Month: May 2018

Enlarge / GOES-17 is in space now, where fixing problems is... difficult. (credit: NASA)

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released some bad news today: the GOES-17 weather satellite that launched almost two months ago has a cooling problem that could endanger the majority of the satellite’s value.

GOES-17 is the second of a new generation of weather satellite to join NOAA’s orbital fleet. Its predecessor is covering the US East Coast, with GOES-17 meant to become “GOES-West.” While providing higher-resolution images of atmospheric conditions, it also tracks fires, lightning strikes, and solar behavior. It’s important that NOAA stays ahead of the loss of dying satellites by launching new satellites that ensure no gap in global coverage ever occurs.

The various instruments onboard the satellite have been put through their courses to make sure everything is working properly before it goes into official operation. Several weeks ago, it became clear that the most important instrument—the Advanced Baseline Imager—had a cooling problem. This instrument images the Earth at a number of different wavelengths, including the visible portion of the spectrum as well as infrared wavelengths that help detect clouds and water vapor content.

Enlarge / A facepalm with ponies seems to be the most reasonable response to the proposed science education standards. (credit: Joachim S. Müller / Flickr)

In Arizona, the state's superintendent of public instruction has led a campaign to remove evolution from the state's science education standards. Diane Douglas has taken the standards, written by educators, and selectively replaced instances of the word "evolution" with euphemisms like "change over time." The alterations come less than a year after Douglas publicly advocated for introducing religious ideas into biology classrooms. Arizona residents still have roughly a week to submit comments on the changes.

Edited standards

Most states develop educational standards that define their expectations for what students should know at different stages of their time in school. These standards then govern things, from the mass purchase of textbooks to the design of instructional plans by individual teachers. For large states like California and Texas, the decisions involved in the formation of educational standards can dictate the structure of textbooks that are released nationwide, as publishers try to develop one book that they can sell everywhere.

Arizona doesn't have this level of influence, but it has more than a million students enrolled. The science standards would govern the textbooks that could be available to them, how they'll be instructed, and the content of any standardized testing they receive.

Netflix / ULULU

Simpsons creator Matt Groening's next animated series will arrive on Netflix on August 17, the streaming service confirmed via Twitter on Wednesday. Netflix also took the opportunity to reveal a few preview screens of the fantasy-obsessed series, which—as we expected—looks like Tolkien through a bug-eyed, Simpsons/Futurama filter.

The series' title, Disenchantment, along with its cast and concept, were announced last summer. Groening has been joined by longtime Simpsons showrunner Josh Weinstein and a remarkable number of Futurama animators and voice actors to build a new elves-and-castles-and-dragons cartoon series. Disenchantment's three primary voice actors, meanwhile, are relative newcomers to the Groening animation universe, with Abby Jacobson (Broad City) voicing the princess Bean, Nat Faxon as the shrimpy elf named, er, Elfo, and Eric Andre as a trickster demon named Luci.

(credit: Comcast)

Comcast today said it is preparing an offer to buy major portions of 21st Century Fox, which would give it majority control of Hulu and other media properties.

Walt Disney Company already has a $52.4 billion all-stock deal to buy the 21st Century Fox properties. But Comcast was rumored to be lining up $60 billion in financing in order to make a hostile bid for the Fox assets, and Comcast's announcement today confirms it.

Comcast "is considering, and is in advanced stages of preparing, an offer for the businesses that Fox has agreed to sell to Disney," Comcast's announcement said. Comcast is working on the offer in preparation for shareholder meetings in which the Disney/Fox deal will be considered.

Enlarge / The plasma vessel has a shape that mimics that of the magnetic field. (credit: Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics)

Many moons ago, Ars was introduced to the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (W7-X), an experimental fusion concept. At the time, W7-X—the world's largest stellarator—had just completed some warm-up tests and had been shut down to install more bits and pieces. That installation is not yet complete, but the results from some of those early runs are being analyzed, and they look good. The scientists may not be cracking champagne bottles, but they are certainly drinking boutique beer in celebration of the agreement between theory and experiment.

Banging rocks together to create bigger rocks

All of the elements heavier than hydrogen are the result of fusion. To create a heavier element through fusion, you first strip all the electrons away from two lighter atoms and then force the two nuclei together. That is difficult, because they are both positively charged and repel each other vigorously. But if you succeed in getting the nuclei to bang together, they may stick, creating a heavier nuclei.

In doing so they release energy. That energy powers the Sun, and we hope that local, slightly smaller versions might someday supply electricity.