Tag: space

Orbital Data Centers Will “Bypass Earth-Based” Constraints

Last week, readers were briefed on the emerging theme of data centers in low Earth orbit, a concept now openly discussed by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, as energy availability and infrastructure constraints on land increasingly emerge as major bottlenecks to data center buildouts through the end of this decade and well into the 2030s.

Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud has released a white paper outlining a case for operating a constellation of artificial intelligence data centers in space as a practical solution to Earth’s looming power crunch, cooling woes, and permitting land constraints.

Terrestrial data center projects will reach capacity limits as AI workloads scale to multi-gigawatt levels, while electricity demand and grid bottlenecks worsen over the next several years. Orbital data centers aim to bypass these constraints by using near-continuous, high-intensity solar power, passive radiative cooling to deep space, and modular designs that scale quickly, launched into orbit via SpaceX rockets.

“Orbital data centers can leverage lower cooling costs using passive radiative cooling in space to directly achieve low coolant temperatures. Perhaps most importantly, they can be scaled almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on Earth, using modularity to deploy them rapidly,” Starcloud wrote in the report.

Starcloud continued, “With new, reusable, cost-effective heavy-lift launch vehicles set to enter service, combined with the proliferation of in-orbit networking, the timing for this opportunity is ideal.”

Already, the startup has launched its Starcloud-1 satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, the most powerful compute chip ever sent into space. Using the H100, Starcloud successfully trained NanoGPT, a lightweight language model, on the complete works of Shakespeare, making it the first AI model trained in space.

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New Warp-Drive Propulsion Concept Moves Fictional Starships Closer to Engineering Reality

A new warp-drive study proposes a novel segmented design that could sidestep many of the problems in the original decades-old concept, bringing the possibility of hyper-fast space travel one step closer to becoming a reality.

Warp drive theory has quickly evolved since the mid-90s, when a concept developed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre was first described in a landmark paper that provided a scientific basis for hyper-fast travel within general relativity.

While the concept of warp drives was initially popularized in the futuristic realm depicted in Star Trek, Alcubierre took the idea to paper, shaping the fictional idea into a conceptual reality—one that, someday, could potentially also be realized through advanced engineering.

“The resulting distortion,” Alcubierre wrote at the time, “is reminiscent of the ‘warp drive’ of science fiction,” though adding that “just as it happens with wormholes, exotic matter will be needed in order to generate a distortion of spacetime like the one discussed here.”

Since that time, aerospace engineer and applied physicist Harold “Sonny” White has been chipping away at the problem Alcubierre first posed. Now, White and his colleagues at Casimir have proposed a bold reimagining of faster-than-light (FTL) warp drive geometry, one that replaces the classic smooth “warp ring” with a set of discrete cylindrical structures, called warp nacelles, as he and his colleagues describe in a new paper. 

Building off of Alcubierre’s foundation of a spacetime “warp bubble,” White introduces a new framework that pinpoints exotic energy in tunable, engine-like structures, while the interior of the bubble remains stable and habitable to a prospective pilot.

“The results of this study suggest a new class of warp bubble geometries that are both interior-flat and structurally segmented into cylindrical ‘nacelles,’” White told The Debrief in an email.

However, White’s newest take on the warp drive concept bears more than just a passing similarity to its fictional forebear.

“The resemblance to the twin nacelles of the USS Enterprise is not merely aesthetic,” White told The Debrief, “but reflects a potential convergence between physical requirements and engineering design, where science-fiction architectures hint at practical pathways for real warp-capable configurations.”

“From my earlier work with the Alcubierre metric, I knew it should be possible to construct warp bubbles based on a nacelle-like topology,” White said. “The historical IXS Enterprise design was an early step in that direction. We envisioned that two warp rings placed in close proximity could generate a capsule-shaped warp bubble rather than the standard sphere.”

“That thought process showed how two distinct topological elements, in that case two rings, could be used to reshape and elongate a spherical bubble,” White added.  

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Hypersonics, AI, Space Weapons, & Directed Energy: Lawmakers Release Defense Bill As Expiring Obamacare Subsidies Marinate On Back-Burner

With Congress in its second-to-last week in session for this year, lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee released the final bill text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Sunday night, which allocates a topline of roughly $8 billion over the $892.6 billion the Department of Defense had requested, and what the House version of the NDAA provided which stuck to the Pentagon’s request. 

The NDAA is the annual law passed by Congress that sets the budget, policies, and legal authorities for the U.S. military and national defense programs. It shapes everything from troop pay to weapons development and foreign military aid.

“This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a Sunday statement. 

The $8B increase is a ‘compromise‘ – as the Senate tried to jack the budget up by $32 billion over the department’s request. According to Breaking Defense, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that appropriators would have the last word on the final budget, but was optimistic that the $8 bullion figure was in the ballpark.

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‘Ice Volcanoes’ Are Erupting All Over 3I/ATLAS, as Scientists Say the Alien Visitor “May be a Primitive Carbonaceous Object”

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be showing signs of active eruptions from “ice volcanoes” on its surface, according to new analysis of the unusual space object.

The discoveries, which build on observations that have revealed the comet’s surprisingly metal-rich interior, add to a growing number of factors that have prompted revised thinking on how comets form, and what future discoveries may await with the ongoing detection of similar interstellar objects in the years ahead.

3I/ATLAS, first discovered in July of this year, has been continuously tracked by astronomers throughout its visit through our solar system. These observations offered scientists a rare glimpse of a truly alien object, whose mysterious origins far beyond the gravitational or radiative influence of our Sun led it to exhibit several behaviors unique among comets.

Of key significance to observations of 3I/ATLAS is that its unusual behaviors offered clues to astronomers about how objects might exist in their natural state under cosmic conditions in which they formed billions of years ago.

The fact that the comet’s behaviors align with our expectations for how such pristine celestial objects would react once subjected to heat from a star like our Sun makes 3I/ATLAS a unique learning opportunity for studying not only interstellar comets, but also the chemistry and physics of distant planetary systems.

A Massive Surge in Ice Activity

Now, according to a new study by researchers Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez, Maria Gritsevich, and Jürgen Blum, which recently appeared on the arXiv preprint server, photometric observations of the comet have revealed a significant sustained increase in brightness that occurred as the object approached approximately 2.5 astronomical units from the Sun.

This unique behavior was sudden, but it was hardly fleeting—the explosive outburst appeared to be long-lasting, and seemingly points to the activation of water ice as the comet was warmed during its approach toward the Sun.

However, the recent observations reveal more than just sudden evaporation due to ice melt, suggesting something even more fascinating may have been occurring: cryovolcanism.

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New Theory Suggests We’ve Been Wrong About Black Holes for 60 Years

How confusing inevitability with reality built decades of paradox.

What if general relativity never actually tells us that black holes already exist, but only that their formation is inevitable in an infinite future we can never observe? In a new theory, Daryl Janzen, a physicist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, questions whether we’ve mistaken mathematical inevitability for physical reality, and shows how much of our black hole story rests on that quiet leap.

Black holes are among the most captivating and scientifically intriguing phenomena in modern physics, inspiring both scientists and the public alike.

But do they really exist? What if they are only ever forming, never formed?

Just imagine — what if the whole edifice of black hole physics is built on an invalid logical inference that’s gone unnoticed (or unacknowledged?) for the better part of a century?

Inevitability is not actuality — that’s obvious enough. Yet for sixty years physicists have ignored relativity’s most basic rule, and we’ve taken for granted that the latter is implied by the former. Like fools walking around imagining we’re all dead because someday we’ll die, they look at the evidence that nothing can stop black holes from collapsing toward their horizons and imagine that a process which remains forever incomplete has already come to its end.

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3I/ATLAS Radio Signal Detections Offer New Confirmation of What Many Astronomers Have Been Saying for Months

New radio detections from the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS have added to a growing number of observations that leave little question about the object’s natural origin.

The new data arrives amid ongoing speculation about whether the object’s odd trajectory and other unusual qualities could suggest it is of artificial origin, a theory that conflicts with the abundance of evidence presently obtained about the comet.

Collected by the MeerKAT radio telescope, the recent radio observations reveal distinctive hydroxyl absorption lines, which astronomers point to as only further solid evidence of cometary activity.

Lending additional clarification to the ongoing debate over the mysterious object and its unique natural properties, the new findings also help to dampen renewed interest in its possible technological origins generated in recent days, following the object’s apparent display of non-gravitational acceleration during its closest approach to the Sun last month.

Comprised of an array of radio telescopes in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, MeerKAT made its recent detections on October 24, according to the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.

The observations revealed OH absorption at 1665 and 1667 MHz, which refers to the process astronomers use involving the detection of the hydroxyl radical (OH) molecule, which absorbs very specific radio or infrared frequencies from background sources. This results in a “dip” that astronomers identify as an absorption line in the observed spectrum.

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‘Alien ship’ releases ‘seven jets’ with ‘glowing halo’ as it nears sun

An alien expert claims that an interstellar object which is seemingly an “alien ship” with a “complex jet structure” and a “glowing halo” is passing by the sun.

The mysterious interstellar object, which has been dubbed 3I/ATLAS, was reportedly at 29 degrees separation from the Sun. Stacked images show a “large glowing halo extending out to half a million kilometres” with at least “7 distinct jets.” According to Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, some of them are anti-tails in the sunward direction.

In an article published by Loeb, he wrote: “This morning, at 4.10 Universal Time (UT) on November 8, 2025, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS showed a complex jet structure. M. Jäger, G. Rhemann and E. Prosperi observed 3I/ATLAS at 29 degrees separation from the Sun in the sky.”

He added: “The stacked images, constituting 24 exposures in the green filter, each lasting 35 seconds , 2 exposures in a red filter and 2 exposures in a blue filter, show a large glowing halo extending out to half a million kilometers (5 arcminutes).

“The images show at least 7 distinct jets, some of which are anti-tails in the sunward direction.

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LOST IN ORBIT: Chinese Astronauts Stranded in Tiangong Space Station After Debris Strikes Their Return Capsule

This is a distressing trend in space exploration.

No matter what our particular feelings about Communist China and their space program, it is worrying news to learn that a Chinese space crew is temporarily stranded at the Tiangong space station.

The astronauts – or rather, taikonauts – have been put in this dangerous situation after space debris struck their return capsule, according to China’s spaceflight agency.

Fox News reported:

“The three-member Shenzhou-20 team had been scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday, but their mission has been temporarily extended as engineers conduct impact analysis and risk assessments on the damaged spacecraft, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement.”

“The Shenzhou program regularly sends crews of three Chinese astronauts to and from the Tiangong space station for six-month missions, where they carry out tasks ranging from scientific experiments to repairing debris damage.

The Shenzhou-20 astronauts – mission commander Chen Dong, fighter pilot Chen Zhongrui and engineer Wang Jie – arrived at Tiangong in April for a six-month rotation. They were nearing the end of their mission when the issue occurred.”

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First Evidence for a Non-Gravitational Acceleration of 3I/ATLAS at Perihelion

By the date of its perihelion, 3I/ATLAS displayed the first evidence of a non-gravitational acceleration. The report (accessible here) was filed by Davide Farnoccia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena who received his PhD in Mathematics from the Galileo Galilei School of Graduate studies at the University of Pisa, Italy.

The non-gravitational acceleration was measured at the perihelion distance of 1.36 times the Earth-Sun separation (defined as an astronomical unit or `au’), equivalent to 203 million kilometers. It had two components in the orbital plane of 3I/ATLAS:

· A radial acceleration away from the Sun of 135 kilometers (=9×10^{-7}au) per day squared.

· A transverse acceleration relative to the Sun’s direction of 60 kilometers (=4×10^{-7}au) per day squared.

If 3I/ATLAS is propelled by the rocket effect of ejected gas, then momentum conservation implies that the object would lose half its mass over a characteristic timescale equal to the ejection speed divided by the measured non-gravitational acceleration. For a thermal ejection speed of a few hundred meters per second, the evaporation half-life of 3I/ATLAS is 6 months. This implies that over the month it takes 3I/ATLAS to cross a spatial scale of order its perihelion separation from the Sun, 3I/ATLAS would lose about a tenth of its mass. Such a massive mass loss should be detectable in the form of a large plume of gas surrounding 3I/ATLAS during the upcoming months of November and December 2025.

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Did 3I/ATLAS Just Show Signs of Technology? Interstellar Object Displays ‘Non-Gravitational Motion’ as it Swings Past the Sun

A new report on the enigmatic interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has revealed deeper insights into the object’s behavior, which include signs of non-gravitational motion during its recent closest approach to the Sun.

Presently, most astronomers maintain that the space object, discovered in July 2025, is a natural comet, based on a growing body of data that confirms this interpretation. The object is the third known interstellar visitor that has entered our planetary neighborhood from another star system.

3I/ATLAS is also helping confirm data that suggests such objects probably make appearances far more frequently in our Solar System than previously known. With its glowing gassy envelope—what astronomers call a coma—and other key traits that have manifested as the object has moved closer to the Sun, little doubt has been left about the interstellar visitor’s identity as a natural object.

However, there are still some experts who interpret its recent activity as being noteworthy indicators—if additional related phenomena were to be confirmed in future observations—which some might expect to associate with objects of technological origin. So what does the latest data reveal, and why does it still have some astronomers divided over whether 3I/ATLAS might show signs associated with intelligent life?

What the New Report Reveals

A recent report by researcher Davide Farnoccia with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory offers some of the latest data on the gravitational characteristics displayed by 3I/ATLAS during its journey through our Solar System.

Farnoccia specializes in the study of small objects and their orbits, which includes “nongravitational perturbations” some space objects display, as well as whether some near-Earth objects (NEOs) may pose an impact hazard to Earth.

According to Farnoccia’s report, 3I/ATLAS follows a hyperbolic orbit, displaying an eccentricity of e = 6.1373 (rounded). This figure is important, as it significantly exceeds the accepted value of 1 that astronomers recognize as being required to escape the Sun’s gravity. This means that the object’s trajectory confirms that 3I/ATLAS is not gravitationally bound to our Solar System, confirming astronomers’ suspicions that once it completes its recent planetary drive-by visit, the object will continue back into interstellar space.

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