Amanda Jane Hughes, Lecturer, Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering at University of Liverpool Stefania, and Soldini Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at University of Liverpool, write: A space-based solar power station could orbit to face the Sun 24 hours a day. The Earth's atmosphere also absorbs and reflects some of the Sun's light, so solar cells above the atmosphere will receive more sunlight and produce more energy. But one of the key challenges to overcome is how to assemble, launch and deploy such large structures. A single solar power station may have to be as much as 10 kilometres squared in area -- equivalent to 1,400 football pitches. Using lightweight materials will also be critical, as the biggest expense will be the cost of launching the station into space on a rocket. One proposed solution is to develop a swarm of thousands of smaller satellites that will come together and configure to form a single, large solar generator. In 2017, researchers at the California Institute of Technology outlined designs for a modular power station, consisting of thousands of ultralight solar cell tiles. They also demonstrated a prototype tile weighing just 280 grams per square metre, similar to the weight of card.

Recently, developments in manufacturing, such as 3D printing, are also being looked at for this application. At the University of Liverpool, we are exploring new manufacturing techniques for printing ultralight solar cells on to solar sails. A solar sail is a foldable, lightweight and highly reflective membrane capable of harnessing the effect of the Sun's radiation pressure to propel a spacecraft forward without fuel. We are exploring how to embed solar cells on solar sail structures to create large, fuel-free solar power stations. These methods would enable us to construct the power stations in space. Indeed, it could one day be possible to manufacture and deploy units in space from the International Space Station or the future lunar gateway station that will orbit the Moon. Such devices could in fact help provide power on the Moon. The possibilities don't end there. While we are currently reliant on materials from Earth to build power stations, scientists are also considering using resources from space for manufacturing, such as materials found on the Moon.

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have said they will join forces with fact-checkers, governments and researchers to try to come up with a new way of tackling misinformation. From a report: Vaccine misinformation has been rife on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with many questioning their efficacy. At the same time, countries are preparing to roll out coronavirus vaccines in a bid to end the pandemic. It is unclear how the initiative will improve the fight against fake news. Fact-checking charity Full Fact will co-ordinate the collaboration. Taking part in the effort alongside Facebook, Google-owned YouTube and Twitter are the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; Africa Check; Canada's Privacy Council Office; and five other international fact-checking organisations. With funding from Facebook, an initial framework will launch in January, setting out new standards for tackling misinformation, as well as a set of aims on the best way to respond to such information.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene -- sheets of carbon one atom thick -- and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an insulator and then, suddenly, into a superconductor: a material that frictionlessly conducts electricity. Dozens of labs leapt into the newly born field of "twistronics," hoping to conjure up novel electronic devices without the hassles of fusing together chemically different materials. Two groups -- including the pioneering MIT group -- are now delivering on that promise by turning twisted graphene into working devices, including superconducting switches like those used in many quantum computers. The studies mark a crucial step for the material, which is already maturing into a basic science tool able to capture and control individual electrons and photons. Now, it is showing that it could one day be the basis of new electronic devices.

A reader writes: While traditional diamonds are formed over billions of years deep in the Earth where extreme pressures and temperatures provide just the right conditions to crystalize carbon, scientists are working on more expedient ways of forging the precious stones. An international team of researchers has succeeded in whittling this process down to mere minutes, demonstrating a new technique where they not only form quickly, but do so at room temperature.

This latest breakthrough was led by scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) and RMIT University, who used what's known as a diamond anvil cell, which is a device used by researchers to generate the extreme pressures needed to create ultra-hard materials. The team applied pressure equal to 640 African elephants on the tip of a ballet shoe, doing so in a way that caused an unexpected reaction among the the carbon atoms in the device. "The twist in the story is how we apply the pressure," says ANU Professor Jodie Bradby. "As well as very high pressures, we allow the carbon to also experience something called 'shear' -- which is like a twisting or sliding force. We think this allows the carbon atoms to move into place and form Lonsdaleite and regular diamond."

These regular diamonds are the type you might find in an engagement ring, while Lonsdaleite diamonds are rarer and found at meteorite impact sites. Using advanced electron microscopy, the team was able to examine the samples in detail, and found that the materials were formed within bands they liken to "rivers" of diamond. The team hopes the technique can enable them to produce meaningful quantities of these artificial diamonds, particularly Lonsdaleite, which is predicted to be 58 percent harder than regular diamonds. "Lonsdaleite has the potential to be used for cutting through ultra-solid materials on mining sites," Bradby says. The research was published in the journal Small, while you can hear from the researchers in this video.

The Arecibo telescope's long and productive life has come to an end. From a report: The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger. "This decision was not an easy one to make," Sean Jones, NSF's assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences, said at a news briefing today. "We understand how much Arecibo means to [the research] community and to Puerto Rico." Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's astronomy division, said at the briefing the agency wants to preserve other instruments at the site, as well as the visitor and outreach center. But they are under threat if the telescope structure collapses. That would bring the 900-ton instrument platform, suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter-wide dish, crashing down. Flailing cables could damage other buildings on the site, as could the three support towers if they fell, too. "There is a serious risk of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse," Gaume said. "A controlled decommissioning gives us the opportunity to preserve valuable assets that the observatory has." Over the next few weeks, engineering firms will develop a plan for a controlled dismantling. It may involve releasing the platform from its cables explosively and letting it fall.

The University of Oxford confirmed that the Covid-19 vaccine it's developing with AstraZeneca produced strong immune responses in older adults in an early study, with key findings from the last phase of tests expected in the coming weeks. From a report: The results, published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal, shed more light on preliminary data released in recent months showing the experimental shot generated an immune response in the elderly, who are at highest risk of severe illness. "This is a very important step, because the big worry with any vaccine is that it doesn't work so well in older people," Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor-in-chief, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The data is "another brick in the house that we're trying to build for this vaccine." Researchers still await late-stage trial results that will show whether the vaccine can meet the high bar set by front-runners Pfizer and Moderna. The Astra-Oxford data readout will come after there have been 53 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the trial, Andrew Pollard, Oxford's chief trial investigator, said at a press briefing.

"A quick analysis of Monday night's Arianespace Vega rocket failure has been root caused to 'a series of human errors,'" writes an anonymous Slashdot reader. STAT reports: In a call with reporters, Roland Lagier, chief technical officer of Arianespace, said the first three stages of the Vega rocket performed normally after liftoff from Kourou, French Guiana, at 8:52 p.m. Eastern Nov. 16. The Avum upper stage then separated and ignited its engine. However, "straightaway after ignition" of the upper stage, he said, the vehicle started to tumble out of control. "This loss of control was permanent, inducing significant tumbling behavior, and then the trajectory started to deviate rapidly from the nominal one, leading to the loss of the mission."

Analysis of the telemetry from the mission, along with data from the production of the vehicle, led them to conclude that cables to two thrust vector control actuators were inverted. Commands intended to go to one actuator went instead to the other, triggering the loss of control. "This was clearly a production and quality issue, a series of human errors, and not a design one," Lagier said.

Researchers with NASA's New Horizons say they've finally been able to determine if space is truly black. The group has posted their work online, and it will soon appear ini the Astrophysical Journal. NPR reports: New Horizons was originally designed to explore Pluto, but after whizzing past the dwarf planet in 2015, the intrepid spacecraft just kept going. It's now more than four billion miles from home -- nearly 50 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is. That's important because it means the spacecraft is far from major sources of light contamination that make it impossible to detect any tiny light signal from the universe itself. Around Earth and the inner solar system, for example, space is filled with dust particles that get lit up by the Sun, creating a diffuse glow over the entire sky. But that dust isn't a problem out where New Horizons is. Plus, out there, the sunlight is much weaker.

To try to detect the faint glow of the universe, researchers went through images taken by the spacecraft's simple telescope and camera and looked for ones that were incredibly boring. Then they processed these images to remove all known sources of visible light. Once they'd subtracted out the light from stars, plus scattered light from the Milky Way and any stray light that might be a result of camera quirks, they were left with light coming in from beyond our own galaxy. They then went a step further still, subtracting out light that they could attribute to all the galaxies thought to be out there. And it turns out, once that was done, there was still plenty of unexplained light.

In fact, the amount of light coming from mysterious sources was about equal to all the light coming in from the known galaxies, says Marc Postman, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. So maybe there are unrecognized galaxies out there, he says, "or some other source of light that we don't yet know what it is." [...] So where does the light come from? Perhaps, he says, there are far more small, faint dwarf galaxies and other faint regions on the outskirts of galaxies that instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope can't detect and so scientists just aren't aware of them. Or, maybe there's more dust out there interfering with the measurements than scientists expected. Or perhaps there's a more exotic explanation -- some unknown phenomenon out in the universe that creates visible light. It's even possible it's something associated with dark matter, a mysterious form of matter that exerts a gravitational pull on visible matter but has never been seen directly.

How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study -- the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination. From a report: Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come. The research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date. "That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years," said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study.

The findings are likely to come as a relief to experts worried that immunity to the virus might be short-lived, and that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control. And the research squares with another recent finding: that survivors of SARS, caused by another coronavirus, still carry certain important immune cells 17 years after recovering. The findings are consistent with encouraging evidence emerging from other labs. Researchers at the University of Washington, led by the immunologist Marion Pepper, had earlier shown that certain "memory" cells that were produced following infection with the coronavirus persist for at least three months in the body. The study has yet to be published and peer-reviewed.

Frequent-flying "super emitters" who represent just 1% of the world's population caused half of aviation's carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study. From a report: Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. Only 11% of the world's population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports. The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis that affected everyone. They said the 50% drop in passenger numbers in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic should be an opportunity to make the aviation industry fairer and more sustainable. This could be done by putting green conditions on the huge bailouts governments were giving the industry, as had happened in France.

New analysis has refuted the claim that dinosaurs were in decline at the time of their extinction. If an asteroid had not hit Earth 66m years ago, dinosaurs might have continued to dominate the planet, according to new research. From a report: A team from the University of Bath and the UK National History Museum has published a study to Royal Society Open Science saying that, contrary to some scientific thinking, dinosaurs were not in a state of decline prior to the mass extinction event. The team collected a set of different dinosaur family trees and used statistical modelling to assess if each of the main dinosaur groups was still able to produce new species at this time. Prior to the asteroid impact during the Late Cretaceous period, dinosaurs were globally widespread and were the dominant form of animal of most terrestrial ecosystems. "Previous studies done by others have used various methods to draw the conclusion that dinosaurs would have died out anyway, as they were in decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period," said first author of the study, Joe Bonsor. "However, we show that if you expand the dataset to include more recent dinosaur family trees and a broader set of dinosaur types, the results don't actually all point to this conclusion -- in fact, only about half of them do." Commenting on the new study, Richard Dawkins tweeted, "An impact as catastrophic as this will happen again. We don't know when. Using existing science, we could develop the technology to detect, intercept, and divert or destroy a large incoming asteroid. No other species could do it. It's our responsibility."

The drug maker Pfizer said on Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine was 95 percent effective and had no serious side effects -- the first set of complete results from a late-stage vaccine trial as Covid-19 cases skyrocket around the globe. From a report: The data showed that the vaccine prevented mild and severe forms of Covid-19, the company said. And it was 94 percent effective in older adults, who are more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19 and who do not respond strongly to some types of vaccines. Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with its partner BioNTech, said the companies planned to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization "within days," raising hopes that a working vaccine could soon become a reality.

The trial results -- less than a year after researchers began working on the vaccine -- shattered all speed records for vaccine development, a process that usually takes years. "The study results mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey to bring forward a vaccine capable of helping to end this devastating pandemic," Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer's chief executive, said in a statement. If the F.D.A. authorizes the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer has said that it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year.

A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has revived an idea shelved by NASA to build a lunar liquid-mirror telescope on the moon to study the first stars in the universe. "The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal," reports Phys.Org. From the report: These first stars formed about 13 billion years ago. They are unique, born out of a mix of hydrogen and helium gasses, and likely tens or 100 times larger than the Sun. New calculations by Schauer show that a previously proposed facility, a liquid mirror telescope that would operate from the surface of the Moon, could study these stars. Proposed in 2008 by a team led by Roger Angel of The University of Arizona, this facility was called the Lunar Liquid-Mirror Telescope (LLMT). NASA had done an analysis on this proposed facility a decade ago, but decided not to pursue the project. According to Niv Drory, a senior research scientist with UT Austin's McDonald Observatory, the supporting science on the earliest stars did not exist at that point. "This telescope is perfect for that problem," he said.

The proposed lunar liquid-mirror telescope, which Schauer has nicknamed the "Ultimately Large Telescope," would have a mirror 100 meters in diameter. It would operate autonomously from the lunar surface, receiving power from a solar power collection station on the Moon, and relaying data to satellite in lunar orbit. Rather than coated glass, the telescope's mirror would be made of liquid, as it's lighter, and thus cheaper, to transport to the Moon. The telescope's mirror would be a spinning vat of liquid, topped by a metallic -- and thus reflective -- liquid. (Previous liquid mirror telescopes have used mercury.) The vat would spin continuously, to keep the surface of the liquid in the correct paraboloid shape to work as a mirror. The telescope would be stationary, situated inside a crater at the Moon's north or south pole. To study the first stars, it would stare at the same patch of sky continuously, to collect as much light from them as possible. The team is proposing that the astronomical community revisit the shelved plan for a lunar liquid-mirror telescope, as a way to study these first stars in the universe.

The capacity of the EU's offshore windfarms in the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea will be increased by 250% under a draft plan drawn up by the European commission. The Guardian reports: The total energy generating capacity in Europe's seas stands at 23 gigawatts (GW), from 5,047 grid-connected wind turbines across 12 countries, including the UK. Under a European commission strategy, the 27 EU member states alone would achieve a capacity of 60GW by 2030 and 300GW by 2050, with Germany set to hugely increase its investment in the sector.

According to the leaked paper, the commission "estimates that an installed capacity of 300GW of offshore wind [and around 60GW of ocean energies] by 2050 would be needed in the integrated, greener and climate neutral energy system of 2050." The commission writes: "This is feasible for a sector where Europe has gained unrivalled technological, scientific and industrial experience and where strong capacity exists already across the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping and installation. Nonetheless, it is a very challenging horizon. It means that offshore renewable energy capacity should be multiplied by 25 times by 2050. The investment needed is estimated up to 789 billion pounds."

The UK, which left the EU in January, has the largest amount of offshore wind capacity in Europe, with 45% of all installations. Germany is second with 34%, followed by Denmark (8%), Belgium (7%) and the Netherlands (5%). Over the summer, the German government said it would also increase its current 7.5GW of capacity to 20GW by 2030, with a target of 40GW by 2040. But the European commission has called for a more "resolute" approach across the bloc. According to a leak of the strategy obtained by the Euractiv news website, the "very challenging" target for new windfarms would come with an expected price tag of 789 billion pounds, creating 62,000 jobs in the offshore wind industry.

hey! writes: Pfizer's BNT162b2 vaccine must be stored at a constant -100F/-70C temperature, presenting a logistical nightmare for hospitals, which don't normally have freezers that go that low. This is because it is an mRNA vaccine, and mRNA is unstable unless stored at extremely low temperatures. Pfizer will distribute doses in dry-ice packed "suitcase" shipping containers containing 1,000-5000 doses, but these cases only work for ten days, during which they may be opened only twice a day, each time for less than three minutes. This will pose a special challenge for rural hospitals, who can't afford specialized freezers; they'll be forced to distribute hundreds of doses a day from the dry ice packed shipping crates to avoid their stocks going bad. Rural vaccination is further complicated by the fact that the vaccine must be given in two doses spaced three weeks apart.

The Moderna MRNA-1273 vaccine candidate is also an mRNA vaccine, but can be stored at -4F/-20C. This is because Moderna has experience in stabilizing mRNA. MRNA-1273 can be stored in a regular hospital freezer, making it a better candidate for smaller hospitals and clinics, although nationwide distribution in the volumes of doses needed is still going to take an unprecedented effort. If both vaccines are approved at the same time, we'll likely see both rolled out in parallel, with smaller hospitals and clinics getting the Moderna vaccine and higher volume facilities getting the Pfizer vaccine.

Late Monday night, a European rocket carrying two satellites failed during flight, leading to the loss of the payloads on board. It was the second major failure of this particular type of rocket within the last two years. From a report: The rocket that failed is called Vega, one of the primary rockets developed by European launch provider Arianespace. The vehicle took off last night from Europe's primary spaceport in French Guiana. On board the rocket was a Spanish Earth-imaging satellite called SEOSat-Ingenio, which would have been operated by the European Space Agency, and another imaging satellite from France called TARANIS. At about eight minutes into the flight, the engine on Vega's upper stage ignited. Right after that occurred, the rocket started to veer off course, and its altitude began dropping. After noticing the deviation, Arianespace tried to establish a signal with the rocket but ultimately couldn't connect, indicating that Vega had fallen out of orbit, destroying the two payloads on board. After looking over the data, the company believes that there was an issue with the system that activates the upper stage engine.

Amazon is making its biggest push into the healthcare industry yet with the launch today of Amazon Pharmacy: a new service offering home delivery for prescription medication. From a report: Customers can sign up to the new store by creating a "secure pharmacy profile," with the option of adding information about their health insurance, any outstanding medical issues like allergies, and any regular prescriptions. The store will offer a range of "generic and brand-name drugs," reports CNBC, including "commonly prescribed drugs like insulin, triamcinolone steroid creams, metformin for controlling blood sugar, and sumatriptan for migraines." Notably, the pharmacy will not sell Schedule II medications, which includes many common opioids like Oxycontin. As usual for Amazon, Prime members will get a number of advantages over regular customers. These perks include free, two-day delivery on orders and discounts on medication. Amazon claims Prime members will be able to save "up to 80 percent off generic and 40 percent off brand name medications when paying without insurance." Prime members will also be able to save on medication bought in person from over 50,000 pharmacies across the US, including Rite Aid, CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens.

Four astronauts aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule "Resilience" have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above the Earth, where they will stay until spring. From a report: The capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, chasing the ISS for 27 hours before matching its altitude and speed for an orbital dock. The flight marks only the second crewed flight for Crew Dragon, which became the first commercial vehicle to put humans in orbit when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched in May. "SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job, right down the center," commander Hopkins radioed to mission control after the docking. "SpaceX and NASA, congratulations." The flight marks another milestone for SpaceX flying its first fully operational mission. After the May launch, designated "Demo-2" with Hurley and Behnken, NASA certified the capsule for operational use in its Commercial Crew program. The Resilience crew includes three NASA astronauts and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who were mostly passengers during the flight of Crew Dragon, which generally flies without human input and docks to the ISS autonomously.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought. The Italian researchers' findings, published by the INT's scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.

A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled "Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy." It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.

"This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the virus," Apolone said. "It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but only to surge again," he added. Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than thought.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 1 billion people could be immunized against coronavirus by the end of next year with shots from the first two companies to reveal positive results, after the latest vaccine was shown to be nearly 95% effective in trials. With the US's top infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, hailing "the light at the end of the tunnel", the US biotech firm Moderna announced impressive results for its mRNA vaccine on Monday, a week after interim results for a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed 90% effectiveness.

The inclusion of high-risk and elderly people in the Moderna trial suggested the vaccine would protect those most vulnerable to the disease, said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who described the results as "tremendously exciting." Though it is more expensive, Moderna's vaccine could potentially provide a major advantage over Pfizer's, which requires ultracold freezing between -70C (-94F) and -80C from production facility to patient. Moderna said it had improved the shelf life and stability, meaning its vaccine can be stored for six months at -20C for shipping and long-term storage, and at standard refrigeration temperatures of 2C to 8C for 30 days. Moderna said it could potentially manufacture 1bn doses by the end of 2021, adding to a further 1.3bn from Pfizer/BioNTech in the same timeframe. Both vaccines require two doses and are due to be assessed by regulators in coming weeks. Moderna is planning to apply to the FDA for emergency use authorization in the coming weeks. "The biotech company said it would have 20 million doses ready to ship in the U.S. before the end of 2020 and hoped to manufacture 500 million to 1 billion doses globally next year," reports The Guardian. It's not expected to be available outside the U.S. until next year.