knowledgeiskeyuk

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Today is the birthday of the renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Doctors grimly estimated that he wouldn't make it past his twenties, and today he turns 76 - and still one of the sharpest minds in the world. Happy birthday Stephen!

It’s #NationalBirdDay! The Hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world, weighing only a few grams. It is also the only bird that can hover, flapping its wings 55 times per second to effectively remain stationary in the air as it sips the nectar of plants and flowers.

January 4th is the birthday of the scientist Sir Isaac Newton, widely known for developing the laws of gravity and planter relations. Newton first began to think about these concepts when he witnessed an apple falling from a tree – though the apple did not hit him on the head as many believe. #ThursdayThoughts #NationalTriviaDay

January is national Braille literacy month. Did you know that Braille actually started out as military code developed so the French soldiers could read important messages without light? In fact, the code was known as night writing. It was the schoolboy Louis Braille who developed the more streamlined version of the alphabet used today. #WorldBrailleDay

Studies show that around 30% of all jobs in the U.K will likely be automated by 2030, with jobs and manufacturing, storage and transport most at risk. Read our article for the full facts. https://knowledgeiskey.co.uk/articles/job-automation 

Studies show that fewer seductions take place on Tuesday than any other day of the week. Use that information however you will. And yes, this is the best SFW royalty free image we could find for this fact.  #TuesdayThoughts

Knowledgeiskey would like to thank all our followers, readers and supporters who have joined on this journey thus far. 2017 was just the beginning and we big plans for 2018!

Outward Bound: Interplanetary Trade

Jeff Bezos: “We Have to Go to Space to Save Earth”

Carbon dioxide in atmosphere hits highest level in 800,000 years, study says

Carbon dioxide levels surged at record breaking speeds last year, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached its highest level in 800,000 years in 2016, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Monday.

Carbon dioxide levels “surged” at record breaking speeds last year, with globally averaged concentrations of CO2 hitting 403.3 parts per million in 2016 compared to 400 parts per million in 2015, according to the WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

Continue Reading.

Scientists May Have Found the Chemical Compound That Started Life http://futurism.com/scientists-found-chemical-compound-started-life/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=tumblr&utm_medium=futurismnews&utm_content=Scientists%20May%20Have%20Found%20the%20Chemical%20Compound%20That%20Started%20Life

Scientists May Have Found the Chemical Compound That Started Life

The discovery of a compound, diamidophosphate (DAP), could help to put the pieces together of how life originated on Earth. This compound, which was likely to exist on early Earth, is capable of reacting to create the ingredients for life.

European Nation Set to Be 100% Renewable in Two Years http://futurism.com/european-nation-renewable-two-years/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=tumblr&utm_medium=futurismnews&utm_content=European%20Nation%20Set%20to%20Be%20100%25%20Renewable%20in%20Two%20Years

European Nation Set to Be 100% Renewable in Two Years

All over the world, countries are minimizing their reliance on fossil fuels. In Scotland, authorities have confirmed that by 2020, all electricity will come from renewable sources.

"Quark Fusion" produces eight times more energy than nuclear fusion

Researchers, building on findings from work involving the Large Hadron Collider, have found a theoretical new form of energy. This new, renewable option is more powerful than nuclear by fusing quarks into baryons.

To reduce the emissions fueling climate change and develop more efficient ways of generating energy, while focusing on the bottom line, governments and private institutions all over the world have been turning to renewable energy. And while solar and wind energy advance and become more widely accepted, scientists continue to explore the possibility of stabilizing nuclear fusion as a truly renewable energy source that far outperforms current options.

But what if there’s an even better source of energy that’s also potentially less volatile than nuclear fusion? This possibility is what researchers from Tel Aviv University and the University of Chicago proposed in a new study published in the journal Nature.

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Mammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaurs died out, says study

Earliest mammals were nocturnal to avoid dinosaurs, which may be why there are relatively few modern daytime-active mammals, say researchers

The earliest mammals were night creatures which only emerged from the cover of darkness after the demise of the daytime-dominating dinosaurs, according to new research.

This would explain why relatively few mammals follow a daytime-active – or “diurnal”– lifestyle today, and why most that do still have eyes and ears more suitable for living by night.

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Stephen Hawking: "I fear that AI may replace humans altogether"

Hawking believes humanity has reached "the point of no return."

Stephen Hawking fears it may only be a matter of time before humanity is forced to flee Earth in search of a new home. The famed theoretical physicist has previously said that he thinks humankind’s survival will rely on our ability to become a multi-planetary species. Hawking reiterated — and in fact emphasized — the point in a recent interview with WIRED in which he stated that humanity has reached “the point of no return.” Read more here. 

Cambridge University scientists have identified a chemical in the brain that blocks unwanted thoughts, offering a new avenue to treat neurological disorders. http://ift.tt/2lXzefU

Market for humanoid robots set to grow ten times by 2023

A new report claims the market for humanoid robots will expand tenfold by 2023. Current estimates put its value at $320.3 million, but it’s projected to reach $3.9 billion within the next six years. Read more here.

Lamborghini’s New Concept Electric Car is Energy Storage On Wheels http://futurism.com/lamborghinis-new-concept-electric-car-energy-storage-on-wheels/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=tumblr&utm_medium=futurismnews&utm_content=Lamborghini%27s%20New%20Concept%20Electric%20Car%20is%20Energy%20Storage%20On%20Wheels

A.I. could produce ‘a new sector that we probably don’t know about yet,’ Nasdaq vice chair says http://ift.tt/2hdo7tX

Four cheetah cubs learn a brutal lesson. Warning: graphic footage. 

We just uncovered new clues about how to secure human longevity

If you want to survive, get stressed and stay alive.

A new study from Northwestern University suggests a little stress can actually have a positive effect on cellular health.

As humans grow older, their cellular machinery responsible for carrying out quality control on the protein-folding process begins to fail. The damaged proteins that are produced as a result are responsible for conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Read more here. 

Travelling to other solar systems is not as far away as you might think...

Ten near-Earth size planets in habitable zone of their star

NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet.

This is the most comprehensive and detailed catalog release of candidate exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, from Kepler’s first four years of data. It’s also the final catalog from the spacecraft’s view of the patch of sky in the Cygnus constellation.

With the release of this catalog, derived from data publicly available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, there are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified.

Keep reading

Nasa announces major press conference on a 'discovery beyond our solar system'

Attending the press conference will be astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world.

Nasa is to host a major press conference on a “discovery beyond our solar system”.

The event will see the revelation of major information about exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than our sun, according to a release. It made no further mention of the details of what would be revealed.

Exoplanets are the major hope for life elsewhere in the universe, since many have been found that resemble our own Earth and could have the building blocks of life. More of them are being discovered all the time.

The event will take place on 22 February at 1pm New York time, it said. It will be streamed live on Nasa’s television station and on its website.

Attending the press conference will be astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world.

Nasa said that the public will be able to ask questions using the hashtag #AskNasa during the conference. The agency will also hold a Reddit AMA, or ask me anything, session straight after the briefing.

Are We Alone In The Universe?

Surprisingly erratic X-ray auroras discovered at Jupiter

ESA and NASA space telescopes have revealed that, unlike Earth’s polar lights, the intense auroras seen at Jupiter’s poles unexpectedly behave independently of one another.

Auroras have been seen in many places, from planets and moons to stars, brown dwarfs and a variety of other cosmic bodies. These beautiful displays are caused by streams of electrically charged atomic particles – electrons and ions – colliding with the atmospheric layers surrounding a planet, moon or star. Earth’s polar lights tend to mirror one another: when they brighten at the North pole, they generally brighten at the South pole, too.

The same was expected of auroras elsewhere, but a new study, published today in Nature Astronomy, reveals that those at the gas giant Jupiter are much less coordinated.

The study used ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatories to observe the high-energy X-rays produced by the auroras at Jupiter’s poles. While the southern auroras were found to pulse consistently every 11 minutes, those at the planet’s north pole flared chaotically.

“These auroras don’t seem to act in unison like those that we’re often familiar with here on Earth,” says lead author William Dunn of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK, and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA.

“We thought the activity would be coordinated through Jupiter’s magnetic field, but the behaviour we found is really puzzling.

“It’s stranger still considering that Saturn – another gas giant planet – doesn’t produce any X-ray auroras that we can detect, so this throws up a couple of questions that we’re currently unsure how to answer.

“Firstly, how does Jupiter produce bright and energetic X-ray auroras at all when its neighbour doesn’t, and secondly, how does it do so independently at each pole?”

With the data at hand, William and colleagues identified and mapped X-ray hot spots at Jupiter’s poles. Each hot spot covers an area half the size of Earth’s surface.

As well as raising questions about how auroras are produced throughout the cosmos, Jupiter’s independently pulsing auroras suggest that there is far more to understand about how the planet itself produces some of its most energetic emissions.

Jupiter’s magnetic influence is colossal; the region of space over which the Jovian magnetic field dominates – the magnetosphere – is some 40 times larger than Earth’s, and filled with high-energy plasma. In the outer edges of this region, charged particles ultimately from volcanic eruptions on Jupiter’s moon, Io, interact with the magnetic boundary between the magnetosphere and interplanetary space. These interactions create intense phenomena, including auroras.

“Charged particles have to hit Jupiter’s atmosphere at exceptionally fast speeds in order to generate the X-ray pulses that we’ve seen. We don’t yet understand what processes cause this, but these observations tell us that they act independently in the northern and southern hemispheres,” adds Licia Ray, from Lancaster University, UK, and a co-author.

The asymmetry in Jupiter’s northern and southern lights also suggests that many cosmic bodies that are known to experience auroras – exoplanets, neutron stars, brown dwarfs and other rapidly-rotating bodies – might produce a very different aurora at each pole.

Further studies of Jupiter’s auroras will help to form a clearer picture of the phenomena produced at Jupiter; auroral observing campaigns are planned for the next two years, with X-ray monitoring by XMM-Newton and Chandra and simultaneous observations from NASA’s Juno, a spacecraft that started orbiting Jupiter in mid-2016.

ESA’s Juice will arrive at the planet by 2029, to investigate Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. It, too, will observe the auroras and in particular the effect on them of the Galilean moons.

“This is a breakthrough finding, and it couldn’t have been done without ESA’s XMM-Newton,” adds Norbert Schartel, ESA project scientist for XMM-Newton.

“The space observatory was critical to this study, providing detailed data at a high spectral resolution such that the team could explore the vibrant colours of the auroras and figure out details about the particles involved: if they’re moving fast, whether they’re an oxygen or sulphur ion, and so on.

“Coordinated observations like these, with telescopes such as XMM-Newton, Chandra and Juno working together, are key in exploring and further understanding environments and phenomena across the Universe, and the processes that produce them.”

What is the point of space exploration?