Latest news with #Rubin
UPI
10 hours ago
- Science
- UPI
Light pollution is encroaches on observatories around the globe
As human activity spreads out over time, many of the remote areas that host observatories are becoming less remote. Light domes from large urban areas slightly brighten the dark sky at mountaintop observatories up to 200 miles away. Photo by mariya_m/ Pixabay Outdoor lighting for buildings, roads and advertising can help people see in the dark of night, but many astronomers are growing increasingly concerned that these lights could be blinding us to the rest of the universe. An estimate from 2023 showed that the rate of human-produced light is increasing in the night sky by as much as 10% per year. I'm an astronomer who has chaired a standing commission on astronomical site protection for the International Astronomical Union-sponsored working groups studying ground-based light pollution. My work with these groups has centered around the idea that lights from human activities are now affecting astronomical observatories on what used to be distant mountaintops. Hot science in the cold, dark night While orbiting telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope give researchers a unique view of the cosmos -- particularly because they can see light blocked by the Earth's atmosphere -- ground-based telescopes also continue to drive cutting-edge discovery. Telescopes on the ground capture light with gigantic and precise focusing mirrors that can be 20 to 35 feet wide. Moving all astronomical observations to space to escape light pollution would not be possible, because space missions have a much greater cost and so many large ground-based telescopes are already in operation or under construction. Around the world, there are 17 ground-based telescopes with primary mirrors as big or bigger than Webb's 20-foot mirror, and three more under construction with mirrors planned to span 80 to 130 feet. The newest telescope starting its scientific mission right now, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, has a mirror with a 28-foot diameter and a 3-gigapixel camera. One of its missions is to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe. To do that, it will collect a sample of 2.6 billion galaxies. The typical galaxy in that sample is 100 times fainter than the natural glow in the nighttime air in the Earth's atmosphere, so this Rubin Observatory program depends on near-total natural darkness. Any light scattered at night -- road lighting, building illumination, billboards -- would add glare and noise to the scene, greatly reducing the number of galaxies Rubin can reliably measure in the same time, or greatly increasing the total exposure time required to get the same result. The LED revolution Astronomers care specifically about artificial light in the blue-green range of the electromagnetic spectrum, as that used to be the darkest part of the night sky. A decade ago, the most common outdoor lighting was from sodium vapor discharge lamps. They produced an orange-pink glow, which meant that they put out very little blue and green light. Even observatories relatively close to growing urban areas had skies that were naturally dark in the blue and green part of the spectrum, enabling all kinds of new observations. Then came the solid-state LED lighting revolution. Those lights put out a broad rainbow of color with very high efficiency -- meaning they produce lots of light per watt of electricity. The earliest versions of LEDs put out a large fraction of their energy in the blue and green, but advancing technology now gets the same efficiency with "warmer" lights that have much less blue and green. Nevertheless, the formerly pristine darkness of the night sky now has much more light, particularly in the blue and green, from LEDs in cities and towns, lighting roads, public spaces and advertising. The broad output of color from LEDs affects the whole spectrum, from ultraviolet through deep red. The U.S. Department of Energy commissioned a study in 2019 which predicted that the higher energy efficiency of LEDs would mean that the amount of power used for lights at night would go down, with the amount of light emitted staying roughly the same. But satellites looking down at the Earth reveal that just isn't the case. The amount of light is going steadily up, meaning that cities and businesses were willing to keep their electricity bills about the same as energy efficiency improved, and just get more light. Natural darkness in retreat As human activity spreads out over time, many of the remote areas that host observatories are becoming less remote. Light domes from large urban areas slightly brighten the dark sky at mountaintop observatories up to 200 miles away. When these urban areas are adjacent to an observatory, the addition to the skyglow is much stronger, making detection of the faintest galaxies and stars that much harder. When the Mount Wilson Observatory was constructed in the Angeles National Forest near Pasadena, Calif., in the early 1900s, it was a very dark site, considerably far from the 500,000 people living in Greater Los Angeles. Today, 18.6 million people live in the LA area, and urban sprawl has brought civilization much closer to Mount. Wilson. When Kitt Peak National Observatory was first under construction in the late 1950s, it was far from metro Tucson, Az., with its population of 230,000. Today, that area houses 1 million people, and Kitt Peak faces much more light pollution. Even telescopes in darker, more secluded regions -- like northern Chile or western Texas -- experience light pollution from industrial activities like open-pit mining or oil and gas facilities. The case of the European Southern Observatory An interesting modern challenge is facing the European Southern Observatory, which operates four of the world's largest optical telescopes. Their site in northern Chile is very remote, and it is nominally covered by strict national regulations protecting the dark sky. AES Chile, an energy provider with strong U.S. investor backing, announced a plan in December 2024 for the development of a large industrial plant and transport hub close to the observatory. The plant would produce liquid hydrogen and ammonia for green energy. Even though formally compliant with the national lighting norm, the fully built operation could scatter enough artificial light into the night sky to turn the current observatory's pristine darkness into a state similar to some of the legacy observatories now near large urban areas. This light pollution could mean the facility won't have the same ability to detect and measure the faintest galaxies and stars. Light pollution doesn't only affect observatories. Today, around 80% of the world's population cannot see the Milky Way at night. Some Asian cities are so bright that the eyes of people walking outdoors cannot become visually dark-adapted. In 2009, the International Astronomical Union declared that there is a universal right to starlight. The dark night sky belongs to all people -- its awe-inspiring beauty is something that you don't have to be an astronomer to appreciate. Richard Green is astronomer emeritus at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions in this commentary ae solely those of the author.
National Geographic
6 days ago
- Science
- National Geographic
Are interstellar objects proof of alien life? This could finally settle the debate.
The Vera Rubin telescope is poised to kick off an explosive era of discovery. "It's like old-fashioned astronomy: Find the thing, point telescopes at it, argue about it. It's going to be fun." Astronomers predict that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which begins surveying the night sky this year, could spot dozens more interstellar objects over the next decade. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic In our solar system, everything belongs to the sun. While they might take years and years to complete one loop, every planet and moon, asteroid and comet, every bit of crushed ice and rock, is gravitationally bound to our star, fixtures of a perpetual cosmic carousel. But every once in a while, something else comes along that, based on careful measurements of orbital mechanics, is unmistakably untethered: an interstellar visitor. The object arrives from the realm between stars, and after a quick sojourn in our solar system, it goes back out to the unknowable depths. Such enigmatic travelers are called interstellar objects, and they bring with them a glimpse of a part of the cosmos that we've never seen before. Each time one shows up it kicks off an observing spree, with astronomers mustering other telescopes, on the ground and in space, to scrutinize the visitor. The object appears as little more than a fuzzy speck of light, but astronomers try to uncover its true nature before it slips away, from fundamental properties (dimensions, chemical composition) to the wild possibilities (signs of alien technology). Only three interstellar objects have ever been discovered, with the latest appearing just this month, from the direction of somewhere in the center of the Milky Way. 3I/ATLAS, as the object is known, is currently traveling just inside the orbit of Mars, captivating telescopes around the world. These are rare events—for now. A new telescope, scheduled to begin full operations later this year, is expected to find many more such transient objects. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, perched on a mountaintop in the Chilean desert, is designed to scan the sky night after night and capture faint glimmers in the darkness—including sunlight reflecting off a fast-moving celestial body. Its observations produce time-lapse views, allowing astronomers to track those objects and study their orbits for any oddities. Rubin didn't discover 3I/ATLAS but happened to snap dozens of pictures of the object, before and after its interstellar nature became apparent. Those images are already helping astronomers form a clearer picture of the visitor. Rubin's Simonyi Survey Telescope can detect very faint objects like interstellar visitors and track their paths, as they swoop through our solar system before heading back out to the space between stars. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic With Rubin, the field is in for a potentially explosive era of discovery; according to astronomers' statistics-driven predictions and exhilarated personal bets, the observatory could spot somewhere between five and 100 interstellar objects in the next decade. "It's like old-fashioned astronomy: Find the thing, point telescopes at it, argue about it," Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at Oxford, says. "It's going to be fun." What we know about interstellar objects An interstellar object, once anchored to a star of its own, can travel for millions and even billions of years before encountering the warmth of another. When the first known interstellar guest appeared in 2017, astronomers were stunned—not only because of the historic moment, but because 'Oumuamua, as it was later named, didn't match up with their working theories of the universe. Scientists had long thought that interstellar objects must exist, thrown out from the cold edges of their home system as new planets swirled into shape, a distinctly turbulent time. 'Oumuamua, though, wasn't like anything astronomers had observed before: weirdly shaped, rocky like an asteroid but plowing forward like a comet, and yet lacking the signature tail of dust. (Ideas about alien origins abounded.) The second recorded interstellar object to visit, Borisov in 2019, was more in line with expectations—an icy comet, though perhaps originating from a smaller, dimmer kind of star. While astronomers have already characterized 3I/ATLAS as a comet, it has its own quirks; the object is far larger than 'Oumuamua and Borisov, and appears to be a few billion years older than our solar system. ʻOumuamua (illustrated above) means 'a messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian, and the first confirmed interstellar object to visit our solar system continues to puzzle astronomers today. Illustration by NASA/ESA/STScI The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of our solar system's second-known interstellar visitor, a comet named for its discoverer, amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov. Photograph by NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA) An entire catalog of interstellar objects, however, can help reveal how cosmic forces shape planetary systems over time. Right now, "there's a whole zoo of explanations for interstellar objects," says Susanne Pfalzner, an astrophysicist at Forschungszentrum Jülich, a research institution in Germany. The space rocks could have been ejected because of the gravitational jostling of giant planets fresh from the cosmic oven. Most stars form in clusters, and the crowded environment could force objects from several budding planetary systems to fly off. Grown systems could lose celestial bits and pieces too; the icy bodies at the very ends of a planetary system are secured by the faintest hint of gravity, and could easily be whisked away by a passing star. And when a star exhausts its lifetime of fuel and begins to expand, the stellar winds unleashed in the dying act could expel many interstellar objects. These wanderers are relics of countless histories, and Rubin's future inventory could help astronomers determine which are most common, Pfalzner says. A flurry of Borisovs would indicate that the objects likely spring from the cold, dark outskirts of their systems. More 'Oumuamuas would suggest that most interstellar objects originate in their inner star systems, where the heat of their star has stripped away most of the chemical compounds that would typically create a shimmery tail during an encounter with our sun. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's potential to help build a more extensive catalogue of interstellar visitors could help researchers answer big questions about the objects themselves and how planetary systems change over time. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Rubin's observations could also help settle the discussion over whether 'Oumuamua was something other than a space rock, says Avi Loeb, a Harvard physicist. Loeb thinks that 'Oumuamua is a broken piece of alien structure; our own solar system, he says, is full of space trash—rocket parts, a red Tesla—which are sometimes mistaken for asteroids by amateur astronomers. He and his collaborators suggest that 3I/ATLAS is a piece of alien tech, too. Should Rubin turn up more objects that look and behave like 'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS, they're less likely to be the products of extraterrestrials, Loeb says. "At the very least, we will learn more about rocks that are thrown out of other stars,' he says. ' But we might also find an answer to the most romantic question in science: Are we alone?" It's a spine-tingling thought, and certainly daydream fodder, even for the astronomers doing the work. The late astronomer Vera Rubin, for whom the new telescope is named, wrote in 2006 that when she examined the nearby galaxy M31 through a telescope, "often I wondered if an astronomer in M31 was observing us. Always I wished we could exchange views." (Vera Rubin was the GOAT of dark matter.) Most of the astronomy community doesn't share Loeb and his collaborators' interpretation of 'Oumuamua, or his latest claim about 3I/ATLAS. "It's strange, but it's not so strange that we need to fall back on the aliens hypothesis," says John Forbes, an astrophysicist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. 'Oumuamua's unusual acceleration, which can't be explained by gravity's influence, could be explained by comet-like properties. 'Oumuamua may have released a tiny amount of gas as it thawed in the warmth of the sun enough to propel it along, but not necessarily to be observed by telescopes, says Darryl Seligman, an astrophysicist at Michigan State University. In the last few years, Seligman and his colleagues have reported the discovery of a dozen asteroids near Earth that vent gases just like comets do, but produce a tail that isn't visible to us. They suggest that these asteroids belong to a new class of celestial bodies, which they call dark comets. "This type of thing could be much more widespread that we haven't noticed before and potentially haven't even been looking for," Seligman says—and visiting objects could exhibit this behavior, too. Exploring our galactic wilderness While some scientists focus on chasing after these objects as they hurtle through our solar system, others are eager to investigate their journeys through the galactic wilderness. While they aren't bound to specific stars, interstellar travelers move around the Milky Way. Forbes, in his research, posits that space rocks, once unmoored from their home system, start traveling in a long, thin current through the galaxy. Stars ejected from stellar clusters can form streams, and Forbes predicts that interstellar objects may do the same. These currents would expand over time, becoming more diffuse, because "the galaxy is messy, and there's all sorts of things going on that perturb your nice, simple orbits," Forbes says. He hopes that Rubin will spot multiple newcomers arriving from the same spot in the sky and traveling at matching velocities. "That's a pretty strong indication that we're sitting in a dense stream of interstellar objects," he says. Our sun could be drifting through millions of such currents. (What other mysteries could the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory solve?) A menagerie of interstellar objects could help astronomers solve a particularly puzzling aspect of planet formation, including Earth's own story. Planets form in much the same way that dust bunnies around the house do, with particles swirling and sticking together until they grow large enough to become worlds. Computer simulations have shown, however, that while it's easy for cosmic forces to make the leap from dust-sized particles to boulder-sized objects, it is actually quite difficult for those boulders to then grow into something larger. While the universe has obviously overcome this challenge—"we are living proof," Pfalzner says—astronomers haven't figured out how. Interstellar objects, she says, are just about the right size for this conundrum, ready to be glommed on and grown. If there's a lot of interstellar objects floating around in the vicinity of a new system—perhaps drawn in by the gravity of the freshly ignited star at its center—the universe has all the raw materials it needs, removing any friction in the process. The interstellar objects whizzing through our skies may someday, help shape someone else's solar system. Rubin's search for interstellar objects, whether it turns up only a few or dozens, provides a kind of knowledge that goes beyond pure empirical research. We can know, better than before, what kind of universe stretches out all around us, as if we've cracked open a giant secret and become privy to wonders we weren't meant to witness. What lies beyond Earth isn't nature in any sense that we might recognize, but it is a kind of wilderness nonetheless, shaped by many of the same forces that led to the familiar landscapes on this planet. Interstellar objects are a reminder that the cosmos is a shared place, and that we are just as much a part of it as those mysterious travelers, carving our own path through time and space.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk: 1M Nvidia GPUs? Nah, My Supercomputers Need the Power of 50M
Elon Musk isn't stopping at acquiring 1 million Nvidia GPUs for AI training. The billionaire wants millions more as his startup xAI races to beat the competition on next-generation AI systems. Musk today tweeted that xAI aims for compute power that's on par with 50 million Nvidia H100 GPUs, the enterprise-grade graphics chip widely used for AI training and running chatbots. "The xAI goal is 50 million in units of H100 equivalent-AI compute (but much better power-efficiency) online within 5 years,' he said. Musk's tweet comes a day after rival Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote in his own post about plans to run 'well over 1 million GPUs by the end of this year,' with the goal of exponentially scaling up the compute power by '100x.' Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has a similar goal; he wants mega data centers devoted to developing AI super intelligence. These growing AI investments underscore how expensive it is to scale up (and attract top talent). Musk's tweet doesn't mean he'll try to buy 50 million GPUs, though. The H100 was introduced in 2022 before Nvidia began offering more powerful models, including in the GB200, which can reportedly deliver an up to 2.5 times performance boost. Nvidia has also released a roadmap that outlines two additional GPU architectures, Rubin and Feynman, which promise to unleash more powerful AI chips in the coming years with improved power efficiency. Still, Musk's xAI will likely need to buy millions of Nvidia GPUs to reach his goal. In the meantime, Musk said in another tweet that xAI's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, has grown to 230,000 GPUs, including 30,000 Nvidia GB200s. His company is also building a second Colossus data center that'll host 550,000 GPUs made up of Nvidia's GB200s and more advanced GB300 chips. This compute power requires enormous amounts of electricity; xAI is using gas turbines at the Colossus site, which environmental groups say are worsening the air pollution in Memphis.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk: 1M Nvidia GPUs? Nah, My Supercomputers Need the Power of 50M
Elon Musk isn't stopping at acquiring 1 million Nvidia GPUs for AI training. The billionaire wants millions more as his startup xAI races to beat the competition on next-generation AI systems. Musk today tweeted that xAI aims for compute power that's on par with 50 million Nvidia H100 GPUs, the enterprise-grade graphics chip widely used for AI training and running chatbots. "The xAI goal is 50 million in units of H100 equivalent-AI compute (but much better power-efficiency) online within 5 years,' he said. Musk's tweet comes a day after rival Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote in his own post about plans to run 'well over 1 million GPUs by the end of this year,' with the goal of exponentially scaling up the compute power by '100x.' Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has a similar goal; he wants mega data centers devoted to developing AI super intelligence. These growing AI investments underscore how expensive it is to scale up (and attract top talent). Musk's tweet doesn't mean he'll try to buy 50 million GPUs, though. The H100 was introduced in 2022 before Nvidia began offering more powerful models, including in the GB200, which can reportedly deliver an up to 2.5 times performance boost. Nvidia has also released a roadmap that outlines two additional GPU architectures, Rubin and Feynman, which promise to unleash more powerful AI chips in the coming years with improved power efficiency. Still, Musk's xAI will likely need to buy millions of Nvidia GPUs to reach his goal. In the meantime, Musk said in another tweet that xAI's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, has grown to 230,000 GPUs, including 30,000 Nvidia GB200s. His company is also building a second Colossus data center that'll host 550,000 GPUs made up of Nvidia's GB200s and more advanced GB300 chips. This compute power requires enormous amounts of electricity; xAI is using gas turbines at the Colossus site, which environmental groups say are worsening the air pollution in Memphis.
Malaysian Reserve
21-07-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Protalix BioTherapeutics Appoints Gilad Mamlok as its New Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
CARMIEL, Israel, July 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Protalix BioTherapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: PLX), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, production and commercialization of recombinant therapeutic proteins produced by its proprietary ProCellEx® plant cell-based protein expression system, today announced the appointment of Gilad Mamlok to serve as the Company's new Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, effective August 24, 2025, succeeding Eyal Rubin. To ensure a seamless transition, Mr. Mamlok has joined the company and is working alongside Mr. Rubin. After his tenure as Chief Financial Officer ends, Mr. Rubin will continue to be available to the Company as necessary until October 2025. 'With his three decades of experience in healthcare and technology companies, Gilad will play a pivotal role in the execution of our growth strategy, and I am delighted to welcome him to the Protalix team,' said Dror Bashan, Protalix's President and Chief Executive Officer. 'I also want to thank Mr. Rubin, both personally and on behalf of Protalix and its Board of Directors, for his unwavering dedication and leadership. Over the last six years, Eyal and I have worked in a close, collaborative manner in the management of the Company. He contributed significantly to Protalix's transformation, strengthening the Company's capital and financial status and preparing the Company for growth. We wish Eyal success in his future endeavors.' Mr. Mamlok is a seasoned financial executive with three decades of experience in healthcare and technology companies. He has an extensive background in capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions, business development and investor relations as well as in corporate governance matters. Most recently, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of TytoCare Ltd., a privately-held company in the remote healthcare space. Prior to his role at TytoCare, Mr. Mamlok served as the Chief Financial Officer of Sol-Gel Technologies Ltd. In this role, he was responsible for an initial public offering and other capital markets transactions, as well as in-licensing and out-licensing transactions. Prior to his role at Sol-Gel, he served in other medical device companies, including Given Imaging which was acquired by Covidien plc in 2014. Mr. Mamlok holds a BA in Economics, magna cum laude, and a Master's degree in Business/Managerial Economics, both from the Tel Aviv University. About Protalix BioTherapeutics, is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of recombinant therapeutic proteins expressed through its proprietary plant cell-based expression system, ProCellEx. It is the first company to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a protein produced through plant cell-based in suspension expression system. This unique expression system represents a new method for developing recombinant proteins in an industrial-scale manner. Protalix has licensed to Pfizer Inc. the worldwide development and commercialization rights to taliglucerase alfa for the treatment of Gaucher disease, Protalix's first product manufactured through ProCellEx, excluding in Brazil, where Protalix retains full rights. Protalix's second product, Elfabrio®, was approved by both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency in May 2023. Protalix has partnered with Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A. for the global development and commercialization of Elfabrio. Protalix's development pipeline consists of proprietary versions of recombinant therapeutic proteins that target established pharmaceutical markets, including the following product candidates: PRX–115, a plant cell-expressed recombinant PEGylated uricase for the treatment of uncontrolled gout; PRX–119, a plant cell-expressed long action DNase I for the treatment of NETs–related diseases; and others. Forward-Looking StatementsTo the extent that statements in this press release are not strictly historical, all such statements are forward-looking, and are made pursuant to the safe-harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The terms 'expect,' 'anticipate,' 'believe,' 'estimate,' 'project,' 'plan,' 'should' and 'intend' and other words or phrases of similar import are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual future experience and results to differ materially from the statements made. The statements in this press release are valid only as of the date hereof and we disclaim any obligation to update this information, except as may be required by law. Investor ContactMike Moyer, Managing DirectorLifeSci Advisors+1-617-308-4306mmoyer@ Logo –
