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by Marina LAPENKOVA Agence France-Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) – “I asked her to forgive us and I even cried as I stroked her for the last time,” says 90-year-old Russian biologist Adilya Kotovskaya, recalling the day she bid farewell to her charge Laika. The former street dog was about to make history as the first living creature to orbit the earth, blasting off on a one-way journey. The Soviet Union sent Laika up […]
by Janet MCEVOY Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Three and a half years before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, a dog called Laika was in 1957 the first living creature to orbit the Earth. The stray from Moscow is one of many animals who preceded humans in the conquest of space; like most of the others, she did not survive. “These animals performed a service to their respective […]
by Pascale MOLLARD-CHENEBENOIT Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Sixty years after Laika the dog became the first living creature to go into orbit, animals are still being sent into space — though these days much smaller creatures are going up. Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the International Space Station programme, explains what we are still learning from animals in orbit. Why no more dogs, cats or monkeys? When those animals were sent […]
by Glenn Chapman Agence France Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook on Wednesday reported profits leapt on booming revenue from online ads in the third quarter, topping investor forecasts and buoying shares already at record highs. The leading social network said it made a profit of $4.7 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30, a jump of 79 percent from the same period a year earlier. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg […]
MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Baby bats learn language from peers in their colony, and will adopt the group’s dialect, or accent, instead of their mother’s, researchers said Tuesday. The difference is similar to speaking with a London accent versus a Scottish accent, said the report in the journal PLOS Biology. The findings shed new light on crowd-learning of language, a skill thought to belong to mainly to humans and just a few other mammals. […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Singapore’s Changi Airport opened a cutting-edge terminal Tuesday with a fully automated check-in system including facial scanning and computerized baggage drop points, but some passengers struggled with the new technology. Terminal 4, built at a cost of Sg$985 million (US$723 million), will have an annual capacity of 16 million people and is aimed at coping with an expected increase in passenger numbers through one of Asia’s top travel hubs. It is […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — A “monster” planet, which should in theory not exist, has been discovered orbiting a faint dwarf star far, far away, surprised astronomers said Tuesday. The existence of the gassy giant challenges long-standing theories that such a big planet — about the size of Jupiter — cannot be formed around a star so small. The star has a radius and mass about half that of the sun. Theory had predicted that small […]
by Alison Tahmizian Meuse Agence France-Presse DHOFAR, Oman (AFP) — In sunglasses and jumpsuits, a crew of European test astronauts is laying the groundwork for a Mars simulation in the barren expanse of the Omani desert, a terrestrial mission intended to pave the way to the red planet. The “analog astronauts” of the Austrian Space Forum — a volunteer-based collective — have arrived in Oman to begin preparations for a four-week simulation mission due to […]
MIAMI, United States (AFP) — SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Monday carrying a South Korean communications satellite to boost broadband coverage for southeast Asia and the Middle East, and stuck its 19th rocket landing in two years. The tall, white rocket roared into the blue sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:34 pm (1934 GMT), propelling Koreasat-5A toward a geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) from Earth. The satellite is designed to replace an earlier […]
by Rob Lever Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Apple will let you unlock the iPhone X with your face — a move likely to bring facial recognition to the masses, along with concerns over how the technology may be used for nefarious purposes. Apple’s newest device, set to go on sale November 3, is designed to be unlocked with a facial scan with a number of privacy safeguards — as the data will […]
by Nova SAFO Agence France-Presse CHICAGO, United States (AFP) — Seated onstage at a museum near Chicago, Adina Sella talks about her life as a Holocaust survivor. A group of young school kids is entranced — all the more so because Sella is not actually there. Her likeness is being beamed in the form of an interactive and moving hologram, part of a first-of-its-kind exhibition debuting this weekend at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which aims […]
Reuters — A small asteroid or comet that has been spotted racing through our solar system may have come from elsewhere in the galaxy, U.S. space scientists say, possibly marking the first such interstellar visitor observed from Earth. The mystery object, so far known only as A/2017 U1, was discovered earlier this month by a researcher using a sophisticated telescope system at the University of Hawaii that continually scans the universe for such phenomenon. The […]
