Day: December 3, 2024

Handle on history: Knives embedded with rocket parts honor 45 years of Ariane launches

NeRD

A French company that crafts knife handles from leftover rocket metal and the wood from trees surrounding the rocket’s launch pad has created a limited-edition piece celebrating the anniversary of Europe’s venerable expendable heavy-lift vehicle. SpacePep’s has introduced its “45 Years of Ariane” folding knife. Each of the 100 individually-numbered knives is made with metal from the production of an Ariane 5 rocket, which is embedded in the snakewood handle. “It was indeed on Dec. 24, 1979, that the first Ariane launcher in history took off from the ELA1 launch…

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Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

NeRD

Scientists have discovered that mysterious blasts of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be created when asteroids slam into ultradense extreme dead stars called neutron stars. Such a collision releases enough energy to supply humanity’s power needs for 100 million years! FRBs are transient pulses of radio waves that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to a few seconds. In this period, an FRB can release the same amount of energy that it would take the sun several days to radiate. The first FRB was observed in…

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Could dark matter have been forged in a ‘Dark Big Bang?’

NeRD

Our common understanding of the universe tells us that all matter and energy were created at the beginning of time during a period of rapid inflation called the Big Bang. However, in 2023, Katherine Freese, director of the Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, and Martin Wolfgang Winkler of the University of Texas suggested a radical new idea: a “second Big Bang.” This “Dark Big Bang” would have given rise to the universe’s most mysterious “stuff,” known as dark matter. Now, two scientists from Colgate University have expanded on…

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Interview with Luke Sollitt

NeRD

Let’s begin by Inquiring into your early years, your childhood, where you were born, where you grew up, what your family was like? Do you have siblings? What did your parents do, and how young were you when you developed an interest in what has become your career? I was born in Boston. My mom lived in Vermont at the time, so it’s kind of a home state. We moved to the Washington DC area, to Alexandria, when I was about four. I have a brother whose name is Ian.…

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