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Will Chinas Belt and Road Initiative include affordable space travel? - Sciences and Technology - RFI

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Will Chinas Belt and Road Initiative include affordable space travel? - RFI English

NASA is moving one step closer to another moon mission; Phil Keating reports on the details.

Humans have entered their 20th year with a continuous living presence in space atthe International Space Station.

To celebrate the 19th anniversary of the arrival of the first crew to live aboard the International Space Station, NASA has sent a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft to the outer space outpost to aid in research for long-term space missions, the agency reportedin a press release on Saturday.

The spacecraft launched from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Saturday morning carrying nearly 8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo and is scheduled to arrive at the space station around 4:10 a.m. Monday, with coverage of its approach and arrival to be streamed live on NASA Television and the agencys website.

RICHARD BRANSON: SPACE TRAVEL COSTS WILL FALL FROM $250,000 A POP

Amongsome of the scientific investigations being carried to the ISS are entitledMore Probing of Mysteries of the Universe, where astronauts will make repairs on an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, Testing Personal Protective Equipment for Astronauts, where astronauts will wear an AstroRad Vest to test unpredictable solar particle events, Food Fresh from the Oven which examines food cooked in microgravity, and 3D Printing with Recycled Materials, which will test systems needed to reprocess plastic into 3D printing filament that can then be transferred for use to the Made in Space Manufacturing Device, which is a 3D printer that has been used on the orbiting laboratory since 2016,in the space agencys own words.

The exterior of the International Space Station.

NASA TRACKING MULTIPLE ASTEROIDS HEADING TOWARD EARTH

Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will be intercepting the spacecrafts cargo from the International Space Station with the stations robotic arm, while NASAs Andrew Morgan will monitor telemetry during the interstellar cargo transfer.

This delivery marks the 12th cargo flight to the ISS by the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spaceship and the first under its current Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract with NASA, which will support dozens of new and existingscientific investigations, according to the space agency.

The ISS is amicrogravity laboratory in earth's orbitthat has hosted 239 people from 19 different countries and has conducted over2,600 experiments from 3,900 researchers in 107 countries. NASA has spent an estimated $100 billion overall on the International Space Station, with $3 to $4 billion per year being spenton maintainance alone, NASA revealed in a July 2018 report.

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The giantlaboratory has been travelling around the globe at five miles per second since the first part of it was launched into orbit back in 1998and wasmanned by its first crew in Nov. 2000, the three of whichstayed a total of 136 days.

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Resupply ship heads to space station to aid research missions - Fox Business

Mars its the subject of countless science fiction novels and has long been a fascination amongst us earthlings. Today NASA is setting its sights on making a human Mars landing a reality within the next two decades. Located on average 140 million miles away from Earth, distance is just one obstacle in sending humans to the red planet.

Maintaining the health of the astronauts venturing to Mars is another major challenge scientists and researchers are grappling with today. However, the advancements and technologies that come from these challenges could have implications for future healthcare.

When you think about it, its really for humans exploring deep space on behalf of all of humanity. Everything that we do creates a new way to do healthcare, Dorit Donoviel, director at Translational Research Institute for Space Health, said at the Space Health Innovation Conference on Saturday.

Historically, space exploration has led to medical advances that impact the world in general. In particular, space travel has allowed researchers to look at the effects of aging on the human body.

What we learn about space health is relevant to you and I, especially as we age. So, aging on Earth is not that unlike going to space for a long period of time, former NASA astronaut and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis Stephen Robinson told HIMSS Media. That gives us potential for insights that can really influence everyone here on Earth.

Robinson gave the example of osteoporosis. In space, astronauts are at a higher risk for losing mass in their bones in a process similar to osteoporosis.

If we can learn to counteract that in space for people who are experiencing that onset very rapidly, maybe we can take that back to Earth for the rest of us, he said.

Traveling to Mars poses a new set of health challenges for NASA. For one, the planet is further than any to which humans have traveled before. Unlike other missions, due to the orbital mechanics of the journey, astronauts wont be able to come home if there is a health emergency.

So, the round trip to mars is nearly three years, and maybe one of [the crew] will be a physician and they are going to have to contend over that long duration mission far away from Earth without any possibility of return or abort, or any ways of replacing broken parts with normal health concerns, Donoviel said.

Far away from Earth the stakes are high. Common conditions can have devastating impacts.

Having a simple kidney stone in space for example can be life threatening, Donoviel said. In addition to those regular concerns that could occur in that mission, we are going to have the extremely hostile environment of the space environment and the craft. So, we are going to have to contend with situations where they are going to have to provide their own healthcare.

The challenges arent just physical strain on the body, but psychological and social. The crew going to Mars will spend three years in a tight space with less than a handful of companions.

How do you relieve that concept of, I cant have those things I had before? I have no access to that, and maybe you havent even anticipated how that confinement was going to affect you, Jennifer Fogarty, chief scientist at the NASA Human Research Program, said during the conference. How do you give people self-awareness when they are going down a road where they are going to struggle, and then have tools available when it is actionable that can help them? It could be virtual reality, it could be augmented reality.

While crews generally have a physician on board during the mission, if the doctor needs care it will be the rest of the crew, predominantly engineers, who will have to step up.

We know we need something in the vehicle, and we know we need something on the ground, and we know it has to talk to each other. We know that [during the] Mars mission, we dont get to bring anyone back, Erik Antonsen, assistant director of human systems risk management at NASA and an emergency medicine physician, said at the conference. So all we have the option to do is to move knowledge, not people. We have to figure out how to enable those data systems to provide that knowledge or capability that support in an appropriate way if we want to enable something like a Mars mission.

But implementing technologies like telemedicine and remote monitoring is easier said than done. In Mars there is no cloud network or WiFi. There is a deep space network, but technologies will have to be built specifically to work within it.

Onboarding new technologies is also a risk for crews with limited space.

There is a lot of talk about 3D printing. Sure, its possible but again that is going to be measured against resources such as food and water, Fogarty said. You start seeing trade-offs.

NASA is also looking at a number of other niche issues that will likely impact the crew's health, including radiation, hostile closed environments and altered gravity fields.

While there are countless challenges that come with putting humans on Mars, NASA is partnering with innovation organizations and reaching out to entrepreneurs to problem solve.

So what kinds of solutions do we need? No doubt autonomous, light, lean, robust, Fogarty said.

One of the organizations that NASA is partnering with is the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a consortium which includes the Baylor College of Medicine, California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The program is focused on translating biomedical research and technology into space health.

TRISH is designed to go do cutting-edge stuff. High risk fail fast, fail often, running it through, see[ing] what they need, Fogarty said.

Due to the limited space, by the time any technology makes it into a mission it needs to be heavily vetted.

When you go into a space flight vehicle, that is not where you need to be cutting edge. That is a very scary thing because you dont have the data to support it, Fogarty said. You may not be able to fix it, and now that thing you chose to take instead of more water gives you a zero. That is really a worst-case scenario from a NASA perspective for how you plan missions.

Fogarty said that in many ways NASA is looking at challenges that are similar to those facing home health.

We have a lot in common with home healthcare untrained people that arent going to have real-time communication to operate a device, Fogarty said. Can they do it? Are your instructions good enough and easy enough? Is your user interface friendly enough so that person could operate that without mission control and 40 people helping you with a procedure? So definitely we are continuing to push on it.

But unlike on Earth where room is plentiful, innovators need to consider space configurations.

It is really great that we can develop 50, 60, 100 point-of-care devices and they are all using different techniques and different reagents. Guess what somehow in space flight you got to bring that down to probably one item, Fogarty said.

There remains a lot of work to be done before the first person steps onto Mars. But the groundwork is rolling and the mission has the potential to change the future of humans.

We may need to leave this planet and how do we learn? This is one of the stepping stones, Fogarty said. It may not be Mars where we are going to go and colonize permanently well learn though. These are really amazing opportunities.

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Mission to Mars: The healthcare challenges facing NASA - MobiHealthNews

It sounds like a line out of a weird new-age space comedy, but it's 100 percent factual: DoubleTree's famous welcome chocolate chip cookie is in outer space. A spaceship launched at 9:59 a.m. EDT Saturday from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia made its way to the International Space Station Monday morning. Among the "8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo?" A Zero-G Oven, DoubleTree cookie dough, and DoubleTree cookies.

The oven was "designed for microgravity aboard the International Space Station," per NASA, and could result in "psychological and physiological benefits" for crew members "from eating flavorful cooked meals." Until this experiment, food had never been baked in spaceastronauts eat specially made, pre-packaged meals instead. You know, space food.

If you're scratching your head wondering how DoubleTree got involved, it's a tale as 2019 as it gets. Someone from the hotel brand's social media responded to an Elon Musk tweet about putting a dummy and a Tesla into space; the tweet caught Zero-G Kitchen's attention, DoubleTree SVP Shawn McAteer told Delish, and the two companies began working together.

"One of their big missions is making space travel more hospitable, so they said what would we better than starting the experiment with chocolate chip cookies," McAteer said.

Since the oven is in the testing stage, the astronauts won't be able to eat the freshly baked cookies this time around. But, since the temptation of a fresh baked cookie is real and the astronauts are up there through January, DoubleTree sent some already-made cookies up for the team to enjoy, too. If all goes well, astronauts could soon be eating foods hot out of the oven on future missionsdessert included, of course.

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DoubleTree's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookie Will Be The First Food Baked In Space - Delish.com

DoubleTree's famous chocolate chip cookie will be first food baked in space

It sounds like a line out of a weird new-age space comedy, but it's 100% factual: DoubleTree's famous "welcome" chocolate chip cookie is in outer space. A spaceship launched at 9:59 a.m. ET Saturday from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia made its way Monday morning to the International Space Station Monday.

Among the "8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo" was a Zero-G Oven, DoubleTree cookie dough and DoubleTree cookies.

The oven was "designed for microgravity aboard the International Space Station," per officials with NASA, and could result in "psychological and physiological benefits" for crew members "from eating flavorful cooked meals." Until this experiment, food had never been baked in space astronauts eat specially made, pre-packaged meals instead.

If you're scratching your head wondering how DoubleTree got involved, it's a tale as 2019 as it gets. Someone from the hotel brand's social media responded to an Elon Musk tweet about putting a dummy and a Tesla into space; the tweet caught Zero-G Kitchen's attention, DoubleTree SVP Shawn McAteer told Delish, and the two companies began working together.

"One of their big missions is making space travel more hospitable, so they said what would we better than starting the experiment with chocolate chip cookies?" McAteer said.

Since the oven is in the testing stage, the astronauts won't be able to eat the freshly baked cookies this time around. But since the temptation of a fresh-baked cookie is real and the astronauts are up there through January, DoubleTree sent some already-made cookies up for the team to enjoy, too. If all goes well, astronauts could soon be eating foods hot out of the oven on future missions dessert included, of course.

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DoubleTree's famous chocolate chip cookie will be first food baked in space - Alton Telegraph

Everything we think we know about the shape of the universe could be wrong. Instead of being flat like a bedsheet, our universe may be curved, like a massive, inflated balloon, according to a new study.

That's the upshot of a new paper published today (Nov. 4) in the journal Nature Astronomy, which looks at data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint echo of the Big Bang. But not everyone is convinced; the new findings, based on data released in 2018, contradict both years of conventional wisdom and another recent study based on that same CMB data set.

Related: From Big Bang to Present: Snapshots of Our Universe Through Time

If the universe is curved, according to the new paper, it curves gently. That slow bending isn't important for moving around our lives, or solar system, or even our galaxy. But travel beyond all of that, outside our galactic neighborhood, far into the deep blackness, and eventually moving in a straight line you'll loop around and end up right back where you started. Cosmologists call this idea the "closed universe." It's been around for a while, but it doesn't fit with existing theories of how the universe works. So it's been largely rejected in favor of a "flat universe" that extends without boundary in every direction and doesn't loop around on itself. Now, an anomaly in data from the best-ever measurement of the CMB offers solid (but not absolutely conclusive) evidence that the universe is closed after all, according to the authors: University of Manchester cosmologist Eleonora Di Valentino, Sapienza University of Rome cosmologist Alessandro Melchiorri and Johns Hopkins University cosmologist Joseph Silk.

The difference between a closed and open universe is a bit like the difference between a stretched flat sheet and an inflated balloon, Melchiorri told Live Science. In either case, the whole thing is expanding. When the sheet expands, every point moves away from every other point in a straight line. When the balloon is inflated, every point on its surface gets farther away from every other point, but the balloon's curvature makes the geometry of that movement more complicated.

"This means, for example, that if you have two photons and they travel in parallel in a closed universe, they will [eventually] meet," Melchiorri said.

In an open, flat universe, the photons, left undisturbed, would travel along their parallel courses without ever interacting.

The conventional model of the universe's inflation, Melchiorri said, suggests that the universe should be flat. Rewind the expansion of space all the way to the beginning, to the first 0.0000000000000000000000001 seconds after the Big Bang, according to that model, and you'll see a moment of incredible, exponential expansion as space grew out of that infinitesimal point in which it began. And the physics of that superfast expansion point to a flat universe. That's the first reason most experts believe the universe is flat, he said. If the universe isn't flat, you have to "fine-tune" the physics of that primordial mechanism to make it all fit together and redo countless other calculations in the process, Melchiorri said.

But that might end up being necessary, the authors wrote in the new study.

That's because there's an anomaly in the CMB. The CMB is the oldest thing we see in the universe, made of ambient microwave light that suffuses all of space when you block out the stars and galaxies and other interference. It's one of the most important sources of data on the universe's history and behavior, because it's so old and so spread throughout space. And it turns out, according to the latest data, that there's significantly more "gravitational lensing" of the CMB than expected meaning that gravity seems to be bending the microwaves of the CMB more than existing physics can explain.

The data the team is drawing upon comes from a 2018 release from the Planck experiment a European Space Agency (ESA) experiment to map the CMB in more detail than ever before. (The new data will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is available now on the ESA website. Both Di Valentino and Melchiorri were part of that effort as well.)

To explain that extra lensing, the Planck Collaboration has just tacked on an extra variable, which the scientists are calling "A_lens," to the group's model of the universe's formation, "This is something that you put there by hand, trying to explain what you see. There's no connection with physics," Melchiorri said, meaning there's no A_lens parameter in Einstein's theory of relativity. "What we found is that you can explain A_lens with a positively curved universe, which is a much more physical interpretation that you can explain with general relativity."

Melchiorri pointed out that his team's interpretation isn't conclusive. According to the group's calculations, the Planck data point to a closed universe with a standard deviation of 3.5 sigma (a statistical measurement that means about 99.8% confidence that the result isn't due to random chance). That's well short of the 5 sigma standard physicists usually look for before calling an idea confirmed.

But some cosmologists said there were even more reasons to be skeptical.

Andrei Linde, a cosmologist at Stanford University, told Live Science that the Nature Astronomy paper failed to take into account another important paper, published to the arXiv database on Oct. 1. (That paper has not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal.)

In that paper, University of Cambridge cosmologists George Efstathiou and Steven Gratton, who both also worked on the Planck Collaboration, looked at a narrower subset of data than the Nature Astronomy paper. Their analysis also supported a curving universe, but with much less statistical confidence than Di Valentino, Melchiorri and Silk found looking at a larger segment of the Planck data. However, when Efstathiou and Graton looked at the data together with two other existing data sets from the early universe, they found that overall, the evidence pointed toward a flat universe.

Asked about the Efstathiou and Gratton paper, Melchiorri praised the careful treatment of the work. But he said the duo's analysis relies on too small a segment of the Planck data. And he pointed out that their research is based on a modified (and, in theory, improved) version the Planck data not the public data set that more than 600 physicists had vetted.

Linde pointed to that reanalysis as a sign that Efstathiou and Gratton's paper was based on better methods.

Efstathiou asked not to be directly quoted, but pointed out in an email to Live Science that if the universe were curved, it would raise a number of problems contradicting those other data sets from the early universe and making discrepancies in the universe's observed rate of expansion much worse. Gratton said he agreed.

Melchiorri also agreed that the closed-universe model would raise a number of problems for physics.

"I don't want to say that I believe in a closed universe," he said. "I'm a little bit more neutral. I'd say, let's wait on the data and what the new data will say. What I believe is that there's a discrepancy now, that we have to be careful and try to find what is producing this discrepancy."

Originally published on Live Science.

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(Image credit: Future plc)

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The Universe Might Be a Giant Loop - Space.com

Many companies are investing a lot of money in projects to know if there is a possibility of life outside our planet. For these people, the sky will never be the limit. Now, an American company aspires to build a huge space hotel for those who want to live a life beyond the earths atmosphere.

The Gateway Foundation claims that it is designing the worlds first space hotel, the Von Braun Space Station. The forecast is that Von Braun will be operational in 2025 to accommodate 100 tourists every week, says its architect, Tim Alatorre.

But how will such an invention work? The technology on which this steller hotel is based is similar to that used in the current International Space Station (ISS), although, with a gravity that is generated by the rings that give shape to this project.

The Von Braun space station structure will consist of two concentric structural rings fixed together with a set of spokes supporting a Habitation Ring made-up of large modules.

The large 190-meter diameter wheel will rotate to create a gravitational force similar to that felt on the moon. Around it, there will be 24 individual modules equipped with sleeping accommodation and other support functions, such as bars, kitchens, lounges. Each module is 20-meter long and has a diameter of 12 meters and offers a total of 500 m of habitable surface spread over 3 floors.

This rotating space station is designed to be the largest human-made structure in space and will house up to 450 people, including guests, employees, and scientists since some of the modules will be rented for equipment for research purposes.

The inspiration behind it (this space station) really comes from watching science fiction over the last 50 years and seeing how mankind has had this dream of starship culture, Timothy Alatorre, the lead architect of this space station, told Space.com.

It is an extremely ambitious project that will require astronomical amounts of funds to ever be built. But it also shows how passionate humans are and how much they want to get the opportunity to travel into space during their lives.

But will this first spaceport ever be built? And if it is built, could we build it by 2025?

The Gateway Foundation is not the only company aiming to expand the space travel opportunity. In June, NASA announced that it hopes to open the International Space Station to private astronauts by 2020.

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The worlds first space hotel will open its doors in 2025 - Inceptive Mind

The dream of traveling through time is both ancient and universal. But where did humanity's fascination with time travel begin, and why is the idea so appealing?

The concept of time travel moving through time the way we move through three-dimensional space may in fact be hardwired into our perception of time. Linguists have recognized that we are essentially incapable of talking about temporal matters without referencing spatial ones. "In language any language no two domains are more intimately linked than space and time," wrote Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher in his 2005 book "The Unfolding of Language." "Even if we are not always aware of it, we invariably speak of time in terms of space, and this reflects the fact that we think of time in terms of space."

Deutscher reminds us that when we plan to meet a friend "around" lunchtime, we are using a metaphor, since lunchtime doesn't have any physical sides. He similarly points out that time can not literally be "long" or "short" like a stick, nor "pass" like a train, or even go "forward" or "backward" any more than it goes sideways, diagonal or down.

Related: Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun?

Perhaps because of this connection between space and time, the possibility that time can be experienced in different ways and traveled through has surprisingly early roots. One of the first known examples of time travel appears in the Mahabharata, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem compiled around 400 B.C., Lisa Yaszek, a professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science

In the Mahabharata is a story about King Kakudmi, who lived millions of years ago and sought a suitable husband for his beautiful and accomplished daughter, Revati. The two travel to the home of the creator god Brahma to ask for advice. But while in Brahma's plane of existence, they must wait as the god listens to a 20-minute song, after which Brahma explains that time moves differently in the heavens than on Earth. It turned out that "27 chatur-yugas" had passed, or more than 116 million years, according to an online summary, and so everyone Kakudmi and Revati had ever known, including family members and potential suitors, was dead. After this shock, the story closes on a somewhat happy ending in that Revati is betrothed to Balarama, twin brother of the deity Krishna.

To Yaszek, the tale provides an example of what we now call time dilation, in which different observers measure different lengths of time based on their relative frames of reference, a part of Einstein's theory of relativity.

Such time-slip stories are widespread throughout the world, Yaszek said, citing a Middle Eastern tale from the first century BCE about a Jewish miracle worker who sleeps beneath a newly-planted carob tree and wakes up 70 years later to find it has now matured and borne fruit (carob trees are notorious for how long they take to produce their first harvest). Another instance can be found in an eighth-century Japanese fable about a fisherman named Urashima Tar who travels to an undersea palace and falls in love with a princess. Tar finds that, when he returns home, 100 years have passed, according to a translation of the tale published online by the University of South Florida.

In the early-modern era of the 1700 and 1800s, the sleep-story version of time travel grew more popular, Yaszek said. Examples include the classic tale of Rip Van Winkle, as well as books like Edward Belamy's utopian 1888 novel "Looking Backwards," in which a man wakes up in the year 2000, and the H.G. Wells 1899 novel "The Sleeper Awakes," about a man who slumbers for centuries and wakes to a completely transformed London.

Related: Science Fiction or Fact: Is Time Travel Possible?

In other stories from this period, people also start to be able to move backward in time. In Mark Twains 1889 satire "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," a blow to the head propels an engineer back to the reign of the legendary British monarch. Objects that can send someone through time begin to appear as well, mainly clocks, such as in Edward Page Mitchell's 1881 story "The Clock that Went Backwards" or Lewis Carrol's 1889 children's fantasy "Sylvie and Bruno," where the characters possess a watch that is a type of time machine.

The explosion of such stories during this era might come from the fact that people were "beginning to standardize time, and orient themselves to clocks more frequently," Yaszek said.

Wells provided one of the most enduring time-travel plots in his 1895 novella "The Time Machine," which included the innovation of a craft that can move forward and backward through long spans of time. "This is when were getting steam engines and trains and the first automobiles," Yaszek said. "I think its no surprise that Wells suddenly thinks: 'Hey, maybe we can use a vehicle to travel through time.'"

Because it is such a rich visual icon, many beloved time-travel stories written after this have included a striking time machine, Yaszek said, referencing The Doctor's blue police box the TARDIS in the long-running BBC series "Doctor Who," and "Back to the Future"'s silver luxury speedster, the DeLorean.

More recently, time travel has been used to examine our relationship with the past, Yaszek said, in particular in pieces written by women and people of color. Octavia Butler's 1979 novel "Kindred" about a modern woman who visits her pre-Civil-War ancestors is "a marvelous story that really asks us to rethink black and white relations through history," she said. And a contemporary web series called "Send Me" involves an African-American psychic who can guide people back to antebellum times and witness slavery.

"I'm really excited about stories like that," Yaszek said. "They help us re-see history from new perspectives."

Time travel has found a home in a wide variety of genres and media, including comedies such as "Groundhog Day" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" as well as video games like Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda:Majora's Mask" and the indie game "Braid."

Yaszek suggested that this malleability and ubiquity speaks to time travel tales' ability to offer an escape from our normal reality. "They let us imagine that we can break free from the grip of linear time," she said. "And somehow get a new perspective on the human experience, either our own or humanity as a whole, and I think that feels so exciting to us."

That modern people are often drawn to time-machine stories in particular might reflect the fact that we live in a technological world, she added. Yet time travel's appeal certainly has deeper roots, interwoven into the very fabric of our language and appearing in some of our earliest imaginings.

"I think it's a way to make sense of the otherwise intangible and inexplicable, because it's hard to grasp time," Yaszek said. "But this is one of the final frontiers, the frontier of time, of life and death. And we're all moving forward, we're all traveling through time."

Originally published on Live Science.

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Where Does the Concept of Time Travel Come From? - Livescience.com

It is time for a baking high! An oven has been launched to the International Space Station (ISS) for astronauts to be able to bake chocolate chip cookies in it. Now, while no one knows how the cookies being baked in space will turn out to be like, the fact remains that it will be the first time astronauts living there will be able to bake anything.

According to a report in BBC, this is the first time that astronauts are set to test the impact of high heat and zero gravity on the shape and consistency of the chocolate chip cookies.

Hilton's Double Tree hotel chain has provided the dough for the space baking experiment. The hotel chain took to Twitter to celebrate the moment.

Houston we have a cookie. Now serving warm welcomes in space. Follow the adventure with #CookiesinSpace pic.twitter.com/U5OzwQhJUH

— DoubleTree by Hilton (@DoubleTree) November 2, 2019

Furthermore, according to BBC, Hilton's DoubleTree hotel chain said that it was a "landmark microgravity experiment."

The hotel chain further said the whole idea behind bring in this on-board is to make space travel "more hospitable."

The report added that the capsule that took off from the US state of Virginia on Saturday was also loaded with other equipment including parts from sports car and a vest to protect against radiation.

According to NASA, the Zero-G Oven, which will be used for the baking experiment, "examines heat transfer properties and the process of baking food in microgravity."

They further add that the Zero-G Oven, "uses an oven designed specifically for use aboard the space station with a top temperature of 363.3 C," stating that in the future, during "long-duration missions" it could be used to, bake fresh food that could have "psychological and physiological benefits for crew members."

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Now Astronauts Can Enjoy Chocolate Chip Cookies after Baking Them in Space - News18

Our sense of time will be altered via the advent of self-driving cars.

Ask any physicist about the famous twin paradox problem and you are likely to find yourself facing a lengthy diatribe about the topic.

Often referred to as Einsteins twin paradox, Einstein was known for focusing on the nature of time and clocks, doing so as part of his theories on relativity, so the topic can be referred to as the Einstein clock paradox rather than mentioning twins per se (historians point out that the origins of the thought experiment can be traced to scientist Paul Langevin in a 1911 paper that he wrote and in which he used twins for the earlier framing of the problem).

What exactly is the paradox, you might be wondering?

Imagine that you are standing here on earth, which I assume most of you are, and suppose further that you happen to have been born with an identical twin. Your beloved twin has decided to become an astronaut and venture into the far reaches of outer space.

You are both the age of 25, lets say.

You wave goodbye as your twin rockets away. Pretend that the spaceship is incredibly fast, so fast that it moves at nearly the speed of light.

Marking the days on your calendar here on earth, your twin flies for 25 years to a far point in the universe, turns around, and for another 25 years flies back to earth.

Upon arriving here on earth, you greet your long traveling twin, embracing with a firm hug.

Ill ask you a seemingly simple and innocent question: What is your age and what is the age of your twin upon meeting each other at the end of your twins voyage?

Well, we know that you marked the days and believe that the trip took 50 years. The trip started when you both were 25 years old. Therefore, the rote math suggests that you are now 75 years old and that presumably your twin is also 75 years old.

Suppose I told you that your twin is now actually only 30 years old, having aged a mere 5 years while you have aged fifty years.

Is that shocking to you or does it comport with what you would have expected?

If youve ever watched any science fiction movies about space travel, youve undoubtedly seen story after story that involves a space traveler experiencing time more slowly than those of us on earth. When they get back to earth, their children are older than they are, and the peers that they left on earth are now long deceased.

Im guessing that you, therefore, accept the premise that your twin would be younger than you and has aged more slowly than you.

Not everyone would necessarily agree with that premise.

Your basis for believing that your twin aged more slowly is that they traveled at a fast speed and therefore approached our fundamental unit of time per the speed of light.

The paradox aspect is that we could turn the situation around and say that instead of looking at the twin that flew away from you, suppose we look at things in the eyes of your twin and they would perceive that you essentially flew away from them. You might say that the twin was stationary and you here on earth were moving away from the twin.

In that case, maybe you ought to have aged only five years and your twin should have aged fifty years.

That is the crux of the paradox.

Which is it, did you age the fifty years or did your twin age the fifty years?

Of course, you might toss your hands in the air and say that you are both still the same age, regardless of how many years passed, since you could try to argue that both of you aged the same number of years while the traveling occurred (those that undertake such hand tossing are considered deniers).

Most of todays physicists would agree that the correct answer is that you aged fifty years and your twin aged the five years.

For such physicists, there isnt any paradox and the answer easily is derived via Einsteins theory of special relativity and using too the handy Lorentz factor (a vital equation for figuring out elapsed time based on your velocity and number of years traveled).

Heres what Einstein said: If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations.

Note that you dont need to use twins in this thought experiment and could substitute the twins by simply saying that you have two clocks that are set to the same time, of which you then send one of the clocks on the journey, and upon return of the traveling clock to earth, you compare the time of the two clocks.

In fact, the entire twin story can be reduced to the belief that moving clocks go slower (a matter of time dilation, as it were).

Mentioning twins makes the tale a bit more entertaining. It is partially used to suggest that the two items being compared are to be as nearly identical as possible, aiming to reduce any side arguments about the fact that maybe something different in the two originating elements can account for a time difference.

You are welcome to mull over the paradox and study it with whatever intensity and gusto you prefer.

For purposes herein, the infamous problem brings up the overall notion that time can be perceived differently and on a relative basis for an observer or participant seem to be longer or shorter in length.

Heres an intriguing question: Could the advent of true self-driving cars cause us to have a different sense of time?

Dont misinterpret the question to somehow suggest that self-driving cars are going to move at the speed of light. Sorry, thats not in the cards for now.

Self-driving cars might though subtly alter our sense of time via the convenience and ease of transit via car travel, changing our perception about time.

Lets unpack the matter.

The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars

It is important to clarify what I mean when referring to true self-driving cars.

True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isnt any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless cars are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-ons that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we dont yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.

Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).

Since the semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, such cars arent particularly going to alter the dynamics of time perception. There is essentially no difference between using a Level 2 or Level 3 versus a conventional car when it comes to the time paradox aspects.

It is notable to point out that in spite of those dolts that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, do not be misled into believing that you can take away your attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.

You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the car, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.

True Self-Driving Cars And Time Perception

For the use of Level 4 and Level 5 driverless cars, there isnt a human driver in the car. Occupants inside the self-driving car are all considered passengers.

When you get into a self-driving car, the AI system will whisk you away to whatever destination youve stated. No need on your part to watch the road. No need to provide driving advice about which way to go. You can liken this to acting as a passenger in an airplane, whereby you simply sit back, relax, and the traveling occurs without you having to lift a finger.

Suppose you want to visit a good friend that lives twenty miles away from you.

Normally, youd need to grab up your prescription glasses, make sure you have your valid drivers license on you, and then drive your car to see your friend. During the driving journey, youd be stressed out about the horrid traffic and the near misses with ornery drivers.

By the time you reached your friends place, youd be exhausted, irritable, and exasperated at the drive. As such, you might vow to your friend that it will be a rare day that you opt to drive to see them again, given the arduous nature of getting there. The trip seemed to take forever.

Switch to a scenario involving the use of a driverless car.

You get into the self-driving car and have no worries about whether you can see the road, and nor do you have a drivers license on you or even need one at all. During the trip, you watch some streaming videos and enjoy the time spent in the self-driving car. In fact, you might recline the seat and take a nap, dreaming perhaps about time travel and someday visiting planets at the far reaches of our galaxy.

In the former case of driving the car, time seemed to go slowly, agonizingly so.

In the latter case of being a passenger in a self-driving car, time seemed to move along quickly.

Even your friend might perceive the time differences of your taking a self-driving car versus having driven yourself.

Upon your arrival at your friends place when you drove a car, you are vocal in complaining about the drive, and your friend feels terrible that you had to endure the long drive.

When arriving via a self-driving car, you are refreshed and happy, and your friend feels like it was just moments ago that you said youd be on your way.

In short, your perception of time could change as a result of making use of self-driving cars. Likewise, your friend, though not having traveled in the driverless car, might also perceive time differently as a result of your using a driverless car.

Again, this is not to suggest that time changed in some physical manner as a result of the self-driving car.

Instead, the emphasis is on the perception of time by both the participant and the observer.

Conclusion

If this change in a sense of time can occur, one argument to be made is that presumably via todays ridesharing services you would already be undergoing that same change in time perception.

A ridesharing service of today allows you to sit back and relax since there is a human driver at the wheel.

The comparison is only half-right.

You still need to be wary about the human that is your ridesharing driver. In theory, the human driver could make wayward moves and crash the car. Being in a ridesharing car is not the same as being absent of all concerns about the driving task.

For self-driving cars, some assert that they will be entirely safe and never crash. I dont subscribe to that belief. There will still be car crashes, though (hopefully) of a much smaller volume and a lesser force of damage or injury, though we dont yet know if that will be the case.

Assume for the moment that driverless cars eventually will be extremely safe and safer than human drivers in the aggregate. In that case, the claim is that youll be less on-edge when in a driverless car and more prone to being able to enjoy the ride without any substantive qualms.

Another factor is that self-driving cars will gradually be rolled-out and there will be a mixture of both conventional cars and driverless cars on our roadways for many years to come.

One could contend that youll sometimes be using a human-driven car and other times be using a self-driving car.

The use of conventional cars will continue to remind you of the time related aspects and therefore continue to keep the driverless car perception as a fresh one. Eventually, the number of conventional cars will presumably dwindle, and youll only rarely use a human-driven car.

In that case, youll inevitably get used to being inside a driverless car.

Over time, we will all become used to the self-driving car as this time-saver or time enabler. A new normal will inexorably take hold of us.

At that juncture, we will no longer perceive the time of travel as any different since it will all be of the same nature. Our time perception will have adjusted.

Thats admittedly a long time from now, so lets enjoy our new perception of time as it unfolds, relishing it for as long as time will allow.

See more here:

Einsteins Twins Paradox And How Self-Driving Cars Will Change Our Sense Of Time - Forbes