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Science

Researchers develop a light source that produces two entangled light beams

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The optical parametric oscillator (OPO) used in the study. Credit: Alvaro Montaña Guerrero

Scientists are increasingly studying quantum entanglement, which occurs when two or more systems are created or interact in such a manner that the quantum states of some cannot be described independently of the quantum states of the others. The systems are correlated, even when they are separated by a large distance. The significant potential for applications in encryption, communications and quantum computing spurs research. The difficulty is that when the systems interact with their surroundings, they almost immediately become disentangled.

In the latest study by the Laboratory for Coherent Manipulation of Atoms and Light (LMCAL) at the University of São Paulo’s Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil, the researchers succeeded in developing a light source that produced two entangled light beams. Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.

“This light source was an optical parametric oscillator, or OPO, which is typically made up of a non-linear optical response crystal between two mirrors forming an optical cavity. When a bright green beam shines on the apparatus, the crystal-mirror dynamics produces two light beams with quantum correlations,” said physicist Hans Marin Florez, last author of the article.

The problem is that light emitted by crystal-based OPOs cannot interact with other systems of interest in the context of quantum information, such as cold atoms, ions or chips, since its wavelength is not the same as those of the systems in question. “Our group showed in previous work that atoms themselves could be used as a medium instead of a crystal. We therefore produced the first OPO based on rubidium atoms, in which two beams were intensely quantum-correlated, and obtained a source that could interact with other systems with the potential to serve as quantum memory, such as cold atoms,” Florez said.

However, this was not sufficient to show the beams were entangled. In addition to the intensity, the beams’ phases, which have to do with light wave synchronization, also needed to display quantum correlations. “That’s precisely what we achieved in the new study reported in Physical Review Letters,” he said.

“We repeated the same experiment but added new detection steps that enabled us to measure the quantum correlations in the amplitudes and phases of the fields generated. As a result, we were able to show they were entangled. Furthermore, the detection technique enabled us to observe that the entanglement structure was richer than would typically be characterized. Instead of two adjacent bands of the spectrum being entangled, what we had actually produced was a system comprising four entangled spectral bands.”

In this case, the amplitudes and phases of the waves were entangled. This is fundamental in many protocols to process and transmit quantum-coded information. Besides these possible applications, this kind of light source could also be used in metrology. “Quantum correlations of intensity result in a considerable reduction of intensity fluctuations, which can enhance the sensitivity of optical sensors,” Florez said. “Imagine a party where everyone is talking and you can’t hear someone on the other side of the room. If the noise decreases sufficiently, if everyone stops talking, you can hear what someone says from a good distance away.”

Enhancing the sensitivity of atomic magnetometers used to measure the alpha waves emitted by the human brain is one of the potential applications, he added.

The article also notes an additional advantage of rubidium OPOs over crystal OPOs. “Crystal OPOs have to have mirrors that keep the light inside the cavity for longer, so that the interaction produces quantum correlated beams, whereas the use of an atomic medium in which the two beams are produced more efficiently than with crystals avoids the need for mirrors to imprison the light for such a long time,” Florez said.

Before his group conducted this study, other groups had tried to make OPOs with atoms but failed to demonstrate quantum correlations in the light beams produced. The new experiment showed there was no intrinsic limit in the system to prevent this from happening. “We discovered that the temperature of the atoms is key to observation of quantum correlations. Apparently, the other studies used higher temperatures that prevented the researchers from observing correlations,” he said.

More information:
A. Montaña Guerrero et al, Continuous Variable Entanglement in an Optical Parametric Oscillator Based on a Nondegenerate Four Wave Mixing Process in Hot Alkali Atoms, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.163601

Citation:
Researchers develop a light source that produces two entangled light beams (2023, January 3)
retrieved 4 January 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-01-source-entangled.html

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Entertainment

King Charles beams as he meets Ryan Reynolds after Prince Harry and Meghan ‘waged war’ on royals

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King Charles was all smiles as he met Ryan Reynolds in Wrexham today – in his second public appearance since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle began ‘waging war’ on the Royal Family.

The monarch, 74, visited the football club – which was purchased by the Hollywood actor in February 2021 – with the Queen Consort this afternoon.

The royal couple visited the club’s stadium to speak with co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to learn about how it has contributed to the regeneration of the Welsh city, which was the subject of Disney+’s Welcome to Wrexham series.

Despite Prince Harry and Meghan Markle unleashing further bombshells on the Royal Family with the release of their Netflix documentary yesterday, King Charles was all smiles as he spoke with the A-List father-of-three. 

King Charles appeared to share a joke with Hollywood A-Lister Ryan Reynolds – who purchased the Welsh football club in February 2021

While the monarch wrapped up warm in a double-breasted tweed navy coat, Ryan – who is married to actress Blake Lively – opted for a three-piece suit for the royal engagement. 

Sharing footage of the King meeting the Wrexham co-owners, the Daily Mail’s royal correspondent Rebecca English said Charles and Camilla’s visit will feature in an upcoming episode of the hit Disney+ series.

Ahead of the visit, Ryan said he was ‘impossibly excited’ to meet King Charles and the Queen Consort.

He said: ‘Rob and I both said early on, and this holds true and for the rest of our lives, we will do anything to uplift and elevate this community and this club and having the King pay a visit is it’s certainly one way to do it. That’s for sure.’

King Charles and the Queen Consort visited the football to learn more about Wrexham’s regeneration 

Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney shook hands with King Charles on the pitch

Ryan Reynolds and King Charles spoke for a few moments before posing for pictures

King Charles and the Queen Consort pictured walking out onto the pitch

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney nervously adjust their jackets before the meeting

The King met with the stars and staff who work on the Welcome to Wrexham series

The King was all smiles as he met with players as Welcome to Wrexham cameras filmed

After shaking Ryan and Rob’s hands, the King appears to make a comment about the cold temperature.

‘I’m from Philadelphia but I live in Los Angeles,’ Rob told him. ‘So it’s actually quite warm there!’ 

The hit sports documentary follows the Deadpool and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia stars’ attempts to rejuvenate the football club, which was facing dissolution following the pandemic.

Due to their celebrity status, the two have been able to secure partnerships with TikTok, Expedia, EA Sports and Reynolds’ own Aviation Gin. They have also been able to lure top talent with their money and were able to pay for upgrades to Racecourse Ground — the oldest international football stadium in the world. 

King Charles and the Queen Consort tried to tune out the the noise surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary series – which landed on the streaming platform yesterday. 

The Duke and Duchess took a series of new swipes at the Royal Family and Britain in their new series which is being described as a transatlantic ‘TV bomb’ aimed at The Firm.

Episode one begins with a thinly-veiled attack on Buckingham Palace’s decision not to co-operate with their six-part documentary charting their courtship, marriage and Megxit. 

As part of their $100million deal with Netflix, the privacy-conscious couple have handed over a trove of pictures and video from their relationship including the moment Harry proposed in 2017 and filming himself in the VIP lounge at Heathrow as he emigrated in March 2020. 

The first three episodes contain a series of barbs that will upset his father King Charles III, including Harry’s claim that he was ‘literally brought up’ by a ‘second family’ in Africa where he chose to spend three-month stints in his late teens and twenties as he came to terms with his mother’s death.   

Harry also describes a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’ in the Royal Family – with reference to Princess Michael of Kent wearing an offensive Blackamoor-style brooch in front of his wife at Buckingham Palace. 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s bombshell Netflix documentary was released yesterday

Author Afua Hirsch (pictured) brands the Commonwealth Empire 2.0 in Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary, before describing Harry as ‘anti-racist’

There is also a suggestion that the UK is racist and more obsessed with race than the US, with Meghan declaring that she ‘wasn’t really treated like a black woman’ until she came to Britain.

And in a swipe at the choice of wives by his male relatives, viewed as an attack on his father and other senior royals, perhaps even his brother William, Harry insisted that his decision to marry Meghan sets him apart from his family because it was ‘from his heart’ and not because she ‘would fit the mould’.

The new Ted Lasso! Social media goes wild for Ryan Reynolds’ documentary Welcome to Wrexham

 

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He said his wife being an American actress ‘clouded’ his family’s view of her – and they believed it wouldn’t last.

In the third episode of the series, writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsh – author of the 2018 memoir Brit(ish) – described the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth as being ‘Empire 2.0’ before then going on to describe Prince Harry as ‘anti-racist’. 

Discussing institutional racism in the UK, Afua said: ‘Britain calculated that it needed to grant these countries independence in a way that protected its commercial and capitalist interest. So it created this privileged club called the Commonwealth. 

‘The Commonwealth is still described as a club of friends who share common values. I find that language really problematic.

‘I sometimes call the Commonwealth ‘Empire 2.0′ because that is what it is.’ 

The Commonwealth was founded in December 1931 and currently contains 54 countries. According to the Royal Family’s website, the purpose of the orgnisation is to ‘foster international co-operation and trade links between people all over the world’. 

The episode then tells the story of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and shows Harry speaking at a memorial to him, 26 days before his and Meghan’s wedding.

Afua said the black community ‘really appreciated’ his speech, saying his and Meghan’s attendance was ‘really significant’.

She added: ‘It represented a direct attempt to speak to the pain many people still feel as a result of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

‘And that was really welcomed by many black communities in Britain. I always perceived Prince Harry as just another senior royal, a little bit racist, very ignorant.

Prince Andrew has been pictured out riding around Windsor this morning

It is the first time the Duke has been pictured since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s documentary dropped

‘But I have watched him on this journey and seen that he has really embraced the education that is required for someone like him to transform himself into an anti-racist.’

Elsewhere in the series, author Kehinde Andrews claims ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s ‘better PR’

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle also discuss Princess Michael of Kent a Blackamoor-style brooch to a pre-Christmas event the Duchess of Sussex attended in 2017. She was forced to apologise.

Harry said: ‘In this family sometimes your part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And there is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias is actually no one’s fault.

Meghan adds: ‘Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. Before then. I wasn’t really treated like a black woman’.

In response to the bombshell series, Tory MP Bob Seely has argued that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex should be stripped of their royal titles.

The Isle of Wight MP said the couple were ‘monetising’ their titles with ‘aggressive’ and ‘unbelievable’ attacks on the Royal Family and Britain.

Backbench Bills rarely become law, but Mr Seely said presenting the proposals to the House will be ‘a start’.

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Science

NASA spaceship beams back really eerie images of the moon

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When a space rock slams into the moon, the impact crater often stays for billions of years, almost frozen in time.

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That’s because, unlike Earth, our lunar satellite has no weather to wash away the collision, nor intense geologic activity to blanket the surface in new rock. NASA’s new Orion spacecraft — which is currently orbiting the moon on a crucial, uncrewed mission to test the capsule’s spaceflight abilities — recently captured detailed images of the moon’s deeply cratered ground. The space agency released these pictures from the Artemis I mission on Nov. 23.

NASA snapped the black and white images with the Orion capsule’s optical navigation camera, which engineers are testing for future moon flights. “Orion uses the optical navigation camera to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, providing an enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew,” NASA wrote online.

Orion captured some of these images from around 80 miles above the surface. Below are a few of the new pictures of the moon, a barren desert teeming with craters and hills. Crucially, NASA suspects some of the satellite’s craters contain bounties of water ice — a necessary resource for future deep space missions.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft captured new images of the lunar surface.

As NASA’s Orion spacecraft flew by the moon on the sixth day of its mission, it captured views of the deeply cratered lunar surface.

As NASA’s Orion spacecraft flew by the moon on the sixth day of its mission, it captured views of the deeply cratered lunar surface.

Orion’s view of the moon with the blackness of space behind it.

4/4 SLIDES

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The Orion capsule, which will one day carry up to six astronauts, has some major benchmarks just ahead. On Friday evening, NASA will fire the spacecraft’s engines and send it into an orbit (called “distant retrograde orbit”) that will fling it some 50,000 miles beyond the moon. There, it will orbit the moon for over six days. Then Orion will again fire its engines to leave the moon’s gravity and travel back to Earth.

The uncrewed spacecraft is expected to splash down into the Pacific Ocean, off of San Diego, on Dec. 11. If the mission proves successful, astronauts may fly aboard Orion as early as 2024. And though the timeline is ambitious and will likely be pushed back, astronauts may again step foot on the lunar surface as soon as 2025.

This time, they’ll be looking to establish a permanent presence on the resource-rich moon. NASA wants to stay.

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Science

An Ultra-Rare Cosmic Object Was Just Detected in The Milky Way, Astronomers Report

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A new member of a category of star so rare we can count the known number of them on our fingers and toes has just been discovered in the Milky Way.

It’s called MAXI J1816-195, located no greater than 30,000 light-years away. Preliminary observations and investigations suggest that it’s an accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar – of which only 18 others are known, according to a pulsar database compiled by astronomer Alessandro Patruno.

 

When numbers are that low, any new object represents an extremely exciting find that can yield important statistical information about how those objects form, evolve, and behave.

The discovery really is hot off the presses. X-ray light emanating from the object was first detected on 7 June by the Japanese Space Agency’s Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) instrument mounted on the outside of the ISS.

In a notice posted to The Astronomer’s Telegram (ATel), a team headed by astrophysicist Hitoshi Negoro of Nihon University in Japan posted that they’d identified a previously uncatalogued X-ray source, located in the galactic plane between the constellations of Sagittarius, Scutum, and Serpens. It was, they said, flaring relatively brightly, but they hadn’t been able to identify it based on the MAXI data.

It wasn’t long before other astronomers piled on. Using the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a space-based telescope, astrophysicist Jamie Kennea of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues homed in on the location to confirm the detection with an independent instrument, and localize it.

Swift saw the object in X-rays, but not optical or ultraviolet light, at the location specified by the MAXI observations.

 

“This location does not lie at the location of any known catalogued X-ray source, therefore we agree that this is a new transient source MAXI J1816-195,” they wrote in a notice posted to ATel.

“In addition, archival observations by Swift/XRT of this region taken in 2017 June 22, do not reveal any point source at this location.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

Next up was the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray NASA instrument also mounted to the ISS, in an investigation led by astrophysicist Peter Bult of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

And this is where things started to get really interesting. NICER picked up X-ray pulsations at 528.6 Hz – suggesting that the thing is spinning at a rate of 528.6 times per second – in addition to an X-ray thermonuclear burst.

“This detection,” they wrote, “shows that MAXI J1816-195 is a neutron star and a new accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar.”

So what does that mean? Well, not all pulsars are built alike. At the very basic level, a pulsar is a type of neutron star, which is the collapsed core of a dead massive star that has gone supernova. These objects are very small and very dense – up to around 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, packed into a sphere just 20 kilometers (12 miles) or so across.

 

To be classified as a pulsar, a neutron star has to… pulse. Beams of radiation are launched from its poles; because of the way the star is angled, these beams sweep past Earth like the beams from a lighthouse. Millisecond pulsars are pulsars that spin so fast, they pulse hundreds of times a second.

Some pulsars are powered purely by rotation, but another type is powered by accretion. The neutron star is in a binary system with another star, their orbit so close that material is siphoned from the companion star and onto the neutron star. This material is channeled along the neutron star’s magnetic field lines to its poles, where it falls down onto the surface, producing hotspots that flare brightly in X-rays.

In some cases, the accretion process can spin up the pulsar to millisecond rotational speeds. This is the accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar, and it appears that MAXI J1816-195 belongs to this rare category.

The thermonuclear X-ray burst detected by NICER was likely the result of the unstable thermonuclear burning of material accumulated by the companion star.

Since the discovery is so new, observations in multiple wavelengths are ongoing. Follow-up has already been conducted using Swift, and the 2m Liverpool Telescope on the Canary Island of La Palma in Spain was employed to look for an optical counterpart, although none was detected. Other astronomers are also encouraged to climb aboard the MAXI J1816-195 train.

Meanwhile, a full pulsar timing analysis is being conducted, and will, Bult and his team said, be circulated as more data becomes available. You can follow along on ATel.

 

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Science

NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Beams Back Eerie Spacecraft Wreckage From Mars

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NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has beamed back to Earth eerie yet incredible images of the NASA Perseverance rover wreckage that helped bring it to the Red Planet last year.

As reported by CBS News, Ingenuity, which was the first helicopter to fly on another planet, took these 10 aerial color photos of Perseverance’s debris and NASA believes the images have “the potential to help ensure safer landings for future spacecraft.”

NASA Ingenuity Images of the Debris of Perseverance

The photos feature Perseverance’s backshell and supersonic parachute that helped the rover land and safely make it through Mars’ atmosphere. While the landing was a huge success, these parts took some expected damage on the descent.

“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said JPL’s Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. “But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”

The parachute itself contained a secret message that was decoded last year, and it was discovered to feature the secret message “dare mighty things,” the motto used by the Perseverance team.

Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020, and it successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. It’s mission is to seek signs of habitable conditions for life and search for signs of past microbial life as well.

Blogroll Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.



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Science

Large Hadron Collider Breaks Proton Record Only Days After 3-Year Shutdown

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Europe’s Large Hadron Collider has started up its proton beams again at unprecedented energy levels after going through a three-year shutdown for maintenance and upgrades.

It only took a couple of days of tweaking for the pilot streams of protons to reach a record energy level of 6.8 tera electronvolts, or TeV. That exceeds the previous record of 6.5 TeV, which was set by the LHC in 2015 at the start of the particle collider’s second run.

 

The new level comes “very close to the design energy of the LHC, which is 7 TeV”, Jörg Wenninger, head of the LHC beam operation section and LHC machine coordinator at CERN, said today in a video announcing the milestone.

When the collider at the French-Swiss border resumes honest-to-goodness science operations, probably within a few months, the international LHC team plans to address mysteries that could send theories of physics in new directions.

For now, Wenninger and his colleagues are sending separate beams consisting of a relatively small number of protons through the collider’s 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) underground ring of superconducting magnets.

Engineers want to make absolutely sure that the collider can be operated safely in the wake of the changes made during the shutdown before they start high-energy collisions – and avoid a costly repair operation like the one that had to be done shortly after the LHC was turned on for the first time in 2008.

“The machines and facilities underwent major upgrades during the second long shutdown of CERN’s accelerator complex,” CERN’s director for accelerators and technology, Mike Lamont, explained in a news release.

 

“The LHC itself has undergone an extensive consolidation program and will now operate at an even higher energy and, thanks to major improvements in the injector complex, it will deliver significantly more data to the upgraded LHC experiments.”

During the LHC’s first run, scientists collected data that pointed to the Nobel-winning discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

The second run, which lasted from 2015 to 2018, brought increases in energy and luminosity – but there were no Higgs-level discoveries. The upcoming third run is due to go until 2026.

Over the past three years, the LHC team upgraded the magnet system to narrow the focus of the beams, producing far more collisions per second.

The analytical software has been upgraded as well to analyze 30 million particle-bunch crossings per second. Two new experiments, FASER and SND@LHC, were added to the LHC’s existing lineup of detectors to look for phenomena that go beyond the Standard Model of physics.

Such phenomena could shed light on the nature of dark matter, which is more abundant than the ordinary matter that we see in the Universe. They could confirm the existence of as-yet-unseen supersymmetric particles, or extra dimensions, or microscopic black holes, or a fifth fundamental force of nature.

“I’ve been hunting for the fifth force for as long as I’ve been a particle physicist,” Sam Harper, a team member for the LHC’s CMS detector, told the BBC.

“Maybe this is the year.”

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

 

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Entertainment

Jason Momoa beams ear-to-ear at The Batman premiere with his kids Lola and Nakoa-Wolf

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He shocked his fans last month with the announcement of his separation from his wife of nearly five years Lisa Bonet.

But Jason Momoa proved that family was still his top priority on Tuesday when he attended the World Premiere of The Batman in New York City with his daughter Lola, 14, and son Nakoa-Wolf, 13.

The 42-year-old star was also there supporting his stepdaughter Zoë Kravitz, 33, who stars opposite Robert Pattinson’s Batman as Catwoman.

Family: Jason Momoa, 42, was joined by his daughter Lola, 14, and son Nakoa-Wolf, 13, to support his stepdaughter Zoë Kravitz at the premiere of her film The Batman in New York City on Tuesday

Jason looked as stylish as ever on the red carpet in a burgundy corduroy suit, which he paired with a plunging green plaid vest that showed off his rugged chest.

He matched his suit with burgundy velvet loafers, but dressed down his outfit by skipping socks.

The Dune star wore his now-standard long hair and thick beard, and he brought along a large camera to capture some memories from the big night.

Lola cut a stylish figure in a black-and-white checker-print dress, which she wore with black Cuban heels.

Standing out: Jason looked as stylish as ever on the red carpet in a burgundy corduroy suit, which he paired with a plunging green plaid vest that showed off his rugged chest

Low key: Lola wore a stylish checker-print dress, while Nakao-Wolf had on a Bob MarleyT-shirt and red boots

Her biggest fans: They made it clear that they were supporting their big sister Zoë by posing in front of a display featuring her face, and Jason even pointed over to the image

Nakao-Wolf was more low key in a Bob Marley t-shirt under an unbuttoned white dress shirt and a black jacket, which he contrasted with maroon boots.

The children with both affection with their father and held his hands on the red carpet while showing off their winning smiles.

They made it clear that they were supporting their big sister Zoë by posing in front of a display featuring her face, and Jason even pointed over to the image. 

She appeared to be busy with the film’s primary cast, including Pattinson.

The Big Little Lies actress stunned in a black off-the-shoulder dress with a plunging neckline, crisscrossing stitching and cat-shaped cups over her bust. 

Playful: She appeared to be busy with the film’s primary cast, including Pattinson. The Big Little Lies actress stunned in a black off-the-shoulder dress with a plunging neckline, crisscrossing stitching and cat-shaped cups over her bust

Capturing the day: Jason put his camera to good use earlier in the evening when he was spotted snapping photos of his children outside the theater before stepping onto the red carpet

Blocked: He had a devious smile on his face as he appeared to try to snap a photo of the two, before Nakoa-Wolf put his hand up in front of the lens

Jason put his camera to good use earlier in the evening when he was spotted snapping photos of his children outside the theater before stepping onto the red carpet.

He had a devious smile on his face as he appeared to try to snap a photo of the two, before Nakoa-Wolf put his hand up in front of the lens.

Missing from the premiere was their mother Lisa Bonet.

While speaking with ET, Jason shared that the family was supporting Zoë in her mother’s place. 

‘We’re just so proud,’ he said. ‘Lisa couldn’t be here so we’re representing, me and the babies. We’re very excited to just be here. … It’s still family, you know?’

MIA: Missing from the premiere was their mother Lisa Bonet. While speaking with ET , Jason shared that the family was supporting Zoë in her mother’s place

Family: ‘We’re just so proud,’ he said. ‘Lisa couldn’t be here so we’re representing, me and the babies. We’re very excited to just be here. … It’s still family, you know?’

A source close to the couple told the publication that they still have warm feelings for each other, even if they are no longer together.

‘They had a lot of love for each other when they broke up, and obviously still do,’ they said.

The night before the premiere, Jason was spotted in New York City dining with his stepdaughter Zoë and her boyfriend Channing Tatum.

Splitting up: A source close to the couple told the publication that they still have warm feelings for each other, even if they are no longer together. They separated in January after nearly five years of marriage and 16 years together

Showing his support: The night before the premiere, Jason was spotted in New York City dining with his stepdaughter Zoë and her boyfriend Channing Tatum 

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Science

Unknown space object beams out radio signals every 18 minutes

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The spinning space object, spotted in March 2018, beamed out radiation three times per hour. In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves in our sky, acting like a celestial lighthouse.

Astronomers think it might be a remnant of a collapsed star, either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star, with a strong magnetic field — or it could be something else entirely.

A study on the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” said lead study author Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a statement.

“That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that. And it’s really quite close to us — about 4,000 light-years away. It’s in our galactic backyard.”

Curtin University doctoral student Tyrone O’Doherty made the unusual discovery while using the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in the outback of Western Australia.

“It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object,” O’Doherty said in a statement. “The MWA’s wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected.”

What remains of a massive star’s death

Flaring space objects that appear to turn on and off are known as transients.

“When studying transients, you’re watching the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind,” said study coauthor Gemma Anderson, ICRAR-Curtin astrophysicist, in a statement. “‘Slow transients’ — like supernovae — might appear over the course of a few days and disappear after a few months. ‘Fast transients’ — like a type of neutron star called a pulsar — flash on and off within milliseconds or seconds.”

This new, incredibly bright object, however, only turned on for about a minute every 18 minutes. The researchers said their observations might match up with the definition of an ultra-long period magnetar. Magnetars usually flare by the second, but this object takes longer.

“It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically,” Hurley-Walker said. “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”

The researchers will continue to monitor the object to see whether it turns back on, and in the meantime, they are searching for evidence of other similar objects.

“More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we’d never noticed before,” Hurley-Walker said.

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World

Beams not bullets: IAI electronic war system touted as battlefield breakthrough

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Defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries unveiled a new electronic warfare system Thursday, touting it as the first ever that can target multiple threats simultaneously, including at varying distances.

The system, dubbed Scorpius, can disrupt the communications and radar systems of UAVs, ships, missiles and more, according to IAI.

Scorpius scans the entire sky and can direct narrowly targeted beams “at any wavelength, any frequency, any direction against specific targets without interfering with anybody else,” IAI’s Gideon Fustick told Forbes. “We believe this is the revolution. It’s the future of electronic warfare,” Fustick said.

“Scorpius’ technological breakthrough is characterized by unprecedented receiver sensitivity and transmission power (ERP), far exceeding those of legacy EW systems. This allows Scorpius to detect multiple threats, of different kinds, simultaneously, from dramatically increased distances, and to address each threat with a customized response,” IAI said in a statement.

The new Scorpius system can be attached to ground, naval and air forces, according to the semi state-owned IAI.

An IAI official said the new technologies “tip the scale of electronic warfare.”

“The modern battlefield depends on the electromagnetic domain for sensing, communications, and navigation. Protecting the use of the electromagnetic domain for our forces, while denying its use by the enemy, have become mission-critical for success in combat and for ensuring the superiority of our forces in the field,” said Adi Dulberg, general manager of IAI’s Intelligence Division, in a statement.

Illustration of Scorpius systems (IAI)

“The new technology, developed by IAI’s talented engineers, tips the scale of electronic warfare, providing world-first breakthrough capabilities for electronic defense and disrupting enemy systems,” added Dulberg.

IAI, develops and manufactures advanced systems for air, space, sea, land, cyber and homeland security.

Since 1953, the company has provided technology solutions to government and commercial customers worldwide, including satellites, UAVs, missiles, weapon systems and munitions, unmanned and robotic systems, and radar. The firm is one of Israel’s largest technology employers with offices and R&D centers in Israel and around the world. Founded by the state, it has undergone privatization but the state retains a majority stake in the firm.

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Science

Powerful Landsat 9 satellite beams home 1st photos of Earth

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The first image collected by Landsat 9, on Oct. 31, 2021, shows remote coastal islands and inlets of the Kimberly region of Western Australia. In the top middle section of the image, the Mitchell River carves through sandstone, while to the left Bigge Island and the Coronation Islands stand out in the Indian Ocean. (Image credit: NASA/USGS)

Landsat 9 has opened its eyes.

The next-generation Earth-observation satellite, which launched on Sept. 27, snapped its first photos of our planet on Oct. 31, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced on Friday (Nov. 5).

The two agencies, which work together on Landsat 9, have released the initial imagery. It depicts the Florida Panhandle; Detroit and its surrounding area; Navajo Country in northern Arizona; the high Himalayas; and the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

In photos: NASA launches Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite

The city of Kathmandu, Nepal, seen at the bottom left of this Landsat 9 image, lies in a valley south of the Himalayan Mountains between Nepal and China. Glaciers, and the lakes formed by glacial meltwater, are visible in the top middle of this image. (Image credit: NASA/USGS)

“Landsat 9’s first images capture critical observations about our changing planet and will advance this joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that provides critical data about Earth’s landscapes and coastlines seen from space,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

“This program has the proven power to not only improve lives but also save lives,” Nelson added. “NASA will continue to work with USGS to strengthen and improve accessibility to Landsat data so decision makers in America — and around the world — better understand the devastation of the climate crisis, manage agricultural practices, preserve precious resources and respond more effectively to natural disasters.”

As its name suggests, Landsat 9 is the ninth satellite in the Landsat program, which has been studying our planet from orbit since 1972. It’s just the eighth to reach orbit, however; Landsat 6 was lost to a launch failure in 1993.

In the Western U.S., in places like the Navajo Nation as seen in this Landsat 9 image, Landsat and other satellite data help people monitor drought conditions and manage irrigation water. (Image credit: NASA/USGS)

Landsat 9 will work together with the similar Landsat 8, which launched in 2013, to image the entire Earth once every eight days. The new satellite is replacing the aging Landsat 7, which lifted off in 1999. And this is a big upgrade. For example, Landsat 9 can differentiate more than 16,000 shades of a given color of light, compared to just 256 for Landsat 7, NASA officials said.

Landsat 9 has two Earth-imaging instruments. One detects thermal radiation, which will allow researchers to track surface temperatures, and the other picks up visible, near-infrared and shortwave-infrared light in nine different wavelengths, NASA officials said.

The white sands of Pensacola Beach stand out in this Landsat 9 image of the Florida Panhandle of the United States, with Panama City visible under some popcorn-like clouds. Landsat and other remote sensing satellites help to track changes to US coastlines, including urban development and potential impacts of rising sea levels. (Image credit: NASA/USGS)

NASA is currently checking out Landsat 9 and its instruments, systems and subsystems, a process expected to take 100 days. In January, the space agency will hand mission operations over to the USGS, which will make the satellite’s images freely available to the public at its Landsat website.

“The data and images from Landsat 9 are expanding our capability to see how Earth has changed over decades,” Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, said in the same statement. “In a changing climate, continuous and free access to Landsat data, and the other data in NASA’s Earth observing fleet, helps data users, including city planners, farmers and scientists, plan for the future.”

Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 



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