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SpaceX successfully launches 60 more Starlink satellites.

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Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), working in combination with ground transceivers. SpaceX also plans to sell some of the satellites for military, scientific, or exploratory purposes. The SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington houses the Starlink research, development, manufacturing, and on-orbit control operations. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be about US$10 billion. SpaceX on Sunday launched another batch of 60 of its internet-beaming Starlink satellites, growing its constellation even further. That makes 835 Starlink satellites launched thus far, though not all of those are operational (some were test satellites that were intentionally decommissioned). The launch, from Florida’s Kennedy
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How Do Quantum Computers Work?

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WHAT IS QUANTUM COMPUTING? This branch of computer science is based on the principles of the superposition of matter and quantum entanglement and uses a different computation method from the traditional one. In theory, it would be able to store many more states per unit of information and operate with much more efficient algorithms at the numerical level, such as Shor's or quantum annealing. This new generation of supercomputers uses knowledge of quantum mechanics — the area of physics that studies atomic and subatomic particles — to overcome the limitations of classic computing. Although in practice, quantum computing faces evident problems regarding scalability and incoherence, it makes it possible to perform multiple simultaneous operations and eliminates the tunnel effect that limits current nanometric scale programming. Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object's state before it is measured - instead of just 1s or 0s - which means they ha
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Did we just find life on Venus ?

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After the moon, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky, gleaming like a tiny diamond in the darkness. The planet is so radiant because of its proximity to Earth, but also because it reflects most of the light that falls across its atmosphere, more than any other world in the solar system.   Traces of a rare molecule known as phosphine have been found in the hellish, heavily acidic atmosphere of Venus, astronomers announced Monday — providing a tantalizing clue about the possibility of life. Phosphine molecules found on Earth are primarily a result of human industry or the actions of microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. “As crazy as it might sound, our most plausible explanation is life,” Clara Sousa-Silva, a molecular astrophysicist at MIT and one of the authors of the new study, told me. Before everyone starts screaming, I need to emphasize that the discovery of phosphine molecules in Venus’s atmosphere does not mean that scientists have found proof of alien life.
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Mars 2020 Mission, Perseverance Rover Launch on July 30.

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Illustration depicting NASA's Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars (Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA's next Mars rover just cleared a big hurdle on the path toward its planned launch next week.The $2.7 billion Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission passed its flight readiness review (FRR) Wednesday (July 22), keeping the mission on track to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on July 30, NASA officials announced. With Perseverance , its most complex Mars rover to date, NASA is opening a new chapter in the search for traces of ancient life on Mars.The launch of the new rover is scheduled to take place on 30 July 2020 at 13:50 CEST [11:50 UTC/7:50 am US EDT] on board an Atlas V launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Then, on 18 February 2021, it will land in Mars' Jezero crater.The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is represented on the Mars 2020 mission science team and is involved in
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Google invests $4.5 billion in India's Reliance Jio Platform.

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Google  has become the latest high-profile firm to back India’s Reliance Jio  Platforms. The search giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Wednesday. The Alphabet-owned search engine has agreed to pay $4.5bn (£3.6bn) for a 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms.Reliance's billionaire owner Mukesh Ambani says the two companies will develop phones for 4G and 5G networks.Google joins a list of new investors in Jio that includes Facebook, Intel and Qualcomm."Google has empowered millions of Indians to access helpful information and, like Jio, is a force for change and innovation," Mr Ambani said in a statement to shareholders. For Google, this is the “first and biggest investment” from the recently announced $10-billion India fund, CEO Sundar Pichai said. The two companies will jointly develop an operating system for an entry-level smartphone that will support 5G and target India’s 350 milli
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Netflix is testing a new low-cost subscription tier in India.

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Netflix  is testing a new low-cost subscription tier in India as the on-demand video streaming service looks to court more subscribers in Asia’s third-largest economy. The news about the new subscription plan being tested in India was first reported by AndroidPure, which revealed that Netflix has started rolling out a 'Mobile+' plan in India, priced at Rs 349. The plan reportedly allows HD streaming and supports viewing across mobile, tablet, and computer screens. Streaming on TV, however, is not supported.Netflix is testing a new Rs 349 low-cost subscription plan in India: All you need to know Netflix confirmed the news in an emailed statement:“We launched the mobile plan in India to make it easier for anyone with a smartphone to enjoy Netflix. We want to see if members like the added choice this offer brings. We’ll only roll it out long-term if they do." Netflix says that currently it is only testing the plan in India and will only roll out the plan to all after a 'l
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SpaceX and NASA target first operational astronaut crew launch for late September

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  Image Credits:  SpaceX SpaceX   and NASA are aiming to launch the first official operational mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon human-rated spacecraft sometime in September, the agency revealed via a media update this week. The launch had been tracking towards an August date, but the updated timeframe indicates “late September,” allowing time for the completion of the current Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission which will see astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley return to Earth using the SpaceX  spacecraft potentially as early as August 1. The Demo-2 mission, while it carried actual astronauts to the International Space Station, is actually the final step in the test and development phase of human-rating Crew Dragon and Falcon  9, meaning that they’ll then be qualified for regular service transporting astronauts in the eyes of NASA. Crew-1 is the first operational mission, meaning the first considered a standard part of SpaceX’s contract to provide regular astronaut transportation. SpaceX s
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Time dilation and Length contraction.

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Time Dilation Definition :  Time dilation is the lengthening of the time interval between two events for an observer in an inertial frame that is moving with respect to the rest frame of the events (in which the events occur at the same location). A closely related phenomenon predicted by special relativity is the so-called twin paradox. Suppose one of two twins carrying a clock departs on a rocket ship from the other twin, an inertial observer, at a certain time, and they rejoin at a later time. In accordance with the time-dilation effect, the elapsed time on the clock of the twin on the rocket ship will be smaller than that of the inertial observer twin—i.e., the non-inertial twin will have aged less than the inertial observer twin when they rejoin. The time-dilation effect predicted by special relativity has been accurately confirmed by observations of the increased lifetime of unstable elementary particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. The clock paradox effect also has be
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Gravitational waves - Ripples in Spacetime !

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What are Gravitational Waves? Gravitational waves are 'ripples' in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. Einstein's mathematics showed that massive accelerating objects (such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) would disrupt space-time in such a way that 'waves' of undulating space-time would propagate in all directions away from the source. These cosmic ripples would travel at the speed of light, carrying with them information about their origins, as well as clues to the nature of gravity itself. The strongest gravitational waves are produced by cataclysmic events such as colliding black holes, supernovae, and colliding neutron stars. Other waves are predicted to be caused by the rotation of neutron stars that are not perfect spheres, and possibly even the remnants of gravitational radiation cr
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Light - is It a Wave or a Particle? Wave–particle duality!

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Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a wave. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects. Can we accurately describe light as exclusively a wave or just a particle? Are the two mutually exclusive? In this third part of his series on light and color, Colm Kelleher discusses wave-particle duality and its relationship to how we see light and, therefore, color. You look down and see a yellow pencil lying on your desk. Your eyes, and then your brain, are collecting all sorts of information about the pencil: its size, color, shape, distance, and more.  But, how exactly does this happen? The ancient Greeks were the first to think more or less scientifically about what light is and how vision works. Some Greek philosophers, including Plato and Pythagoras, thought that light originated in ou
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