Technologies

Moonquakes: Understanding the Moon’s Tectonic Forces Could Protect Future Astronauts

Space agencies and companies looking to set up lunar outposts should build far away from seismic activity.

As humanity looks to the moon for science and economic opportunity in the coming years, understanding potential dangers lurking on the lunar surface could become increasingly important.

Ridges on the moon that signify moonquakes are the subject of a recent research paper, which delves into tectonic activity across the lunar maria, a vast network of dark plains that arose from ancient volcanic activity.

A team of researchers analyzed lunar formations called small mare ridges to create a global moon map, which is the first of its kind. The paper was originally published Dec. 24 in the Planetary Science Journal.

Cole Nypaver, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and one of the paper’s authors, told CNET that the ridges that were identified were formed by faults in the lunar subsurface, which are associated with moonquakes.

«While those moonquakes are potentially hazardous for long-term lunar exploration missions or permanent outposts, they also present fantastic opportunities to learn more about the interior of the moon and how the moon formed,» Nypaver said.

The moon is shrinking

Another of the paper’s authors is a scientist named Tom Watters. Back in 2010, Watters discovered that the moon is slowly shrinking because its core is cooling.

The moon’s contraction causes disturbances on its surface. The crust gets compressed and forces material up along faults, which creates ridges, similar to how mountains form on Earth.

The most common of these ridges are called lobate scarps. They form on the lunar highlands, which are the bright spots we see when we look at the moon. But the small mare ridges only form in the lunar maria, which are the dark areas of the moon that contrast with the highlands.

This research is the first time scientists have documented the ridges throughout the lunar maria. In doing so, we now have a more complete understanding of the moon’s thermal and seismic history, which could give us a better idea of any potential moonquakes in the future.

«Our results represent the most globally complete understanding of recent lunar tectonism to date,» Nypaver said. «The presence of these additional tectonic features in the lunar maria suggests that the moon may have experienced more global contraction in the recent past than previously thought.»

Moon missions

Humans setting up permanent footholds on the lunar surface have moved from science fiction to real plans for the near future. NASA’s Artemis II mission is set to launch in March at the earliest. And while this mission will only send astronauts to orbit the moon, future Artemis missions plan to land people on the lunar surface and build permanent infrastructure there.

University of Maryland professor Nicholas Schmerr helped NASA develop the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station for Artemis 3, which the crew of the third Artemis mission, currently scheduled for 2028, will deliver to the moon’s surface.

Schmerr said to CNET that this instrument will detect seismic activity in the lunar south polar region.

«We’ll get a whole new picture of lunar seismic activity both on the South Pole and lunar farside,» Schmerr said.

LEMS-A3 is a station designed to be self-sustaining, and Schmerr will act as the instrument’s deputy principal investigator for the mission. The LEMS-A3 will assess «tectonics-related seismicity of the region and any hazard the moonquakes (or, for that matter, impacts) could pose to future longer-lived infrastructure,» Schmerr said.

Setting up shop

NASA isn’t the only one that’s looking to sustain long-term lunar operations. A company called Interlune also wants to set up mining operations on the moon to excavate helium-3, a valuable isotope that could be used for clean energy and quantum computers.

Elon Musk has been talking about building a moon base to launch AI satellites into orbit.

Getting up to speed on the areas of the moon that are more likely to experience moonquakes could influence where space agencies and private companies decide to build outposts in the future.

«There are several upcoming missions to the moon that will carry dedicated seismometers in hopes of detecting a moonquake from a small mare ridge or an asteroid impact on the moon,» Nypaver said. «By identifying a new population of tectonic features in the lunar maria, our work provides additional targets for those missions that seek to use moonquakes to better understand our closest celestial neighbor.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, March 18

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 18.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought it was a fairly easy one, but read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Word before «card,» flood» or «photography»
Answer: FLASH

6A clue: Joust weapon
Answer: LANCE

7A clue: Brain, heart or lungs
Answer: ORGAN

8A clue: «Frozen» reindeer
Answer: SVEN

9A clue: What can be found on frozen roads or frozen margaritas
Answer: SALT

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Follow a dentist’s recommendation
Answer: FLOSS

2D clue: Baby bug
Answer: LARVA

3D clue: Shape made in the snow
Answer: ANGEL

4D clue: Very little
Answer: SCANT

5D clue: Egg layer
Answer: HEN

Technologies

Amazon Speeds Up Delivery Even More With 1- and 3-Hour Options

The retailer says the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities, with discounted shipping for Prime members.

Same-day delivery apparently isn’t fast enough for some Amazon shoppers. The retail giant said on Tuesday it’s adding new shipping options that will get products to front doors within a one- or three-hour window.

The company said in its announcement that the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities across the US, while the three-hour option is now live in more than 2,000 areas. Amazon’s web page at amazon.com/getitfast shows whether those options are available to shoppers for their location. More than 90,000 products will be available for those shipping windows, the company said.

For those who can’t get those services (including the author of this post, who lives between Austin and San Antonio in Texas), a message will display: «3-hour delivery is currently unavailable. Check back at a later time or shop products with Same-Day delivery below.»

Pricing for the faster delivery options is not cheap: It’ll cost you $20 for one-hour delivery and $15 for three-hour delivery for those without an Amazon Prime account, or $10 and $5 for customers who subscribe to Prime.

Last year, the company rolled out faster Amazon delivery options to 4,000 additional areas.

In a video of the podcast Learn and Be Curious with Doug Herrington, hosted by Amazon’s CEO of worldwide stores, Kandace Kapps, the director of the company’s same-day strategy team, spoke in more detail about the challenges of fast shipping. Kapps discussed shifts in customer buying habits over the last few years, such as more people buying household essentials like toilet paper on Amazon.

She said that Amazon can deliver so quickly by placing same-day delivery hubs close to customers in metro areas and by getting products ready to ship within 15 minutes, aided by warehouse robots.

«I think customers are going to continue to get magically surprised by how fast we can deliver to their doorstop,» Kapps said.

Herrington said fast shipping increases sales: «When we speed up the service, the probability that somebody buys a product from us goes up.»

Other retailers, including Walmart, have been adding same-day delivery options or exploring other ways to speed up shipping times to compete with Amazon.

Removing buyers’ moments of hesitation

Part of Amazon’s strategy, which has involved a massive buildout of locations, deployment of thousands of trucks, deals with other delivery services and investment in logistics software, is actually pretty simple: being there when people need last-minute items or make impulse buys.

«It’s about removing the last moment where you would’ve reconsidered the purchase,» said Stephanie Carls, retail insights expert at coupon and promotional-code website RetailMeNot, a sibling site of CNET. «It changes how you shop, not just how fast you get things.»

Carls said that Amazon’s super-fast delivery is removing the timeframe when people might change their minds about a purchase.

«There used to be a gap between deciding to buy something and actually having it. That’s when you’d price check, rethink it, or decide you didn’t need it after all,» she said. «This closes that gap.»

The retail expert said that competitors, including Walmart and Target, have been speeding up delivery times in some markets. Still, they’re not matching Amazon’s scale or product range at those speeds or levels of consistency.

«And that’s what starts to make everyone else feel slow,» Carls said. «Amazon’s advantage is how tightly connected its technology, inventory and delivery networks are, which makes this level of speed more repeatable.»

Technologies

Dog Health Goes Digital With New AI Chatbot

Fi Intelligence allows you to ask questions of a specially tailored pet health chatbot, but it’s not meant to replace vet visits.

It might be time to rethink what it means to be sick as a dog. On Tuesday, Fi, a smart pet technology company, announced a new AI-powered chatbot to help owners stay on top of their dog’s health using a blend of personal information and generalized dog breed data.

The AI agent, which the company is calling Fi Intelligence, is integrated directly into the Fi app. It has access to all the information gathered about your dog across the entire suite of Fi products, including the Fi Series 3 Plus and Fi Mini dog collars, as well as information and documents uploaded by the pet owner. The service is for dogs only (not cats, rabbits or other pets).

If you already own a Fi smart collar, existing data will be incorporated into the AI agent’s dataset to help it answer your questions.

When creating Fi Intelligence, the company identified a multitude of common questions that dog owners have, including whether their animal friend is walking or sleeping enough, or scratching more than usual. The chatbot was created to help owners find answers to these questions quickly and easily, according to Fi.

Fi designed its agent to answer these questions using a mix of general information about a dog’s breed, personal information and biometric data gathered by Fi smart pet collars.

Pet owners can ask the chatbot questions in plain English and get back detailed responses. Fi Intelligence is equipped to answer general questions, contrast your dog’s current data to previous time periods and compare your dog’s data to other dogs of the same breed.

Fi says its chatbot is different from general-purpose AI agents because it has been trained on a proprietary dataset containing «the largest repository of real-world canine activity, sleep and behavior data in the world.»

Fi Intelligence doesn’t replace a trip to the vet — and the company stresses it’s not supposed to. Rather, the agent is supposed to grant owners «informed confidence» about their dog’s health and can help them «show up [to the vet] with specific, documented observations drawn from weeks of continuous data.»

«The strongest signal from our beta was that owners aren’t using this to replace their vet,» said Fi’s Vice President of Product Darrell Stone. «They’re using it to show up better prepared.»

According to Fi, the Fi Intelligence integration will provide the most complete dog health profile available in the app so far. Fi Intelligence is available to all Fi members immediately.