Abstract of a paper:Theories of innovation emphasize the role of social networks and teams as facilitators of breakthrough discoveries. Around the world, scientists and inventors are more plentiful and interconnected today than ever before. However, although there are more people making discoveries, and more ideas that can be reconfigured in new ways, research suggests that new ideas are getting harder to find --contradicting recombinant growth theory. Here we shed light on this apparent puzzle. Analysing 20 million research articles and 4 million patent applications from across the globe over the past half-century, we begin by documenting the rise of remote collaboration across cities, underlining the growing interconnectedness of scientists and inventors globally.

We further show that across all fields, periods and team sizes, researchers in these remote teams are consistently less likely to make breakthrough discoveries relative to their on-site counterparts. Creating a dataset that allows us to explore the division of labour in knowledge production within teams and across space, we find that among distributed team members, collaboration centres on late-stage, technical tasks involving more codified knowledge. Yet they are less likely to join forces in conceptual tasks -- such as conceiving new ideas and designing research -- when knowledge is tacit. We conclude that despite striking improvements in digital technology in recent years, remote teams are less likely to integrate the knowledge of their members to produce new, disruptive ideas.

SpaceX's next test of its Starship rocket is expected to include "a propellant transfer demonstration." CNBC reports: SpaceX last month launched its second Starship flight, a test which saw the company make progress in development of the monster rocket yet fall short of completing the full mission. The propellant transfer demonstration would require that the rocket reach orbit as one of the demo's goals. A successful attempt would push Starship beyond its benchmarks reached thus far. "NASA and SpaceX are reviewing options for the demonstration to take place during an integrated flight test of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket. However, no final decisions on timing have been made," NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell said in a statement to CNBC.

The "propellant transfer demonstration" falls under a NASA "Tipping Point" contract that the agency awarded SpaceX in 2020 for $53.2 million. As part of the contract, NASA wants SpaceX to develop and test "Cryogenic Fluid Management" (CFM) technology, which the agency notes is essential for future missions to the moon and Mars. [...] Under the NASA contract, SpaceX's first demo will involve transferring 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen between tanks within the Starship rocket. While Starship won't be rendezvousing with another tanker rocket for this demo, NASA considers the test progress in maturing the tech. "The goal is to advance cryogenic fluid transfer and fill level gauging technology through technology risk assessment, design and prototype testing, and in-orbit demonstration. The demonstration will decrease key risks for large-scale propellant transfer in the lead-up to future human spaceflight missions," NASA says.

Scientists have proposed a framework that they say could unify quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's theory of general relatively. "Quantum theory and Einstein's theory of general relativity are mathematically incompatible with each other, so it's important to understand how this contradiction is resolved," said Prof Jonathan Oppenheim, a physicist at University College London, who is behind the theory. The Guardian reports: Until now, the prevailing assumption has been that Einstein's theory of gravity must be modified, or "quantized," in order to fit within quantum theory. This is the approach of string theory, which advances the view that spacetime comprises 10, 11 or possibly 26 dimensions. Another leading candidate, advanced by Rovelli and others, is loop quantum gravity, in which spacetime is composed of finite loops woven into an extremely fine fabric. Oppenheim's theory, published in the journal Physical Review X, challenges the consensus by suggesting that spacetime may be classical and not governed by quantum theory at all. This means spacetime, however closely you zoomed in on it, would be smooth and continuous rather than "quantized" into discrete units. However, Oppenheim introduces the idea that spacetime is also inherently wobbly, subject to random fluctuations that create an intrinsic breakdown in predictability.

"The rate at which time flows is changing randomly and fluctuating in time," said Oppenheim, although he clarifies that time would never actually go into reverse. "It's quite mathematical," he added. "Picturing it in your head is quite difficult." This proposed "wobbliness" would result in a breakdown of predictability, which, Oppenheim says, "many physicists don't like." [...]

Ultimately, whether the theory is correct is not an aesthetic preference, but a question of whether it is a faithful representation of reality. A second paper, published simultaneously in Nature Communications and led by Dr Zach Weller-Davies, formerly of UCL and now at Canada's Perimeter Institute, proposes an experiment designed to uncover "wobbles" in spacetime through tiny fluctuations in the weight of an object. For example, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France routinely weigh a 1kg mass, which used to be the 1kg standard. If the fluctuations in measurements of this 1kg mass are smaller than a certain threshold, the theory can be ruled out. "We have shown that if spacetime doesn't have a quantum nature, then there must be random fluctuations in the curvature of spacetime which have a particular signature that can be verified experimentally," said Weller-Davies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A little more than three months ago the Indian space agency, ISRO, achieved a major success by putting its Vikram lander safely down on the surface of the Moon. In doing so India became the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, and this further ignited the country's interest in space exploration. But it turns out that is not the end of the story for the Chandrayaan 3 mission. In a surprise announcement made Monday, ISRO announced that it has successfully returned the propulsion module used by the spacecraft into a high orbit around Earth. This experimental phase of the mission, the agency said in a statement, tested key capabilities needed for future lunar missions, including the potential for returning lunar rocks to Earth.

Sir Richard Branson has ruled out putting more money into his lossmaking space travel company Virgin Galactic, saying his business empire "does not have the deepest pockets" any more. From a report: Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Branson in 2004, last month announced it was cutting jobs and suspending commercial flights for 18 months from next year, in a bid to preserve cash for the development of a larger plane that could carry passengers to the edge of space. The group has said it has enough funding to carry it through to 2026, when the bigger Delta vehicle is expected to enter service. But some analysts are expecting Galactic to ask investors for more money in about 2025.

Asked whether he would consider putting more cash into the business if needed, Branson told the Financial Times: "We don't have the deepest pockets after Covid, and Virgin Galactic has got $ 1 billion, or nearly. It should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own." Branson said he was "still loving" the Virgin Galactic project and that it had "really proved itself and the technology" of commercial space flight. Galactic has just completed its sixth commercial flight in six months, with tickets starting at $450,000 a seat on its rocket-powered Unity space plane.

Today is the 20th anniversary of its last flight of the supersonic Concorde aircraft. It was faster than the speed of sound, travelling at speeds of 1,350 mph (2,170 km/h).

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared an article from the Telegraph: As the space race raged and dominated headlines, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were equally competitive about being the first post-war superpower to create a commercial jetliner that could travel faster than the speed of sound." Both started work on secret projects, at the same time that Britain and France — who were less hell-bent on imprinting their superiority on geopolitics, but blessed with many of the world's finest engineering minds — were in pursuit of the same goal.

It has been known for decades that the three-horse race wasn't run entirely fairly. While the Americans, with their colossal and largely pointless Boeing 2707, never got close to getting airborne (they scrapped the project in 1971), the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144 won the race in 1968. When it did, though, its design similarities to Concorde appeared to confirm suspicions that the blueprints might have been leaked by espionage. In the late 1990s, it was revealed that an aeronautical engineer codenamed Agent Ace was one such spy. Recruited in 1967, he allegedly handed over some 90,000 pages of detailed technical specifications on new aircraft — including Concorde, the Super VC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 — to the KGB, the foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union.
The identity of Agent Ace is revealed in Concorde: The Race for Supersonic, a new two-part documentary by the UK public broadcasting station Channel 4.

The Telegraph adds: With the rich benefit of hindsight, John Britton isn't entirely surprised there was a Soviet mole in the factory. It was a long time ago, 1965, but something — or someone — at Filton Aerodrome seemed fishy. "We had dozens, maybe hundreds of people working on the project, and we didn't have enough permanent staff so we took on contractors, all sorts of characters," Britton says. At the time he was a 19-year-old apprentice engineer, working for British Aeroplane Company (BAC) in the design office for a supersonic, passenger-carrying aircraft. An aircraft that would, ideally, fly before the Soviet Union's competing effort did.

"There was one chap working there... He used to stay behind, he'd do a lot of overtime in the drawing library, taking prints off the microfilms of designs..." Britton, who is now 76, initially assumed the man — he thinks his name was George — was merely conscientious and needed copies for his work. He can titter at the memory now. "It was only afterwards, when the Soviet aircraft came out and it looked remarkably like Concorde, when we thought... 'Ah'."

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon just inked a deal with chief competitor and Elon Musk-helmed SpaceX to launch internet-beaming satellites -- a move that comes even as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pursues his own space dreams with his own rocket company, Blue Origin, and as SpaceX builds its own internet constellation.

While Musk and Bezos have notoriously been publicly competitive and have a history of openly sparring on social media, with Musk regularly making crude jokes about Bezos and Blue Origin, it is not uncommon for business rivals to team up in the world of rocket launches. Some Amazon satellites will still ride on a large rocket made by Blue Origin, dubbed the New Glenn. But it's been delayed for years and will make its launch debut next year at the earliest.

The Space Weather Prediction Center is closely watching the arrival of a super-hot plasma eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), that will slam into Earth tonight, writes longtime Slashdot reader StyleChief. Images of the huge sunspot "rotating to face the earth" can be viewed here. The Space Weather Prediction Center reports: With 3 CMEs already inbound, the addition of a 4th, full halo CME has prompted SWPC forecasters to upgrade the G2 Watch on 01 Dec to a G3 Watch. This faster-moving halo CME is progged to merge with 2 of the 3 upstream CMEs, all arriving at Earth on 01 Dec. G3 (Strong) conditions are now likely on 01 Dec. Continue to monitor spaceweather.gov for the latest updates. "The rapid Earth-bound CME left the sun on Nov. 29 during a powerful M9.8-class solar flare eruption," reports Space.com. "But it isn't alone."

"The speedy plasma outburst will merge with several slower upstream CMEs that left the sun a day earlier (Nov. 28), creating a 'Cannibal CME' that will likely trigger a strong geomagnetic storm akin to a Nov. 5 event that supercharged auroras and STEVE around the world."

"Two articles from Electrek and InsideEVs describe Hyundai and Kia's new 'Uni Wheel' drive system that could revolutionize EV design," writes longtime Slashdot reader Uncle_Meataxe. From a report: Described by its makers as a "paradigm-shifting vehicle drive system," the Uni Wheel moves the main drive system components to the vacant space within an EVs wheel hubs. The approach utilizes a planetary gear configuration consisting of a sun gear in the center, four pinion gears on each side, and a ring gear surrounding everything. Traditional ICE vehicles utilize CV joints, but by moving them closer to the wheels requires a short drive train length and as a result, a decrease in efficiency and durability -- especially over bumpy terrain. Hyundai and Kia's Uni Wheel system on the other hand, can transmit power with almost zero changes to efficiency, regardless of wheel movement. "Advantages include more platform space and more room within an EV's interior," adds Uncle_Meataxe. "When this system may be integrated into an actual EV remains unclear, but Kia and Hyundai have already registered eight patents related to the technology." You can learn more about the new drive system via an instructional video on YouTube.

Astronomers have discovered six planets orbiting a bright star in perfect resonance. The star system, 100 light-years from Earth, was described on Wednesday in a paper published in the journal Nature. From a report: The discovery of the system could give astronomers a unique opportunity to trace the evolution of these worlds to when they first formed, and potentially offer insights into how our solar system got to be the way it is today. "It's like looking at a fossil," said Rafael Luque, an astronomer at the University of Chicago who led the study. "The orbits of the planets today are the same as they were a billion years ago."

Researchers think that when planets first form, their orbits around a star are in sync. That is, the time it takes for one planet to waltz around its host star might be the same amount of time it takes for a second planet to circle exactly twice, or exactly three times. Systems that line up like this are known as orbital resonances. But, despite the theory, finding resonances in the Milky Way is rare. Only 1 percent of planetary systems still preserve this symmetry.

Most of the time, planetary orbits get knocked out of sync by an event that upsets the gravitational balance of the system. That could be a close encounter with another star, the formation of a massive planet like Jupiter, or a giant impact from space on one planet that causes a ripple effect in other orbits. When this happens, Dr. Luque said, planetary orbits become too chaotic to mathematically describe, and knowledge of their evolution is indecipherable. Astronomers are lucky to find even one pair of exoplanets in resonance. But in the newly discovered star system, there are a whopping five pairs, because all six planets have orbits that are in sync with one another. Dr. Luque described it as "the 1 percent of the 1 percent."

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine. "Cathy Hebert, the communications director for PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures, says the outlet needs to 'evolve' beyond its magazine product, which published its first all-digital issue in 2021," reports The Verge. From the report: PopSci, which covers a whole range of stories related to the fields of science, technology, and nature, published its first issue in 1872. Things have changed a lot over the years, with the magazine switching to a quarterly publication schedule in 2018 and doing away with the physical copies altogether after 2020. In a post on LinkedIn, former PopSci editor Purbita Saha commented on the magazine's discontinuation, stating she's "frustrated, incensed, and appalled that the owners shut down a pioneering publication that's adapted to 151 years worth of changes in the space of a five-minute Zoom call."

"PopSci is a phenomenal brand, and as consumer trends shift it's important we prioritize investment in new formats," Herbert tells The Verge. "We believe that the content strategy has to evolve beyond the digital magazine product. A combination of its news team, along with commerce, video, and other initiatives, will produce content that naturally aligns with PopSci's mission." PopSci will continue to offer articles on its website, along with its PopSci Plus subscription, which offers access to exclusive content and the magazine's archive.

"On a typical day 1,300 planes take off and land at Heathrow Airport, and keeping that going requires around 20 million litres of jet fuel every day," reports the BBC. "That's the equivalent of filling up your car around 400,000 times.

"But, when it comes to fuel, airports around the world are having to have a major rethink..." To be of any use to the aviation industry, hydrogen needs to be in its liquid form, which involves chilling it to minus 253C. Handling a liquid at that kind of temperature is immensely challenging. Given the chance, liquid hydrogen will "boil-off" and escape as a gas — potentially becoming a hazard. So tanks, pipes and hoses all have to be extra-insulated to keep the liquid cold.

France's Air Liquide has a lot of experience in this area. For around 50 years it has been supplying cryogenic hydrogen to the Ariane rockets of the European Space Agency (ESA)... Over the past three years, in partnership with Airbus and France's biggest airport operator, Group ADP, Air Liquide has been investigating the potential of hydrogen in the aviation business. It is also part of the H2Fly consortium which this summer successfully flew an aircraft using liquid hydrogen. For Air Liquide, it was an opportunity to test systems for fuelling a hydrogen aircraft...

However, installing the equipment needed to store and distribute hydrogen at airports will not be cheap. The consultancy Bain & Company estimates it could cost as much as a billion dollars per airport. One start-up, Universal Hydrogen, says it has a solution... The company has developed special tanks to hold liquid hydrogen (UH calls them modules), which can then be trucked to the airport. The modules are designed to slot straight into the aircraft, where they can be plugged into the propulsion system. No need for pipes, hoses and pumps.

The modules are extremely well insulated and can keep the hydrogen in its liquid form for four days. Two modules would hold 360kg of hydrogen and would be able to fly an aircraft 500 miles, plus an extra 45 minutes of flight time in reserve.

AI employed by the U.S. military "has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces' missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia," reports the Associated Press.

But that's the beginning. AI also "tracks soldiers' fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space." Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China. The ambitious initiative — dubbed Replicator — seeks to "galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in August. While its funding is uncertain and details vague, Replicator is expected to accelerate hard decisions on what AI tech is mature and trustworthy enough to deploy — including on weaponized systems.'

There is little dispute among scientists, industry experts and Pentagon officials that the U.S. will within the next few years have fully autonomous lethal weapons. And though officials insist humans will always be in control, experts say advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications will inevitably relegate people to supervisory roles. That's especially true if, as expected, lethal weapons are deployed en masse in drone swarms. Many countries are working on them — and neither China, Russia, Iran, India or Pakistan have signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: In 2024, a new spacecraft will hurtle toward Jupiter in a bid to learn whether its moon Europa is capable of supporting life. The craft will carry more than high-tech sensors: It also will bear a poem and hundreds of thousands of human names.

Yours could be one of them.

NASA is asking people to submit their names ahead of the mission's October 2024 launch. Those submitted by the end of 2023 will go into space on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which should enter Jupiter's orbit in 2030... They'll eventually be stenciled onto a dime-sized microchip in microscopic writing, then attached to a metal plate engraved with the poem that will accompany the craft.
700,000 names have been submitted so far — and they'll all be carried a distance of over 1.8 billion miles.

They'll travel through space with a poem that ends by describing what we humans on earth are made of — including "a need to call out through the dark."

Scientists have detected the most powerful cosmic ray seen in more than three decades. But the exact origin of this turbocharged particle from outer space remains a mystery, with some suggesting that it could have been generated by unknown physics. From a report: The puzzling cosmic ray had an estimated energy of 240 exa-electron volts (EeV; 10^18 volts), making it comparable to the most powerful cosmic ray ever detected, aptly named the Oh-My-God particle, which measured at around 320 EeV when it was discovered in 1991. The findings were published today in Science.

"It's amazing because you have to think of what could produce such high energy," says Clancy James, an astronomer at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. A cosmic ray, despite its name, is actually a high-energy subatomic particle -- often a proton -- that zips through space at close to the speed of light. In their ultra-high energy form, cosmic rays have energy levels that exceed one EeV, which is around one million times greater than those reached by the most powerful human-made particle accelerators. Cosmic rays with energies of more than 100 EeV are rarely spotted -- fewer than one of these particles arrive on each square kilometre of Earth each century.

The founder of Chipotle is opening a new endeavor called Kernel, a vegetarian fast-casual restaurant that will be operated mostly by robots. Steve Ells is opening at least 15 locations of Kernel, the first by early 2024; the remainder are on track for NYC in the next two years, a spokesperson confirms. From a report: Kernel will serve vegetarian sandwiches, salads, and sides, made in a space that's around 1,000 square-feet or smaller. Each location would employ three workers, the Wall Street Journal reported, "rather than the dozen that many fast-casual eateries have working." The menu pricing will be on par with Chipotle's, and, Ells says, the company will pay more and offer better benefits for actual humans working than other chains.

As you'd expect from the former CEO of Chipotle -- which had at least five foodborne illness outbreaks between 2015 and 2018, costing the company $25 million per the Justice Department -- "the new system's design helps better ensure food safety," Ells told the Journal. It has taken $10 million in his personal funds to start Kernel, along with $36 million from investors. The company suggests customers may not want much interaction with other people -- and neither do CEOs. "We've taken a lot of human interaction out of the process and left just enough," he told the Journal. Yet in a 2022 study on the future of dining out conducted by commerce site, PYMNTS, of 2,500 people surveyed, 63 percent of diners believe restaurants are becoming increasingly understaffed, and 39 percent said that they are becoming less personal.

NASA selected Blue Origin in February to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of smallsats that will study the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere of Mars. The space agency now expects the mission will be on the first launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicle next year. SpaceNews reports: Neither Blue Origin nor NASA disclosed exactly where in the manifest of New Glenn launches ESCAPADE would take place. "It will be an early New Glenn mission and we're going to be ready," one Blue Origin executive, Ariane Cornell, said at the Satellite 2023 conference in March. At a Nov. 20 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's human exploration and operations committee, Bradley Smith, director of NASA's Launch Services Office, said he was "incredibly excited" about the ESCAPADE launch, which he said was scheduled for about one year. His charts, though, and past presentations, listed an August 2024 launch for ESCAPADE.

"It's an incredibly ambitious first launch for New Glenn and we really appreciate the partnership," he said. Later in the committee meeting, he confirmed that NASA expected ESCAPADE to be on the inaugural New Glenn launch. "We will very likely be the very first launch of New Glenn," he said. That is acceptable, Smith said, since ESCAPADE is what NASA characterizes as a "class D" mission with a higher tolerance for risk. "We're willing to take a little bit of risk with a price tag and a mission assurance model that reflects that risk."

Besides the inherent technical risks in the first launch of a new rocket, there are also schedule risks. New Glenn development is years behind the original schedule Blue Origin put forward. The company has not provided recent updates about progress towards a first launch of the rocket, although Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, said at World Satellite Business Week in September that the first flight vehicle would arrive at a Florida integration facility by the end of the year, with the company planning "multiple" launches of New Glenn in 2024.

As if homesickness, wasting muscles, thinner bones, an elevated cancer risk, the inescapable company of overachievers and the prospect of death in the endless vacuum of space were not enough to contend with, male astronauts may return from deep space prone to erectile dysfunction, scientists say. From a report: In what is claimed to be the first study to assess the impact of galactic radiation and weightlessness on male sexual health, Nasa-funded researchers found that galactic cosmic rays, and to a lesser extent microgravity, can impair the function of erectile tissues, with effects lasting potentially for decades. Raising their concerns in a report on Wednesday, the US researchers said they had identified "a new health risk to consider with deep space exploration." They called for the sexual health of astronauts to be closely monitored on their return from future deep space missions, noting that certain antioxidants may help to counteract the ill-effects by blocking harmful biological processes.

"While the negative impacts of galactic cosmic radiation were long-lasting, functional improvements induced by acutely targeting the redox and nitric oxide pathways in the tissues suggest that the erectile dysfunction may be treatable," said Dr Justin La Favor, an expert in neurovascular dysfunction at Florida State University and a senior author on the study. The warning comes amid a renewed focus on deep space missions, with Nasa and other major space agencies preparing for long-term expeditions to the moon and more ambitious voyages to Mars. Nasa's Artemis programme aspires to send astronauts to the moon as early as next year, with crewed missions to Mars tentatively lined up for as early as 2040.

Rahul Rao reports via Space.com: On Nov. 14, NASA picked up a laser signal fired from an instrument that launched with the Psyche spacecraft, which is currently more than 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) from Earth and heading toward a mysterious metal asteroid. (The spacecraft is at more than 40 times the average distance of Earth's moon, and still voyaging afar.) The moment marked the first successful test of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, a next-generation comms link that sends information not by radio waves but instead by laser light. It's part of a series of tests NASA is doing to speed up communications in deep space, on different missions. "Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC," Abi Biswas, the system's project technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in an agency statement.

"And we were also able to send some data, meaning we were able to exchange 'bits of light' from and to deep space," Biswas added.

Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a "new advanced AI research team," the software conglomerate's chief Satya Nadella said Monday, capping three days of intense discussions following the unexpected decision by OpenAI's board to dismiss Altman. From a report: Many OpenAI members, including the co-founder Brockman, left the firm in protest last week. Altman will serve as the chief executive of the new AI group at Microsoft, Nadella said. "We've learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I'm looking forward to having you do the same." Nadella said Altman and Brockman will be joined by "colleagues." Former OpenAI top talent Szymon Sidor, Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry are joining Microsoft with "more" to follow suit, Brockman said in a post on X.