Monthly Archives: January 2024

Top science fiction reads released in January 2024

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Alastair Reynolds and Esmee Zikiemi-Pearson are two authors who set their novels in space in January this year.

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There won’t be a lot of new science fiction this January, but there are some gems to look forward to, including a new release from science fiction guru Alastair Reynolds, who wrote our masterpiece. new scientist This year’s Christmas short story is Lottie and the river. I’m also really looking forward to Esmee Zikiemi-Pearson’s debut feature, a space opera with epic ambitions, and Alice McIlroy’s creepy psychological thriller. glass woman, a scientist is implanted with technology that results in him losing his memory. If I have the courage, I will read Toro Toro Tsamase’s book. City of wombs. If this isn’t enough and you’re looking for more tips for the year ahead, be sure to check out science fiction columnist Sally Addy’s tips for reading in 2024.

machine vendetta Written by Alastair Reynolds. I’ll take a new Alastair Reynolds any day. This latest information is in him Governor Dreyfus The series sees Dreyfus investigate the death of Invar Tench, a police officer who worked to maintain democracy in the 10,000 city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone.

principle of the moment Written by Esme Jikiemi Pearson. This space opera is Zikiemi-Pearson’s first novel and follows Obi, who time-travels from the planet Garrahan in 6066, where humans are indentured laborers for the Emperor’s war machine, to London in 1812, where he meets a young girl. , sounds great. From the British Museum at another time. It’s said to be for fans of Becky Chambers, VE Schwab, and NK Jemisin, but all are must-reads for me. Seems like the perfect antidote to the January blues.

glass woman Written by Alice McIlroy.This is a psychological thriller like “BThere’s no mirror meet before going to bed as Severance pay: The story follows Iris, a scientist who volunteers to become a test subject for an experimental treatment that inserts technology into her brain. However, she no longer has her memory and wonders why she volunteered for the treatment in the first place. I don’t know if I did it or even what it is. It’s eerily awesome, and I’m sure I’ll be spending my commute and nights in January with it.

In Alice McIlroy’s The Glass Girl, strange technology is implanted in the brain of a scientist.

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city of womb Written by Toro Toro Tsamaase.The Handmaid’s Tale meet Get out? That’s quite a tall order, but this African-futuristic horror novel looks like it’ll be both fun and scary.? A cruel surveillance regime is in place, with Nella trapped in her loveless marriage, her every move monitored by microchip by her police officer husband. When she buries the body of a car accident, the ghosts of the victims begin to haunt her loved ones. Our science fiction columnist Sally Addy suggests this as something to be aware of.

13 Ways to Defeat Lulabel Rock Written by Maud Wolfe. This looks like a lot of fun. Set in the near future, celebrities can create clones of themselves (known as “portraits”) to take on various tasks. We are following 13 stories.th A copy of the actor Lurabel Rock, who is trying to eliminate his predecessor.

Ava Anna Ada Written by Ali Miller. This novel is set in the hot near future and depicts the events of a week in which Anna and Eva become trapped in their own world and reconsider who they really are. Ian Rankin explains it this way:[Philip K.] Dick’s They are This novel depicts the disintegration of a family in the near future and features early Ian Banks and Ian McEwan. The novel is “both frightening and fascinating” in every way.

clover Written by Karen Langston. Ten years after the death of her partner Neve, Ink finds that he has no concept of her past and can only think of her in the present tense. He seems to be in a new “crisis of memory loss”. But is this due to a broken code in Klova, an artificial language that allows anyone to think and speak?

necropolis alpha Written by Chris M. Arnone. This piece of cyberpunk science fiction is a sequel to Arnone’s novel. hermes protocol and follows a cybernetically enhanced “Intel operative” as he attempts to steal data from an evangelical preacher’s office.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The Hera mission to revisit an asteroid destroyed by NASA is scheduled for 2024

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Hera will soon head to the asteroid Dimorphos with CubeSats

ESA/Science Directorate

The European Space Agency (ESA) is sending a mission to find out what happened to an asteroid that NASA collided with in 2022. The Hera mission, scheduled to launch in October, will head to the asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA collided with during the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). Mission.

The purpose of DART was to see if crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid would be a good way to protect Earth if one were to come our way.we know the impact Change the trajectory of Dimorphos The collisions around parent asteroid Didymos shorten each orbit by about 33 minutes, but details are not known about exactly how the collisions affected the asteroid or what happened next. do not have.

“To determine whether the impact left a crater or completely changed the shape of the asteroid, another spacecraft will need to return to the crime scene, because with the current data, either scenario is possible. That's why,” says Hera Mission Director. patrick michel At the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France. “Hera is a detective who will thoroughly investigate the effects.”

The mission consists of a main spacecraft that will fly up to 1 kilometer to Dimorphos, and two smaller cube-shaped satellites that are intended to land on the surface and see it up close. This research will not only be crucial for simulating potentially dangerous asteroids and how to deflect them in the future, but will also provide important scientific insights.

“Collisions have played an important role in the entire history of the solar system. We started the growth of planets through collisions, and all solid surfaces are full of impact craters,” Michel says. “If we're going to build a complete model of the solar system's collision history, we need to understand how these collisions work.” And it helps clarify how those conflicts work for us.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The Hubble Telescope uncovers countless faraway galaxies in the constellation Cetus

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New infrared images taken with wide field camera 3 (WFC3) onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows dozens of galaxies in the constellation Cetus, including SDSS J020941.27+001558.4, SDSS J020941.23+001600.7, and HerS J020941.1+001557. Masu.

This Hubble image shows a variety of distant galaxies in the constellation Cetus. Most galaxies are very small, but there are also some larger galaxies and some stars that can be seen in detail. At its center is an elliptical galaxy with a bright nucleus and a wide disk. A reddish, distorted ring of light surrounds its center, thicker on one side. Small galaxies intersect the rings as bright spots. Image credits: NASA / ESA / Hubble / H. Nayyeri / L. Marchetti / J. Lowenthal.

“What are we looking at when we study this image?” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.

“A distant galaxy 19.5 billion light-years away from Earth? Or a much closer (relatively) tiny glowing red galaxy 2.7 billion light-years away? Or a third galaxy that appears to be much closer to the second galaxy? Is not it?”

“The answer, perhaps confusingly, is that we are considering all three.”

“More precisely, we see light emitted from all of these galaxies, even though the farthest galaxy from Earth is directly behind the first.”

“In fact, it's that very alignment that makes the particular visuals of this image possible.”

“The bright spot in the center of this image is one of our closest galaxies, known by a long (but informative) name. SDSS J020941.27+001558.4,” they said.

“Another bright spot above it appears to be intersected by a curved crescent of light, SDSS J020941.23+001600.7, is the second closest galaxy. ”

“And finally, that curved crescent of light itself is 'lensed' light from a very distant galaxy. Girlfriend J020941.1+001557”

Her J020941.1+001557 light was bent by the gravity of the foreground galaxy and expanded into a circular shape called an Einstein ring.

“Einstein rings occur when light from a very distant object bends around a large intermediate object,” the astronomers said.

“This is possible because the fabric of the universe itself, spacetime, is bent by mass, and so is light traveling through spacetime.”

“This is too subtle to observe at a local level, but when dealing with the curvature of light on large astronomical scales, for example when light emitted from a galaxy bends around another galaxy or galaxy cluster, , may become clearly observable.”

“When the lensed object and the lensed object are aligned in such a way, the result is a unique Einstein ring shape, with a complete or partial ring around the lensed object, depending on the precision of the alignment. A circle of light appears.

“This partial Einstein ring is of particular interest because it was identified thanks to a citizen science project. space warp — means that the public made the discovery of this object possible. ”

Source: www.sci.news

Extreme Temperature Record from 2023 to be Surpassed in 2024

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The August drought in Villanueva, Spain was one of the most common extreme weather events in 2023.

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Last year was the hottest year on record, but 2023 is unlikely to retain that dubious honor for long. In addition to warming caused by greenhouse gases, 2024 is expected to be even hotter due to the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. “We've never had an El Niño of this magnitude against a backdrop of global warming,” he says. adam scaife At the UK National Met Office…

Source: www.newscientist.com

What can we expect in 2024 from moon missions to COP29?

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As we end 2023, what does 2024 have in store for us? As a wise person new scientist As our readers know, the division of time into years is fairly arbitrary, and only tells us that the Earth has gone around the sun once (yes, I get it. 0.256363004 days is fine. (No, please pipe up in the back). So many of this year's big topics, such as the rise of artificial intelligence and the growing dangers of climate change, will remain big topics next year.

But we can't help but give new meaning to the new year.

Source: www.newscientist.com

The Most Anticipated Scientific Breakthroughs of 2024 |BBC Science Focus Magazine

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If 2023 is any indication, 2024 is poised to be a year of breakthroughs across all areas of science. From cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence to revolutionary discoveries in health and space exploration, here’s a look at what to expect in science in 2024.

Things are looking up: Space in 2024

If all goes well, humans will return to the moon for the first time in 50 years in 2024. NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch in late 2024 and will carry a crew of four, including the first woman and person of color to participate in a moon mission.

Additionally, NASA’s Plankton, Aerosols, Clouds, and Ocean Ecosystems (PACE) satellite mission is scheduled to launch early this year. It aims to collect data that will help scientists measure the health of Earth’s oceans.

The long-delayed debut of ESA’s Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket is scheduled for mid-2024. And in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper will begin a journey to one of Jupiter’s icy moons to investigate the possibility of life.

Prior to that, the Jupiter Ice Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft, launched by ESA in 2023 on a similar mission, is scheduled to perform its first Moon-Earth flyby a few months earlier, in August of this year.

Meanwhile, for those of us stuck on Earth, a total solar eclipse will hit Mexico, Canada, and the United States on April 8th, making it the last one to hit the continental United States until 2044.

This year also marks the bisection of Halley’s Comet’s 76-year orbit. This means that Halley’s Comet will reach its furthest point from Earth before beginning its return journey.

Artemis II (LR) Crew member and pilot of American astronaut Victor Glover. Reed Wiseman, Commander. Christina Hammock Koch, Mission Specialist. Canadian astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (rear) poses with the Artemis II crew module. – Photo credit: Getty

New frontiers in health and medicine

Following the attention given to the weight-loss drug semaglutide in 2023, a phase 3 trial of a similar anti-diabetic drug, tirzepatide (Mounjaro), is expected to yield results towards the end of 2024.

Advances in CRISPR therapy are also expected after the gene editing tool was approved in the UK in November 2023 for the treatment of sickle cell disease and the blood disease beta-thalassemia. It is then expected to be approved in the United States by March 2024.

Transplant medicine also appears to be reaching new heights. In fact, biotech company EGenesis suggested earlier this year that gene-edited pig organs could be donated to human babies in need of transplants.

We also need to see how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve cancer diagnosis, test the effectiveness of new cancer treatments and drug combinations, and see the results of clinical trials of vaccines against HIV and malaria. be.

technology outlook

There has been a lot of speculation about OpenAI’s next project, and although nothing has been officially announced, an update to its Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) model is expected.

Generative AI will continue to find new applications in research and everyday life. The future technology for VR and gaming is shaping up to be interesting as tech giants pour resources into mixed reality.

This year, advances in fundamental areas of human life, from medicine to infrastructure, will be matched and enhanced by breakthroughs in robotics, smart materials, and eco-materials.

We expect more advanced robots that can perform microscopic operations inside the body, buildings that react to changing weather conditions, improved solar cells, and more. Some of these may be created with his 4D printer, which uses smart materials to create objects that can change shape.

Science in 2024: Culture

science fiction glasses

Movies in 2024 will be dominated by book adaptations, reboots, and sequels. alien to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. But what really caught our eye is the sequel.

inside out 2 We are committed to tackling the mental health of teenagers, and our first work explored the minds of children. We also return to your question about extraterrestrial terraforming. Dune: Part 2.

Inside Head 2: Fear, Sadness, Anger, Joy, Disgust, Anxiety take on new challenges. – Photo credit: Alamy

game changer

AI will greatly enhance camera operations at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Facial recognition is prohibited, but AI surveillance can help detect abandoned items and suspicious activity in large groups.

artificial politics

In 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned the U.S. Congress about the risks AI poses to politics, but amid a rise in political deepfakes, there are growing concerns about generative AI’s ability to mislead. Concerns are growing. Still, several important elections are scheduled to take place in 2024, including the US presidential election.

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com