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A new way to plan trajectories to asteroids

There are tens of thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that represent some of the most easily accessible resources in the solar system. Planning trajectories to rendezvous with these miniature worlds is notoriously difficult, and requires a massive amount of computational power to calculate. But a new paper from astrodynamicist Alessandro Beolchi of Khalifa University of Science and Technology and his co-authors offers a much less computationally intensive way to find these trajectories, and has the added bonus of finding much less energy-intensive paths to boot.

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LASD arrests electric dirt bike rider who rammed motorcycle deputy head-on during pursuit

The suspect is accused of speeding more than 50 mph, running multiple red lights and knocking an LASD deputy off a motorcycle

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New lithium-plasma engine passes key Mars propulsion test

You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’re told the Odyssey spacecraft designed to take you there will be the smoothest ride you’ll ever take. It features a newly christened electric propulsion engine which was in the late stages of testing during the first three missions. The mission starts and the spacecraft travels at a crawl, and you wonder if it’s broken. A week goes by and you’re now traveling at more than 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) per hour, and your mind is blown as to how fast you’re going, how quickly that happened, and that this mission might be more awesome than you thought.

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Videos show suspect ‘casing’ hotel before D.C. gala attack, shooting Secret Service officer at checkpoint

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, stated that the videos show no evidence that the officer was struck by friendly fire

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Calif. police chief fires 3 officers with prior military service over disabled veteran license plates

The former Riverside Police officers have filed a lawsuit alleging the department discriminated against them based on their disabled veteran status

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Sentinel-1D goes live: A milestone for Europe’s radar mission

The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite, launched last November, is now fully operational after successfully completing its critical in-orbit commissioning phase. With all four Sentinel-1 satellites having now been deployed, this achievement marks a major milestone for this flagship radar mission—a journey that began more than a decade ago and that has helped pave the way for the future of Earth observation.

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Explosive evaporation unlocks new possibilities in 3D printing and chemical analysis

Water droplets might seem simple at first. But when nearing evaporation, a desperate power struggle of competing physical forces can emerge, with explosive effects. In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publication, researchers have taken a closer look at the physics of charged water droplets on frictionless surfaces, observing spontaneous jets of microdroplet emissions. Their insights may open new opportunities in nanoscale fabrication and electrospray ionization.

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DESI-HVS1 is an old hypervelocity star ejected from the galactic center, observations suggest

Chinese astronomers report the discovery of DESI-HVS1, which may be an old metal-poor hypervelocity star of galactic center origin. The finding, based on the data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and ESA’s Gaia satellite, was detailed in a research paper published April 23 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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Hunting the elusive Eta Aquariid meteors

Early May is a good time to watch for a powerful yet often elusive meteor shower, the annual Eta Aquariids. They’re a prolific, yet often elusive for northern hemisphere observers. If skies are clear, watch for a strong annual meteor shower that’s attained an almost mythical status: the May Eta Aquariids.

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Under crushing hypergravity, fruit flies adapt—and recover

Expose an animal to extreme physical stress, and the expectation is simple: It will break down. But when UC Riverside scientists subjected fruit flies to forces many times stronger than Earth’s gravity—a condition called hypergravity—the insects did something unexpected. They survived. They even mated and reproduced. Their movements and behaviors changed dramatically and then, over time, they recovered.

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Physicists achieve first-ever ‘quadsqueezing’ quantum interaction

Researchers at the University of Oxford have demonstrated a new type of quantum interaction using a single trapped ion. By creating and controlling increasingly complex forms of “squeezing” – including a fourth-order effect known as quadsqueezing – the team has, for the first time, made previously unreachable quantum effects experimentally accessible.

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The O’Hare Airport UFO Sighting of 2006: Aviation Professionals Witness a Disc Over America’s Busiest Airport

On November 7, 2006, a silent metallic disc hovered over Gate C17 at O’Hare International Airport, witnessed by United Airlines pilots and ground crew. When it shot upward, it punched a clean hole through the clouds. The FAA tried to bury it — until the Chicago Tribune forced it out.

The post The O’Hare Airport UFO Sighting of 2006: Aviation Professionals Witness a Disc Over America’s Busiest Airport appeared first on Infinity Explorers.

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A better way to search for extraterrestrial intelligence

When you’re looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it helps to know what you’re looking for and to go about it in the most efficient way. But work so far has generally not done so, writes Benjamin Zuckerman, an astrophysicist and emeritus professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

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Physicists have measured ‘negative time’ in the lab

As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island. We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, “It was nothing. In fact, it was less than nothing. Negative five years I dwelt with Calypso. How else could I have arrived home after only ten years? If you don’t believe me, ask her.”

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How do close binary stars form?

Our sun is a bit of an outlier in the general stellar population. We typically think of stars as being solitary wanderers throughout the galaxy. But roughly half of sun-like stars are locked in with more than one companion star. If there are two, it’s known as a “binary” system, but in many cases there are even more stars all collectively tied together by gravity.

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