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    New Algorithm may help Autonomous Vehicles Navigate Narrow, crowded streets

    July 21, 2021, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    A CMU team developed a algorithm that could help an autonomous vehicle safely and efficiently navigate narrow, crowded streets like this one.

    Autonomous vehicle researchers have tackled navigating a crowded, narrow street, with cars parked on both sides, and not enough space for vehicles traveling in both directions to pass each other. It is a scenario familiar to anyone who has driven down a crowded, narrow street. Parked cars line both sides, and there isn’t enough space for vehicles traveling in both directions to pass each other. One has to duck into a gap in the parked cars or slow and pull over as far as possible for the other to squeeze by.

    Drivers find a way to negotiate this, but not without close calls and frustration...

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    Dark Heart of the Nearest Radio Galaxy

    July 21, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Distance scales uncovered in the Centaurus A jet. The top left image shows how the jet disperses into gas clouds that emit radio waves. The top right panel displays a color composite image, with a 40⨉ zoom compared to the first panel to match the size of the galaxy itself. The next panel below shows a 165 000⨉ zoom image of the inner radio jet.The bottom panel depicts the new highest resolution image of the jet launching region obtained with the EHT at millimeter wavelengths with a 60 000 000⨉ zoom in telescope resolution. One light year is equal to the distance that light travels within one year: about nine trillion kilometers. Credit: Radboud University; CSIRO/ATNF/I. Feain et al., R. Morganti et al., N. Junkes et al.; ESO/WFI; MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A. Weiß et al.; NASA/CXC/CfA/R. Kraft et al...
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    Scientists Create the World’s Toughest Self-Healing Material

    July 20, 2021, Categories  Physics, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Scientists Create the World’s Toughest Self-Healing Material

    Scientists have been working for decades to develop materials that can heal themselves, and they have had some success, too. For example, American Chemical Society researchers were able to develop small, swimming robots that can magnetically heal themselves, while researchers from the National University of Singapore took a different approach by making a smart foam material that allows robot hands to self-repair and sense objects.

    However, one issue with these projects is that they are soft and opaque and not very suitable for rugged applications. So the researchers at IISER, along with those at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur decided to focus on developing something that is harder than conventional self-healing material, as reported by The Telegraph India.

    T...

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    Millimeter-tall ‘Mountains’ on Neutron Stars

    July 20, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s depiction of a neutron star.

    Credit: ESO / L. Calçada

    New models of neutron stars show that their tallest mountains may be only fractions of millimetres high, due to the huge gravity on the ultradense objects. The research is presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021.

    Neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the Universe: they weigh about as much as the Sun, yet measure only around 10km across, similar in size to a large city.

    Because of their compactness, neutron stars have an enormous gravitational pull around a billion times stronger than the Earth. This squashes every feature on the surface to miniscule dimensions, and means that the stellar remnant is an almost perfect sphere.

    Whilst they are billions of times smaller than on Earth, these def...

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