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.

It’s the most unexpected food trend of the year so far, and now McDonald’s has broken its silence on the Grimace shake going viral. In case you missed it, TikTok has been completely obsessed over a limited edition purple-coloured milkshake over recent days. Grimace has been a mascot in McDonald’s marketing for decades and the fast food giant honoured the 52nd birthday of the character by introducing the new item to menus in the US. Only, since then, TikTok users have made it the focus of a strange trend – which sees them drink it, then pretend to be dead after consuming it. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Typically, the clips see someone sip the drink, before cutting to them in a fake crime scene looking like they’ve been poisoned. Gen Z is always finding new ways to surprise us, and the odd trend has racked up millions of hits. @wheresxander the foot twitch… it’s grimace taking over. #grimaceshake #grimacesbirthday Now, McDonald’s has addressed the trend with a lighthearted Tweet. The official account posted a picture of a Grimace mascot, writing: “meee pretending i don't see the grimace shake trendd.” The milkshake is only set to be on the menu for a limited time, but it looks like the trend isn’t going anywhere just yet - and the memes keep coming thick and fast. 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.

Ask anyone to name a typical characteristic exhibited by Bitcoin and they might mention that it’s volatile. But

ChatGPT is offline in a “major outage”. Anyone attempting to use the artificial intelligence system saw a warning that it was “at capacity right now”. The error page also includes a ChatGPT-written rap about the status of ChatGPT, which begins with the phrase “Yeah, yo, what’s up ChatGPT fam”. But on its status page, creators OpenAI said it was suffering a “major outage” that was being investigated urgently and had lasted for more than an hour. The latest update on that page indicated that engineers had “identified an issue” with the system and was working to fix it. The problems also affected OpenAI’s API service, which allows third-party services to connect to its AI systems. Both went down at the same time. It is the first major outage on the system for months. While it has seen some problems in recent weeks, they have been partial outages that have slowed or otherwise interfered with ChatGPT’s performance, rather than going fully offline. One of those difficulties came last night, when OpenAI said that both ChatGPT and its API had been suffering from a partial outage. The problems comes days after OpenAI held its first developer conference, on Monday, though there is no indication the two events are connected. At that conference, it announced a range of new features including a new tool it calls “GPTs”, which let people easily create their own custom versions of ChatGPT. During that same event, OpenAI announced that one hundred million people use ChatGPT each week. Some two million developers are also working on the platform, its chief executive Sam Altman said. ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history when it launched last November, as well as igniting worldwide excitement and panic over artificial intelligence. It saw 100 million users join in two months, a dramatic record that was later beaten by Meta’s Instagram Threads. Read More ChatGPT update allows anyone to make their own personalised AI assistant How Elon Musk’s ‘spicy’ Grok compares to ‘woke’ ChatGPT ChatGPT and other chatbots respond to emotions, report says

TL;DR: As of May 11, you can snag a refurbished MacBook Pro (Core i5, 8GB

LAUSANNE, Switzerland & NEWARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 2023--

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Germany will top up a pot to fund climate-protection measures and investment in semiconductor production by about €20