Tag: first

Jul272017 by adminNo Comments

Signal may be from first 'exomoon'

A team of astronomers has potentially discovered the first known moon beyond the Solar System.If genuine, the "exomoon" is likely to be about the size and mass of Neptune, and circles a planet the size of Jupiter but with 10 times the mass.The signal was detected by Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope; astronomers now plan to carry out follow-up observations with Hubble in October.A paper about the candidate moon is published on the Arxiv pre-print site.To date, astronomers have discovered more than 3,000 exoplanets - worlds orbiting stars other than the Sun.A hunt for exomoons - objects in orbit around those distant planets - has proceeded in parallel. But so far, these extrasolar satellites have lingered at the limits of detection with current techniques.Dr David Kipping, assistant professor o...

Jul242017 by adminNo Comments

Possible melted fuel seen for first time at Fukushima plant

Technology

An underwater robot captured images of solidified lava-like rocks Friday inside a damaged reactor at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, spotting for the first time what is believed to be nuclear fuel that melted six years ago. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the robot found large amounts of lava-like debris apparently containing fuel that had flowed out of the core into the primary containment vessel of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima. The plant was destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Cameras mounted on the robot showed extensive damage caused by the core meltdown, with fuel debris mixed with broken reactor parts, suggesting the difficult challenges ahead in the decades-long decommissioning of the destroyed plant. Experts have said the fuel mel...

Jul232017 by adminNo Comments

World's first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland

Technology

The world's first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland.The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines used.The Peterhead wind farm, known as Hywind, is a trial which will bring power to 20,000 homes. Manufacturer Statoil says output from the turbines is expected to equal or surpass generation from current ones.It hopes to cash in on a boom in the technology, especially in Japan and the West coast of the US, where waters are deep."This is a tech development project to ensure it's working in open sea conditions. It's a game-changer for floating wind power and we are sure it will help bring costs down," said Leif Delp, project director for Hywind...

Jul172017 by adminNo Comments

Report: Mindy Kaling pregnant with her first child

Entertainment

July 17 (UPI) --The Office and The Mindy Project star Mindy Kaling is pregnant with her first child.E! News cited an unnamed source as saying the pregnancy was "an unexpected surprise."However, the 38-year-old writer and actress has long said she wanted to have children, Us Weekly noted."I think I've decided that unlike everything else in my life, I'm going to be fast and loose about kids," she told Yahoo! Style in September 2015."I'm going to not actively plan, but if it happens, it would happen," Kaling explained. "I'm not cavalier about who I would have a kid with. But the thing I ask every parent that I really admire, the one comment they all have is that they wish they had kids earlier."The name of the child's father has not yet been reported. Kaling will soon be seen in the fantasy f...

Jul152017 by adminNo Comments

First woman to win 'maths Nobel Prize' dies

Technology

Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize for mathematics, has died aged 40.Professor Mirzakhani, who was also the first Iranian national to win the award, passed away after a four-year battle with breast cancer.She received the Fields Medal in 2014 for her "outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".At the time she was praised for the "stunning advances" she had made in some of the most complicated areas of the mathematics.[embedded content]Professor Mirzakhani was also congratulated by the president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, who said the nation "can feel proud that the first woman who has ever won the Fields Medal is their fellow citizen."Born in 1977 in Tehran, Professor Mirz...