Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Author at Gizmodo

Our Solar System’s Largest Asteroid Is Covered in Ice Volcanoes

We usually associate volcanoes with extreme heat. But new results demonstrate that the Solar System’s largest asteroid, Ceres, is covered in volcanoes that have spewed ice throughout their history. Scientists analyzed images of Ceres, a rock 588 miles wide (Montana is 630 miles wide) and the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, taken by NASA’s Dawn…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 17 '18

House Passes Bill to Advance Quantum Science in the U.S.

The House of Representatives passed the National Quantum Initiative Act yesterday. When signed into law, the bill will outline a 10-year plan to push forward applications using the counterintuitive science of subatomic particles. The House bill, sponsored by congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), serves to “ensure the continued leadership of the United States” in this technology—as…

Tech Policy Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 14 '18

NASA’s Efforts to Contact Opportunity Rover Ramp Up as Martian Dust Storm Clears

As the planet-wide Martian dust storm clears, NASA scientists have increased their efforts to contact the nearly 15-year-old Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10. Some scientists are beginning to feel apprehensive, but there’s a plan in place.. The deep-space network of NASA communications satellites began a 45-day period of “active listening” on Wednesday,…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 14 '18

Hubble Captures Image of a Truly Warped ‘Dragon’

An ambitious use of the Hubble Space Telescope hopes to map some of the biggest, brightest, and furthest galaxies to understand the structure of our universe. Above is a picture from that survey, featuring a strange, warped feature called the Dragon. You may have seen the Hubble Deep Field image—the telescope pointed to a seemingly…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 13 '18

Mission to Slam Spacecraft Into Asteroid Has Begun Final Design and Construction

A mission to deflect asteroids that might threaten Earth has begun its final design and assembly phase, according to a news release. NASA is testing a technique meant to protect the planet from an impending asteroid strike, and it’s a satisfyingly simple one: They’re gonna slam the ship into the rock. The Double Asteroid Redirection…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 13 '18

What the Hell Is Going on With the ISS Drill Hole Story?

A tiny hole in a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the International Space Station has turned into a strange game of international telephone. Scientists immediately determined that the pressure leak in the capsule attached to the ISS, first detected on August 30, wasn’t a big deal—the astronauts were never in danger of running out of air…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 12 '18

The Large Hadron Collider Turns 10: Here’s What’s Next for Particle Physics

September 10 marked the 10th anniversary of when the Large Hadron Collider first powered on. Since it’s already achieved its most well-known goal—to discover the Higgs boson—you might wonder what else is happening at the famous collider. The Large Hadron Collider, located in Geneva, Switzerland, is the world’s largest scientific apparatus. It’s a pair of intersecting…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 11 '18

The Color-Changing, Hexagonal Vortex on Saturn Just Surprised Scientists Again

Sitting atop Saturn’s north pole is one of the Solar System’s most striking weather patterns: a rotating, color-changing hexagon slightly wider than Earth. A new study shows there’s another hexagon directly on top of the first one—and that’s weird. Saturn’s hexagon has remained visible to any probe that’s visited planet, including Voyager, Hubble, and Cassini, though…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 7 '18

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Wins $3 Million Breakthrough Prize for Discovering Pulsars

Accomplished astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell has won a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize for her discovery of pulsars 50 years ago and continued leadership in science. Bell Burnell has lived an accomplished life. Though best known for her discovery, she has become a leader in the field, serving in many top positions at well-known scientific…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 6 '18

Apparent Faster-Than-Light Motion Helps Solve Mystery of Colliding Neutron Stars

Last year brought a monumental observation of the cosmos: the light and simultaneous gravitational waves from a pair of colliding neutron stars over 130 million light-years from Earth. But mysteries about this event remained—like why the radiation it emitted as x-rays and radio waves gradually brightened for half a year afterward. That mystery might now…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 6 '18

Jupiter’s ‘Baffling’ Magnetic Field Is Unlike Any Other

Jupiter is strange for a number of reasons. It’s the biggest planet in our Solar System, of course. It harbors perhaps the most intense radiation environments. And, according to a new study, it has a magnetic field unlike that of any other known planet. NASA’s Juno orbiter, a basketball court-sized spacecraft, is observing the gas…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 5 '18

This Slick $100 Sous Vide Lets Anyone Cook Like a Modernist Chef for Cheap

The food might taste great, but fancy restaurants generally use tricks to prepare meals perfectly with surprisingly little effort. Perhaps the most storied of these devices is the sous vide, a glorified immersion heater that keeps water at a precise temperature in order to evenly cook foods, usually meats in vacuum-sealed bags. Sous vides for…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 5 '18

A New Hunt for a ‘Dark Force’ Begins This Month in Italy

This month, Italian physicists will turn on an experiment hunting for a fifth, dark force of nature, the Guardian reports. You may be familiar with the hunt for dark matter. Measurements of the universe imply that there should be five to six times more mass than experiments can observe directly. Many scientists hope to find…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 4 '18

Japan Testing Miniature Space Elevator Near the International Space Station

A Japanese team is testing a small prototype space elevator, according to news reports. It’s certainly not the fantastical, many-kilometer-long cable of science fiction, but it demonstrates that at least someone is serious about this tech. The Mainichi newspaper reports: In the experiment, two ultra-small cubic satellites, which were developed by Shizuoka University Faculty of…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 4 '18

New Research Sheds Light on How Opium Poppies Evolved Their Powerful Painkillers

The opium poppy is famous for its ability to produce painkilling molecules. Now, by sequencing its genome, a team of scientists from China, the United Kingdom and Australia uncovered several events in the poppy’s history that, together, could have led to the evolution of its opium-producing behavior. Opium poppies and humans share a history dating…

Biology Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 31 '18

This Is Our Best Look Yet at Saturn’s Aurora

Sometimes, things line up just perfectly. For example, back in 2017, the Hubble Space Telescope got a full view of Saturn’s northern aurora. The newly-released image above isn’t exactly what Hubble saw—but it’s still exciting, I promise. This observation aligned with the Cassini mission’s grand finale. Working in tandem, Cassini and Hubble were able to…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 31 '18

Physicists Just Made the Most Precise Measurement Ever of Gravity’s Strength

Gravity might feel strong if you drop a bowling ball on your feet, but is in fact the weakest force. Compare it to electromagnetism: the pull of all the Earth’s gravity can’t stop you from picking up a paperclip with a refrigerator magnet. That weakness makes gravity incredibly difficult to measure. A team of scientists…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 30 '18

Black Holes Might Temporarily Bring Dead Stars Back to Life

What happens when a dead star meets a black hole? The answer appears to be a brief zombie awakening, according to a new paper. Let me explain. A team of scientists was interested in how white dwarfs—small, dense objects thought to form when bigger stars run out of fuel—interact around black holes weighing between one…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 30 '18

Ancient ‘Monster Galaxy’ Is Forming Stars a Thousand Times Faster Than the Milky Way

Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has observed a galaxy that looks nothing like what researchers expected. It’s forming stars at an absolutely incredible rate. The “Monster Galaxy”, also known as COSMOS-AzTEC-1, formed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang, and it turns more than a thousand Suns worth of gas into stars each…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 29 '18

Physicists Achieve Incredible Electron-Accelerating Feat at Small Scale

Particle physics experiments are huge—they have to be, in order to accelerate particles with enough energy to properly study them. The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is nearly 17 miles around, while others are closer to the 2-mile range. But scientists working on a new experiment reported Wednesday that they’ve accelerated electrons to high energies…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 29 '18

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Our Solar System’s Largest Asteroid Is Covered in Ice Volcanoes

House Passes Bill to Advance Quantum Science in the U.S.

NASA’s Efforts to Contact Opportunity Rover Ramp Up as Martian Dust Storm Clears

Hubble Captures Image of a Truly Warped ‘Dragon’

Mission to Slam Spacecraft Into Asteroid Has Begun Final Design and Construction

What the Hell Is Going on With the ISS Drill Hole Story?

The Large Hadron Collider Turns 10: Here’s What’s Next for Particle Physics

The Color-Changing, Hexagonal Vortex on Saturn Just Surprised Scientists Again

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Wins $3 Million Breakthrough Prize for Discovering Pulsars

Apparent Faster-Than-Light Motion Helps Solve Mystery of Colliding Neutron Stars

Jupiter’s ‘Baffling’ Magnetic Field Is Unlike Any Other

This Slick $100 Sous Vide Lets Anyone Cook Like a Modernist Chef for Cheap

A New Hunt for a ‘Dark Force’ Begins This Month in Italy

Japan Testing Miniature Space Elevator Near the International Space Station

New Research Sheds Light on How Opium Poppies Evolved Their Powerful Painkillers

This Is Our Best Look Yet at Saturn’s Aurora

Physicists Just Made the Most Precise Measurement Ever of Gravity’s Strength

Black Holes Might Temporarily Bring Dead Stars Back to Life

Ancient ‘Monster Galaxy’ Is Forming Stars a Thousand Times Faster Than the Milky Way

Physicists Achieve Incredible Electron-Accelerating Feat at Small Scale

Xbox’s Big Turnaround Hedges Everything on Gamers’ Nostalgia

The First Trailer for ‘Strange New Worlds’ Season 4 Teases a Weird and Scary Galaxy

The ‘Invincible’ Game’s Story Brings Action and New Voices

‘Daemons of the Shadow Realm’ May Be Your New Shonen Fave

South Korean Man Might Get Prison Time for Posting AI Wolf Picture

Return to ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ With an Astarion Prequel Book

Palantir Debuts Chic Chore Coat So the World Knows You’re One of the Baddies

Hopeful Thought of the Day: Robots Can’t Do Human Conflict

‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ Almost Led to an Insomniac Venom Game

‘Gen V’ Won’t Return for a Third Semester

Anker’s UV Printer Can Handle Almost Anything… If You Know What You’re Doing

HP’s EliteBoard Keyboard-Computer Proves We Can Stick a PC in Anything

Sleep-Tracking Earbuds Didn’t Fix Me, but They Did Open My Eyes

I’ve Tested a Lot of Bad Smart Glasses and These Are the Worst Yet

Roborock’s Qrevo Curv 2 Flow Is the Ultimate Robot Mop—If You Don’t Have Corners or Walls

Alienware’s $350 QD-OLED Gaming Monitor Nixes Everything for a Pretty Screen

Sony Inzone H6 Air Review: A Perfect Case for Open-Back Gaming Headsets

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

The Soundboks Mix Is Going to Make You the Most Popular Guy at the Park

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real