Month: October 2019

Enlarge / NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, right, is seen with Representative José Serrano, D-N.Y., in March, 2019. (credit: NASA)

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with legislators who write the House's version of the space agency's budget. The hearing came after six months of frenetic lobbying by Bridenstine to win support from Congress for his Artemis Program plan to accelerate a human return to the Moon from the year 2028 to 2024.

It appears as though those efforts were unsuccessful.

"I remain extremely concerned by the proposed advancement by four years of this mission," said Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York who chairs the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. "The eyes of the world are upon us. We cannot afford to fail. Therefore, I believe that it is better to use the original NASA schedule of 2028 in order to have a successful, safe, and cost-effective mission for the benefit of the American people and the world."

Enlarge / Nicky Morgan, UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. (credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The United Kingdom is abandoning plans to try to force pornography websites to age-verify UK Internet users. Digital Secretary Nicky Morgan announced the shift in a Wednesday statement.

Morgan claimed that "the government's commitment to protecting children online is unwavering." However, she said, the government will now accomplish that goal "through our proposed online harms regulatory regime." She didn't elaborate on what those regulations would look like.

The age verification requirement was part of the Digital Economy Act that the UK parliament passed in 2017. It was supposed to go into effect last year but was delayed multiple times. Most recently, the government announced in April that the new requirement would go into effect on July 15.

Enlarge / The Vebjørn Sand Da Vinci Project bridge in Ås, Norway, is based on a design by Leonardo Da Vinci. (credit: Åsmund Ødegård/Wikimedia Commons)

Pedestrians and bicyclists in Ås, Norway, use the Da Vinci Bridge to cross the city's E-18 highway, a laminated-wood structure based on an early 16th century sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. Had Leonardo's bridge ever been built, it would have been the longest bridge span of its time. But would his original design, given the materials available at the time, have been stable enough to support the necessary loads and withstand seismic tremors? According to a team of researchers at MIT, who built a detailed scale model to test that hypothesis, the answer is yes. The group presented their results last week at a conference in Barcelona, Spain.

The MIT group is led by John Ochensdorf, who has been studying ancient architecture and construction for many years and has a particular interest in domes and arches. Several years ago, he adapted particle spring modeling—the same tool often used to recreate the movement of fabrics and hair in CGI animation (like the movement of Yoda's cloak in his battle with Darth Sidious in Revenge of the Sith)—to model those architectural features. Ochensdorf's version reversed the model so that instead of modeling tension, it modeled compression. The software program featured virtual "masses" at key "nodes" connected by virtual "springs," which bounce around until they find equilibrium, indicating that the design can support the requisite loads.

Compression is the key to any stable arch. "An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength," Leonardo once observed. He was describing a delicate balance of opposing forces based on an inversion of a curved geometric shape known as a catenary. Suspend a flexible chain from two points, and it will naturally come to rest in a state of pure tension. Invert that shape, and you have a state of pure compression. Robert Hooke phrased it best in the 17th century: "As hangs the flexible chain, so inverted stands the rigid arch." It's how Gothic architects, for example, were able to design and construct magnificent domes like the one topping the chapel vault at King's College, Cambridge.

Enlarge / A new solar array at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. (credit: NIST)

While US President Donald Trump may be “the world’s most powerful climate change denier,” our latest research suggests that he took over a thriving green economy.

According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people—making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too—between 2013 and 2016, both the industry’s value and employment figures grew by 20%.

For some time, economic data on the green economy in many countries has been lacking. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped measuring jobs in the green economy in March 2013 due to budget cuts. This meant that US politicians were not able to make informed decisions about the relative merits of supporting green industry or backing fossil fuels—as Trump had pledged to do during his 2016 campaign.

Enlarge / Saudi defence ministry spokesman Colonel Turki bin Saleh al-Malki displays pieces of what he said were Iranian cruise missiles and drones recovered from the attack site that targeted Saudi Aramco's facilities, during a press conference in Riyadh on September 18, 2019. US officials have now said that the US responded with a cyber attack against Iran's "propaganda" infrastructure. (credit: FAYEZ NURELDINE / Getty Images)

Reuters reports that the United States launched a "secret cyber operation" against Iran in September, following the alleged drone and missile attack by Iran on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. Unnamed officials told Reuters that the late-September cyberattack targeted Iran's "propaganda" infrastructure. The attack, one official said, affected physical hardware. But no further details were provided.

Just how effective this targeted attack was, or if it actually did any damage, is far from clear. When asked about the claimed attack today by Iran's Fars news agency, Iran Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi replied, “They must have dreamt it.”

US, Saudi, German, French and British officials have all concluded that Iran was responsible for the attack on the Aramco Abqaiq oil refinery, based on forensic evidence collected from the missiles and drones involved in the strike and other data related to the direction from which the attack was launched. Iran continues to deny involvement, and the Ansar Allah—the Houthi militia in Yemen—has claimed responsibility.