Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 225

SpaceX CEO and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk is dreaming big as usual: his newly unveiled long-term plan is to colonize Mars, among other planets.

The first phase: launch an upgraded, unpiloted Dragon spacecraft toward Mars in 2018, with the aim of obtaining flight experience, while developing advanced boosters, spacecraft, and subsystems necessary for what Musk calls his "Interplanetary Transport System".

A later phase: building a 400 foot tall rocket to send large crew capsules into low-Earth orbit. The capsules are to be fueled for a trip to Mars by the same rocket, which will also carry unpiloted propellant tankers. One of the principles behind the mission structure is to make the trips much more affordable: $200,000 per ticket versus the previous standing $10 billion.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA, launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and to this day it stays a vital research tool for astronomy. Hubble is meritorious for some major discoveries and photographs that have shown us the beauties of the universe.

Today, NASA announced that Hubble has imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. It appears that the icy moon erupts with high altitude vapor plumes. Scientists estimate that the plumes rise about 200 kilometers before falling back onto Europa's surface.

The observation increases the possibility that missions to Europa may be able to sample Europa's ocean without having to drill through miles of ice.

The world's largest telescope had begun operating in China and it should help humanity search for alien life. The 500m Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is located in the Dawodang depression, a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, southwest China. It consists of a fixed 500m dish constructed in a natural depression in the landscape.

It is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope (Arecibo Observatory held that title for 53 years) and the second largest radio telescope (after the Russian RATAN-600, which has a sparsely filled aperture). The final cost of the FAST telescope was $180 million and it took five years to build it. Its primary goal is to search for alien life but it will also be developed as a tourist attraction. Currently there are 71 people working for the FAST project.

The facility was opened at a ceremony on Sunday but it will take up to three years to calibrate the instrument so it can become fully operational. FAST will help us 'listen' to the universe and it will be able to detect radio waves from space. Scientists hope the FAST will play a key role in the discovery of alien life.

It won't be long from now that China's first space station, Tiangong-1, will plunge from space and back into the Earth in the second half of 2017 - where keen-eyed viewers will be looking for that 'Made in China' sticker.

Senior officials have confirmed the news, with Tiangong-1's re-entry and uncertainty about falling debris worrying because China is providing a broad timeline for the events. Speculation has started that China has possibly lost communication to Tiangong-1, the result of a possibly damaged module, meaning it's no longer capable of controlling its descent.

Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astrophysicist, told The Guardian that parts of the debris could be as large as 100kg/220lbs, adding: "Not knowing when it's going to come down translates as not knowing where its going to come down". If a large piece were to fall into a house, building, or crowded place - it could cause a fair amount of damage, and even worse - people could be hurt, or killed.

If you're a truck or taxi driver, an Uber driver or work in customer service, your days of employment could be numbered - with robots taking out 6% of these jobs in the US by 2021 according to a new report from market research firm Forrester.

The intelligent agents will be powered by artificial intelligence technology, where they will be capable of understanding human behavior, and then making decisions, for you. We're already dabbling in it now with AI-based services like Google Now, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and more - which for the moment mostly simple, but they will get much more advanced in the coming decade.

Once this breakthrough happens, the world of AI assistants, self-driving cars and computer hardware that can think for you, the changes to the world will be enormous. The Guardian reports that it's "not so good if you're an employee working in a simple-to-automate field". This is reiterated by Forrester's report by Brian Hopkins, who said: "By 2021 a disruptive tidal wave will begin. Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services".

I really think the marketing behind Terminator: Genisys could've used this to better effect, but Kate Mara's upcoming movie, Morgan, has a new trailer released that was made by AI. Yes, you read that right - an artificial intelligence made the trailer you're about to watch.

Morgan is a story of a corporate risk management consultant who has to decide whether to end the 'life' of an AI being, with the studio apporoaching IBM to see if they could use Watson to make the scariest promotional video it could. IBM's team then allowed Watson to create a trailer to Morgan after watching the footage, using its computer-powered logic, algorithms and math to make the trailer.

The IBM research time had Watson analyze 100 classic horror movies, closely looking at each scene for consistencies and triggers that lead to the scarier parts of the movies. There was a visual analysis of what was happening on screen, and a separate audio analysis of what was being said, or the reaction sounds actors made.

The world continues marching towards the warm embrace of machines in the formation of Skynet, so it should come as no surprise that a new Defense Department report says the United States need to take "immediate action" to increase the development of its AI war technology.

The US military is behind in AI research and autonomous technology when compared against academic and private research, reports Engadget, which also adds that the US has been primarily focused on launching heavy, physical attacks like previous wars, that it has left itself behind the AI and autonomous technology race. Well, that needs to stop - and we can be sure that over the coming years US taxpayers' money will be spent on it, in a big way.

In the report, the Defense Department said that the Pentagon needs to gather intelligence on other nations' AI capabilities, and work on "counter-autonomy" solutions. So in other words, the bully didn't do his homework or bring lunch money, so he's going to cheat off your test and steal your lunch money and claim victory.

SpaceX has confirmed it has sent its next-generation rocket engine, codenamed Raptor, in for testing at a facility in Texas.

The new Raptor engine could be up to 3x as powerful as the current Merlin engines that power SpaceX's Falcon 9 and upcoming Falcon Heavy rockets, but details on the next-gen Raptor engine are thin right now. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell made the announcement of the testing of Raptor at the Small Satellite Conference in Utah.

SpaceX founder and real life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, has said that Raptor could have a thrust of around 500,000 pounds, which puts it in the same category as the main engine on a space shuttle. But unlike the shuttle, which uses three main engines and two booster rockets, the future Mars Colonial Transporter would be powered by nine Raptor engines, giving it plenty of power.

Google has applied for a patent on bathroom devices that monitor your health. Among them: a pressure and electrical-sensing mat, a color-sensing bathroom mirror, an ultrasonic bathtub, a pressure-sensing toilet seat, and a radar-field device.

Some monitor your body by sending out sound waves, electromagnetic waves, electrical signals, and various forms of radiation, among other techniques, the data from which could be sent to health professionals. The devices can monitor your blood pressure and various parts of your body to determine specific health issues, like an impaired knee or overworked heart.

This isn't Google's first foray into the medical technology field: previously it explored Google Lens, a device that monitored sugar levels via an electronic eye lens.

Google is getting all six degrees of separation with parent company Alphabet, and its life sciences company Verily - yeah, see - has announced it entered a new joint venture with GSK, one of the pharmaceutical powerhouses, called Galvani Bioelectronics.

Galvani Bioelectronics will be working on experimental medicine that uses will use electric signals and much smaller devices, in comparison to the current system of chemical drugs in order to treat chronic diseases. Verily, owned by Google along with GSK said they would invest over $700 million across 7 years, with GSK owning a 55% equity in the newly formed Galvani Bioelectronics. GSK is already familiar with bioelectronics, as it began work in the exciting new field back in 2012.

Verily has been working with much smaller medical devices, such as smart contact lens right after Google's X research labs formed. Verily has worked with another large part of big pharma, with a joint venture into medical robots with Johnson and Johnson. There have been reports from biotech insiders and former staff that have not agreed with Verily for working on too many 'far-fetched health care projects without focus", reports Recode.

In the future, all of our houses might be 3D printed - especially if it takes just 45 days, like the world's first 3D printed house that was recently build in China.

According to the reports, the entire house was 3D printed in one go, rather than being built with multiple pieces. Experts over at Huashang Tengda in China oversaw the project, which took 45 days to complete in Beijing's Tongzhou District.

After 45 days, what we have is a large 400-square-meter home, with the two-story villa featuring walls that are up to 8.2 feet thick. Each flooor has a height of 10 feet, so you can be super tall and not have to worry about getting around the house. The 3D printing side of things was completed by the company, with specialists overlooking the project, but there wasn't much physical work to be done as it did most of it on its own.

SpaceX has been on a roll lately with three consecutive successful rocket launches and landings. It all came to an end yesterday though when its Falcon 9 rocket failed to land on a floating drone ship at sea and promptly exploded (or suffered a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" as founder Elon Musk puts it), but not before it successfully launched two satellites into orbit.

Musk says the explosion was caused by low thrust in one of the rocket's three primary engines, and that the company is now working on upgrades to the rocket in order to handle the same situation in the future.

SpaceX has a carg resupply mission for the International Space Station next month, followed closely by a Falcon 9 ground landing in Cape Canaveral, Florida and a satellite launch in August.

China's current five-year economic plan came to light in March, and in it saw mention of the country's intent to build a manned deep-sea platform nearly 10,000 feet underwater. Now authorities have examined the particulars and decided to accelerate the project.

The purpose of the lab is multi-fold: to help hunt for treasure, evaluate mineral deposits (particularly oil), and to put it to military use (likely within the field of sensor and communication systems).

"Having this kind of long-term inhabited station has not been attempted this deep, but it is certainly possible," said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Manned submersibles have gone to those depths for almost 50 years. The challenge is operating it for months at a time."

Our robot overlords are well and truly on their way, with former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi, saying that it's better to buy $35,000 robots than it is to hire teenagers for $15 an hour.

During an interview with FOX Business Network's Mornings with Maria, Rensi said: "I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe".

He added: "It's not just going to be in the fast food business. Franchising is the best business model in the United States. It's dependent on people that have low job skills that have to grow. Well if you can't get people a reasonable wage, you're going to get machines to do the work. It's just common sense. It's going to happen whether you like it or not. And the more you push this it's going to happen faster".

China seems to have beat us to the punch when it comes to enlisting robots and AI to help fight crime. It's not quite on the level of Robo Cop, but the autonomous machine is still slightly deadly.

The researchers at CERN have just released an insane 300TB of data from the Large Hadron Collider, with the data itself from 2011.

A physicist who works on the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, Kati Lassila-Perini explains: "Once we've exhausted our exploration of the data, we see no reason not to make them available publicly. The benefits are numerous, from inspiring high school students to the training of the particle physicists of tomorrow. And personally, as CMS's data preservation coordinator, this is a crucial part of ensuring the long-term availability of our research data".

The raw data from the detectors, as well as the "derived" data sets can be used with tools released by CERN. There's even an entire CERN Linux environment, where you can boot up a virtual machine and start playing with scripts and apps.

DJI has been making some seriously good professional drones over the years, with its impressive Phantom series, but has just unveiled its latest is the Matrice 600, a hexacopter that is capable of adjusting how it flies automatically, depending on what camera is attached.

The M600 costs $4599, and is the latest drone in DJI's huge professional lineup that is a successor to its current "Spreading Wings" series, which are higher-end craft that include retractable landing gear, and a foldable design. The new M600 features dust-proof propellers, as well as self-cooling motors.

DJI's new M600 launches with an improved, robust A3 flight controller that will change flight parameters depending on what it's carrying, and the amazing Lightbridge 2 camera link. Lightbridge 2 delivers higher frame rates over 1080p live-streamed video back to the pilot, at up to 3 miles away. This video is pumped to the pilot at 1080p 60FPS, which is impressive given the 3-mile distance allowance.

We all know the future is filled with robots, so it should come as no surprise that the University of Science and Technology of China is showing off its impressively realistic robot, Jia Jia.

Jia Jia looks more human than previous robots, and is capable of interacting with real humans, and can make realistic facial impressions. Jia Jia can tell you if she senses that you're taking unflattering pictures of her, where she'll say: "Don't come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make my face look fat".

The researchers spent three years designing Jia Jia to make sure that her mouth moves when she speaks, and that her eyes glance around the room naturally. Jia Jia can't laugh or cry just yet, and her hands still don't look super realistic, yet. The next version of Jia Jia will look better, with the researchers continuing to work on the robot without any plans of mass production. Team leader Chen Xiaoping said they hope to give her deep learning and facial recognition in the near future.

I didn't think we'd see this for at least another 10 years, but the world's first cyborg Olympics (or Cybathlon) will happen in Zurich in October, this year. The event was created as a way of creating innovation in the industry, where only a few eligible for prostheses actually use them. A trial event took place last year, and was a success.

The Cybathlon will measure the performance of the latest developments in technology that assist people with disabilities in everyday tasks. The modifications done to humans are encouraged at the Cybathlon, compared to the normal Olympics where athletes with enhancements are considered to have an unfair advantage - and as I write this, it feels like I'm explaining some future DLC of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) is organizing the event where in a cycling race (as an example) paraplegics will be pushed forward using electrical stimulation systems that will move their legs by stimulating the muscles. If competitors have prosthetic arms, contests will see them slicing loaves of bread and opening jars of jam. Other events will include people climbing up and down stairs, or walking across stepping stones.

Skynet has begun its takeover, of the library. Future University of Hakodate researchers have announced that their artificial intelligence has co-written a short-form novel, and it's been accepted by a Japanese story competition.

The short-form novel co-written by the AI has been accepted by the Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, and while the story didn't win the competition, its acceptance is a huge win for AI systems becoming more capable of reaching human-like creativity.

The team was led by computer science professor Hitoshi Matsubara, who worked closely with their AI during the writing process. The team assigned a gender to the protagonist in the novel, and then developed a rough outline of the plot. The team created a list of words, phrases, and sentences to be included with the story. The AI has the job of assembling the distinct assets into a unified text that was just intelligible, but compelling, as well.