People have been interested in the Antikythera mechanism for more than 120 years, and new research has shed more light on this amazing machine in recent years. The pieces that are still there show that it was probably used to figure out things like eclipses and where the planets were in the sky. With some statistical methods that are often used in gravitational wave research, astronomers from the University of Glasgow have found more proof that it is linked to the Moon.

Professor Graham Woan and Dr. Joseph Bayley each used a different method after an interesting X-ray analysis of the object was done years ago. Some people don’t know how many holes are in one of the rings, which is thought to be a calendar. There is only a small piece of the ring left, and it’s hard to say for sure what it is because it spent 2,000 years underwater.

Based on the X-ray data, Woan and Bayley used bayesian statistics to determine how many holes there were in the rings. The most likely number was either 354 or 355 holes, they found. Around 354 days make up a lunar calendar. Based on the research, this number is 100 times more likely than 360 holes, which is what the Egyptian solar calendar has. This means that a 365-hole ring, which would be like a real solar year, is very unlikely.

“Towards the end of last year, a colleague showed me data that YouTuber Chris Budiselic had collected. Budiselic was trying to make a copy of the calendar ring and was looking into ways to find out how many holes it had,” Professor Woan said in a statement. “I thought it was an interesting problem that I might be able to solve in a new way over the Christmas break, so I started using some statistical methods to find the answer.”

The Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling methods were used. These are common ways to figure out how likely one result is given incomplete data. These techniques lead us to believe that the whole ring was 77.1 millimeters across and had either 354 or 355 holes spaced 0.028 millimeters apart.

“Previous research had suggested that the calendar ring probably followed the lunar calendar, but the two methods we used in this project make it much more likely that this was the case,” Dr. Bayley said. “It’s made me appreciate the Antikythera mechanism and the work and care that Greek craftsmen put into making it even more. To punch the holes so precisely, they would have needed to be measured very accurately and punched with a very steady hand.”

The study has been written up in The Horological Journal.

The sample that OSIRIS-REx took from the asteroid Bennu continues to give us new information about the past of this small space rock and the early Solar System. After the sample was opened a few weeks ago, signs began to appear that Bennu may have had a wet past. There is now another finding to add to that.

Researchers have said that magnesium-sodium phosphate has been found. It came as a surprise because the ship hadn’t seen it from orbit. It makes the case for Bennu being a broken piece of a much bigger, primitive ocean world even stronger.

The Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa-2 picked up a piece of an asteroid from Ryugu and found phosphate minerals on it. Earth rocks have also had them in them. But the Bennu sample stands out because the grains are so pure and big.

An asteroid called Bennu may have been wet in the past because of the phosphates and other elements and compounds that are found on it. Dante Lauretta, co-lead author of the paper and chief scientist for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said this in a statement. “Bennu might have lived in a wetter world in the past.” But this hypothesis needs to be looked into more.

One of the people who worked on the study and is in charge of OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said, “OSIRIS-REx gave us exactly what we hoped for: a large, clean asteroid sample rich in nitrogen and carbon from a world that used to be wet.”

For many reasons, the team thinks of Bennu as a part of the ocean world. For example, serpentinite is present. This is a type of rock that forms when hot rocks meet water, like on Earth’s mid-ocean ridges. Additionally, a lot of the substances that dissolve appear to have moved with the help of water. The fact that phosphates are real can be added to that list.

The team suggests a body with a lot of liquid water, maybe with a hard or icy exterior. A good example is Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon. Bennu’s parent body would be about 250 kilometers (155 miles) across, which is half of it. In the past, objects have struck the 1,630-foot-wide Bennu, which measures 500 meters.

“We are still thinking of ways to test [the wet parent body hypothesis].” But, according to Professor Lauretta, it’s the most likely place where these rocks formed. He said this in an exclusive chat in March.

The sample is still being sent to labs in the US and around the world. The valuable material was being moved around for a long time before it arrived. The team shared 58 results from the first study in March, and every week there are new discoveries. It will be possible to get even more science as the number of scientists grows.

“The rocks from Bennu are enticingly beautiful,” said Harold Connolly, who is the co-lead author of the study and a sample scientist for the OSIRIS-REx mission at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “Every week, the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team finds new, sometimes surprising information that helps us understand where Earth-like planets came from and how they changed over time.”

The study is written up in the Meteoritics & Planetary Science magazine.

Living in space nonstop for almost 24 years, with astronauts and cosmonauts living on the ship since October 10, 2000, when astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev took their first steps on board the International Space Station (ISS).

There will come a time when everything good has to end, and NASA is now making plans for that time to come. The US space agency said on Wednesday that it has chosen SpaceX to design and build the Deorbit Vehicle. This vehicle will be used to safely bring the space station down to Earth when its time is up.

If the US Deorbit Vehicle is chosen for the International Space Station, it will help NASA and its partners make sure that the end of station operations is a safe and responsible one in low Earth orbit. “This decision also backs up NASA’s plans for future commercial destinations and lets people keep using space close to Earth,” said Ken Bowersox, who is the associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “For the benefit of everyone, the orbital laboratory is still a model for science, exploration, and working together in space.”

The first parts of the ISS were sent into space in 1998. When their work is done in 2030, they will have been in space for two years longer than they were supposed to. The skeleton of the space station is made up of these parts, which means the ISS can’t go on after 2030.

“A lot of the space station can be fixed or replaced in space, and other parts can be sent back to Earth to be fixed and then sent back into space again.” “These parts include the science hardware, communications gear, life support gear, and solar arrays,” NASA says. “However, the primary structure of the station, such as the crewed modules and the truss structures, cannot be repaired or replaced practically.”

The space station moves in and out of sunlight, and spaceships dock and undock from it. This puts stress on the structures.

“These forces were accounted for in the original 30-year structural life estimate, and while NASA’s flown experience indicates the actual forces imparted to the station have been less than originally forecast, there is still a finite lifetime available in the primary structure,” said NASA.

As the space station has aged, leaks have started to appear, even though it has worked very well for a long time. Five space agencies worked together on an amazing project to run a lab high above our heads at about 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). NASA is now planning for the end of the project. SpaceX will run the project, which could be worth $843 million, but NASA will own and run the Deorbit Vehicle and mission to take the old space station out of orbit.