Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 409

We all know what happens when Skynet is turned on, and it feels like we continue to get closer each week - with Google now teasing its new AI, after it learned "highly aggressive" behavior.

Google had its AI technology in a wolfpack hunting game scenario, where the AI had to gather fruit - with the concept of the game based around cooperation, but it went bad. AI were represented by colored squares that moved on a grid collecting fruit squares of differing colors.

As they collected fruit, the AI collected points - while the fruit squares would regenerate. But then the AI began to change, as they were capable of damaging the other AI players in the game with laser beams. The AI was fine when there were plenty of fruit squares, but when the fruit squares became scarce - the AI started attacking other AI, just like we would against other gamers in a video game.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, called TRAPPIST-1. The system is named after The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, which first discovered three of these planets.

At their press event, NASA has confirmed that three of those planets are located in the habitable zone. All of the seven planets could have liquid water, meaning there is a chance that some form of life might have developed on them. Scientists believe that the highest chances of finding extraterrestrial life are the three planets in the habitable zone.

The discovery also sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system.

NASA has announced that they will hold a news conference at 1 PM Wednesday, February 22nd, to "present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets." NASA's announcement didn't reveal any further details.

There are thousands of known exoplanets that scientists discovered in the past two decades. Scientists believe that exoplanets are our best chance to find an extraterrestrial life.

There is special interest in planets that orbit in a star's habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface.

After a postponed launch on Saturday, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday at 9:39 EST.

SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the first commercial launch from Kennedy's historic pad. The first-ever launch from Kennedy's Pad 39-A was Apollo 4. Lifting off on November 9th, 1967, it was the first test flight of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the moon. The SpaceX CRS-10 launch of a Dragon spacecraft is the first from Pad 39-A since the final space shuttle mission on July 8th, 2011.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is now on its way to International Space Station where it will arrive on Wednesday, February 22nd. Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the ESA (European Space Agency) will use the station's robotic arm to capture it.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch its tenth Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station on Saturday, February 18th.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is targeting liftoff on the company's Falcon 9 rocket at 10:01 AM from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft will carry supplies and hardware needed for the scientific research of the Expedition 50 and 51 crew members.

After a two-day trip, the spacecraft should arrive at the Station where Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the station's robotic arm to capture it.

The world is quickly stumbling into the world of fully autonomous everything, and it looks like factories are going to really win with robots if the results of a Chinese factory are anything to go by.

Changying Precision Technology Company (CPTC) replaces 600 human workers with robots, and saw a gigantic 250% increase in productivity, while they also noted an 80% decrease in defects. Factory workers can't be happy with that, as I don't think that even with the best training, they could provide a 250% productivity boost overnight like their robotic overlords did.

CPTC has 60 human workers remaining, which will be sliced down to just 20 in the coming months. Now we've all got to sit back and think: where will we all be in 10-20 years, and is your job truly safe from robotics or a fully advanced AI-based system?

Amazon is making big moves to take over the skies with drone deliveries, teasing its purported Prime Air delivery service during the Super Bowl this year.

After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings, and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017.

Cassini already sent some impressive images of the Saturn's atmosphere, and now it has shown us detailed images of Saturn's rings.

The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Although Cassini saw these features earlier in the mission, the spacecraft's current, special orbits are now providing opportunities to see them in greater detail. The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 meters), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings.

While the Chinese are still banned from the Space Station, that hasn't stopped the country from developing a strong space exploration program. Last year, China had the highest number of launches in space so far, and now they are developing new plans for further space exploration, including sending spacecraft to Mars and Jupiter.

Their plan is to send its first probe to Mars by 2020, said Wu Yanhua, Vice Director of the China National Space Administration. The second probe should bring back samples that will help them get a better understanding of the environment on the Red Planet.

China also plans to launch a large modular space station in 2023, and if the International Space Station finishes its work in 2024, as planned, China will be the only country with a permanent station in space.

If there was something that could change the world, it would be a cancer-detecting app on your smartphone - all powered with AI. We know that artificial intelligence is something that will be a part of our future, but now a group of researchers from Stanford are coming out with some exciting things.

The researchers published their findings in the latest issue of Nature this week, training a neural network with 129,450 photos that displayed to the system over 2000 different types of skin conditions. Mixing one of Google's own image recognition algorithms, the researchers trained the neural network to identify both malignant, and benign skin lesions.

The team also worked with 21 human dermatologists, showing the experts the same, common and deadly forms of skin cancer, and asked what treatment they would recommend. Comparing their answer to the AI, the humans performed at the same level. Sebastian Thrun from Stanford's AI Lab wrote in a blog: "We realized it was feasible, not just to do something well, but as well as a human dermatologist. That's when our thinking changed".