The Planetary Society will announce a $50,000 prize for "Asteroid Tagging Designs" tomorrow at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the Apophis Mission Design Competition, you are invited to submit designs for a mission to intercept and "tag" a potentially hazardous asteroid headed towards Earth.
Image: old-school asteroid vanquishment technology from Atari — Link. These death rays were very powerful in 1976, but do not work as effectively on contemporary space matter, hence the contest.
Snip from announcement:
Apophis is a near-Earth object (NEO), which will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. On that pass, the asteroid will be gravitationally perturbed to an unknown orbit, one that that may have the slim possibility of hitting Earth in 2036. Very precise tracking may be needed to determine the probability of such a collision. Such precise tracking may require "tagging" the asteroid, perhaps with a beacon — a transponder or reflector — or some other method. Exactly how an asteroid could best be tagged is not yet known, nor is it obvious, which is why The Planetary Society is holding a competition.
Link.
"This is increasingly sounding like a Black Mirror episode"—Elon Musk, introducing Neuralink. Elon Musk's brain-computer-interface venture today unveiled a prototype that involves a pig with a computer chip implanted inside their brain. The coin-sized device is implanted beneath the creature's skull. "It's like a Fitbit, but in your skull," says Musk, and it's implanted by […]
A reported UFO in the Congo turned out to be a Loon Balloon, floated 20km up to provide cellular internet out in the sticks. The operators neglected to tell the relevant authorities what they were doing; two UFO hunters ended up in jail while Loon, a subsidiary of Google holding company Alphabet, smoothed things out. […]
Isolation.site does just one thing: it visits URLs that you want to check out but don't trust, and shows you what comes up. It's not just a convenient wrapper around the curl command-line tool, but generates a rendered snapshot of the site to look around. Protect your devices from web-transmitted infections (WTIs). Picked up some […]
If you're a fan of edibles, then you already know this, but for everybody else, a look at the price of some standard edibles might shock you. Depending on the dosage, an edible baked good is often about $15 to $20. A weed-infused lollipop is $10 to $12. And a pound of butter with a […]
You may not be a fan of paper straws. And honestly, we don't blame you. They're almost universally ill-equipped to handle their one job. But as sub-par as most paper straws are, most of us would agree they're better than the usual alternative. Single-use plastic straws are part of a plastic scourge that has landfills […]
Staring at the blank page is often the most intimidating moment of any writing project. Deciding exactly what to say and how to say it can be nerve-racking. If you're writing fiction, you've also got a whole separate set of questions that need answering. Have you worked out your story beats? Have you defined your […]
