Abort! Abort!

SpaceX just posted dramatic footage of its commercial space taxi Crew Dragon undergoing rigorous tests of its emergency abort system.

The idea is that if something goes wrong with the rocket carrying the Crew Dragon to orbit, the module can engage its own thrusters to quickly escape the danger — and then coast down safely on a parachute.

Ahead of our in-flight abort test for @Commercial_Crew—which will demonstrate Crew Dragon's ability to safely carry astronauts away from the rocket in the unlikely event of an emergency—our team has completed over 700 tests of the spacecraft's SuperDraco engines pic.twitter.com/nswMPCK3F9

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 12, 2019

Ejector Button

The spacecraft is outfitted with eight SuperDraco engines, allowing it to cover half a mile in just 7.5 seconds during an emergency, reaching a top speed of 436 mph, according to a follow-up tweet. Parachutes ensure that the craft safely lands back on Earth after the system deploys.

But testing hasn’t always gone according to plan. The same engines were responsible for blowing up the first Crew Dragon capsule during a system test in April.

Last week, SpaceX tested the first stage of its Falcon 9 boosters that will be responsible for launching two NASA astronauts into orbit as part of Crew Dragon’s first-ever crewed test flight. When exactly that test flight will take place is still uncertain.

READ MORE: SpaceX on Twitter

More on Crew Dragon: SpaceX Confirms That Accident Destroyed Crew Dragon Capsule

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Fish out of Water

For environmental researchers, using robots to collect much-needed water samples can be tricky. The bot might have trouble navigating around trash while collecting samples from polluted waters, for example, or avoiding ice.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London have created a robot fish that can get around such obstacles — by propelling itself over them using a stream of water pushed out its rear end.

Full of Gas

The researchers detail their creation of the flying robot fish in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics on Wednesday.

According to the paper, the bot uses a combustion chamber that fills with surrounding water via a pump, the bot’s only moving part. The chamber also contains a small amount of calcium carbide powder, which, when combined with water, produces combustible acetylene gas.

An ignition system in the robot ignites this gas, forcing water out of the robot’s rear and sending it flying into the air, where it can glide for a remarkable distance of 85 feet.

Ocean Bound

The researchers have already tested their flying robot fish in a lab, a lake, and a wave tank.

They’re now looking to begin field trials of the bot to gauge its potential use for monitoring waters near offshore energy platforms and coral reefs — so if you’re in the ocean and see a strange looking “fish” flying through the air while water shoots out of its butt, don’t be alarmed.

READ MORE: Robot can launch out of the water and glide like a flying fish [New Scientist]

More on robot fish: Robot Fish Can Swim for 37 Hours With Blood-Powered Batteries

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Watch a Robot Fish Fly by Shooting Water out of Its Rear

Escape

Residents of the Russian town of Kiselyovsk have a simple request for Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: let us in.

That’s because the town, infamous for gray-black, coal-polluted snow has proven inhospitable for residents who now seek status as environmental refugees, according to CBC News. But because of complicated legal technicalities — fleeing pollution is seen differently from escaping climate change — experts say they don’t stand much of a chance.

Toxic

About 80 percent of Kiselyovsk’s population lives near an open-pit coal mine, according to Motherboard. As a result, the town’s water and food are highly contaminated. Cancer and tuberculosis are common, and the life expectancy has plummeted as toxic dust blankets the region.

All in all, it makes Canada look great.

“We chose Canada because the climate there is similar to our region,” an exodus organizer told a local newspaper, per CBC. “So that they [Russian authorities] wouldn’t say that we just wanted to move to warm countries.”

Unlikely

The residents have publicized their plea for asylum through a series of YouTube videos. But Canada typically doesn’t welcome environmental refugees, especially when other parts of Russia remain hospitable — a stance that Queens University law professor Sharry Aiken told Motherboard she finds outdated in the face of an increasingly-inhospitable planet.

“There is no question,” Aiken told Motherboard, “that our laws and policies will need to adapt to this new reality.”

READ MORE: Residents of a Siberian Town With Black Snow Are Pleading for Asylum in Canada [Motherboard]

More on refugees: New Research: Climate Change Causes Migration and Conflict

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Sticker Shock

A private trip to the Moon’s orbit could cost you anywhere from $35 million to $150 million. But now, one startup is saying it’ll charge just $99 to put you on the Moon.

Part of you, anyway.

In a newly published IEEE Spectrum story, LifeShip founder Ben Haldeman shares his startup’s plan to send human DNA to the Moon — a whimsical undertaking that could also ensure humanity lives on even if Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Spit Collector

The project will launch this fall with a Kickstarter campaign through which LifeShip will sell $99 kits that backers can use to collect samples of their spit.

LifeShip will then extract DNA from the saliva and preserve it in an “artificial amber” that will reach the Moon as part of a future Arch Mission journey.

“You provide a saliva sample and then we take your DNA, your source code, and preserve it up in space for eternity,” Haldeman told IEEE Spectrum.

Survival Unknown

“Eternity” might be a stretch, though.

While your DNA might land on the Moon through the LifeShip project, even Haldeman later notes that he isn’t sure how long it’ll survive once it reaches its lunar destination.

“We can’t guarantee a million years on the Moon but it should be up there for a while,” he told IEEE Spectrum. “It’s about archiving life and saving for the future but also the wonder of traveling into space and what could happen with this DNA in the future.”

READ MORE: This Startup Wants to Stash Your DNA on the Moon [IEEE Spectrum]

More on the Arch Mission: Israeli Moon Lander Is Carrying a Vast Backup of Human Knowledge

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This Startup Will Send DNA From Your Spit to the Moon for $99

Heightened Scrutiny

The FBI has turned its all-seeing eye toward Mithril Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel — an industry kingmaker who’s one of the most prominent supporters of the Trump administration in tech.

It’s unclear specifically what prompted the FBI to scrutinize the firm’s business practices, but Recode reports a host of possibilities ranging from questionable tax strategies to mismanagement of investors’ money — a shakeup, in either case, at the explosive intersection of tech and politics.

And My Axe

The FBI isn’t alone in its heightened scrutiny of Mithril, which borrows its name from a fictional metal in “Lord of the Rings.”

Also probing the company’s finances is Cambridge Associates, a prominent investment adviser for the mega-rich that has put millions of dollars into Mithril’s coffers, according to Recode. Cambridge is looking into whether the firm has been overly-selective with investments, choosing to sit on investors’ cash and collect higher management fees as a result.

All-Seeing Eye

While Thiel isn’t involved in day-to-day operations at Mithril, his money and reputation are inexorably linked with its performance.

That’s relevant because the firm is also dealing with low morale, per Recode, related to the dual investigations into its practices. It reportedly once collected staffers’ computers and phones in a bid to determine who’d been talking to the press and investigators — though a spokesperson told Recode that it was merely a “device upgrade.”

Disclosure: The Thiel Foundation previously provided grant funding to Futurism’s parent company, Singularity University.

READ MORE: The FBI is investigating a venture capital fund started by Peter Thiel for financial misconduct [Recode]

More on Mithril Capital: The Next Head of the FDA May be a Man Who is Fighting a War Against Aging

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FBI Investigation Targets Trump Booster Peter Thiel’s VC Firm

Bathroom Break

In the future, airplane bathrooms will never run out of toilet paper again.

At least, that’s Airbus’s excuse for a cursed-sounding new Internet of Things platform that collects a large amount of data about passengers, according to Bloomberg — including how often they go to the bathroom and how long they have to wait to pee.

Pee Tape

Airbus says it’s testing its “Airspace Connected Experience” tech in its experimental A350-900 Flight Lab aircraft.

The data collected includes “pre- and remote ordering of preferred meals, booking of private bin space, setting of individual seat positions, as well as a tailor-made inflight [entertainment] offer,” according to a press release. Oh yeah, and the pee thing.

Digital Trolleys

The big-picture vision is a system that can track the amount of free space available in overhead bins, make it easier for crew members to identify who ordered a vegan meal, and track obscure data points like how much soap and toilet paper are left in the crapper.

The platform will also give crew members access to the data through a mobile smart device — meaning they could get ahead of maintaining bathrooms that were in use far more than others and know when somebody needs help while inside the bathroom, according to Bloomberg.

READ MORE: The Next Generation of Aircraft Will Track Your Bathroom Visits [Bloomberg]

More on airplane tech: These Futuristic Airplane Seats Could Make Flying Economy Better

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Airbus Planes Will Track How Often Passengers Go to the Bathroom

On Thursday, a team of MIT engineers reported that they’d created a material that absorbs 99.995 percent of light that reaches it — making it even blacker than Surrey NanoSystems’ mind-bending Vantablack, which absorbs 99.965 percent of light.

But perhaps even more remarkable than the light-absorbing capabilities of the new super black material is how the MIT team discovered it: by accident.

In an attempt to boost certain properties of electrically conductive materials, the MIT team removed the oxide layer from aluminum and began growing carbon nanotubes on it.

“I remember noticing how black it was before growing carbon nanotubes on it, and then after growth, it looked even darker,” researcher Kehang Cui told MIT News. “So I thought I should measure the optical reflectance of the sample.”

That’s when the team discovered that it had created the world’s new blackest material, which it detailed in a study published in the journal ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces on Thursday.

The MIT researchers almost immediately partnered with artist Diemut Strebe to coat a $2 million diamond in the material as part of an art exhibit that launched at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

The MIT team has since offered up the material to any interested artists. But the substance could have many applications beyond the artistic, such as helping astronomers remove unwanted glare from telescopes.

As black as this material is, though, researcher Brian Wardle doesn’t expect it to hold the title of blackest black forever.

“I think the blackest black is a constantly moving target,” he told MIT News. “Someone will find a blacker material, and eventually we’ll understand all the underlying mechanisms, and will be able to properly engineer the ultimate black.”

READ MORE: MIT engineers develop “blackest black” material to date [MIT News]

More on Vantablack: BMW Unveils a Car Coated in Vantablack

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MIT Team “Accidentally” Invents Blackest Material in Existence

Terrifying Flaws

In December 2018, a man driving an authorized Uber vehicle picked up an intoxicated woman leaving a Christmas party — and then brought her to his home and raped her. But the man, who The Age reports was sentenced to five and a half years in prison on Wednesday, was not an authorized Uber driver. Rather, he was able to easily fool Uber’s verification system by holding up a photo of a real driver.

In other words, the AI technology that Uber uses to verify that its drivers are who they claim to be — like Amazon delivery drivers, Uber contractors take a selfie when signing on — wasn’t sophisticated enough to spot a printed headshot. It’s a horrifying story that illustrates the perils of big tech offloading security to dodgy AI systems.

De-Automating

Uber told Business Insider that it deployed a fix in response to the December incident.

The company hired an undisclosed number of humans to review the driver-verifying selfies this year, it said — and also implemented better AI.

Higher Standards

Apparently, it works — The Age reports that drivers posting in online forums are talking less about operating scam rings and more about how difficult it is to get the system to approve a selfie.

But it all raises the question of why the improved security wasn’t in place from the start ­— the unauthorized driver may have been fooling Uber’s security protocols since 2016, according to The Age.

READ MORE: Uber introduces human reviewers to crack down on drivers evading security selfie system with printed photos after Australian rape case [Business Insider]

More on Uber drivers: Uber and Lyft Still Allow Racist Behavior, but Not as Much as Taxi Services

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A Driver Tricked Uber’s Algorithm, Sexually Assaulted a Passenger

Going Solar

As electric cars become increasingly popular worldwide, there’s one renewable source of energy that could make them even more convenient and environmentally friendly: the Sun.

Japanese auto giant Toyota has partnered with a local energy company to test a Prius hybrid that’s almost entirely covered in solar panels, according to Bloomberg. The ambitious goal is to one day end the car’s dependence on charging stations entirely.

Trend Piece

Both Toyota and Hyundai have already released models, including the 2017 Prius, that feature solar panels on their roofs — but their ability to power the vehicle is extremely limited, since they only charge the batteries when the car is parked.

Since July, Toyota has been working on a brand-new design. It features special, much higher efficiency solar panels that are mounted on the hood, roof and even hatchback of the car, charging the car’s batteries even when it’s moving.

Panel Van

The new solar system could allow the Prius to cover 50 kilometers, four days a week, on solar alone, Bloomberg reports.

If the vehicle makes it to market, it wouldn’t be the only next-gen solar vehicle around. Dutch startup Lightyear revealed what it calls the world’s first long-range “solar car” back in June. The company is expecting to start deliveries in early 2021.

READ MORE: Toyota Is Trying to Figure Out How to Make a Car Run Forever [Bloomberg]

More on solar cars: Startup Unveils World’s First Long-Range “Solar Car”

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Toyota Wants to Slather Solar Panels All Over Its Prius Hybrid

It Follows

Back in the 1980s, astronomers spotted a runaway star speeding across the night sky at upwards of 1.2 million miles per hour.

Now, decades later, scientists say they’ve finally figured out which pocket of the galaxy the star once called home — and what it’s fleeing from: a giant black hole.

Home is Nowhere

The star, dubbed PG1610+062, has probably spent all this time escaping from a black hole, Live Science reports. Or, more technically, it likely passed near a mid-mass black hole and got whipped off course by its gravitational pull, like a galactic slingshot.

There’s something slightly off about that explanation, though. Namely, a black hole with the mid-range mass needed to launch the star at this particular speed has never been observed within the Milky Way, according to a press release about the research.

Cosmic Horror

The scientists calculated that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy couldn’t be responsible for the star’s wild ride — the numbers simply don’t add up unless the black hole is considerably smaller.

In other words, there may be undetected monstrous black holes lurking in the Milky Way.

“Now, PG1610+062 may provide evidence that [mid-mass black holes] could indeed exist in our galaxy,” Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg astronomer Andreas Irrgang said in the press release. “The race is on to actually find them.”

READ MORE: This Ridiculously Speedy Star Might Be Running Away from a Rare, Unproven Type of Black Hole [Live Science]

More on black holes: Spotted: A Black Hole That Shouldn’t Be Physically Possible

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A Runaway Star Is Escaping a Black Hole at 1.2 Million MPH

Police State

On Thursday, Russian police targeted the home of Sergey Boyko, a known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as part of a widespread raid.

But Boyko was determined to prevent the officers from confiscating his electronics — so he used a drone to fly them out of his high-rise apartment via an open window.

Extraction Point

A companion in Boyko’s home at the time of the Russian raid recorded the whole thing, with Boyko later uploading the footage to YouTube.

“Done,” Boyko said in Russian at one point in the clip, according to a BBC News translation. “The evacuation has been carried out. The drone reached its destination.”

That destination remains unknown, but the BBC reported that Boyko said the drone carried a combination of hard disks, solid-state drives, and flash sticks, all of which contained “very important” information he didn’t want the police to get their hands on.

Russian Raid

In addition to Boyko’s apartment, Russian police stormed approximately 200 homes and offices on Thursday as part of a crackdown on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Russian nonprofit dedicated to exposing corruption in the nation’s government.

Boyko is a known ally of Navalny, but thanks to his quick drone escape, his electronics weren’t among the many computers and phones Russian police reportedly confiscated during Thursday’s raid.

READ MORE: A Putin opponent about to be hit by a police raid at his high-rise apartment flew his hard drives to safety with a drone [Business Insider]

More on drones: Russia’s Top Secret Heavy Strike Stealth Drone Takes Flight

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Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

On Thursday, local news reporter Colton Molesky took to the streets of Mitchell, South Dakota, to report on the city’s dangerous flooding for the station KSFY.

While Molesky was filming his segment, a white Tesla Model X appeared down the street — and then plowed its way through the headlight-covering water, exiting the flooded street seemingly no worse for wear.

What NOT to do! This car in Mitchell tries to drive down a flooded street as @CMolesky reports LIVE. pic.twitter.com/Tv00CLUDYT

— Kamie Roesler (@KamieRoeslerTC) September 12, 2019

Bad Idea

This isn’t the first time a Tesla has been filmed in high water — in 2016, footage of a Model S owner in Kazakhstan using their car to float through a flooded tunnel hit the internet.

At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he definitely did not recommend that drivers use their Teslas as boats — and Molesky was quick to discourage others from following the South Dakota Tesla owner’s lead.

“We encourage people don’t do this,” he said in the clip. “Don’t do what you see right there. Very dangerous.”

READ MORE: Tesla Model X shows water-wading abilities by driving across deeply-flooded street [Teslarati]

More on the Model X: Watch a Tesla Model X Pull a Semi Truck Through Snow

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Watch a Tesla Model X Blast Through Deep Flood Waters

Table Manners

The supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy might be feeling a bit queasy — scientists say it “burped” out two gigantic bubbles of radioactive gases.

Scientists first caught a fleeting glimpse of the bubbles — tens of lightyears wide — in the 1980s, according to Business Insider. But thanks to the recently-constructed MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, astronomers could finally get a better look at the mysterious bubbles and learn more about what caused them.

Big Boom

The bubbles are an unusual outburst for our galaxy’s black hole — compared to other galaxies’ central black holes, ours is comparatively inactive, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

As such, the University of Oxford and Rhodes University astronomers behind the new survey suspect the bubbles are akin to cosmic indigestion — the black hole likely had a feeding frenzy when clumps of cosmic dust passed nearby millions of years ago, just to spew it all back out in the form of the giant bubbles.

Filtering Out

Millions of years later, the radio signals from the cosmic belch reached Earth, which is why scientists can detect them with the MeerKAT telescope.

“These enormous bubbles have until now been hidden by the glare of extremely bright radio emission from the [center] of the galaxy,” Fernando Camilo of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory said in a press release.

“Teasing out the bubbles from the background ‘noise’ was a technical tour de force,” he added.

READ MORE: The black hole at the center of our galaxy just belched two giant bubbles of radiation [Business Insider]

More on space bubbles: Scientists Baffled by Giant Bubbles Sandwiching Our Galaxy

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Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole Lets out Two Giant, Radioactive Burps

False Flag

British fishmonger Rex Goldsmith likes to post photos of his available seafood on Instagram.

“I can put a video or photo up of a particular fish,” he told BBC News, “and I’ll often get direct messages or phone calls saying ‘save one for me’ — it’s a good connector.”

But twice in two weeks, he found his photos mistakenly censored by Instagram as featuring “offensive content” — a bizarre example of social networks’ current inability to effectively police their content.

Something’s Fishy

A spokesperson for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, apologized for the mistake in a statement, noting that Goldsmith’s “content was marked as sensitive in error and has now been reinstated.”

Still, with not one but two posts censored — and whispers of butchers facing similar censorship, according to the BBC — Goldsmith suspects he and his meat-slinging colleagues might be the victims of vegan trolls.

“I think it’s a bit ridiculous really,” he told The Telegraph. “I don’t know whether the post has been reported by vegans or whether Instagram censored it as they thought it would be offensive to vegans. I have no idea why a vegan would follow a vegan would follow a fishmonger on social media in the first place.”

READ MORE: Instagram apologises after censoring London fishmonger [BBC News]

More on censorship: Facebook Needs Humans *and* Algorithms to Filter Hate Speech

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Instagram Keeps Accidentally Flagging Fish Photos as Offensive

Since the July arrest of Jeffrey Epstein on charges of sex trafficking, a number of huge names in the world of tech — from Bill Gates to Elon Musk — have attempted to defend or deny any inkling of a relationship with the financier.

But one prominent computer scientist is seemingly going out of his way to insert himself into the scandal: MIT Visiting Scientist Richard Stallman.

MIT accepted millions of dollars in funding from Epstein, prompting one student group to organize a protest calling for the resignation of any senior MIT administrators who knew about the donations.

In the details of the Facebook event for that protest, the students noted that late MIT professor Marvin Minsky “is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims.” They included a link to a story by The Verge that cited the deposition of a woman who said that she was forced to have sex with Minsky at Epstein’s compound when she was 17 and the MIT professor was in his seventies.

On Thursday, MIT graduate Selam Jie Gano published a Medium post including excerpts from an email that Stallman reportedly sent to an MIT CSAIL mailing list in response to the protest.

“The word ‘assaulting’ presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way,” Stallman wrote in the email, “but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.”

Had Stallman checked the legal definition of sexual assault prior to penning his email, he would know that the Department of Justice defines it as “a nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent.”

As a 17-year-old in the Virgin Islands, Minsky’s alleged victim automatically lacked that capacity to consent — hence, sexual assault.

After that, Stallman went on to say the member of “Epstein’s harem” likely presented herself to Minsky as “entirely willing.”

Gano takes Stallman to task for his tone-deaf defense of the sexual assault accusations against Minsky in her post — then calls on MIT to “remove men like Richard Stallman” from its ranks.

“This behavior cannot go unchecked, simply because someone is seen as a ‘genius,'” Gano wrote. “Simply because they are powerful, influential, or have friends in high places. Those are the same forces that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to rape and traffick children for so long.”

“Remove everyone, if we must,” she later adds, “and let something much better be built from the ashes.”

READ MORE: Remove Richard Stallman [Medium]

More on Epstein: Sex Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein Obsessed With Eugenics, Cryogenics

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MIT Community Horrified by Famed Researcher’s Epstein Outburst

Go Crimson!

The latest twist in the saga of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with of sex trafficking before dying by suicide in jail: Harvard University accepted about $8.9 million from him — but refused to accept more donations after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for underage prostitution.

Most of the Epstein money is gone now, according to CBS News, but Harvard plans to donate the remaining $186,000 or so to organizations that support sexual assault and human trafficking victims — a move that stands in stark contrast to MIT, which continued to solicit and hide funding from Epstein after his pattern of sex abuse was widely known.

Damage Control

In a letter to the Harvard Community, university President Lawrence Bacow explained how Epstein’s last gift to the university came in 2007, before his 2008 conviction.

After that, Bacow says the university turned Epstein down when he tried to donate more, perhaps in an attempt to differentiate Harvard from MIT and moneyed folks — including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — who maintained ties with the sex criminal.

Second Look

To prevent future scandals, Bacow said he plans to launch a new group to more closely scrutinize would-be donors.

“Epstein’s behavior, not just at Harvard, but elsewhere, raises significant questions about how institutions like ours review and vet donors,” Bacow wrote in the letter. “I will be convening a group here at Harvard to review how we prevent these situations in the future.”

READ MORE: Jeffrey Epstein gave nearly $9 million to Harvard [CBS News]

More on Epstein: Sex Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein Obsessed With Eugenics, Cryogenics

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Unlike MIT, Harvard Cut Off Epstein Donations After Conviction

People spinning in their graves is actually quite common, according to gruesome new scientific research.

As bodies decompose, they tend to slowly-but-surely writhe around for a year or longer, according to Agence France-Presse. This disturbing factoid comes courtesy of scientists at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research — a “body farm” where human corpses are made available for scientific research — and it could have far-reaching implications for forensic investigators.

To determine how corpses wriggle around over time, Australian scientists photographed a man’s corpse — donated to the body farm for study — every half hour for 17 months, according to research published last month in a new journal called Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Troublingly, the body’s arms started down along its sides — but ended up outstretched.

“We think the movements relate to the process of decomposition, as the body mummifies and the ligaments dry out,” Central Queensland University scientist Alyson Wilson told AFP.

Wilson told AFP that she hopes her discovery can help improve forensic investigators interact with bodies at crime scenes. Time-lapse photography is already a commonly-used practice to monitor decomposition and calculate the time of death, but understanding how bodies move over time could make those calculations more accurate.

“Once I observed a movement in a previous study, I started researching and couldn’t find anywhere in the world that looks at quantifying the movement,” Wilson told AFP, “so I thought ‘OK, I’m going to do this.'”

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Hard Pass

The French Minister of the Economy and Finance just warned that Libra, Facebook’s controversial cryptocurrency, won’t be permitted in France if it’s launched as planned next year.

The minister, Bruno Le Maire, railed against Libra at a crypto conference on Thursday, according to Vice News. He told the crowd that he would do what he could to not only stop Libra from being developed on French soil, but also from being used in the country if it’s launched.

No Uncertain Terms

Le Maire told the crowd that Libra threatened to undermine the euro and destabilize the entire French economy — and he has no interest in playing ball with Facebook’s plan. He also shared concerns that if the economy took a hit, people could make matters worse by abandoning government-sanctioned currencies in favor of Facebook’s Libra, Vice reports.

“The monetary sovereignty of countries is at stake [from] possible privatization of money by a sole actor with more than 2 billion users on the planet,” Le Maire said, per Vice. “All these concerns around Libra are serious. So I want to say this with a lot of clarity: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.”

READ MORE: France Took One Look at Facebook’s Cryptocurrency and Said, ‘Hell, Non’ [Vice News]

More on Libra: Backers for Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency May Jump Ship

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French Gov Official Warns Facebook: Libra Is Not Welcome Here

MRI for Ants Atoms

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines are great for creating detailed images of a person’s internal organs and tissues.

Using magnets and radio waves, the machines temporarily change how the billions of protons in the person’s body spin. Then they measure and image energy released by these protons once they return to their normal state.

Now, researchers have created a version of an MRI machine that’s so scaled down, it images individual atoms — and the device could help usher in the era of quantum computing.

Honey, I Shrunk the MRI

For their study, which was published on Monday in the journal Nature Physics, researchers from the United States and South Korea attached magnetized iron atoms to the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope, a device used to image and probe individual atoms.

They then swept the microscope’s tip over iron and titanium atoms they’d placed on a magnesium oxide surface. This subjected the atoms to a magnetic field that disrupted their electrons. The team then hit the atoms with a radio wave pulse, and the system imaged the energy the electrons subsequently released.

Unprecedented View

The researchers believe this new nanoscale imaging technique could lead to the development of new materials and drugs, as well as the creation of better quantum computing systems.

“We can now see something that we couldn’t see before,” researcher Christopher Lutz told The New York Times. “So our imagination can go to a whole bunch of new ideas that we can test out with this technology.”

READ MORE: World’s smallest MRI performed on single atoms [Institute for Basic Science]

More on quantum computing: Russian Scientists Used a Quantum Computer to Turn Back Time

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World’s Smallest MRI Machine Means We Can Now Scan Individual Atoms

Orion Exit Strategy

Before NASA can attempt to send astronauts back to the Moon, it needs to know they have a way to GTFO of harm’s way if something goes wrong during the trip.

To that end, the space agency tested its Orion spacecraft’s Launch Abort System (LAS) on Tuesday — and it seems NASA’s astronaut escape plan works exactly as hoped.

Mission Aborted

To start the three-minute-long Ascent Abort-2 test, NASA launched an Orion crew module on a modified Peacekeeper missile built by Northrop Grumman.

Once the pair reached an altitude of about 9.6 kilometers (6 miles), the abort sequence triggered. This sent the crew module blasting away from the rocket and on its journey to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Moving Forward

NASA’s now rounding up the 12 data recorders the crew capsule ejected during its descent so it can analyze the data to confirm that everything went as planned.

At first glance, however, it appears we’re now one step closer to returning humans to the Moon.

“It was a very smooth liftoff,” Orion Program Manager Mark Kirasich said in a press release. “By all first accounts, it was magnificent.”

READ MORE: NASA performs successful test of Orion spacecraft launch abort crew escape system [TechCrunch]

More on Orion: Congress Denies NASA Request for More Moon Mission Money

The post NASA’s Orion Crew Capsule Aced Its Abort System Test appeared first on Futurism.

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NASA’s Orion Crew Capsule Aced Its Abort System Test