My Science School

Mobile phones have come a long way from when they were first introduced. Today, almost everyone has a touchscreen smartphone. But the mobile phone industry is constantly evolving in terms of design and technology. The most recent design, readily accessible to consumers, are seamless foldable phones. Samsung launched its Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 in August. Both the phones went up for pre-order on August 24, 2021 on the company's official site as well as other leading retail stores.

Galaxy Z Fold3 5G and Galaxy Z Flip3 5G are equipped with IPX8 water resistance and built with our new Armor Aluminum—the strongest aluminum ever used on a Galaxy smartphone—along with the toughest Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus™ to protect against scratches and accidental drops. Both devices come with a new protective film made of stretchable PET5 and optimized display panel layers resulting in a Main Screen that’s 80% more durable than previous devices. Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3 are verified by Bureau Veritas to withstand folding 200,000 times. They are equipped with the latest powerful 5nm processor and 5G band compatibility for the best experience inside and out.

Galaxy Z Flip3 5G comes with a redesigned Cover Screen that is four times larger and makes it easier to view notifications and messages without having to open the phone. Add bold colours, sleek design and premium features, and the Z Flip3 becomes a device for true self-expression. Galaxy Z Flip3 is also crafted to give users the best capability for capturing and sharing memories. Packed with some of our latest camera features, users can take hands-free selfies or do hands-free video calling with the signature Flex mode. Even if the device is folded, you capture a quick photo—and now, even video—right from the Cover Screen using enhanced Quick Shot by double-clicking Galaxy Z Flip3’s power key. Plus, scrolling and sharing are super smooth, thanks to Z Flip3’s new 120Hz adaptive refresh rate.

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Sonic the Hedgehog, the video game created by Sega, celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2021. Originally conceived as a high-speed rival to Nintendo's widely popular Mario video game, Sonic was created by Sega's lead programmer Yuji Naka. When it was released for Sega's Mega Drive 16-bit games console, the game sold 22.2 million copies worldwide, briefly putting Sega's Mega Drive at the top spot. Today, Sonic is available to buy, and playable on the smartphone.

A standalone Sonic the Hedgehog platformer game hasn’t been released since Sonic Forces, which was created in 2017 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the franchise. More recently the franchise came out with spin-off Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and racing game Team Sonic Racing in 2019.

The event will feature special guests alongside SEGA’s Sonic team to unveil the news, and will take place on the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitch and YouTube channels. As an additional treat for fans, Sega collaborated with Liquid+ Arcade to create the video campaign “Unstoppable,” which celebrates the franchise and its fans throughout the years. 

Credit : Paste Magazine

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Mike Winkelmann, known popularly as Beeple, sold a non-fungible token (NFT) of his work for 69 million dollars in an auction at Christie's. NFT is a unit of digital data. It is unique and cannot be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin could be traded for another bitcoin but you get the same thing - 10 bitcoins 10 bitcoins or something worth 10 bitcoins. However, if you trade a NFT, you get something that is completely different-a NFT art piece = whatever rate is paid for it.

Beeple’s collaged JPG was made, or “minted,” in February as a “nonfungible token,” or NFT. A secure network of computer systems that records the sale on a digital ledger, known as a blockchain, gives buyers proof of authenticity and ownership. Most pay with the Ethereum cryptocurrency. “Everydays” was the first purely digital NFT sold by Christie’s, and it offered to accept payment in Ethereum, another first for the 255-year-old auction house.

Todd Levin, a New York art adviser who saw Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi” sell at Christie’s for $450.3 million in 2017, said he had “mixed emotions” about the Beeple sale.

“On the one hand, it’s super exciting to witness a historical inflection point,” Levin said. “On the other hand, the amount of money involved could skew and damage a nascent emerging market.”

Credit : The New York Times

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A new study by researchers from India, Australia and the U.S. suggests that the first stable continents (cratons) rose from the oceans 700 million years earlier than previously thought, and that the earliest continental landmass to emerge may have been Jharkhand's Singhbhum region.

Researchers studied sedimentary rocks called sandstones in Singhbhum and analyzed the uranium and lead content of the zircon mineral preserved within them. The rocks were estimated to be 3.2 billion years old. They observed signs of river channels, tidal zones and beaches in the sandstones - all of which occur on crust exposed to air, and not crust underwater.

The consensus until now has been that the continents emerged around 2.5 billion years ago through plate tectonics- the horizontal movement, collisions and upward movement of continental plates. A study of the granites that form the continental crust of Singhbhum suggests that heated magma beneath the crust caused areas to thicken and become enriched with lightweight elements like silica and quartz, leaving it "physically thick and chemically light" and buoying the landmass up to float. This suggests that Singhbhum's elevation increased from 3.6 kms below sea level 3.5 billion years ago to over 1.8 kms above sea level 3.2 billion years ago, making the region one of the oldest beaches on the planet.

The study probed two aspects of the emergence of continents. "The sandstones tell us when and the granite tells us how," says Priyadarshi Chowdhury, geologist at Australia's Monash University. "The Singhbhum region is possibly Earth's earliest continental land exposed to the air. Before that, Earth was a water world, the whole planet covered by water."

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Engineers in Japan have set a new world record for fastest internet speed - 319 terabits per second (Tb/s). It's so fast, you'd be able to download nearly 80,000 movies in just one second! Typical fibre broadband cables have one core (which carries the data at high speeds), surrounded by insulation to protect that core and make sure that the data transmission does not break. Researchers at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology developed an experimental optical fibre with four cores instead of one, combined with a laser that fired pulses at different wavelengths and multiple signal amplification techniques.

The findings of the research have now been presented at the International Conference on Optical Fiber Communications.

“The 4-core MCF with standard cladding diameter is attractive for early adoption of SDM fibers in high-throughput, long-distance links, since it is compatible with conventional cable infrastructure and expected to have mechanical reliability comparable to single-mode fibers,” the Japanese research institute said the paper published earlier this month.

The biggest positive outcome of the research was that the test was largely done on fibre optic infrastructure, which is already the main cable for internet connection in most countries.

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Astronomers have discovered the fastest-rotating white dwarf star that spins once every 25 seconds. The star, named J0240+1952, is about the size of Earth but contains at least 200,000 times more mass. Put into context, one rotation of planet Earth takes 24 hours, while the equivalent on J0240+1952 is 25 seconds. Can you imagine if an Earth day was 25 seconds, day and night cycling rapidly?

White dwarfs are relatively cool, compact stars that are reaching the end of their lifetimes. Our own Sun will become a white dwarf in about 5 billion years.

J0240+1952 is a rare example of a magnetic propeller system - it pulls gaseous plasma from a nearby companion star and its magnetic field propels the matter out into space at around 3,000 kms per second. It is only the second magnetic propeller white dwarf to have been identified in over 70 years.

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After decades of waiting, the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and the most powerful observatory ever built was finally launched on December 25. It was conceived as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope more than 30 years ago, with special instruments such as the giant hexagonal mirror, this observatory is set to explore the early phases of cosmic history, looking back in time to a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The telescope is the result of an immense international collaboration, and integrates Canadian and European instruments. One of the major goals of the telescope is the discovery of exoplanets. It will also investigate the potential for life on those worlds by studying their atmospheres.

JWST is often considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been orbiting the Earth since 1990. However, JWST’s mirror will dwarf Hubble’s mirror, which is just 8 feet, or 2.4 meters, wide. This next-generation observatory promises to be 10 to 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and much more capable of picking up distant, faint objects. To emphasize JWST’s impressive capabilities, NASA claims that the telescope would be able to pick up the infrared light emitted by a bumblebee located at the distance of the Moon.

Astronomers have dreamt of JWST’s capabilities for the last two and a half decades, but turning those dreams into reality has been a grueling process. Scientists formally proposed a massive infrared space telescope in 1996, and early mission engineers hoped to launch such an observatory as early as 2007 for a price tag as low as $1 billion. However, creating the spacecraft took much more time and money than anyone anticipated. JWST missed one target launch date after the next, while its budget ballooned by billions of dollars. Congress even tried to cancel the project at one point over the rising costs but agreed to continue funding the mission if NASA stuck to a cost cap of $8.8 billion. However, NASA blew through that, and the entire mission cost now sits at $9.7 billion.

Credit : The Verge 

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