Astronomers said this week that a piece of a Falcon 9 rocket that was launched in February 2015 is currently on a trajectory to collide with the moon in just a few weeks. CBS News reports: The rocket left from Florida’s Cape Canaveral and launched NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project that allows researchers to maintain real-time data for more accurate space weather alerts and forecasts. According to NOAA, having that data is “critical,” as space weather events “have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system on Earth.” During that deployment, Falcon 9’s second stage, which provides it with a second boost to reach its desired orbit, ran out of fuel to return to Earth, according to meteorologist and Ars Technica space editor Eric Berger. The second stage has been orbiting Earth ever since, and now, according to data gathered by astronomers, it’s on track to hit the moon.

Bill Gray, who writes the Project Pluto software that is used by both amateur and professional astronomers, gathered data from those space observers over the past few weeks to predict just when the impact will occur. Based on the information he gathered, there will be a “certain impact” with the far side of the moon on March 4, he said. The rocket stage is currently floating away from Earth and outside of the moon’s orbit on a “chaotic” orbit, Gray said, but in the coming days, it’s expected to turn around and head back towards Earth. It made a “close lunar flyby” on January 5, but March 4 is when its path and the moon’s will cross. Thankfully, there’s no cause for concern, says Gray, noting that it’s the “first unintentional case” of space junk hitting the moon that he’s aware of. It may actually help researchers learn more about the moon’s makeup if lunar orbiters are able to observe the crash site.

“If we can tell the [lunar orbiter] folks exactly where the crater is, they’ll eventually pass over that spot and be able to see a very fresh impact crater and probably learn something about the geology (well, selenology) of that part of the moon,” Gray said.

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Source: Slashdot – A Piece of a SpaceX Rocket Is On Track To Collide With the Far Side of the Moon

“Former heads of nuclear regulatory bodies across Europe and the US put out a statement this week voicing their opposition to nuclear energy as a climate solution,” reports The Verge’s Justine Calma. The publication spoke with Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to learn more about why some nuclear experts oppose the energy source as a climate fix. Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc shares an excerpt of the interview: Former NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko in an interview with the Verge notes: “I think there’s been a lot of misinformation about the role that nuclear power can play in any climate strategy. A lot of attention has been put on nuclear as somehow the technology that’s going to solve a lot of problems when it comes to dealing with climate change. I just think that’s not true. And it’s taking the debate and discussion away from the areas that can have a role and that do need focus and attention.” He added: “I think it’s money that’s not well spent. Nuclear has shown time and time again that it cannot deliver on promises about deployment and costs. And that’s really the most important factor when it comes to climate.” Jaczko goes on to note how many of the nuclear plants when he was chairman were supposed to come online but have experienced delays and exceptional cost overruns. Two of the four new design reactors that were licensed when he was chairman, which were supposed to be starting production in 2016 and 2017, were canceled, “and that involved federal indictments for fraud among the heads of the company running that reactor development.” The other two, he says, “continue to be pushed back and now are scheduled to start in 2022 or 2023” with a price tag that’s over $30 billion.

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Source: Slashdot – Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Argues Nuclear Power Isn’t a Climate Solution

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: OpenSea has revealed just how much of the NFT activity on its platform is defined by fakery and theft, and it’s a lot. In fact, according to the company, nearly all of the NFTs created for free on its platform are either spam or plagiarized. The revelation began with some drama. On Thursday, popular NFT marketplace OpenSea announced that it would limit how many times a user could create (or “mint”) an NFT for free on the platform using its tools to 50. So-called “lazy minting” on the site lets users skip paying a blockchain gas fee when they create an NFT on OpenSea (with the buyer eventually paying the fee at the time of sale), so it’s a popular option especially for people who don’t have deep pockets to jumpstart their digital art empire.

This decision set off a firestorm, with some projects complaining that this was an out-of-the-blue roadblock for them as they still needed to mint NFTs but suddenly couldn’t. Shortly after, OpenSea reversed course and announced that it would remove the limit, as well as provided some reasoning for the limit in the first place: The free minting tool is being used almost exclusively for the purposes of fraud or spam. “Every decision we make, we make with our creators in mind. We originally built our shared storefront contract to make it easy for creators to onboard into the space,” OpenSea said in a tweet thread. “However, we’ve recently seen misuse of this feature increase exponentially. Over 80% of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – More Than 80% of NFTs Created For Free On OpenSea Are Fraud Or Spam, Company Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: OpenSea has revealed just how much of the NFT activity on its platform is defined by fakery and theft, and it’s a lot. In fact, according to the company, nearly all of the NFTs created for free on its platform are either spam or plagiarized. The revelation began with some drama. On Thursday, popular NFT marketplace OpenSea announced that it would limit how many times a user could create (or “mint”) an NFT for free on the platform using its tools to 50. So-called “lazy minting” on the site lets users skip paying a blockchain gas fee when they create an NFT on OpenSea (with the buyer eventually paying the fee at the time of sale), so it’s a popular option especially for people who don’t have deep pockets to jumpstart their digital art empire.

This decision set off a firestorm, with some projects complaining that this was an out-of-the-blue roadblock for them as they still needed to mint NFTs but suddenly couldn’t. Shortly after, OpenSea reversed course and announced that it would remove the limit, as well as provided some reasoning for the limit in the first place: The free minting tool is being used almost exclusively for the purposes of fraud or spam. “Every decision we make, we make with our creators in mind. We originally built our shared storefront contract to make it easy for creators to onboard into the space,” OpenSea said in a tweet thread. “However, we’ve recently seen misuse of this feature increase exponentially. Over 80% of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – More Than 80% of NFTs Created For Free On OpenSea Are Fraud Or Spam, Company Say

New submitter blackprint writes: The City of Austin released a memo saying that Samsung released as much as 763,000 gallons of sulfuric acid waste into a Northeast Austin creek over a period as long as 106 days. They confirmed the leak has stopped, but no fish or macro invertebrates survived in the impacted area. They don’t know if there are any long-term impacts, but pH levels in the area have returned close to normal. According to the memo, “Public access to this area is limited, and there are no nearby parks.”

They have not stated the cause of the spill. “Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment,” reports local news station KXAN, citing the memo. “WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish.”

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Source: Slashdot – Samsung Spilled Up To 763K Gallons of Sulfuric Acid Waste Into Austin Tributary