5 best news for January
Shame in front of the whole world: Google will show all methane polluters on the maps
Next month, a satellite will be launched into Earth’s orbit to track methane leaks from oil and gas companies. For its part, Google will put data on its maps by the end of the year so that polluters can be seen around the world, writes ScienceAlert.
The satellite will be launched in May and is a joint program between Google and the Environmental Defense Fund. The satellite, called MthanSAT, could usher in a new era of global responsibility for climate change.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for nearly a third of human-caused global warming.
Reducing emissions of this gas is one of the fastest ways to slow the climate crisis. The heating capacity of methane is 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.
“Globally, 2023 was the hottest year on record. The need to protect the climate has never been more pressing, and reducing methane emissions from fossil fuel operations and agriculture is truly the fastest way to slow warming right now,” the executive said. of the MthanSAT project by Steve Hamburg.
Agriculture accounts for most of the methane emissions, followed by the energy sector.
IPHONE 16 comes with exclusive AI features
The iOS 18 operating system, the full readiness of which is expected in June, will be saturated with AI capabilities, the vast majority of which will work exclusively on smartphones of the iPhone 16 model range. This is due to the increased number of Neural Engine cores in the “apple” processor A18.
Apple has been integrating artificial intelligence into its products for quite some time, but the iPhone 16 will still be a qualitative leap forward. Siri is expected to be improved by using more language models to better understand users.
Other AI features exclusive to iPhone 16 may include:
– automatic selection of key points from iMessage and SMS messages;
– improved photo and video recording due to automatic setting of parameters;
– personalized recommendations for applications, music and movies;
– improved face and object recognition system.
The expected date of the premiere of the iPhone 16 is September of this year. As the date of the presentation approaches, the Network will grow with new details both about the device itself and about the A18 processor intended for it.
Shares of Meta and Amazon rose by $279 billion – Bloomberg
Share prices of Meta and Amazon rose by a combined $279 billion after both companies cut staff and posted strong earnings.
Meta and Amazon both reported better-than-expected earnings, sending their shares soaring by a total of $279 billion in premarket trading, according to the news agency.
In particular, earnings rose thanks to tens of thousands of job cuts starting in 2022, as well as strong sales that beat analysts’ estimates.
Meta, which cut staff by 22% last year, unveiled plans for a $50 billion share buyback and announced its first quarterly dividend.
According to the publication, the owner of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, will receive about 700 million US dollars a year from his first dividends.
While Amazon posted its best growth in online sales since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was helped by faster delivery of goods.
In addition, the company, which initiated its biggest round of job cuts starting in 2022, affecting 35,000 people last year, announced plans to eliminate more positions at Prime Video, studios and businesses related to Twitch’s live streams.
As explained in the media, the results of these actions led to a 17% increase in Meta shares in pre-market trading before the opening of exchanges in New York, and a 7% increase in Amazon shares.
Large-scale reforestation has protected the eastern US from climate change
The former forests of the eastern United States have been reborn over the past century. In the process, they keep temperatures stable or even slightly lower for tens of millions of people, while the world as a whole heats up. Discussions of the climate impacts of reforestation usually revolve around how much carbon it can sequester from the atmosphere. This conclusion suggests that regional effects cannot be neglected when considering global consequences.
Americans are far more likely to deny evidence of climate change, especially in the Southeast, than residents of other countries. While this undoubtedly reflects social and historical factors, direct experience may also play a role.
While almost the entire world is getting hotter and most of the planet’s population is exposed to increasing heat waves, things are different in the eastern United States. The reason, as new studies show, is the restoration of forests devastated in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This information can help calculate how much forest other regions need to restore to protect against global trends.
“It’s about finding out how much forests can cool our environment and how much that will affect it,” said Dr. Mallory Barnes of Indiana University in a statement. “This knowledge is key not only for predicting large-scale reforestation aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change but also for planning initiatives such as tree planting in cities.”
SpaceX has tried for the second time to launch a spacecraft that is supposed to make a soft landing on the moon
A US spacecraft set to land on the moon took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, February 15, marking the second attempt by a private company this year after the first failed
This is reported by Science Alert.
The head of the IM-1 mission, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, hopes to become the first non-governmental organization to make a soft landing on the moon and land the first American robot on its surface since the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. .
The Nova-C launcher, named Odyssey, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket around 1:00 a.m. local time (06:00 GMT).
IM-1 was scheduled to launch on Wednesday, but the launch was delayed after SpaceX detected abnormal temperatures while trying to refuel the launcher.
The spacecraft is equipped with a new type of supercooled liquid methane and oxygen engine that will allow it to reach its destination quickly, avoiding a long stay in the high-radiation region around Earth known as the Van Allen Belt.
Despite the delay, on February 22 the ship should reach the Malapert A landing site – an impact crater 300 kilometers from the south pole of the Moon.
On board the ship is a digital archive of human knowledge, 125 mini-sculptures of the Moon by artist Jeff Koons, and NASA scientific equipment.
After landing, the device is expected to operate for about seven days before a lunar night falls on the South Pole, rendering Odyssey inoperable.
Background: IM-1 is the second mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which the space agency created to delegate payload services to the private sector to achieve economies of scale and stimulate the broader lunar economy.