Teachers will have to write monthly checks if they want to stay in their union instead of having dues automatically deducted from their paycheck

SpaceX has launched a new type of zero-fuel propulsion system into orbit, which its creators claim will revolutionise the space industry. The Quantum Drive engine, built by US startup IVO Ltd, was fitted on a microsatellite that entered orbit aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 9 mission, which lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. IVO claims that its technology is the world’s first commercially viable pure electric propulsion technology that works in space, drawing “limitless power for propulsion from the Sun”. It relies on a controversial theory called Quantized Inertia (QI) that challenges Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, with some physicists dismissing the technology as impossible. The QI theory was first proposed in 2007 by physicist Mike McCulloch, who drew on the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics to account for a new understanding of inertia as defined by Newton’s First Law of Motion. IVO chief executive Richard Mansell said his company performed 100 hours of vacuum chamber testing before the launch, during which the quantum drive produced a small amount of thrust. “Deploying Quantum Drive into orbit in a Rogue satellite on SpaceX Transporter 9 is a milestone for the future of space propulsion,” Mansell said. “Quantum Drive’s capability allows Rogue to produce new satellite vehicles with unlimited Delta V.” A pair of Quantum Drives are fitted to the BARRY-1 cubesat, which will take around one month to settle into its orbit before the next-generation propulsion system is activated in an effort to raise the satellites orbit by 100 kilometres. If successful, its creators say it will not only rewrite the critical principles of physics, but also form the foundation for a new era of space travel and exploration. “There are many things that have held back space exploration, one of them of course is power and propulsion,” said Mansell. “IVO’s quantum drive eliminates this propulsion problem by eliminating the fuel. By taking away the fuel, then you have essentially unlimited thrust.” Read More ‘It’s becoming like an airport’: How SpaceX normalised rocket launches

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2023--

Kelden ‘Boostio’ Pupello and Max ‘Demon1’ Mazanov emerged as key players during this pivotal moment for the team

Paige Spiranac starts the British Open with a 'eye contact' joke about Phil Mickelson

Apple said Thursday that its revenue slipped 1% to $81.8 billion for its quarter ending July 1, marking the third consecutive year-over-year drop in quarterly revenue for the world's most valuable company.

Listen to The Big Take podcast on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Terminal. The “Black Summer” bushfires devastated Australia

Elon Musk has accepted an offer from legendary MMA fighter George St-Pierre to train him for his upcoming fight against Mark Zuckerberg. The two tech billionaires agreed to a “cage match” last week after Mr Musk first proposed a fight following rumours that the Meta boss was working on a new platform to rival Mr Musk’s Twitter. The UFC Apex centre in Las Vegas will be the likely location of the contest, which has been endorsed by UFC president Dana White. Mr Zuckerberg already practises martial arts and competed in his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year. Mr Musk, by contrast, claims to “almost never work out”, though does have a significant size advantage over his rival. Former UFC champion St-Pierre, who retired in 2019, is widely considered one of the greatest ever mixed martial artists, having won both the welterweight and middleweight titles. Addressing Mr Musk on Twitter over the weekend, the retired fighter wrote: “I’m a huge fan of yours and it would be an absolute honour to help you and be your training partner for the challenge against Zuckerberg.” On Monday evening, Mr Musk replied: “OK, let’s do it.” The SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter boss revealed that he had a “practice round” with podcaster and jiu jitsu fighter Lex Fridman on Monday evening. Mr Fridman also sparred with Mr Zuckerberg last week, with a video showing the Facebook founder submitting the black belt with a choke hold. No date has been set for the fight, though both opponents have spoken to the UFC president about the contest. Mr White said that the pair were “absolutely dead serious” about the bout. “They both said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it’. They both want to do it’,” he told TMZ. “This would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world. Bigger than anything that’s ever been done. It would break all pay-per-view records... You don’t have to be a fighting fan to be interested in this fight. Everybody would want to see it.” Read More Elon Musk confirms cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg Twitter hacker who took over Musk, Obama, Biden accounts gets prison sentence Elon Musk confirms cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg Elon Musk sparks outrage with threat to ban ‘cisgender’ as a ‘slur’ on Twitter

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2023--

If you’re anything like us, you were probably absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs as a child. However, did you ever stop to think about the sheer number of dinos that were wandering around the planet before they met their untimely end at the hands of an asteroid? A new study has been published which states that a whopping 1.7 billion T-Rex roamed the Earth in total across the Late Cretaceous period. It comes after researchers calculated their average lifespan, which measured up to a whopping 40 feet in length and 12 feet in height. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They cross referenced this with the number of eggs which survived and the sexual maturity of the animals to come up with the figure. It’s a huge number, but it’s actually far less than previously thought. A previous study from 2021 estimated that there were 800 million more of them that existed between about 90 to 66 million years ago. The research was published in Palaeontology, and evolutionary ecologist Eva Griebeler from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany wrote about the findings. "Unlike my model, the generation time as well as life expectancies, gross reproduction rates, and reproductive values of individuals calculated from the previous model all strongly contradicted our current understanding of the biology of T. rex and of other theropods,” she said. "Their values also disagreed with those of large extant reptiles, birds, and mammals. All of these shortcomings of the previous model favor the assessment of individual and population characteristics of T. rex and of other extinct species using my model." Griebeler also explained how the findings suggest a lower T-Rex survival rate, as well as fewer generations of the animal and less egg laying. "All of these shortcomings of the previous model favor the assessment of individual and population characteristics of T. rex and other extinct species using my model," she wrote. 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.

By Sheila Dang Twitter's head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters on Thursday that she has

Asian semiconductor stocks got a fresh boost from a stellar set of results at Nvidia Corp., the standard