By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth. Named after the first American to orbit Earth , the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, soaring from the same pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century ago. Years in the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an an experimental platform designed to host satellites or release them into their proper orbits. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Pho...
In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead to a messy end. But it turns out the scientific answer is a bit more interesting. On the one hand, it’s clear that a large enough black hole could kill you. On the other hand, a black hole with the mass of a single hydrogen atom is clearly too small to be noticed. The real question is the critical mass. At what minimum size would a black hole become deadly? That’s the focus of a new paper on the arXiv . The study begins with primordial black holes. These are theoretical bodies that may have formed in the earliest moments of the Universe and would be much smaller than stellar-mass black holes. Anywhere from atom-massed to a mass several times that of Earth. Although astronome...
To try to stay ahead of any future pandemics, scientists at Scripps Research in La Jolla are taking a deeper look into the proteins that coronaviruses depend on to survive. And with their findings, they hope to develop next-generation treatments and adjust to potential mutations. Related Articles How to get a COVID-19 shot and ensure it’s covered by your insurance Major California health insurers side with Newsom and medical groups to cover COVID shots West Coast states issue joint vaccine recommendations ahead of CDC advisers meeting COVID-19: Bay Area physicians go ‘full court press’ on vaccine access Kennedy’s vaccine committee plans to vote on COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox shots A study published in June in the scientific journal PLOS Biology uncovered 32 proteins “essential for the earliest stage of infection” of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, as well as cellular pathways that are exploited and the 27 proteins the virus uses later. When resea...
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