Friday the U.S. military released 400 other names it considered for Space Force's soliders (before settling on the word "guardians.")

Politico writes that the names were "crowdsourced" from the U.S. military's space workforce, and "Troops clearly had fun with their submissions, which included Space Cadet, Spacies, Anti-Gravity Gang, Homo Spaciens and Spacefolk." But the Space Force had more science fiction-inspired names it could have picked. Fleet Officer, Stormtrooper and Trekkies were both among the suggested names...

Many in the public still confuse NASA's civil space mission with the Space Force's national security focus, and a name like Ground-Based Astronauts or Apollonauts, harkening back to the space agency's moon landing program, would not help... One suggestion was Skywalker, though members of the Space Force at least in the short-term will be Earth-bound to operate the nation's GPS constellation and provide early missile warning.

Though the Space Force's workforce is expected to be highly-skilled in technical fields, its members may not have taken kindly to one suggestion: Geek...

Others perhaps took the suggestion process too literally, with one suggestion just saying "nothing because you wouldn't hear it in space anyway."
The UPI reminds readers that the U.S. Space Force "is now a full military branch that was allocated $15.4 billion in the 2021 budget and enlisted 16,000 active duty and civilian personnel who were all reassigned from the defunct Air Force Space Command."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Wednesday that the Biden administration will keep Space Force... "They absolutely have the full support of the Biden administration. And we are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force," Psaki said Wednesday at a White House news briefing...

Many experts were not surprised that President Joe Biden will keep Space Force as its own branch of the military because it would take an act of Congress to abolish it when it now has bipartisan support as a valuable tool in future military efforts....
The UPI also got this comment from a research associate with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The name is funny; it sounds like something that Trump just dreamed up," said Young. "But it's been talked about in national security circles for over a decade now. It's something that's just going to be important to have going forward."

And a co-director of the Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution tells them bluntly that "The Space Force is a serious attempt to deal with a serious problem, and that problem is the deployment of anti-satellite weapons by countries like Russia and China."

Launched in July, China's probe "Tianwen-1" is now approaching an orbit around Mars — and it's sent back its first picture. Slashdot reader AmiMoJo spotted this report in the Guardian: The photo released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows geological features including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a vast stretch of canyons on the Martian surface. The photo was taken from about 1.4m miles away (2.2m kilometres), said the CNSA, with the spacecraft since reaching 1.1 million kilometres from the planet...

The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, lander, and a rover that will study the planet's soil. China hopes to land the rover in May in Utopia, a massive impact basin...

China has poured billions of dollars into its military-led space programme and first sent a human into space in 2003. It is aiming to assemble a space station in Earth orbit by 2022.

The fabric of spacetime may be frothing with gigantic gravitational waves, and the possibility has sent physicists into a tizzy. A potential signal seen in the light from dead stellar cores known as pulsars has driven a flurry of theoretical papers speculating about exotic explanations. Scientific American reports: The most mundane, yet still quite sensational, possibility is that researchers working with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), which uses the galaxy as a colossal gravitational-wave detector, have finally seen a long-sought background signature produced when supermassive black holes crash and merge throughout the universe. Another interpretation would have it originating from a vibrating network of high-energy cosmic strings that could provide scientists with extremely detailed information about the fundamental constituents of physical reality. A third possibility posits that the collaboration has spotted the creation of countless small black holes at the dawn of time, which could themselves account for the mysterious substance known as dark matter.
[...]
The NANOGrav collaboration still needs to confirm that it is in fact seeing gravitational waves. And the shape of those gravitational waves' spectrum has yet to be traced out and found to conform to the cosmic string interpretation, each of which is likely to take years. Meanwhile, another contingent of the physics community has suggested that the signal could originate from entities known as primordial black holes. Unlike regular black holes, which are born when gigantic stars die, these would form in the early universe, when matter and energy were nonuniformly scattered through the cosmos as a consequence of processes that occurred at the end of inflation. Certain overdense areas could collapse under their own weight, generating black holes in a variety of sizes. Observations from LIGO and Virgo that could indicate mergers between primordial black holes have already planted the idea in many researchers' minds that these strange objects are more than speculative fictions. Certain theorists like them because, as entities that give off no light, they could account for some or even all of the dark matter in the universe.

Along with two co-authors, Riotto has written a third paper appearing in PRL showing how the NANOGrav signal could be accounted for by a multitude of black holes the size of asteroids being created shortly after the big bang, producing a gravitational wave relic that would travel to us in the modern day. According to the researchers' model, these miniature primordial black holes could comprise up to 100 percent of the dark matter in the universe. [...] Nevertheless, the burst of theoretical activity shows how seriously physicists are taking these results. NANOGrav researchers have another two and a half years of pulsar data they are combing through, which could help distinguish whether some or a combination of all these explanations might be viable.

A new quantum sensor can analyze the full spectrum of radio frequency and real-world signals, unleashing new potentials for soldier communications, spectrum awareness and electronic warfare. Phys.Org reports: Army researchers built the quantum sensor, which can sample the radio-frequency spectrum -- from zero frequency up to 20 GHz -- and detect AM and FM radio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other communication signals. The Rydberg sensor uses laser beams to create highly-excited Rydberg atoms directly above a microwave circuit, to boost and hone in on the portion of the spectrum being measured. The Rydberg atoms are sensitive to the circuit's voltage, enabling the device to be used as a sensitive probe for the wide range of signals in the RF spectrum.

The Rydberg spectrum analyzer has the potential to surpass fundamental limitations of traditional electronics in sensitivity, bandwidth and frequency range. Because of this, the lab's Rydberg spectrum analyzer and other quantum sensors have the potential to unlock a new frontier of Army sensors for spectrum awareness, electronic warfare, sensing and communications -- part of the Army's modernization strategy. The peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Applied published the researchers' findings, Waveguide-coupled Rydberg spectrum analyzer from 0 to 20 GigaHerz, co-authored by Army researchers Drs. David Meyer, Paul Kunz, and Kevin Cox.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Russian news outlets connected to election disinformation campaigns in the United States have set their sights on a new target: convincing Spanish-speaking countries that the Russian coronavirus vaccine works better than its American competitors, according to researchers and State Department officials. The Russian campaign has focused on Latin American nations, including Mexico, which this week signed a deal to acquire millions of doses of the Russian vaccine, and Argentina, which last month began vaccinating its citizens with it.

The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, was named after the first satellite to orbit the earth, which the Soviet Union launched in 1957. Sputnik V is considered less expensive and easier to transport than vaccines made by the American companies Pfizer and Moderna. But some researchers say the criticism in Russian outlets of the Western vaccines has been misleading. "Almost everything they are promoting about the vaccine is manipulated and put out without context," said Bret Schafer, a fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an advocacy group that tracks Russian disinformation. "Every negative story or issue that has come out about a U.S.-made vaccine is amplified, while they flood the zone with any positive report about the Russian vaccine."

Media outlets backed by the Russian government posted to Facebook and Twitter hundreds of links to news stories that reported potential ties suggesting American vaccines may have had a role in deaths, the researchers said. The accounts left out follow-up reports that found the vaccines most likely played no role in the deaths. "This was a coordinated effort that was part P.R. campaign and part disinformation. It is one of the largest operations we've seen to promote a narrative around the vaccine in Latin America, and it appears to have had an effect," said Jaime Longoria, a disinformation researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that supports journalists and independent researchers. "Russia steadily seeded a narrative that has grown and been, to some degree, accepted."

Alaska, the state with the largest land mass in the nation, is leading the country in a critical coronavirus measure: per capita vaccinations per capita vaccinations. From a report: About 13 percent of the people who live in Alaska have already gotten a shot. That's higher than states such as West Virginia, which has received a lot of attention for a successful vaccine rollout and has inoculated 11 percent of its people. But the challenge for Alaska has been how to get vaccines to people across difficult, frigid terrain -- often in remote slivers of the state? "Boats, ferries, planes, snowmobiles -- Alaskans will find a way to get it there," said the state's chief medical officer, Anne Zink, 43. Alaskans are being vaccinated on fishing boats, inside 10-seater planes and on frozen landing strips. Doctors and nurses are taking white-knuckle trips to towns and villages across the state to ensure residents are protected from the coronavirus. Contributing to Alaska's quick speed in getting the vaccine to its residents is a federal partnership that allows the state, which has more than 200 indigenous tribes, to receive additional vaccines to distribute through the Indian Health Service.

23andMe is becoming a publicly-traded company through a merger with Virgin's VG Acquisition. Engadget reports: The deal values 23andMe at about $3.5 billion and should give the company the finances it wants to boost its personal healthcare and therapeutics plans. It should have over $900 million in cash, for instance. The merger is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021 and will have private $25 million investments from both 23andMe chief Anne Wojcicki and Virgin's Sir Richard Branson.

While 23andMe didn't say much about how its strategy might change by going public, it was keen to promote its contributions to genetic research and its involvement in therapeutic programs for conditions like cardiovascular disease and respiratory issues. As Sir Branson suggested, the public offering could help 23andMe "revolutionize" personalized medicine.

According to a new study, the Apple Watch can be used to monitor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. STAT reports: Researchers at Apple, working with specialists who treat Parkinson's, designed a system that uses the Apple Watch to detect the motor symptoms that are a hallmark of the neurological disease. By monitoring resting tremors and other involuntary movements, the researchers were able to identify the characteristic "on" and "off" patterns of medication's effects. Their findings were published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

The new system, called the Motor Fluctuations Monitor for Parkinson's disease (MM4PD), uses the Apple Watch's accelerometer and gyroscope data to detect the presence of resting tremor or dyskinesia. Resting tremors, which can affect the hands, legs, and other parts of the body, are a common symptom of Parkinson's. Dyskinesia, another type of involuntary movement, is a frequent side effect of medication used to treat the disease. The algorithms underlying the model were developed using data from a pilot study with 118 people in which researchers matched subject's smartwatch data to a scoring system called MDS-UPDRS Part III, the gold standard by which motor symptoms of Parkinson's are measured.

The authors say that the measurements helped spot symptoms missed in regular care and identified changes after subjects underwent surgery for deep brain stimulation. The paper also suggests the tool helped pinpoint people who slipped on medication adherence, as well as cases in which a person might benefit from a modified medication regimen.

Israel's vaccination drive has reduced confirmed Covid-19 cases among older Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. From a report: Netanyahu cited a 45% drop in confirmed cases and a 26% decline in hospitalizations of seriously ill patients among people age 60 and older in the past 16 days. Israel's vaccination drive, which began in late December, started with this age group, and more than 80% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Further reading: Israel Is Now The First Country Where Vaccinations Are Starting To Curb The Pandemic.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Scientists have successfully studied einsteinium -- one of the most elusive and heaviest elements on the periodic table -- for the first time in decades. The achievement brings chemists closer to discovering the so-called 'island of stability,' where some of the heftiest and shortest-lived elements are thought to reside. The U.S. Department of Energy first discovered einsteinium in 1952 in the fall-out of the first hydrogen bomb test. The element does not occur naturally on Earth and can only be produced in microscopic quantities using specialized nuclear reactors. It is also hard to separate from other elements, is highly radioactive and rapidly decays, making it extremely difficult to study.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) at the University of California, recently created a 233-nanogram sample of pure einsteinium and carried out the first experiments on the element since the 1970s. In doing so they were able to uncover some of the element's fundamental chemical properties for the first time. [...] The main finding from the study was the measurement of the einsteinium bond length -- the average distance between two bonded atoms -- a fundamental chemical property that helps scientists predict how it will interact with other elements. They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before. Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light [...]. Further experiments are needed to determine why. The study was published in the journal Nature.

sciencehabit writes: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has, for more than 20 years, pioneered collecting spectra from millions of astronomical objects, from nearby stars to supermassive black holes. But this year, the survey is making a change: Instead of employing a small team of technicians for the daily chore of plugging optical fibers into preprepared plates so that -- when placed in the telescope -- they collect light from exactly the right position in the sky, the SDSS is going robotic. For the project's upcoming fifth set of surveys, plug plates are being replaced by 500 tiny robot arms, each holding fiber tips, that patrol a small area of the telescope's focal plane. They can be reconfigured for a new sky map in 2 minutes. Although such robot spectrographs have been built before, the SDSS is part of a rush to retrofit robots to older telescopes so astronomers can grab spectra from the wealth of interesting objects that will soon be streaming from new imaging surveys.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Technology that harnesses wave energy through a "blowhole" is being tested at a remote Tasmanian island in a project backed by federal grants and investors. When the mostly above-water unit is connected in about a month, King Island in Bass Strait will be powered by three renewables -- wave, wind and solar. And there are hopes the project can be expanded across Australia's vast southern coastline.

Wave Swell Energy co-founder Tom Denniss says the pilot will provide crucial data about the system's potential. "It's very much like an artificial blowhole," he said. "There's a big underwater chamber that's open out the front, so the water is forced into the chamber. "It pushes that air back and forth. The movement of air that spins the turbine and produces electricity." Research by the peak scientific body estimates wave energy could contribute up to 11% of the nation's energy by 2050, the equivalent of a city the size of Melbourne. The boat-like structure can generate up to 200kW of power but there are plans for larger 1,000kW models.

About one in four of India's 1.35 billion people may have been infected with the coronavirus, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of a government serological survey, suggesting the country's real caseload was many times higher than reported. From the report: India has confirmed 10.8 million COVID-19 infections, the most anywhere outside the United States. But the survey, whose findings are much more conservative than a private one from last week, indicates India's actual cases may have crossed 300 million. The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which conducted the survey, said it would only share the findings at a news conference on Thursday. The source declined to be named ahead of the official announcement. It was not immediately clear how many people participated in the latest survey.

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover floated back outside the International Space Station Monday and completed solar array battery replacement work that began four years ago. They also installed three new video cameras and made preparations for upcoming work to install new roll-out solar blankets to upgrade the lab's power system. From a report: The work took less time than expected and the astronauts were able to carry out a variety of lower-priority "get-ahead" tasks before returning to Quest airlock and calling it a day, closing out a five-hour 20-minute spacewalk. Taking one last look around before entering the airlock, Hopkins said simply, "Beautiful view." The excursion began at 7:56 a.m. EST when the two men switched their spacesuits to battery power, officially kicking off the 234th spacewalk, or EVA, devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began 23 years ago in 1998.

"OK, it's a beautiful day. Let's go for a walk outside," astronaut Bob Hines radioed from mission control in Houston. The first priority was electrically connecting a replacement battery in the station's solar power system. The batteries are critical to station operation. They are recharged by the arrays when the lab is in sunlight and then provide that stored power during periods of orbital darkness. Starting in 2017, spacewalking astronauts began work to replace all 48 of the station's original nickel-hydrogen batteries with 24 smaller, more powerful lithium ion units. During battery replacement work in March 2019, one of the new lithium ion power packs used by the station's left-side inboard set of arrays failed and was replaced with one of the older nickel hydrogen batteries that had been removed. All of the other older batteries were replaced as planned during multiple spacewalks. Over the weekend, flight controllers operating the station's robot arm by remote control disconnected the one remaining nickel hydrogen battery and robotically installed a fresh lithium ion unit. Hopkins and Glover electrically connected the battery, finally completing the power system upgrade four years after the work began.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II -- an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy that is about 163,000 light years, from Earth. MIT astrophysicists have detected stars at the edge of Tucana II, in a configuration that is surprisingly far from its center but nevertheless caught up in the tiny galaxy's gravitational pull. This is the first evidence that Tucana II hosts an extended dark matter halo -- a region of gravitationally bound matter that the researchers calculated to be three to five times more massive than scientists had estimated. This discovery of far-flung stars in an ancient dwarf galaxy implies that the very first galaxies in the universe were also likely extended and more massive than previously thought.

The team used an imaging filter on the telescope to spot primitive, metal-poor stars beyond the galaxy's core. Analysis shows a kinematic connection, that these far-out stars move in lockstep with the inner stars, like bathwater going down the drain. The results suggest that Tucana II must have an extended dark matter halo that is three to five times more massive than previously thought, in order for it to keep a gravitational hold on these far-off stars. "Without dark matter, galaxies would just fly apart," Chiti. says. "[Dark matter] is a crucial ingredient in making a galaxy and holding it together." The team's results are the first evidence that an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy can harbor an extended dark matter halo. "This probably also means that the earliest galaxies formed in much larger dark matter halos than previously thought," The findings appear in the journal Nature Astronomy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Centers for Disease Control may recommend wearing two masks -- one over the other -- to keep at bay the more contagious variants of the coronavirus, according to Anthony Fauci. The CDC and Fauci discussed the matter Monday but the agency doesn't yet have the data to make any formal recommendation, he said Tuesday during a Washington Post event. Still, "it makes common sense" to increase protection, Fauci said. The infectious disease expert has previously endorsed double-masking given the new strains of the virus.

omfglearntoplay shares a report from ScienceAlert: There's already a long list of reasons to like trees, we know. Warding off depression could be the latest entry on that list, based on a study of 9,751 residents in Leipzig, Germany. For a more consistent measure, researchers used antidepressant prescriptions rather than self-reporting to gauge the mental health of communities, and then cross-referenced these statistics with the numbers of street trees in each area. They reported that more local foliage within 100 meters (328 feet) of the home was associated with a reduced likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants -- findings that could be very useful indeed for city planners, health professionals, and governments.

The reduction in antidepressant use linked to street trees was particularly prominent in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. While it's important not to take such findings too far, the results do hint that urban trees could act as a simple and affordable way of boosting mental health and assist in closing health inequality gaps across society. The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

On Tuesday, a test flight of SpaceX's Starship, a huge next-generation spacecraft that Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of the private rocket company, dreams of one day sending to Mars, came to an explosive end. From a report: That brief flight, to an altitude of about 6 miles and then back to a landing pad, appeared to again demonstrate how the mammoth rocket would tip over on its side as it descended in a controlled belly flop back toward a landing. But when the prototype fired its engines to right itself back to a vertical orientation, it appeared that one engine did not properly ignite, and Starship hit the ground at an angle, disintegrating in a fireball, leaving a cloud of smoke rising over the test site, which is in Boca Chica, Tex., near Brownsville. The end was similar to the last test flight in December which also ended in an explosion at landing, although the particular cause of the rocket failing to slow down enough may have been different.

This time, however, SpaceX at least had the permission of government regulators. Last week, SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates rocket launches, seemed to be in a strange regulatory standoff. SpaceX had filled the propellant tanks of this prototype of Starship -- its ninth one -- and looked ready to launch. But then the rocket stayed on the ground when no approval from the F.A.A. arrived. Mr. Musk expressed frustration on Twitter, describing the part of the F.A.A. that oversees SpaceX as "fundamentally broken." Mr. Musk wrote, "Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars." Late on Monday, the F.A.A. gave permission for Tuesday's launch, but then added that the December launch had occurred without the agency's approval. SpaceX had requested a waiver to conduct that flight even though it posed a greater danger to the public than allowed by regulations. The F.A.A. denied the request. SpaceX defied the ruling and launched anyway.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails. Through nanotechnology, engineers at MIT in the US have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to the scientists. When the spinach roots detect the presence of nitroaromatics in groundwater, a compound often found in explosives like landmines, the carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves emit a signal. This signal is then read by an infrared camera, sending an email alert to the scientists. This experiment is part of a wider field of research which involves engineering electronic components and systems into plants. The technology is known as "plant nanobionics," and is effectively the process of giving plants new abilities. "Plants are very good analytical chemists," explains Professor Michael Strano who led the research. "They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves. This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier," he adds.

Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur behind a payment processing startup, is funding a multimillion trip to space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which could be the first-ever orbital flight crewed entirely by non-astronauts. CNN reports: Isaacman, 37, said he will command the mission, which is slated for late-2021 and will see the spacecraft make a "multi-day" trip into Earth's orbit, according to a press release. Isaacman has purchased three additional seats aboard the mission. The seats will be donated to a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital "ambassador," and a member of the public who enters for a chance to join the trip.

The St. Jude ambassador has already been selected, Isaacman said. He did not disclose any details of their identity beyond saying it would be a woman and a front-line healthcare worker who's "committed to helping kids beat cancer." The fourth seat is reserved for a winner of a contest, limited to customers of Isaacman's eCommerce platform, Shift4Shop. Eligible competitors will have to launch an online store on the platform and tweet a video about their "entrepreneurial story," which will then be reviewed by "a panel of celebrity judges, " according to the company. The names of the judges were not yet disclosed. It's not clear when the winners will be chosen, though Isaacman told reporters on a conference call Monday that the crew members could all begin training within 30 days.

Isaacman added that this mission, dubbed Inspiration4, with the "4" referencing the number of crew members, "is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars." Isaacman said he wanted the mission to also mark a "historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer," and he pledged to also donate $100 million to the hospital as part of a push to raise $200 million more dollars for the organization's research. It's not clear exaclty how long the trip will be or where in orbit it will fly. [SpaceX CEO Elon Musk] told Isaacman on Monday, "wherever you want to go, we'll take you there."