Month: September 2022

Enlarge / Webb captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting diffraction spikes. (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

Scientists are wasting no time in pointing the powerful new James Webb Space Telescope all over the Universe, as well as into our own backyard. Recently, astronomers took data on the eighth planet from the Sun in our Solar System, Neptune. NASA released the first images of this world on Wednesday.

The third-largest planet in our Solar System, Neptune often appears bright blue in images due to the presence of gaseous methane. The Webb telescope, however, observes light in the infrared portion of the spectrum, so its "Near-Infrared Camera" photos show a ghostly white planet. This is because the methane in Neptune's atmosphere absorbs reddish and infrared light.

In the new view of Neptune, the exception to this is the planet's high-altitude methane ice clouds, which reflect sunlight before it can be absorbed by the methane. These appear as brilliant, bright features, NASA says.

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  The new Fire 8. It looks just like the old Fire 8. [credit: Amazon ]

Two years after the previous version, Amazon is introducing a new Fire HD 8 tablet for 2022. Amazon claims the new model is "faster, lighter, and powered by all-day battery life." As usual, the price is dirt cheap: $99.99 for the Fire 8 HD and $119.99 for the higher-spec "Fire 8 HD Plus" model. Amazon didn't supply a full spec sheet ahead of the launch, but there should be details on the Amazon Developer site eventually.

Here's what we do know. There's some kind of eight-core SoC (probably a Mediatek), which Amazon says is "30 percent faster" than the MT8168 in the 2020 Fire 8. The base model has 2GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of storage, and a MicroSD slot. Amazon promises "13 hours" of battery life, but the old Fire 8 HD had the same hour rating from a 4,850 mAh battery. The tablet charges in five hours via a bottom-of-the-barrel 5 W USB-C power adapter.

The "Plus" model raises the bar a bit for $20 more. You get 3GB of RAM, wireless charging, a whopping 9 W USB-C charger, and "sharper images" from an improved 5MP rear camera. The wireless charging dock holds the tablet in an upright position and will let it kick over into an Alexa smart display mode, just like an Echo Show. From the outside, the Plus model looks identical to the normal Fire 8.

Enlarge (credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Top US lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to put Chinese semiconductor company Yangtze Memory Technologies Co on a blacklist for allegedly violating export controls by supplying Huawei.

Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer told the Financial Times that he was concerned about a report, obtained by the FT, that showed YMTC has provided Nand memory chips for the Mate Xs 2, the new flagship foldable phone from Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment giant.

“This report is extremely troubling and further underscores the need for the administration to act swiftly to add YMTC to the entity list,” Schumer said, in a reference to the commerce department blacklist that effectively bars US companies from selling technology to groups on the list.