Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 24

Nice. 🙂

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 24

Which one?

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 22

Wow, can S30 capture this with this much detail?

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 22

What do you prefer?
S30 or S50

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 22

The Milky Way Beyond Earth's Horizon.🔭

International Space Station

This celestial image captured by NASA astronaut Don Pettit using a camera with low light and long duration settings pointed out a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft shows the Milky Way beyond Earth's horizon crowned by an atmospheric glow. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are also distinguishable as the International Space Station orbited 257 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

New Scientist @newscientist.com · Feb 21

Researchers at Microsoft say they have created so-called topological qubits, which would be exceptionally resistant to errors, but their claim has been met with scepticism.

Microsoft has a new quantum computer - but does it actually work?

Researchers at Microsoft say they have created so-called topological qubits, which would be exceptionally resistant to errors, but their claim has been met with scepticism

www.newscientist.com

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 21

That's good news.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · Feb 20

Yay! The asteroid 2024 YR4 appears to be even more unlikely to hit us. The y-axis is the time of closest approach, and x is when an estimate of its TCA was made. As of 2/20, the asteroid should pass us at 09:00 ±2ish hours, missing Earth (it has to pass us at 14:00 to hit).

Ned Wright @mapping3k.bsky.social · Feb 20

Update 2/20/25: the uncertainty has dropped by a factor of 3.7 and the estimated time of closest approach has bounced around but stayed away from the yellow zone, so it is now ~2.5 standard deviations away from impact. The probability of impact should drop significantly.

time of closest approach on the y-axis vs date of estimate on the x-axis. If the time of closest approach ends up in the yellow zone there will be an impact.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

Nature @nature.com · Feb 20

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl shows no signs of a rare genetic disorder, after becoming the first person to be treated for the motor-neuron condition while in the womb.

https://go.nature.com/41a7Zzj

Rare genetic disorder treated in womb for the first time

The child, who is now almost three years old, shows no signs of the often fatal motor neuron disease.

go.nature.com

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 20

That's not true. The Taurus Molecular Cloud is 140 parsecs away (about 430 light-years), not 140 light-years. So Rho Ophiuchi is indeed the closest star-forming region to Earth.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 20

Can't believe it's been almost two years since the Webb Space Telescope captured this, it feels like it was just yesterday.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 20

Wow, this is a great news.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

David Blanchflower BSc @davidbflower.bsky.social · Feb 19

First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's. 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thutmose II: First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's

It is the first royal tomb to be found since King Tutankhaman's over a century ago.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

European Space Agency @esa.int · Feb 20

🌍🛰️ Almost 40% of glaciers in Central Europe were lost between 2000 and 2023.

A new study, using data from various satellite observations -including our CryoSat mission- reveals alarming insights about the declining rate of glaciers.

Read the full study🔗 esa.int/Applications...

Glaciers in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska. This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 6 October 2017, shows the melting Scott (left), Sheridan (middle) and Childs (right) glaciers feeding lakes and rivers in their forefields.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 20

Now it has increased to 3.1%

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 20

🌌

Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · Feb 20

The advances in astronomy during my lifetime have been spectacular.

Left: Image of galaxy pair Arp 107 taken the year I was born, using the Palomar 200" (the world's most powerful telescope at the time).

Right: Image of Arp 107 taken last year by JWST. 🧪🔭

ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/A...

Halton Arp's image of Arp 107, a pair of interacting galaxies, taken in 1966 using the 200" telescope on Mt Palomar.

Image of Arp 107, a pair of interacting galaxies, taken in 2024 using JWST. The infrared image shows details that are completely invisible in Halton Arp's photograph.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 19

The Manicouagan Crater from Space.🔭

The Manicouagan Crater Quebec, Canada.

International Space Station

An UltraFex solar array, one of two cymbal-shaped solar arrays on the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter, is pictured in the foreground as the International Space Station orbited 261 miles above the 214 million-year-old Manicouagan crater in Quebec, Canada.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

Neil deGrasse Tyson @neildegrassetyson.com · Feb 15

At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years.

Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin’.

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Reposted by Zaid Mir

David Blanchflower BSc @davidbflower.bsky.social · Feb 15

Next month will see two eclipses:

14th March- Partial Lunar Eclipse.
29th March- Partial Solar Eclipse.

Visible from the UK and the rest of Europe.
🔭 🧪 #astrophotography

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 14

Two weeks ago.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 14

Happy Pale Blue Dot Day.🔭

Picture of the Earth taken from a large distance.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 14

Think in 3D.

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Zaid Mir @zaidmir.bsky.social · Feb 14

Yeah, i was thinking the same. Cis-trans stereoisomers.

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