India and Russia: A tale of two lunar landing attempts
By Regina G. Barber|Aaron Scott|Viet Le|Ailsa Chang|Mia Venkat|Berly McCoy|Patrick Jarenwattananon|Rebecca Ramirez
Journalists film the live telecast of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network facility in Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. Aijaz Rahi/AP hide caption
toggle caption Aijaz Rahi/APJournalists film the live telecast of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network facility in Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023.
Aijaz Rahi/APhost joins 's and to talk through some of the latest science news. They talk the latest lunar landing attempts, how scientists are reconstructing music from people's brains and lessons from wildfires that contributed to a mass extinction 13,000 years ago.
Two nations, two lunar attempts, two different results
It's been a big week for space news. First, there was an unsuccessful attempt by the Russian space agency to land the Luna-25 spacecraft. Then, Wednesday, the successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 probe near the moon's south pole, making it the first nation to do so. This follows a failed attempt by India in 2019. Landing on the moon isn't an easy feat. In recent years, Israel and Japan have also had failed missions.
Listening to music? Scientists know from your brain activity
Recently, scientists hooked patients up to electrodes and then studied their brains as they listened to Pink Floyd's song, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1." Afterwards, they were able to reconstruct the song based on direct neural recordings from the patients that were fed into a machine learning program. The researchers say the long-term goal is to create an implantable speech device, so that people who have trouble speaking could communicate by simply thinking about what they want to say. Plus, researchers think reconstructing music will enhance existing devices, shifting them from the robotic and monotone to the more emotive and human
The findings were recently published in the journal
Unraveling a 13,000-year-old mass extinction mystery
For the last hundred years or so, researchers have been locked in a debate over what caused a major extinction event in North America that wiped out large mammals like the dire wolf, saber-toothed cats and the North American camel. Last week, scientists zeroed in on a top contender: major wildfires.
