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Watch Nigeria's First Confirmed Drone Strike -- Against Boko Haram

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China Nigeria Drone

Aminu Gamawa

Nigerian CH-3

This January 25, 2015 photo appears to show a Chinese made CH-3 drone, owned by Nigeria, which has crash landed upside down. The two AR-1 ATGMs attached to its wing pylons suggest that Nigeria is turning to drone strikes as the bloody war against Boko Haram continues.

The circle of drone warriors is growing, slowly. Today, Nigeria announced a successful drone strike in its ongoing war against the militant group Boko Haram. With it, Nigeria joins a dubious club of the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, and Iraq who have all used armed drones in modern war.

While we’ve seen evidence of Nigerian armed drones before, notably after one crashed, this time there’s video evidence of a strike, released by Nigerian itself.

There are two big implications from this strike. The first is that, when the United States doesn’t sell countries drones over fear of how they’ll use them, the countries buy their drones from elsewhere, often China.

Much of Nigeria’s drone arsenal are Israeli-made Aerostar UAVs, which are unarmed. Nigeria also has its own, locally-made drones that strongly resemble these Aerostars, and are likely also only surveillance tools. Instead, for the strike it looks like the drone was a Chinese CH-3.

The CH-3 is an armed adaption of earlier Chinese reconnaissance drones, and has been in Nigeria’s inventory since at least 2014. In the video released of the attack, there’s a large blast, and the Nigerian Air Force claims they hit a logistics base belonging to Boko Haram, possibly an ammunition storehouse. Nigeria, like Iraq, appears to buy their armed drones from China.

The second major implication is that, despite more nations using drones, they all seem to be using them in a similar manner to the United States: for counter-insurgency warfare. This is perfectly expected: modern military drones drones are slow, lightly-armed airplanes with cameras, best at flying for a long time and scanning the ground below. When nations today get armed drones, this is how they plan to use them. It will take a lot of change in technology for those drones to start being a threat to other countries.

Watch the video below:


Facebook Turns 12 Years Old Today, What's Next?

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Thefacebook

Facebook's original homepage

The world’s most popular social network turns 12 today. To celebrate, Facebook has declared today “Friends Day,” and released a few new tools it says are designed to help “further encourage our community to rally around their friends today.” They're basically just simple diversions, but they really show the size and scale of how big Facebook has become in a dozen years.

Since 2011, Facebook’s userbase has doubled to 1.6 billion monthly active users (and over 1 billion daily).

Facebook today also released a tool that lets you see how connected you are, on average, to all 1.6 billion other users of Facebook. Remember the "Six Degrees of Bacon" meme, which posits everyone on Earth is connected by six or fewer people to Kevin Bacon (my "Bacon Number" is 3)? The average Facebook user has even closer connections to everyone else on the network: only 3.57 degrees away from any other user.

Since that’s the mean though, your number may be slightly different though. According to Facebook the average range of degrees is somewhere between 2.9 degrees and 4.2 degrees; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is 2.92 degrees of separation from any user, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is 3.17 degrees, and this author is 3.18 degrees from any user.

Facebook Degrees of Separation

"Estimated average degrees of separation between all people on Facebook. The average person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 steps. The majority of people have an average between 3 and 4 steps."

Facebook is also creating Friends Day videos, which you may see on your News Feed throughout the day. You’ll be able to watch create your own video at the top of your News Feed or by clicking the “Watch Yours” button under your friends’ videos.

Back when Facebook started in 2004 there was no News Feed, no commenting on posts or wall-to-wall (the predecessor to commenting on individual posts), and only Harvard students could join after an invitation from an existing user. Eventually it expanded to all colleges, and then to the public (I signed up for Facebook as a high school freshman on October 6, 2006).

Since then there have been many redesigns of Facebook and a plethora of new features introduced: messages, pokes, groups, pictures, videos, apps, games, pages (cough Popular Science cough), trending topics, Sports Stadium, live streaming, 360-degree video, profile videos and so much more.

Meanwhile, the company Facebook itself has done extremely well from a financial perspective, raising billions in private and now public funding, and gone on to expand by acquiring and launching numerous other companies and products. Some, like Instagram and WhatsApp, are very clearly popular social tools like Facebook the social network. But many others, like virtual reality startup Oculus VR and Facebook's Internet.org connectivity organization and its Aquila internet-beaming drones, are wilder, more ambitious, more nascent efforts, whose impact on the world is just beginning to be felt.

But if Facebook's history is any indication, the website that began life as the controversial "Facemash" (for judging the relative attractiveness of other Harvard students' headshots), will continue to have a profound impact on the world at large for years to come.

Roomba Maker iRobot Spins Off Its Defense Business

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courtesy iRobot

Soldier with PackBot

That funny little robot vacuum in your house has a sibling in the Army. With a business built around friendly robots for the home and also powerful robots for the battlefield, it’s easy to see why iRobot, the maker of the Roomba, would want to refocus their company onto just one half of that equation. As announced in a business call today, the company best known for their line of robotic vacuums sold off their own warbot side-business.

The chief warbots in iRobot’s portfolio are the FirstLook and Packbot families. FirstLook is a 5 pound throwable robot, with cameras and tracks that make it a nimble little scout. The PackBot family (later rebranded as “warrior”) are tracked camera-toting robots with grabber arms used in bomb disposal by both military and police customers. These robots were a major part of America’s war effort in Iraq, a high-tech answer to the low-tech bombs used by insurgents.

As a vital tool in long-fought wars, there was a clear market for the robots last decade. America leaving Iraq in 2010, and leaving Afghanistan at the end of 2014, reduced demand somewhat, but the war robot business remains viable. Boston Business Journal notes of the defense and security wing of iRobot:

The company, which will be renamed, will be the largest independent provider of ground-based robots to the U.S. Department of Defense, with a significant and growing global presence in the security, industrial and international defense markets, the release stated.

Purchased for $45 million, the security wing is now held by Arlington Capital Partners of northern Virginia, and will be run by a former iRobot employye and the current head of the defesne and security division. Among Arlington Capital Partners other investments is a stake in horse paper the Daily Racing Form. Why the same company would want both a war robots maker and horse racing we may never know, but we can happilyspeculate.

As for the Roomba side of things? iRobot seems to do perfectly fine on that end, even if nature abhors a vacuum.

German Experiment Takes Tentative Steps Towards A Fusion Reactor

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First Hydrogen Plasma

IPP

First Hydrogen Plasma

The first hydrogen plasma created by the Wendelstein 7-X.

Yesterday, one of the grandest experimental fusion reactors in the world flared to life, converting hydrogen into a plasma for less than a second. The honor of pressing the button went to a PhD in Quantum Chemistry (who also happens to be the Chancellor of Germany), Angela Merkel.

Why such a high-profile ribbon-cutting? Fusion power is a kind of nuclear power source, the same thing that happens on a much larger scale in the hearts of stars. Theoretically, if you could get light atoms to fuse into heavier atoms, the energy produced by the reaction (which happens at immense temperatures and pressures) would be a clean source of energy that could continue almost indefinitely, without the radiation byproducts of nuclear fission (the method currently employed at nuclear power plants).

The German experiment, called Wendelstein 7-X, received funding or components from Germany, Poland, and the United States. This is the first run with hydrogen, though it did some initial work creating helium plasma last year. Though the hydrogen plasma was short-lived, it was an exciting moment for researchers.

“With a temperature of 80 million degrees [Celsius] and a lifetime of a quarter of a second, the device’s first hydrogen plasma has completely lived up to our expectations”, Hans-Stephan Bosch, head of operations for Wendelstein 7-X said. The Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to produce energy. Instead, the experiment is focused solely on producing and maintaining a levitating ball of super-heated plasma, which is a key step towards fusion energy.

The Germans aren't the only ones working on fusion, though. In France, the largest fusion reactor ever made, called ITER, is under construction. Private companies are in on the race too, with Lockheed Martin also working on a fusion reactor design.

While they are both meant to achieve a similar goal, there are differences among the designs used by the various groups. One of the more popular models is the tokamak, a Russian design used by ITER. It uses a doughnut-shaped machine to generate a magnetic field to contain the hot plasma. The Wendelstein 7-X on the other hand is a stellarator also a doughnut shape, but with the distinct advantage of theoretically being able to run indefinitely, instead of in pulses like the tokamaks. If the Wendelstein 7-X succeeds in producing plasma for long amounts of time, (they hope to get up to 30 minutes by 2025 if not earlier) then it might show that the stellarator design could be used in future fusion power plants.

Antiperspirants, Deodorants Change Your Armpit Microbiome

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Armpit

You have lots of bacteria that live on your skin, but some love the damp, dark nook that is your armpit.

It’s hard to keep friends around when you reek, so most of us wear antiperspirant or deodorant to suppress that offensive natural musk. But those personal care products are changing the populations of bacteria that live in our armpits, according to a new study published this week in the journal PeerJ.

There are lots of bacteria in your damp, dark armpits, and it makes sense that deodorants would affect them—when bacteria break down sweat, they create stinky compounds called thioalcohols. Deodorants and antiperspirants work by reducing the amount of sweat that leaves your pores as well as the number of bacteria there to break down that sweat. But researchers didn’t know if these products could have a lasting impact on the microbiome, and whether they target certain kinds of bacteria more than others.

In the new study, the researchers divided 18 participants into three groups: those who regularly used antiperspirant, those who used deodorant, and those who didn’t use any products (the researchers distinguished antiperspirants and deodorants by their active ingredient). On the first day of the eight-day study, the participants continued their typical routines. For days two through six, they all stopped using those products. Then, on the last two days, all of the participants used an antiperspirant/deodorant product that the researchers gave them. Each day, the researchers took swabs from both of the participants’ armpits. They then cultured and sequenced the bacteria to determine how the microbiota changed over the course of the experiment.

Armpit bacteria breakdown

This chart shows the proportion of different bacteria found in the three groups of participants based on the bacteria's genera. As you can see, the people who ceased antiperspirant use had the greatest diversity of bacteria, but it not clear what that means for their health

After the first day, the researchers found that, among the three groups, participants who used antiperspirant generally had the fewest bacteria in their armpits, while those who used deodorant actually had the most on average. When everyone stopped using the products, all participants had about the same number of bacteria, indicating that the quantity of bacteria in the microbiome can regenerate over time. But the products’ effect on the diversity of those microbiota did last—even after five days of not using antiperspirant or deodorant, the participants who habitually use them had a greater diversity of bacteria in their armpits.

The researchers aren’t exactly sure what all this means for our health. On the one hand, greater microbial diversity has been associated with better immunity in other parts of the body. But on the other hand, the participants who didn’t typically use a product under their arms had a higher percentage of Corynebacteria, which are known to provide a strong defense against pathogens, according to a press release. And since these findings came from a small number of participants with a lot of variety in their microbiota, it’s hard to make any definite conclusions from them. In future studies the researchers hope to better understand how the underarm microbial diversity affects a person’s health.

Watch NASA’s Greased Lightning Drone Fly In 360 Degrees

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NASA Langley/David C. Bowman

NASA's GL-10 Greased Lightning Vertical Takeoff Test Drone

NASA’s Greased Lightning is an all-electric transforming drone from the aviation side of the venerable space agency. With lots of little motors and tilt-wings, it can take off and land vertically like a helicopter, then shift them to fly level through the air like a plane. We’ve raved about it before, and marveled at both the name and the abilities of the little plane. It's pretty impressive, for a craft with only a 10-foot wingspan. Now you can see what the view looks like from the drone’s 360-degree camera, thanks to a panoramic video released earlier this week.

Designed for display in virtual reality headsets, the video also looks really weird when captured as a gif.

Thanks to the 10 engines and the digital camera on the plane, the video is also a really good showcase of how progressive-scanning cameras capture moving objects sequentially, turning spinning disks into really weird blobs. Watch the full video below, and explore the 360 degree view:

Pluto's Heart Probably Has Floating Mounds of Water Ice

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NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Water ice mounds drift in Pluto's Sputnik Planum

Pluto is pretty much covered in water ice. We've known that for a while now. In fact, the very first image that NASA's new New Horizons spacecraft sent back during its close flyby of the dwarf planet last summer showed huge mountains suspected to be composed of water ice.

Now scientists suspect that miniature versions of those icy mountains have drifted out onto the wide, flat plains of the area known as Sputnik Planum, located in Pluto's heart-shaped region. As a NASA press release today explains:

Because water ice is less dense than nitrogen-dominated ice, scientists believe these water ice hills are floating in a sea of frozen nitrogen and move over time like icebergs in Earth’s Arctic Ocean.

Some of the icy hills form chains that stretch up to 12 miles across.

Although finding more water ice anywhere else in the universe is exciting, it probably doesn’t raise Pluto’s changes for life — the planet is still likely too distant and thus likely too cold to support liquid water or any associated lifeforms. But the findings do shed more light on the surface conditions of this mysterious alien world on the edge of our solar system.

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The water icebergs float in part of Pluto's "heart"

Logitech's G810 Keyboard Is The Gaming Keyboard You'll Want To Bring To Work

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In the past few years, keyboard makers have used sharp, angular designs that match the fantastical aesthetic seen in modern gaming to pitch their gaming keyboards at “stereotypical gamers.”

Now, Logitech is trying something a little different. Their new keyboard, the G810 Orion Spectrum, is a mechanical keyboard for the professional who also games. Or the gamer who's also a professional.

The G810 is interesting because it's a synthesis and refinement of a lot of trends in the gaming world. As gaming, including playing competitive games like League of Legends, Dota 2, and Heroes of the Storm, becomes more mainstream, companies making peripherals are adapting to a market that want more serious products. The G810 is just that: a harbinger of more refined gaming products. Logitech is also claiming that their keyboard actuates 25 percent faster than the competition, making it ideal for gamers as well as those who just want a great typing experience.

The keyboard is a matte black plastic with black keycaps, and each of the 99 (by my count) switches (plus 7 media/function keys) are configurable for key mapping and RGB lighting. The entire case is perfectly rectangular with rounded corners, a departure from Logitech's previous model that screamed "gaming keyboard." Each key can be lit up to 16.8 million colors, and under each keycap is a lens that focuses the light from the LEDs, which greatly reduces light leakage between keys. With Logitech's software, the lights can be adaptive to typing (the lights change based on the keys you press), or responsive to the game you're playing (when you're being flagged down by the police in Grand Theft Auto V, the keyboard flashes red, white, and blue).

Under each key lies Logitech's proprietary switch (the mechanism for actuating the key), called the Romer-G. Logitech says that the closest comparison to Cherry MX switches, which are widely used by other keyboard manufacturers, would be the Cherry MX Brown, which provide a light "bump" when the key is pressed. They're rated for more than 70 million keystrokes, so feel free to clack away.

In use, the switches have a little more resistance than my Cherry MX Reds at home (on the Corsair K65 RGB), but each keystroke is a little more satisfying. Logitech has also included a roll bar in the top right corner of the keyboard, above the 10-key pad and media buttons, which is ultimately satisfying. Unlike the rest of the keyboard, the roll bar isn't mappable. Also, Logitech's software, which is used for mapping keys, changing colors, and more, is not available for Mac OS X (yet). While I've used the keyboard with a PC, most of my usage has been on a Mac, and I couldn't take advantage of a lot of the extra features, even though it feels great to type on.

Logitech's G-keys, which were extra customizable keys mainly used for gaming, are also absent from the G810. As a whole, the keyboard is gorgeous, designed to be sleek and unassuming.

Until you turn on the disco lights.

The G810 is available later this month and will cost $159, and will be bundled with a copy of Tom Clancy's: The Division.


No, The FAA Isn’t Going To Shoot Down Super Bowl Drones

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No Drone Zone Ad

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

No Drone Zone Ad

It is a bad idea to fly a drone near the Super Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday. The FAA, responsible for regulating the safe shared use of America’s skies, recently put out a Notice to Airmen restricting all flights within a 37-mile radius of Levi’s Stadium during the game this weekend. That restriction applies to private jets, commercial airliners, and small drones alike. Pilots violating this airspace restriction will potentially face civil and criminal penalties. But despite headlines to the contrary, it almost certainly does not mean anyone is going to use deadly force against a drone or a drone operator.

The FAA Will Shoot Down Your Drone If You Fly It Near The Super Bowl,” claims Fast Company. “The FAA says it will shoot down your drone if you fly within 36 miles of the Super Bowl,” reads the headline at Digital Trends. Business Insider was a bit more modest, noting “The FAA is warning people not to fly drones within 32 miles of the Super Bowl.”

I’ve written about this before, and was struck by the references to “deadly force,” which aren’t in the announcement from the FAA or the official notice. As best I can find, it appears to come from an NBC story titled “FAA: Drones Flown Around the Super Bowl Could Face 'Deadly Force'.

Here’s the quote, as it appears in the NBC post:

Drone operators who break the rules could face civil penalties and criminal charges. And, as [FAA Spokesman Ian] Gregor noted from the regulations: "The United States Government may use deadly force against the airborne aircraft, if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat."

This is technically always true, as the United States Government has a sovereign authority to the skies above America and it can make the call to shoot down aircraft deemed to be a threat. And the term “deadly force” appears in the FAA’s recommendations for police on illegal drone use. The document specifically states “The United States government may use deadly force against airborne aircraft, if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat.” The document includes this line once in reference to presidential movements, and another time regarding the Washington, DC Flight Restricted Zone.

Popular Science reached out to Gregor by email for clarification on the quote as presented in the NBC story. Gregor emphasized that the key goal of the FAA’s campaign is to remind people of the aircraft operations (including drone flights) that are banned from the restricted area.

“The NBC reporter asked me what could happen to anyone who flies a drone in the restricted area.,” Gregor writes, “I explained the FAA can fine an individual who violates regulations up to $1,100 per violation. The per-violation fine is up to $27,500 for businesses. Additionally, anyone who violates the Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) could face criminal charges. All that language is in the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) that we issued for the TFR. The NOTAM also refers to what can happen to any aircraft that pose an imminent threat. The language can be viewed here: http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_6_6446.html.”

These are the expected legal penalties, which the FAA has publicized recently with the launch of their new drone registry. Important information for a drone pilot to know, but that doesn’t answer the question of deadly force.

“You would need to speak with NORAD,” Gregor wrote, “for any additional comment on what could happen to aircraft that pose an imminent security threat.”

Besides tracking Santa every Christmas, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is also responsible for detecting and warning about threats in American skies. When contacted by phone, NORAD’s public affairs department was unaware of any claim about deadly force. They noted that there are procedures in place for how they respond to threats, but when specifically pressed on the question of deadly force against small unmanned aerial vehicles, they answered “no comment.”

So does this mean the FAA is working with the American military to shoot down drones that might try and sneak pictures of the Super Bowl? Almost certainly not. It means that drone pilots, like the pilots of other aircraft, are expected to follow the law, and that means clearing the skies according to the restrictions set up by the FAA for safety and security during special events. If a drone pilot violates that, they may face civil and criminal penalties, and if they fly recklessly, they are, like any other pilot, subject to charges for reckless operation of an aircraft.

If, and this is a huge“if,” a drone pilot uses their drone in a way that threatens lives, then it’s possible for the United States government to respond with deadly force, in which case it will probably be local police, and not fighter jets scrambled by NORAD. Should it come to that, the force might not even need to be deadly: nets work well, carried by drone or fired by guns. Next year, the anti-drone security may even come in the form of an eagle.

Rare Allergy To Vibrations Caused By Genetic Mutation

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For 50 million Americans, allergies—often to things like pet hair, pollen, or nuts—can be simply irksome or even life threatening. Very few, though, have a mysterious allergy to vibrations, called vibratory urticarial. Running, jackhammers, lawn mowers, even bumpy bus rides can cause a person to break out in hives, develop a rash or a headache, or feel fatigued. While the allergic reaction is pretty mild, the root cause of the allergy puzzled scientists. Now a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has figured out that a genetic mutation causes this rare allergy, according to a study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers identified people in three different families who have vibratory urticarial and took samples of their DNA, along with samples from their unaffected family members. When the researchers sequenced and compared the DNA, they found that the individuals with the allergy had a mutation on a gene called ADGRE2. Unaffected family members didn’t have that mutation, nor did any of the 1,000 other entries in the researchers’ genetic database.

Here’s what the researchers think is going on. The ADGRE2 gene acts as the blueprints for the body to create ADGRE2 protein, which is present on the surface of many of the cells that regulate the immune system. If the gene is normal, the proteins can fit neatly into their designated spots on the cell membranes. But the mutation causes the ADGRE2 protein to be slightly less structurally stable. When vibrations hit the body, they break off part of this protein, causing those immune cells to act as though there’s something harmful in the body and to produce an immune response.

Now that scientists know that some wonky proteins play a role in sounding the body’s allergic alarms, they might be able to better understand the effects of other types of allergens, according to a press release from the NIH. But it might also provide new links between genes and allergies, something that scientists have long suspected but have not well understood.

Six Degrees of Separation? Try Three

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The world is getting pretty small these days. In the 90's, it was once posited that every movie star on Earth could be connected to Kevin Bacon within six degrees. Since that time, the internet has showed us that this is probably the case with every person on Earth. I myself have a Bacon Number of 2, having worked at the summer camp his son attended and knowing people he has yelled at. Now, according to a new blog post on Facebook's research arm, being separated by two degrees from anybody on Earth is not unheard of.

They say that as more and more users are using the ubiquitous social media platform, these degrees of separation have been steadily shrinking.

In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74 [4,5]. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we've grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world.

Now they calculate that the mean separation between any given person to another is 3.75 degrees. If that sounds hard to believe, think of it this way: If you have 100 friends, and each of your friends has 100 friends, that's already 10,000 friends of friends. I can usually only remember, like, three names at any given time. Calculating the degrees for each of the 1.6 billion users on Facebook takes a lot of computing power.

Rather than calculate it exactly, we relied on statistical algorithms developed by Kang and others [6-8] to estimate distances with great accuracy, basically finding the approximate number of people within 1, 2, 3 (and so on) hops away from a source.

The final result is this graph.

Facebook Research https://research.facebook.com/blog/three-and-a-half-degrees-of-separation/

Figure 1. Estimated average degrees of separation between all people on Facebook. The average person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 steps. The majority of people have an average between 3 and 4 steps.

How small is your world? You can find out your own number at Facebook's blog post on the subject here.

Hat tip to Nicola Black for sending me the link

What Happens To A Football Player's Brain During A Concussion?

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Associated Press

When the concussion occurred?

Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers moments before being laid low by Vontaze Burfict.

No matter who you root for during this Sunday’s Super Bowl 50, a showdown between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers, you can be sure the competition will be so fierce that there will be an estimated 130-plus plays hundreds of hits, tackles, spears, and lay outs. For a young and healthy athlete, that can lead to serious brain trauma.

According to the NFL, there were 271 documented game-related concussions this past season — the most recorded by the league since 2011. Roughly one-third of those were caused by helmet-to-helmet contact. One of the worst of those hits occurred in January, during a grinding back-and-forth playoff match between Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, a game generally regarded as one of the season’s dirtiest.

How dirty? With 22 seconds left in the game, the Steelers’ star wide receiver, Antonio Brown, was mid air, ready to catch a ball that he hoped would put the Steelers within range of a game-winning field goal. Instead, Bengals’ linebacker Vontaze Burfict launched himself at Brown as he came down, slamming his helmet (which in the NFL can weighs four to six pounds) into the side of Brown’s head, whipping it sideways on his brain stem. The hit, at an estimated 707 miles per hour, carried about 1600 pounds of tackling force. It flattened Brown on his back, seemingly knocking him unconscious. Jim Nantz, the NFL’s normally unflappable play-by-play guy, was apoplectic, calling the assault "disgraceful.”

The Steelers, who ended up winning the game 18 - 16, later said Brown had suffered “concussion like symptoms.” In the NFL, that's code for ‘has a concussion.’ But a concussion is only part of the story. What happens to the brain when hit by a linebacker (or cornerback or defensive lineman) is a fascinating and disturbing mixture of physics, biology and human frailty. The victim is juts left groggy and in pain, but can suffer devastating physical, mental, and even emotional injuries life.

To peek under the cranium at the moment of impact, Popular Science spoke to Dr. Robert Cantu, a co-director at Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center. He is also a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the university’s School of Medicine. He told us what mostly likely went on inside Brown's head that day.

As Burfict slammed into the left side of Brown's head, he twisted it up and to the right. The slo-mo is painful just to watch. According to Cantu, a hit like that would lead to a textbook rotational concussion, among the worst a player can suffer. There are several things happening inside Brown’s skull, the moment of impact. Brown’s brain begins to twist and spin. It does this in the opposite direction of the hit and inside his skull’s cerebrospinal fluid, a clear fluid that cushions the brain. In that same moment, his brain’s nerve fibers stretch and rotate.

Picture the brain as a bowl of grey spaghetti that is suddenly flung out of airplane. Those noodles would stretch. Some would snap from the pressure while others would merely thin out in a way that would damage the sensitive neurons.

A large percentage of NFL concussions are the results of T-bone hits (at the ear hole) or right between the eyes. These hits rattle the brain's center of gravity. What they do is make the brain to rock dangerously backwards and forward, repeatedly hitting the skull. In young athletes (think teenagers), the brain is flush with the bone. So this effect is not as pronounced as in older players, who have a one-eighth to a quarter-inch space, more room for the brain to ricochet off the skull, and thus to cause more harm.

Helmet-to-helmet hits can reach between 100 and 150 on the G-force scale (for comparison, consider that an F-16 fighter jet rolling in a turn has a G-force load of nine). Blows to the side of the head, like the that laid out Brown, are far more dangerous. The spinning a brain undergoes during a rotational concussion can cause significant structural issues.

As Brown's body recoils, his brain continues swirling back and forth before finally oscillating to a stop. That's where things fade to black, both in Brown's consciousness and in our scientific understanding.

Read more: Has science finally cracked CTE in living brains?

There’s a lot about concussions we just don't know. For instance, as Stanford bio-engineer David Camarillo recently told PBS KQED's Quest blog, a hit as high as 150 Gs may not cause a concussion at all. But a hit of about 50 Gs, roughly the force of really strong punch in the face, can waylay a player for weeks. We do know, however, that one of the serious issues is the wobbling of the brain. “The exertion caused by a rotational hit puts a much greater degree of stretch and strain on the nerve tissue than a linear hit,” says Cantu. “It isn’t just going in one direction. It is going side to side, front and back.”

Cantu continues, “Everybody recognizes that rotational forces are more likely to cause nerve cells and their fibers to actually break, and have a higher chance of causing blood vessels to be stretched beyond their ability to stay intact.”

As soon as Brown’s head is hit, his brain violently accelerates. Neurotransmitters — chemicals that allow neurons to communicate with each other — are released, but since the trauma is so great, these neurotransmitters are chaotic and rendered effectively useless. At the same time, the new membranes surrounding the brain’s neuronal cells stretch so thin that ions like potassium and sodium flow out of the neurons and into the fluid-packed extracellular space. These ions are quickly replaced by calcium, which flows into the cell and basically paralyzes the neuron.

The cell is unable to transmit nerve impulses. So what you have is a cell that is alive, but is greatly impaired and nonfunctioning. Cantu calls it “an energy crisis in the brain.” And it can last not just minutes, but for months. That means whatever responsibility that cell controls, whether it be memory, speech or rage control, it can’t do its job. “So if the cell affects vision, you won’t see properly,” says Cantu.

Microseconds after the ion chemical reaction, Brown’s nerve cells and fibers start to stretch. Once the blood vessels in those parts break, microscopic hemorrhages occur. Doctors using specialty MRI scans have seen these ruptures in injured NFL players as tiny holes where vessels have bled out. If the vessels bleed into the brain's tissue, the fluid could kill neurons, which can already be in bad shape from a hit as severe as Brown’s.

Scientists do not know how to measure the number of cells injured in a concussion. They just don’t know. But for athletes who suffer from CTE, a degenerative condition that can only be diagnosed through autopsy (90 out 94 former NFL players who authorized the examination over the past eight years have had it), the cell death is crippling. It leads to massive atrophy in the medial surface of the brain’s temporal lobe. That’s the region and area of the brain that is associated, in part, with memory and language. If the cells don't have enough rehab time (say, a player takes the field too soon), they “tip over,” says Cantu, and die, causing brown stains to develop throughout that region (a phenomenon noted by medical examiners during autopsies on NFL players).

So far, scientists have identified 26 symptoms that can develop, depending on which areas of the brain are affected. For example, if a majority of the dead cells are located in the cerebellum (i.e. back of the head), players can lose their ability to balance properly. If they die off in the labyrinthine, which is located near the inner ear and is responsible for hearing, they might suffer dizziness and tinnitus. Or if the frontal and temporal lobes are inflicted, they might have trouble retrieving memories, making new ones, controlling their impulses, and keeping anger in check.

As Brown laid motionless on his back, just seconds after the hit, the cascade of ions fleeing his nerve cells continued. That exodus would likely remain steady for days (if not weeks or months) afterward. Almost instantly, there is an inflammatory response to address the dysfunction in the nerve cells. Other cells, known as microglia, bombard the affected brain areas and create inflammation to plug the leaking fluids. The symptoms can last from a week to ten days (80 percent of concussions) to a month (10 percent).

According to Cantu, Brown’s body doesn’t necessarily reboot while he's sprawled on his back. “His neural impulses wouldn’t be normal, which means his reaction times are slow, his coordination is acutely off, and he could suffer from a cluster of symptoms," he says. In other concussions, these symptoms have included fatigue, sensibility to light, irritability, and depression.

It’s unclear if Brown still suffers from concussion-like symptoms. If his injury is anything like other high-profile hits, he won’t have an easy road. In the months preceding, and following, Brown's televised and talked about hit, and avalanche of NFL players have gone public with their own disabilities and fears. In January, former Pittsburgh and Washington wide receiver Antwaan Randle El told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he suffers severe memory loss and is unable to even walk down the stairs. He is 36 years old. That same month, wide receiver Calvin Johnson (nicknamed Megatron for his unique blend of athleticism, strength, and absurdly soft hands), announced he will retire from the Detroit Lions at age 30 likely because of fears relating to his post-retirement health (Johnson hasn't elaborated on his thought process, but it is not hard to connect the dots).

Within the past two years, roughly a dozen other current, and mostly young, players have permanently stepped away from the game because of health concerns (i.e. watching legends and idols like Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, and Terry Long waste away due to the ravages of CTE and then ultimately commit suicide).

Among the most injured is Adrian Coxson, a rookie wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. This past August, during preseason practice, he was diagnosed with a Grade 3 concussion (the most severe on the diagnosis scale). He never took the field again, retiring before the 2015 season even began. He told the National Football Post following his decision, “The next hit to my head could possibly kill me or be life damaging.”

Science is hoping to learn more about concussive injuries from the players themselves, during life and death. Oakland Raiders’ quarterback Ken Stabler, nicknamed the Snake for the years he spent engineering harrowing runs through defensive formations, suffered from CTE and died of colon cancer last summer. He donated his roughly three-pound brain to Cantu's CTE Center for analysis.

“The very severity of the disease, at least that we’re seeing in American football players, seems to correlate with the duration of play. The longer they play, the more severe we see it," Dr. McKee told the New York Times.

So as we couch surf our way to our way through Sunday's Super Bowl, keep an eye on the Cam Newtons and Peyton Mannings and Josh Normans. The number and types of hits each one suffers during their careers takes a collective toll. While concussion headlines have overtaken the actual science of these injuries, everyone hopes that will soon change, hopefully before anyone becomes another victim like Ken Stabler.

First Phase Of Giant Solar Power Plant In Morocco Turns On

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AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar

Noor I

The facility will use parabolic mirrors to catch the sun's rays to heat a salt solution and drive steam turbines to create power.

The giant concentrated solar power plant in Morocco switched on its first phase this week. Known as Noor I, the 160-megawatt power plant is the first of three phases (named Noor II and Noor III, of course) of a concentrated solar power house situated in the Ouarzazate province.

The ability to produce its own energy will be a boon for the North African country. Unlike many of its neighbors, Morocco doesn't have fossil fuel reserves and thus about 97 percent of its energy is imported from other countries. When it's completed, the concentrated solar power plant will have an energy capacity of more than 500 megawatts, and according to The Guardian will "provide electricity for 1.1 million people."

NASA Earth Observatory

Noor I as seen from space in December 2015

Concentrated solar power plants (CSPs) work differently than a photovoltaic array. CSPs use lots of mirrors to capture the thermal energy of the sun, and use it to convert water into steam to turn turbines. Noor I, which has about two square miles of thermo solar parabolic mirrors, will also be able to store about three hours' worth of energy in molten salt.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI just officially announced the construction of the next two phases of the power plant, which is projected to be finished before 2020. By then, Morocco has plans to obtain more than half of its energy from renewable sources.

[HT NPR]

How NASA Broadcast Neil Armstrong Live from the Moon

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NASA

Neil Armstrong just before his First Step

Apollo 11’s lunar landing and specifically Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon was, arguably, the biggest television event of the 20th century. Knowing the impact a live broadcast would have on the world, Deke Slayton went so far as to push NASA to include an erectable antenna on the LM so Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wouldn't have to wait for a tracking station to come within range before stepping outside. NASA’s live broadcast of Apollo 11’s landing was nearly a decade in the making, and required some stunning feats of engineering.

Communicating Through Deep Space

A lot of information has to pass between a spacecraft and supporting ground crews on any mission, including but not limited to telemetry, computer upload information, and voice communication. As early as 1962, NASA realized that the Apollo missions would demand a unique communications system. The Mercury and Gemini programs, both of which saw missions flying only in Earth orbit, used separate radio systems. Two-way voice communications, uplinked data, and downlinked telemetry were done using ultra high frequency (UHF) and very high frequency (VHF) systems while tracking was achieved with a C-band beacon on the spacecraft interrogated by ground-based radar. The system worked on simpler missions, but Apollo would be going much farther than Earth orbit, and with three men working in two spacecraft that would be operating simultaneously and sending down live television images, NASA needed a new way to uplink and downlink more data.

The solution was called Unified S-band or USB. It combined tracking, ranging, command, voice and television data into a single antenna. Voice and biomedical data were transmitted on a 1.25 MHz FM subcarrier, telemetry was done on a 1.024 MHz bi-phase modulated subcarrier, and the two spacecraft — the command and lunar modules — would use a pseudo-random ranging code using a common phase-modulated S-band downlink frequency of 2287.5 MHz for the CSM and 2282.5 MHz for the LM. In short, every type of information traveling between the ground and a Moon-bound spacecraft had its place. Except for the television broadcast.

NASA

Stan Lebar and the Apollo Cameras

The right camera transmitted colour broadcasts from the Apollo 11 command module while the left camera broadcast the first live video of Apollo 11 astronauts walking on the Moon.

To free up space for a television downlink from the lunar module, NASA removed the ranging code and changed the modulation from phase to frequency. This freed up 700 kHz of bandwidth for a television downlink on the USB signal. The problem was that this wasn't enough bandwidth for the standard video camera of the day that transmitted 525 scan lines of data at 30 frames per second at 5 MHz. Instead, NASA would need a slow-scan camera optimized for a smaller format, 320 scan lines of data at 10 frames per second that could be transmitted at just 500 kHz.

With the guidelines for the camera set, NASA awarded two contracts. One went to RCA for the command module camera. Another went to Westinghouse Electric's Aerospace Division for the lunar module camera.

From the Moon to Family Room

The Westinghouse slow-scan Lunar Camera was designed by Stan Lebar, Program Manager of the Apollo TV Lunar Camera. It was a small, lightweight camera designed to withstand the punishing forces of launch, the subsequent sudden weightlessness, and the striking temperature differences in space. It was also simple and maneuverable enough for astronauts to use it with their bulky gloves on.

The surface camera also had a key piece of classified technology inside it. The lunar surface camera would have to capture a clear image in spite of a high contrast between the bright lunar surface and the atmosphereless black sky, and Westinghouse had the answer. The company had developed a special low-light television imaging tube for the Department of Defense to use in a jungle surveillance camera during the Vietnam War, one that could find a downed pilot at at night. The key was a sensitive image tube combining a variable-gain light intensifier with a secondary electron conduction target. That SEC tube could reproduce objects in motion at low light levels without smearing the image. The DOD allowed NASA to use the top secret technology in its lunar surface camera, though it's likely few people who worked on the project for the space agency knew they were handling sensitive technology.

NASA

Armstrong Training for the Moon

The MESA is shown here covered by a gold thermal blanket. And the lunar surface camera's lens can be seen poking through a hole.

It was this camera that captured Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. The camera was stowed in the LM’s descent stage in the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) in the fourth storage area on the left of the LM's ladder. The MESA released when Armstrong, standing on the lunar module’s porch, pulled a lanyard allowing it to unfold. Though covered with a thermal blanket, the lens poked through a hole so it could see everything going on. Inside the LM cabin, Buzz Aldrin hit a circuit breaker that turned the camera on, allowing it to capture Armstrong’s walk down the ladder and first steps on the Moon.

The signal was sent from the LM’s antenna to the tracking stations at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra, and the Parkes Radio Astronomy Site in New South Wales, Australia. NASA used a scan converter to adapt the image to a broadcast standard format of 525 scan lines at the higher 30 fps rate. Then, the tracking stations transmitted the signals by microwaves to Intelsat communications satellites and AT&T landlines to Mission Control in Houston at which point they were broadcast to the world. The translation process left the image significantly degraded, but it was still live footage of man’s first steps on the Moon.

Sources: The Unified S-Band System; NASA Released Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video; Television from the Moon (ALSJ); "Apollo Television" by Bill Woods.

Malaria Found In U.S. White-Tailed Deer

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Tom Koerner/USFWS

White-Tailed Deer Fawns

Malaria parasites infect white-tailed deer in 10 states, researchers have found.

White-tailed deer throughout 10 states in the southeast are infected with low levels of malaria, according to research published today in the journal Science Advances. Until now, researchers thought the parasite had been largely eradicated in the United States.

The parasite appears to have been present in the U.S. for a long time. However, aside from a single case found in a deer in Texas in 1957, it has remained virtually undetected until now. Given this timeframe, researchers believe that other mammals in the United States could also be infected, although they haven't yet identified any.

However, it seems this parasite cannot infect or cause disease in humans. There are more than 100 different species of malaria parasites, and only four of those consistently cause infection in humans, according to the CDC. Enough time has already passed to allow transmission to humans (a mosquito could have bitten a deer, become infected, then bitten a person), and there have been no known malaria cases in humans attributable to it. This evidence makes the researchers confident that these particular species pose no threat to humans.

“At this stage, there seems to be no health risk to humans,” co-author Robert Fleischer told Popular Science.“There is always some chance for things to change in the future, although I think it is highly unlikely to make the leap.”

The researchers found two separate species of the parasite, which gave them a clue that it may have been present in the U.S. for quite some time. Further genetic analysis suggested that this malaria parasite may have arrived in the Americas during the miocene epoch, up to about 23 million years ago.

“So far, all evidence from our study supports the hypothesis that this parasite came over on the Bering land bridge in an ancestor of the white-tailed deer,” says co-author Ellen Martinsen.

Martinsen et al.

Malaria Infections Visualized

This graphic illustrates sampling sites for mosquitos and hosts. Red markers indicate infections, and the star denotes the location of the first detected case.

For the study, the researchers tested 308 white-tailed deer from 17 states and found 41 infected animals. The infection levels were likely too low to be detected by traditional light microscopy methods, so the researchers combined PCR-based screening, which allows the DNA to be amplified, with light microscopy to test for the parasite. They also tested mules, black-tailed deer, elk, and pronghorn, all of which tested negative. Though, they still believe that given the amount of time the parasite has been present, other animals could be infected.

Fleischer says that the deer are likely in a chronic stage of infection, as opposed to acute, but that it's not yet clear how the parasite affects them. His group intends to continue researching this and performing further analysis to uncover the origin of the parasite, as well as testing other mammals in the U.S. for the presence of malaria.


Primary Truth

Elon Musk Cancelling A Customer’s Tesla Order Makes No Sense

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Elon Musk speaks ahead of COP 21 Paris Climate Talks

ASSOCIATED PRESS/Francois Mori

Elon Musk giving a speech just before the Paris Climate Talks in 2015.

It’s been a few days since the big Musk-vs-Angry-Tesla-Customer flap livened up our Twitter feeds, and having spent that time mulling the brouhaha and reading—and rereading—the two Mediumposts from venture capitalist Stewart Alsop about how Elon Musk personally canceled his Model X order over a bit of online snark, I have just one question: Is there something I’m missing?

Because that’s the only possible explanation for what happened. There must be a more complete version of the story somewhere, and a lot of details we don’t have, because that sort of proactive, hyper-aggressive move from a high-profile, persistently-under-fire-himself corporate CEO could not possibly have come from a simple blog post. It just doesn’t add up.

Alsop’s original post, titled “Dear @ElonMusk: You should be ashamed of yourself” and posted on Medium back on September 15, was a fairly benign rant about the Model X launch event.

Alsop complained that it started two hours late, was packed with 3,000 attendees, didn’t have food, and kicked off with a super-lame slideshow about safety. Then he was handed a badge stating that his number for a quick turn behind the wheel was—get this—1,344. That clearly signaled that the event was going to head into the wee hours, so Alsop gave up and left. His subsequent blog post wondered out-loud what, precisely, he should infer from this event, in terms of Tesla’s managerial prowess or customer relations.

Those are good questions, frankly. I wasn’t at that event, but I’ve been to plenty of similar media events in the automotive realm. Generally, they start close to on time, there may or may not be food, and there are always dreary slideshows meant to set up the big reveal. It’s no big deal if it’s delayed, but it can be terrifically annoying if there’s too much standing around.

There are many different ways to view this thing. You could argue that Silicon Valley media events—Tesla’s in particular—are basically glamorous parties where a degree of tardiness and “anticipation-building” is expected, and that Alsop simply wasn’t down with that whole high-energy mojo.

Or perhaps he was feeling a bit entitled as a Silicon Valley insider—in a room full of them, of course. Maybe he simply had different expectations for the event, or he didn’t read the fine print about how it would all go down. He wanted to show up, see the car, and then cruise—not party with the Muskovites until the wee hours.

That’s cool. I get it. I would have left the second they handed me that badge, too. I also don’t fault him for venting about it. He’s a customer who wanted to see the car, and he didn’t get to after investing considerable time and effort to show up. Fair enough.

But something must have happened in October, November, December, or January for this saga to end up so definitively where it did.

Was Alsop persistently haranguing Tesla about the event or his vehicle order? Was he slagging the company to his Silicon Valley pals and Musk just got sick of it? Was there some other brand of rich-person crankiness happening that pushed Tesla’s rich-person handlers over the edge?

If any of that rings true within Tesla, then that’s their business, between Tesla and Alsop. But if this did truly result from a single blog post that sparked Musk’s ire, that’s a different story altogether. There’s no marketing or customer-relations consultant on Earth who could seriously defend it.

Musk should have said, “You’re right, our bad—come on down and drive the car!” Problem. Solved.

Watch An Artificial Chameleon Change Color

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Chameleons are masters at rapidly changing the color of their skin to camouflage themselves or communicate with others. Scientists worldwide have long sought to mimic the skins of these reptiles to render people effectively invisible with chameleon suits.

Now a mechanical chameleon from China can change color to almost every hue in the visible spectrum with the aid of bumps made of gold and silver on its skin, researchers say. The scientists published their work this past month in the journal ACS Nano.

Materials scientist Guoping Wang and his colleagues at Wuhan University in China 3D-printed a plastic chameleon that they covered in square electronic scales. Each scale had a thin film of glass on top of a backing of indium tin oxide, a transparent conductor often used in touchscreens, video displays, and solar cells, which helped the scales generate electric fields.

These scales had rows of microscopic holes etched into their glass. The researchers then filled these holes with gold bumps and topped them with a layer of gel containing silver. If an electric field was run through each scale, the electricity could either deposit or remove silver from the gold bumps, depending on the polarity of the electricity. Then, by altering the size and shape of the gold and silver filled bumps, the researchers could easily change the color of the scales to anything in the visible spectrum.

To test out their work, the researchers placed simple color sensors in each of the mechanical chameleon's eyes to help it sense the color of its environment. They found its scaly armor could quickly automatically blend in with its surroundings.

Artificial Chameleon

G. Wang et al., ACS Nano

This 3D-printed plastic chameleon can change color with the aid of bumps made of gold and silver on its skin.

Previous work into creating artificial chameleon skins has typically sought to mimic another set of color-changing animals— squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish — by moving colored inks around rubbery skins. Wang says his team's new device is faster, and can generate more colors.

In the future, Wang says, these artificial chameleon scales could be fabricated onto flexible backings to create a color-changing camouflage for military soldiers. The researchers added these devices, technically known as "plasmonic cells," could also be used in full-color low-power electronic paper and displays. However, they cautioned that they might behave too slowly to play video effectively.

Northrop Grumman Ad Teases 6th-Generation Fighter

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6th Generation Fighter Concept

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

6th Generation Fighter Concept

If this Northrop Grumman ad is any indication, we haven’t seen the last of the piloted fighter jet. The defense giant is best known for its long line of flying wings, including the iconic B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the yet-to-be-unveiled Long Range Strike Bomber. Their new 30-second clip doesn’t show us any new details about that bomber, which remains under wraps in ads even after winning a major Air Force contract. Instead, it gives us a trio of arrow-head-shaped grey wedges, all stealthy jet fighters with room for human pilots on board.

A new mystery fighter flies alongside a few of Northrop’s already flying planes, including the B-2 and the unmanned X-47B technology demonstrator. While not a design made for mass production, the X-47B, with its stealth, autonomy, and ability to land on carriers, is seen by many as a precursor to an unmanned era of military aircraft ahead. But the new ad suggests the opposite.

While this commercial just shows off concept art, the cockpit on the potential 6th-generation fighter are clearly visible. Because it takes decades to go from fighter concept to fighter in service, DARPA’s already looking at the future generations. It’s way too soon to say whether the fighter that eventually succeeds the F-35 will have a human in the cockpit, but at the very least, Northrop Grumman thinks it’s important enough to include it as a selling point.

Watch the full spot, entitled "Just Wait," below:

See Blue Origin's Controlled Rocket Landing From The Rocket's Point-of-View

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Blue Origin

The view from the New Shepard rocket booster as it lands on January 22, 2016

Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, made history in November when it landed its New Shepard rocket gently on the ground of the company's Texas test site.

In January, it re-launched and re-landed the same rocket booster, giving us this video.

Now you can get a taste of what it feels like to be a rocket booster crashing toward your landing pad in a glorious and fiery (but controlled) landing.

The company just posted this video from the January launch and landing:

Happy Friday!

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