth. They have contributed to a host of new findings about the very distant edges of our solar system. Read More How to take the perfect picture of tonight's supermoon Elon Musk installs huge, glowing letter on top of his office A game where you go to sleep in real life is one of the most popular in the world

Mark your calendars: Smartphone vendor Nothing plans on holding a launch event for its second-generation