Category Archives: Futurism

Powerhouse

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell but if something dampers their output, it can be difficult to determine why. To better investigate mitochondrial function, a team of researchers from Switzerlands Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne developed a method to make mice glow in the dark, like fireflies. Their work was published today in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Like cells themselves, mitochondria have a membrane that filters materials entering and exiting their structure. That membrane relies on a difference in polarity known as membrane potential and when membrane potential drops, it can be indicative of a problem. Testing that membrane is why scientists had a need to make mice glow.

So! To do that, (EPFL professor and the papers lead author) Elena Goun and team used mice genetically modified to express luciferase, the enzyme that produces light when combined with another compound called luciferin which is exactly how fireflies glow. The team developed two molecules that, when injected into mice, pass into the mitochondria and cause them to produce luciferin, making the mice glow. In a completely darkened room, you can see the mice glowing, just like fireflies, says Elena Goun.

Studying mitochondrial function is then as simple as measuring how bright the mice glow. The brighter they are, the more luciferin in the mitochondria, the better the mitochondria are functioning. This animal model method of testing mitochondrial function could be extremely useful in things like cancer drug research, as well as things like diabetes, oncology, aging, nutrition, and neurogenerative diseases.

READ MORE:Fireflies shed light on the function of mitochondria [EPFL]

More on Mouse Studies: Lab Puts Mice in Suspended Animation. Will It Work on Humans?

Go here to see the original:
Scientists Made Mice Glow in the Dark to Study Mitochondria - Futurism

The US is going through a mental health crisis of immense proportions, according to a new CDC study.

Its a damning study, and a terrible predicament: according to the agencys numbers, 25.5 percent of young American adults between 18 and 24 considered suicide between May and June due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 10.7 percent of respondents overall considered suicide. The mental health levels of minority groups as well as caregivers and essential workers made up the largest portion.

Mental health conditions are disproportionately affecting specific populations, especially young adults, Hispanic persons, black persons, essential workers, unpaid caregivers for adults, and those receiving treatment for preexisting psychiatric conditions, reads the study.

40 percent of respondents noted at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, including anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, trauma or stress, all related to the pandemic.

The prevalence of anxiety disorder was about three times those reported in the second quarter of 2019, according to the CDC.

13.3 percent of respondents claim they had turned to substance abuse, including drugs and alcohol to cope with stress caused by the pandemic.

The CDC did point out some caveats of their study: anxiety and depressive disorders were not clinically diagnosed, but clinically validated screening instruments were used. Substance abuse was based on personal recall, and subject to biases.

Most importantly, an online survey of 5,412 adults might not be fully representative of the United States population, meaning that the results may not be fully generalizable.

So whats the solution? In the future, the agency is advising researchers to study if other factors including social isolation, absence of school structure, unemployment and other financial worries, and various forms of violence could be causing this massive decline in mental health.

As a way to get out of this crisis, the CDC suggests focusing on community-based solutions, including strengthening economic supports, addressing racial discrimination, and supporting those at risk of suicide.

Unfortunately, if the last couple of months are anything to go by, the US has arguably failed on most of these fronts. $1,200 stimulus checks were sent out many months ago with no plans to follow them up with further payments.

The Black Lives Matter social movement has also highlighted that racial discrimination is very much a reality in everyday life, just as it has been for decades. A recently published study also found that young black men are far less likely to reach out for mental health care.

There has been at least some movement in addressing the issue surrounding supporting those at risk of suicide. The study comes roughly a month after the Federal Communications Commission approved 988 as the national suicide prevention hotline number.

Unfortunately, that wont be of much help during the current mental health crisis, as implementing the number will take two long years, according to USA Today. And if this report makes anything clear, its that theres an epidemic within a pandemic, and urgent action is needed for it, fast.

READ MORE: CDC: One quarter of young adults contemplated suicide during pandemic [Politico]

More on the pandemic: Scientists Think They Found the Coronavirus Weak Spot

Link:
CDC: Over 25% of Young Americans Considered Suicide Due to the Pandemic - Futurism

Volvo CE has unveiled a new project that furthers its efforts in Building Tomorrow. The company has partnered with professional futurists to gather their forecasts for the industries that Volvo CEs customers work in, including construction, agriculture, mining and infrastructure. The company has also partnered with students from the Columbia College of Hollywood to animate these visions of the future.

Futurists forecast the coming trends in science, technology and business. They help companies understand how the innovations of today will impact the industries of the future. Volvo CE recently engaged David Zach and Glen Hiemstra known for their work with dozens of innovative fortune 500 companies to provide expert forecasts on where various industries may be headed.

In order to build tomorrow, that means having a good sense of what tomorrow may look like, said Stephen Roy, senior vice president for the Americas, Volvo CE. While no one can be 100-percent certain about what the future has in store, these professional futurists can give us an educated guess based on the research, science and economic trends we see today. We asked students from the Columbia College of Hollywood to animate some of these forecasts so that we have a vision of the possible future from those young persons who will soon inhabit it.

Presented below are a sample of the forecasts for each industry:

Road Infrastructure

Nanotechnology will enable roadways to be built from more resilient glass-like materials.

Photogenic cells along roadways will capture solar energy for transporting to local power grids.

Self-healing epoxies will enable bridges and other metal structures to heal themselves from damage.

Roadways will have embedded censors that provide road, weather and traffic conditions.

Autonomous equipment that is fully electric and emissions free will handle duty-cycle work.

Sensors in construction equipment will provide data for predictive analytics and increase uptime.

Construction

Buildings of all sizes will be increasingly modular, utilizing more prefabricated elements.

Entire rooms and their furnishings will be built in a specialized location, then installed at the job.

Flying drones will monitor construction on job sites, reporting critical data and visualizations.

Rolling drones will travel up and down building shafts and behind walls to take readings.

New paint polymers will improve air quality while wall sensors monitor for chemicals, smoke and fire.

Entire neighborhoods will be 3D printed, then completed with prefabricated elements.

Waste management and recycling

Companies will have more responsibility over the entire lifecycles of their products and the materials used to make them, creating a more circular economy.

Vehicles that collect waste and recycling will be fully electric, reducing emissions and noise.

Waste and recycling bins will become autonomous, driving themselves to collection points.

Robots will use artificial intelligence to separate materials, eating some of them for energy.

The gamification of the industry will lead the work to become more scientific and videogame like.

Machines that accept recyclables will show what those materials will be used for in the future.

Agriculture

Vertical skyfarms near cities will boost the amount of food that can be grown on a single piece of land.

These indoor farms with multiple stories give the ability to control weather, irrigation and pests.

Plants on all farms will be tagged with RFID and sensors to control nutrient and water intake.

Autonomous electric construction equipment will help prepare lands and transport harvests.

Robots that use artificial intelligence will pick crops and sort them for either human use or composting.

Halophytes, crops grown in saltwater, will help tackle freshwater shortages around the globe.

Mining

Autonomous and remote-controlled equipment will remove humans from dangerous situations.

Humans will control mining equipment from remote locations via simulators that give tactile feedback.

Automated, fully electric machines will handle repetitive duty-cycle work with no emissions.

With programmed, autonomous machines, mining operations will work around the clock.

Robots will move in to pick materials from mine shafts and use artificial intelligence to sort them.

We will increasingly extract materials from the ocean, asteroids and other planets.

Here is the original post:
Volvo CE Engages Futurists to Explore Ideas and Possible New Directions - Rental Equipment Register

As time passes, our fertility declines and our bodies start to fail. These natural changes are what we call ageing.

In recent decades, weve come leaps and bounds in treating and preventing some of the worlds leading age-related diseases, such as coronary heart disease, dementia and Alzheimers disease.

But some research takes an entirely unique view on the role of science in easing the burden of aging, focusing instead on trying to prevent it, or drastically slow it down. This may seem like an idea reserved mainly for cranks and science fiction writers, but its not.

There have been myriad scientific research efforts focused on stopping or slowing the effects of aging.

Last year, scientists studying the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (a common model organism for aging-related research) managed to manipulate its biochemical pathways. The resulting worms lived five times longer than their typical lifespan of 20 days.

The length of the telomere has also received a lot of interest. This is a tiny structure within a cell that protects chromosomes from deterioration. One study found a faster rate of telomere shortening resulted in a shorter lifespan in many species, including humans.

This suggests if we can protect these structures, we could greatly increase our lifespan. However, telomere maintenance is complex. Also, telomeres can vary in how quickly they shorten, depending on where they are in the body.

The drug metformin, usually prescribed to manage type 2 diabetes, has also been touted as a way to delay the onset of a range of age-related diseases, thus increasing health-span (how long we remain healthy).

Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Ageing Research at Yeshiva Universitys Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the first clinical trial of metformin to treat aging.

But other researchers are concerned, as metformin intake has been associated with a higher risk of B vitamin deficiencies. Some studies suggest this can result in cognitive dysfunction.

One 2018 study found metformin can reduce aerobic capacity and quash the benefits of excercise something we know to help fight the effects of old age.

Metformin also shows mixed results in its effects on aging depending on which model organism is used (such as rats, flies or worms). This raises doubts about whether its supposed anti-aging capabilities would apply to humans.

Another compound of interest is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). This naturally occurring substance is vital to energy metabolism in most animals including humans, plants, bacteria and even yeast. In mice and humans, NAD levels appear to decline as we age.

NAD and compounds like resveratrol (a chemical isolated from wine) have been shown to work together to maintain the function of our mitochondria the structures that produce energy inside our cells and thus fight off aging in mice. But this research lacks much-needed human trials.

Evolutionary biologists know aging is a highly plastic process influenced by many factors including diet, climate, genetics and even the age at which our grandparents conceived our parents. But, we dont know why some species age more slowly than others.

Research has shown several species appear not to age. For example, the immortal jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can revert to a juvenile stage of life and seemingly escape the process of ageing.

To figure out why some species age better than humans, we have to understand so-called epigenetic changes which alter our DNA expression throughout the aging process.

Epigenetic changes are mechanisms that can determine which genes are turned on or off in offspring. They have a huge influence on the course of a species evolution.

Understanding these mechanisms could also help us understand why humans and other animals evolved to age in the first place.

When it comes to research on aging, immense interest from the public and large companies has created an environment where its difficult to separate unfounded claims from science. In this grey area, biohackers emerge.

Biohacking refers to actions that supposedly let you hack your brain and body to optimize their performance, without traditional medicine.

Its proponents often peddle claims exaggerated by cherry-picked evidence. One example is alkaline water, claimed to slow aging by reducing oxidative stress.

Two studies highlight alkaline waters positive effects for acid-base balance in the bloodstream, and increasing hydration status during exercise. But both of these studies were funded by companies selling alkaline water.

A systematic review of the literature shows there is no research to support or disprove beliefs about alkaline water being a genuine biohack.

There are also bogus young blood transfusions, in which an older person is injected with a younger persons blood to cure aging. This is a very real and exploitative part of the anti-aging industry.

The concept of fighting aging has long been woven into the human narrative.

But forcefully extending the human lifespan by even one decade would present difficult social realities, and we have little insight into what this would mean for us.

Would a cure for aging be abused by the wealthy? Would knowing we had longer to live decrease our motivation in life?

Perhaps its a good thing we wont be diving into the fountain of youth any time soon if ever.

By Zachariah Wylde, Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology, UNSW. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read more from the original source:
The Futurist Quest To Cure Aging, And Why It May Never Work - Science 2.0

Atlassian's resident tech futurist Dom Price.

When it comes to the global pandemic and the abrupt shift to remote work, even a tech giant such as Atlassian can be caught unawares, according to the Aussie unicorns resident tech futurist.

Speaking at Qualtrics Work Different event lastweek, Dominic Price said the key to leadership during the pandemic is experimentation and vulnerability. Ultimately, that can lead to long-lasting positive outcomes.

Even before the pandemic, Atlassians third-biggest office was home office, Price said in the online session. So, when the whole workforce went remote, there was a touch of complacency.

We thought we were just going to be naturally really good at it that once we flipped to working from home it was just going to be normal, he explained.

Actually, what we learnt quite quickly is that our habits, our rituals, were really baked in being in an office that water-cooler conversation, the incidental meeting in the corridor, a whole lot of habits that just didnt work suddenly in a remote fashion.

Get COVID-19 news you can use delivered to your inbox.

Youll also receive special offers from our partners. You can opt-out at any time.

The key to adapting has been listening to employees, taking pulse surveys, and keeping lines of communication very much open.

We practice stuff, if it works, we do more of it. If it doesnt, we can always roll it back.

For Price personally, despite working in a business built on innovation, it has helped to take a step back from technology once in a while.

When he starts feeling Zoom fatigue, he switches a few meetings to be audio-only, putting on his headphones and going for a stroll while chatting.

We started to evolve technology almost backwards, he said.

Its bizarre how old school talking on the phone suddenly felt.

COVID-19 is shaking up peoples everyday lives, both in work and home scenarios. That gives us space to challenge some of the social and professional constructs we tend to take for granted.

From a workplace perspective, one of those is place, Price said.

Even pre-pandemic, many knowledge workers had multiple workplaces anyway, flitting between home, the office, and a collection of favourite coffee shops.

For the most part, employees who can complete their tasks alone can work from anywhere.

Our job as leaders and custodians is to create an environment where they feel comfortable and flexible to do that, Price said.

Why should you need a desk in an office and a certain commute time to do that?

The challenge is, once you have a work-from-anywhere model, how do we team from anywhere?

It comes down to experimentation, Price says, and that can seem scary. But, during a global pandemic, when business-as-usual is out of the window and uncertainty abounds, theres actually never been a better time to experiment.

We have this desire to be right, and experimentation means youre probably going to be wrong as much as your right, and we stray away from it, he explained.

As leaders, weve got this opportunity the hard part here is the vulnerability, he added.

The superpower of a great leader in this modern world is the ability to be authentic and vulnerable. And thats not perfect, its beautifully imperfect.

Opening up these conversations within teams, about how to experiment and improve the remote workplace allows leaders to evolve, rather than simply telling others to, Price said.

It still amazes me, even before the pandemic, the number of leaders I was working with who were driving transformations agile, culture, digital transformations but they werent changing themselves.

We have to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk in these times. When we role model those behaviours, you will build momentum in all of your teammates around the world.

Price is the first to admit that moving to a remote-first workplace and maintaining a team mindset is no easy feat.

But, the benefits could be wide-reaching, and lasting.

Distributed teams can expand the talent pool within their reach, he noted.

If we design this on purpose, we can build environments that are way more inclusive than ever before, he said.

Literally commuting to an office rules out a whole lot of people from being able to work.

While some leaders are treating this adjustment as something to be endured, if they go about it mindfully, its an opportunity for investment in the future of any business.

You get access to a whole new talent base that has amazing ideas, and amazing backgrounds and amazing innovation weve just not tapped into them yet.

NOW READ: A specific kind of leader will see success during this pandemic, says Bren Brown

NOW READ: Atlassian makes remote work permanent, to create the future of work by living it

Small and medium businesses and startups have never needed credible, independent journalism and information more than now.

Thats our job at SmartCompany: to keep you informed with the news, interviews and analysis you need to manage your way through this unprecedented crisis.

Now, theres a way you can help us keep doing this: by becoming a SmartCompany supporter.

Even a small contribution will help us to keep doing the journalism that keeps Australias entrepreneurs informed.

Original post:
Dom Price on leadership during COVID-19, and what Atlassian got wrong - SmartCompany.com.au

PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

So what does it mean for your business? It means that you show up as a whole human being. Youre not just a job title with a skill set. Youre showing up with your heart and your hands and your head. And your work is an expression of who you want to be and the difference you want to make in the world.

Simon Mainwaring is a brand futurist, global keynote speaker, and best-selling author of We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World. He is also the founder and CEO of We First, a creative consultancy helping companies build brand reputation, profits, and social impact.

The following is a summary of #1 of the Keep It Real Series from the Real Leaders Podcast. This is a conversation with brand futurist and global keynote speaker, Simon Mainwaring. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

Simon discusses the importance of fulfillment in any given career, and consequently shares how he has found success to be an inside-out kind of job:

Theres a big fundamental difference between people who go to work to do a job, and people who go to work to give their gift, to give their skills. The way that youre fulfilled is that you fill yourself up from the inside, through what you give to others. You dont get filled up by what others say about you from the outside. And that sounds very simplistic, but I swear to God, it is transformative in your life.

Simon discusses the need to re-distribute our global business model. He emphasizes, however, that capitalism reimagined could be essential for improving the world on both a societal and ecological level.

I am a deep, deep believer in capitalism. But I think the benefits of it need to be distributed more evenly so that its actually sustainable. And what youre seeing right now is a breakdown, youre seeing the natural ecosystem breakdown through climate crisis, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, and extreme weather and all these things that fall out of it. And youre seeing that global social fabric breakdown, and Black Lives Matter, and all of these issues are a function of that.

Responsibility comes with this new business opportunity, and it will have to be a gradual process of evolution:

Only when youve got that coalition of all the different key players, can you start to build out a viable alternative to the way capitalism is being practiced. And a lot of people talk about how were trying to switch out the engine of capitalism as were hurtling down the road. But until we have all the parts, we dont have an engine, it cant actually operate as a viable alternative. And so I do think we will change where theres sufficient pain. Theres a sufficient coalition, stakeholders that want the same things, and that were collaborating in new ways to make that happen.

The interconnectedness of environmental issues is a cause for hope in healing our planet:

The same way all these issues are connected from climate, the same way they hurt us more because theyre connected, they can help us if we do the right thing, because theyre all connected. If we start to treat the planet more effectively, thatll have a better effect on the environments in which we live and the species and biodiversity out there, and so on and so on. This connectivity can work in our favor, not just against us.

Find Simon at: simonmainwaring.com

Read more from the original source:
Keep it Real Series: A Conversation with Simon Mainwaring - Real Leaders

While 2020 has started to feel like some sort of futuristic pre-apocalypse disaster movie as we are battered by a raging pandemic and alarmed by increasingly erratic world leaders, you could be excused for longing for the future car designers and futurists from days gone imagined we would be living in now.

Luckily, you can distract yourself from reality for a bit and see how some of those wild dreams would look on our streets today, thanks to the team at Budget Direct Singapore.

Budget Direct has brought a number of speculative concept vehicles from the past to life and reimagined them in todays world in a series of digital renders.

supplied

No, its not a wildly speculative design from the past its what Elon Musk thinks well all be driving very soon. Maybe.

The result is seven realistic renderings based on their original wild designs from between 1936 and 1979, and are rather wonderful, if you ask us.

READ MORE:* Five Things: completely made-up car names* Blade Runner 2049: Denis Villeneuve explains why the movie is no replicant* Tiny cars with big appeal: Mazda's Kei car history* Five Things: the cheapest hybrids you can buy right now

Super-Cycle (1936)

Budget Direct Insurance/supplied

We are sure nothing would ever have gone wrong if a 480kmh motorbike was unleashed. It had a head cushion for safety, after all.

The June 1936 cover of Modern Mechanix & Inventions Magazine promised two revolutionary technologies: television and the 480kmh Super-Cycle.

While television has held its ground since then, sadly the Super-Cycle (and its unnamed inventor) were lost to the mists of time.

According to the magazine the Super-Cycle is capable of reaching record-breaking speeds on its spherical wheels, with the driver safely encased within the bikes aerodynamic shell.

For added safety, there is a cushion attached to the front of the canopy windscreen to lean your head on as you power forward. Which is something that only would have seemed safe in 1936.

Unnamed Chrysler (1941)

Budget Direct Insurance/Supplied

Gil Spears unnamed concept would have been a nightmare for anyone bad at parking.

Gil Spear was something of a specialist within the trade of car design: he mostly did the fronts.

He designed the front ends of the 1939 Plymouth, 1939 New Yorker, and 1940 Saratoga and Chrysler would adopt the wraparound grille on this unbuilt 1941 cruiser for its 1942 Royal.

Spears proto-space-age Chrysler tapers to a point at the rear perhaps suggesting that he specialised in the front bits because he wasnt so hot on the other end - while the wraparound chrome bumper that stretched the entire length of the car (imagine scraping that on a curb while parking...) gave it the appearance that it was floating.

McLouth - XV61 Concept (1961)

Budget Direct Insurance/Supplied

Were absolutely certain this back-to-front design wouldnt have caused any confusion whatsoever.

If you are a total movie car-nerd (guilty!) you will probably know Syd Mead as the designer behind the Tron Light Cycle (which inspired Kanedas bike in Akira) and the flying Spinner car from Blade Runner.

Getting even nerdier, Meads military-funded design for a four-legged, gyro-balanced, walking cargo vehicle also directly inspired the AT-AT from The Empire Strikes Back.

But before all of that the McLouth Steel Corporation commissioned Mead to design a car for the 1961 New York International Automobile Show.

McLouth built the XV (Xperimental Vehicle) and claimed that the car was both road safe and future safe because it would also run on a monorail system... that was clearly the future...

Singoletta (1962)

Budget Direct Insurance/Supplied

Ever wanted to tip over right in front of a truck? Well, the Singoletta would have been the car for you.

While magazine artist Walter Molino illustrated the Singoletta for the Domenica del Corriere in 1962, the actual inventor was the mysterious Cesare Armano, a pseudonym for the famous correspondent and science-fiction author Franco Bandini.

Bandinis solution to a future of traffic gridlock would cost a quarter of the price of a Fiat 500 and ten of them would fit in the space of one car.

A speed of no more than forty kilometres per hour. A minimum of protection from the weather. A minimum of space. A minimum of consumption. A minimum of cost, were Bandinis design parameters for the tiny commuter vehicle. Oh, and it was electric too.

The New Urban Car (1970)

Budget Direct Insurance/Supplied

Resplendent in its metallic brown paint and boasting a huge canopy, the New Urban Car can only have come from the 1970s.

The New Urban Car was a tiny solution ot congestion dreamed up by Automotive writer Ken W. Purdy for a 1970 Playboy article illustrated by Syd Mead. Yes, that Syd Mead.

Purdy and Meads Tomorrows in-city car was a two-seater with a cheap, quiet, slightly greener gas turbine in place of the internal combustion engine, while space is maximised by combining the steering wheel and accelerator into a single fold-away lever swing it to steer, twist it to accelerate. Doesnt sound like anything could go wrong there...

The rear wheels, turbine and transmission were housed in a single unit that would be detachable to make repairs easier.

See original here:
Five things: future cars from the past - Stuff.co.nz

Watchful Eye

A team of computer scientists has a well-intentioned but thorny plan to reduce recidivism, the rate at which prisoners return to prison once released, and it involves constantly monitoring them as they go about their lives.

The idea? Giving parolees (who would volunteer for this program) smartphones and biometric wearables to monitor their biological data, pictures they take, and location information, all in the hopes of training artificial intelligence to identify patterns linked to regressions into criminal behavior.

Insights that help keep people out of prison could be useful, of course, but how this program would glean those insights is (to put it lightly) ethically fraught.

The Purdue scientists mention in a press release that the AI algorithm they created would analyze data in clumps, rather than in real-time. The study design would leave half of the volunteers, who are already members of a vulnerable population, entirely to their own devices, calling into question the point of them participating at all. And the others, the monitored group, would likely be on their very best behavior, since they know scientists are watching their every move which ultimately calls into question the integrity of this particular data, gathered in this particular way.

That said, there are noble motivations at work, here.

The goal of the study is to identify opportunities for early intervention to better assist those individuals to integrate back into general society successfully, Purdue University computer scientist Marcus Rogers said in the release.

But then again, how many times must we suffer technological solutions (surveillance AI) to societal problems (criminal recidivism) before we realize that our problems might be too much too big for one algorithm to solve?

READ MORE: Artificial intelligence examines best ways to keep parolees from recommitting crimes [Purdue University]

More on prisoner AI: A Finnish Startup Is Using Prison Labor to Train AI

See the article here:
AI Developers Want to Perform a Bizarre Study on Released Prisoners - Futurism

No-Scope

Over the weekend, NASAs Curiosity rover spent its time blasting a bizarre rock on Mars with a laser.

To clarify, Curiosity wasnt just killing time. This particular rock, Digital Trends reports, was adorned with unusual colors for the area, and vaporizing it with a laser is one of the best tricks Curiosity that has for figuring out what its made of.

The laser is just one of Curiositys tools for analyzing an objects chemical composition. In the past, the rover has used them to make discoveries suggesting that Mars once harbored life. The findings for this particular rock arent available yet, but Digital Trends reports that the colors could suggest the presence of organic compounds.

But it wont be until the next rover, Perseverance, shows up with more sophisticated tools that NASA can kick up the hunt for signs of ancient microbes to the next level.

While NASA prepares for its Perseverance launch, Curiosity is continuing on what NASA is calling a summer road trip to scout ahead and study more regions of the planet that may have once harbored life.

Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunitys search for the history of water, NASA researcher Abigail Fraeman said in a press release. Were uncovering an ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized.

READ MORE: Curiosity is investigating a strangely colored rock it found on Mars [Digital Trends]

More on Curiosity: Next NASA Mars Rover Will Sport a Rock-Vaporizing Laser

The rest is here:
NASA's Mars Rover Spent the Weekend Shooting a Weird-Looking Rock With a Laser - Futurism

NASA just released the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun not to be confused with the highest resolution ones courtesy of the Solar Orbiter, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The close-ups are breathtaking to look at, and also reveal something entirely unexpected as well: small flares theyre calling campfires, all over the stars surface.

The campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of solar flares, at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller, said principal investigator David Berghmans, an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, in a a NASA statement. When looking at the new high resolution EUI images, they are literally everywhere we look.

Despite the majority of staff at ground control at the European Space Operations Center in Germany having to work from home during the ongoing pandemic, the team was able to obtain the images from the Solar Orbiter as it made its closest pass on June 15.

The Orbiter came within just 48 million miles of the Sun. Its closest pass within the next year or so will get it within just 26.1 million miles. NASAs Parker Solar Probe came even closer in June, getting to within just 11.6 million miles from the surface.

A closer flyby also means better images. Because the camera itself doesnt doesnt have any zoom capability, that zooming happens by getting closer to the Sun, Daniel Mller, ESAs Solar Orbiter Project Scientist, told The Verge.

These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained, Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, said inthe NASA statement. These amazing images will help scientists piece together the Suns atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system.

Scientists are still unsure as to the exact nature of these little flare-ups each of them are about the size of a country.

But we might soon know more thanks to the Solar Orbiters other scientific instruments. The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment, or SPICE instrument, can measure the exact temperature of each nanoflare.

So were eagerly awaiting our next data set, Frdric Auchre, principal investigator for SPICE operations at the Institute for Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, said in NASAs statement. The hope is to detect nanoflares for sure and to quantify their role in coronal heating.

Mller suggested to The Verge that the campfires in total they could add up enough energy to heat the corona. In other words, all these tiny flares could add up to enough energy to heat up the Suns entire atmosphere.

The Solar Orbiter is outfitted with an entire suite of scientific gear. Counting the cameras and the SPICE instrument, the small spacecraft features ten different instruments, all collecting invaluable data about our star.

Scientists werent expecting to find anything groundbreaking from the Orbiters first ever images yet thanks to the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, astronomers were astonished to discover what they called campfires all over the Suns surface.

We didnt really expect such great results right from the start, Mller, ESAs Solar Orbiter Project Scientist, said in an ESA statement. We can also see how our ten scientific instruments complement each other, providing a holistic picture of the Sun and the surrounding environment.

As part of a different experiment, scientists are excited to soon get a much closer and detailed look at structures of solar wind, massive streams of charged particles released from the Suns corona that make their way through the solar system.

Thanks to yet another instrument, the researchers are also getting an unprecedented look at the Suns magnetic field, particularly at each of its poles.

READ MORE: The closest images of the Sun ever taken reveal tiny solar flares dotting the stars surface [The Verge]

More on the Solar Orbiter: A Space Probe Just Took the Closest Pictures of the Sun Ever

Link:
Scientists Found Something Surprising in Closest-Ever Photos of the Sun - Futurism