US loudspeaker maker sounds the alarm on 'unnecessary' trade war
SHAUN TURTON
SYDNEY -- Next year, if all goes to plan, four astronauts will blast off for a trip around the moon in NASA's Orion spacecraft.
While the crew peers out at the vastness of space on their 10-day journey, the voices from Earth will come through loudspeakers manufactured by MISCO Speakers at its factory in Minnesota and powered by rare earth permanent magnets made in China.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yomiuri Shimbun
3 days ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Lower Chance of Milky Way, Andromeda Merger Detected
NASA / ESA / Z. Levay and R. van der Marel / STScI / T. Hallas and A. Mellinger / Handout via Reuters A stage in the potential merger between the Milky Way galaxy, right, and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as viewed in Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years is seen in this illustration released by NASA in May 2012. WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy are currently hurtling through space toward each other at a speed of about 400,000 kph, setting up a possible future galactic collision that would wreck both of them. But how likely is this cosmic crash? While previous research forecast it to occur roughly 4 billion-4.5 billion years from now, a new study that uses recent observational data and adds fresh variables indicates that a collision is far from certain. It puts the likelihood of a collision in the next 5 billion years at less than 2% and one in the next 10 billion years at about 50%. Galactic mergers are not like a demolition derby, with stars and planets crashing into each other, but rather a complicated blending on an immense scale. 'The future collision — if it happens — would be the end of both the Milky Way and Andromeda,' said University of Helsinki astrophysicist Till Sawala, lead author of the study published on June 2 in the journal Nature Astronomy, with the structure of both being destroyed and a new galaxy with an elliptical shape arising from the merger. 'If a merger happens, it is more likely to occur 7 billion-8 billion years in the future. But we find that based on the current data, we cannot predict the time of a merger, if it happens at all,' Sawala said. The two galaxies currently are around 2.5 million light-years from each other. The sun is one of the Milky Way's many billions of stars. The total mass of our spiral-shaped galaxy — including its stars and interstellar gas as well as its dark matter, which is invisible material whose presence is revealed by its gravitational effects — is estimated at approximately one trillion times the mass of the sun. The Andromeda galaxy has a shape and total mass similar to the Milky Way's. The researchers simulated the Milky Way's movement over the next 10 billion years using updated data from the Gaia and Hubble space telescopes and various ground-based telescopes as well as revised galactic mass estimates. Other nearby galaxies are forecast to factor into whether a collision occurs. Previous research accounted for the gravitational influence of the Triangulum galaxy, also called Messier 33 or M33, which is about half the size of the Milky Way and Andromeda, but did consider the Large Magellanic Cloud, a smaller satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, as this study does. 'We find that if only M33 is added to the two-body system, the chance of a Milky Way-Andromeda merger actually increases, but the inclusion of the Large Magellanic Cloud has the opposite effect,' Sawala said. The researchers concluded that a merger between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud is almost certain within the next 2 billion years, long before a potential collision with Andromeda. One noteworthy difference between the Milky Way and Andromeda is the mass of the supermassive black holes at their centers. The Milky Way's Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is about 4 million times the mass of the sun. Its Andromeda counterpart is about 100 million the sun's mass. 'Collisions between stars are very unlikely, but the two supermassive black holes would sink to the center of the newly formed galaxy, where they would eventually merge,' Sawala said. Galactic mergers have occurred since the universe's early stages and are particularly common in areas of the universe where galaxies are clustered together. 'In the early universe, galaxy mergers were much more frequent, so the first mergers would have occurred very shortly after the first galaxies had formed,' Sawala said. 'Minor mergers — with much smaller galaxies — happen more frequently. Indeed, the Milky Way is currently merging with several dwarf galaxies,' Sawala said.
The Mainichi
06-06-2025
- The Mainichi
Musk threatens to withdraw Dragon spacecraft, a key space station link for NASA
(AP) -- As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk argued on social media on Thursday, the world's richest man threatened to decommission a space capsule used to take astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. After Trump threatened to cut government contracts given to Musk's SpaceX rocket company and his Starlink internet satellite services, Musk responded via X that SpaceX "will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately." It's unclear how serious Musk's threat was. But the capsule, developed with the help of government contracts, is an important part of keeping the space station running. NASA also relies heavily on SpaceX for other programs including launching science missions and, later this decade, returning astronauts to the surface of the moon. The Dragon capsule SpaceX is the only U.S. company capable right now of transporting crews to and from the space station, using its four-person Dragon capsules. Boeing's Starliner capsule has flown astronauts only once; last year's test flight went so badly that the two NASA astronauts had to hitch a ride back to Earth via SpaceX in March, more than nine months after launching last June. Starliner remains grounded as NASA decides whether to go with another test flight with cargo, rather than a crew. SpaceX also uses a Dragon capsule for its own privately run missions. The next one of those is due to fly next week on a trip chartered by Axiom Space, a Houston company. Cargo versions of the Dragon capsule are also used to ferry food and other supplies to the orbiting lab. NASA's other option: Russia Russia's Soyuz capsules are the only other means of getting crews to the space station right now. The Soyuz capsules hold three people at a time. For now, each Soyuz launch carries two Russians and one NASA astronaut, and each SpaceX launch has one Russian on board under a barter system. That way, in an emergency requiring a capsule to return, there is always someone from the U.S. and Russian on board. With its first crew launch for NASA in 2020 -- the first orbital flight of a crew by a private company -- SpaceX enabled NASA to reduce its reliance on Russia for crew transport. The Russian flights had been costing the U.S. tens of millions of dollars per seat, for years. NASA has also used Russian spacecraft for cargo, along with U.S. contractor Northrup Grumman. SpaceX's other government launches The company has used its rockets to launch several science missions for NASA as well as military equipment. Last year, SpaceX also won a NASA contract to help bring the space station out of orbit when it is no longer usable. SpaceX's Starship mega rocket is what NASA has picked to get astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon, at least for the first two landing missions. Starship made its ninth test flight last week from Texas, but tumbled out of control and broke apart.
Yomiuri Shimbun
06-06-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Gravity Study Shows Why the Moon's Two Sides Look So Different
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Handout via Reuters The moon's near side, at left, and far side are seen in a combination of undated images from observations made by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. WASHINGTON (Reuters) — An exhaustive examination of lunar gravity using data obtained by two NASA robotic spacecraft is offering new clues about why the two sides of the moon — the one perpetually facing Earth and the other always facing away — look so different. The data from the U.S. space agency's GRAIL, or Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, mission indicates that the moon's deep interior has an asymmetrical structure, apparently caused by intense volcanism on its nearside billions of years ago that helped shape its surface features. The researchers discovered that the lunar nearside flexes slightly more than the farside during its elliptical orbit around Earth thanks to our planet's gravitational influence — a process called tidal deformation. This indicates differences in the two sides of the lunar interior, they said, specifically in the geological layer called the mantle. 'Our study shows that the moon's interior is not uniform: the side facing Earth — the nearside — is warmer and more geologically active deep down than the farside,' said Ryan Park, supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and lead author of the study published on May 14 in the journal Nature. The moon's nearside is covered by vast plains, called mare, formed from molten rock that cooled and solidified billions of years ago. Its farside has much more rugged terrain, with few plains. Some scientists have hypothesized that intense volcanism within the nearside that caused radioactive, heat-generating elements to accumulate on that side of the mantle drove the surface differences observed today. The new findings offer the strongest evidence yet to support this notion. The researchers estimated that the nearside mantle on average is about 100 C-200 C hotter than the farside, with the thermal difference perhaps sustained by radioactive decay of the elements thorium and titanium on the nearside. 'The moon's nearside and farside look very different, as shown by differences in topography, crustal thickness and the amount of heat-producing elements inside,' Park said. The moon's diameter of about 3,475 kilometers is a bit more than a quarter of Earth's diameter. The lunar mantle is the layer located beneath the crust and above the core, spanning a depth about 35 kilometers-1,400 kilometers under the surface. The mantle makes up roughly 80% of the moon's mass and volume and is composed mostly of the minerals olivine and pyroxene, similar to Earth's mantle. 'The fact that the detected asymmetry in the mantle matches the pattern of the surface geology — for instance, differences in the abundance of the approximately 3-4 billion-year-old mare basalts [volcanic rock] between the nearside and the farside — suggests that processes which drove ancient lunar volcanism are active today,' said Caltech computational planetary scientist and study coauthor Alex Berne, affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the design of gravity sensors for missions to the outer solar system. The researchers spent years analyzing data from GRAIL's Ebb and Flow spacecraft, which orbited the moon from December 2011 to December 2012. 'Our study delivers the most detailed and accurate gravitational map of the moon to date,' Park said. 'This enhanced gravity map is a critical foundation for developing lunar Positioning, Navigation and Timing systems, which are essential for the success of future lunar exploration missions. By improving our understanding of the moon's gravity field, it contributes to establishing a precise lunar reference frame and time system, enabling safer and more reliable navigation for spacecraft and surface operations,' Park added. The same approach employed here using gravity data to assess the lunar interior, the researchers said, could be applied to other bodies in the solar system such as Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Ganymede, two worlds of interest in the search for potential life beyond Earth. In the meantime, the new findings add to the understanding of Earth's eternal companion. 'The moon plays a vital role in stabilizing Earth's rotation and generating ocean tides, which influence natural systems and daily rhythms,' Park said. 'Our knowledge of the moon has expanded through human and robotic missions that have revealed details about its surface and interior, yet many questions about its deep structure and history remain. As our closest neighbor, the moon continues to be an important focus of scientific discovery.'
