Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 436

After a little over a week with just four crew members on board the Space Station, the Expedition 51 is now complete. After a six-hour flight, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos arrived at the International Space Station.

The two launched aboard the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Before docking to the Station, they orbited Earth 4 times.

The arrival of Fischer and Yurchikhin increased the Station's crew complement to five. The two join Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency).

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 Saturn's atmosphere and shown us detailed images of Saturn's rings.

However, Cassini's most important discovery reveals much more. NASA has announced that a form of chemical energy that life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The paper from researchers with the Cassini mission, published in the journal Science, indicates hydrogen gas, which could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life, is pouring into the subsurface ocean of Enceladus from hydrothermal activity on the seafloor.

The presence of ample hydrogen means that microbes if they exist there, could use it to obtain energy by combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide dissolved in the water.

Expedition 50 crew members safely returned to Earth on Monday after 173 days in space.

The Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft, carrying Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA, and Flight Engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has landed in Kazakhstan at approximately 7:20 AM. The three touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

"It was a textbook touchdown," said NASA's spokesperson Rob Navias. "The Soyuz was pulled by its main parachute onto its side, but the crew was quickly extracted and are in good shape."

SpaceX made history by successfully launching and landing already used Falcon 9 rocket. This is the first time in history that an already used rocket has been launched again.

The Falcon 9 in question was first used in April last year when it launched the Dragon towards the International Space Station. It was the second rocket that SpaceX successfully landed, and the first one that they landed on an ocean platform.

SpaceX has been landing rockets for little over two years now. Up until then, rockets were only disposable, destroyed after the launch. The company has now shown that the rockets can be re-used, which will lower the cost of space missions and space flights.

SpaceX just made history. Again. They have just successfully launched and landed an already used Falcon 9 rocket. This is the first time in history that an already used rocket has been launched again.

The Falcon 9 in question was first used in April last year when it launched the Dragon towards the International Space Station. It was the second rocket that SpaceX successfully landed, and the first one that they landed on an ocean platform.

SpaceX is all set to make history on Thursday, March 30th, when they plan to launch their first reusable rocket.

The Falcon 9 rocket, which they plan to launch on Thursday, was first used in April last year when it launched the Dragon towards the International Space Station. It was the second rocket that SpaceX successfully landed, and the first one that they landed on an ocean platform.

SpaceX test-fired the rocket this week, and they announced that the static fire test was successful.

Elon Musk is making some big moves towards getting your mind inside of a machine, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Musk has launched a new company called Neuralink, which is pushing the boundaries on something Musk teases as "neural lace technology".

Back in February, Musk said that humans can communicate at around 10 bits per second when typing on smartphones, but computers can talk to each other at trillions of bits per second. In order for the human race to begin trying to keep up with advanced machines will be a high-speed link, something Musk calls neural laces, between computers and our brains. Oh, is that all, Elon?

WSJ's sources say that Musk has taken a key role in Neuralink, and might even be in a leadership position. Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak confirmed the company is in operation, and Musk is involved, but it's early days for Neuralink.

So, we're now at a point where scientists can scan our brain waves while we watch movie trailers - and are able to pretty accurately predict whether that movie will be a box office success... or whether it'll bomb.

Researchers from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management have been working on a method of scanning brain waves of moviegoers, scanning over 120 of them wearing EEG brain monitors while they watched movie trailers, scanning their brain wave patterns. The researchers used this data, to see how well the trailers were keeping the attention of the viewers, and how similar the viewers' brain waves were.

This provided them with something called "neural similarity", and was a great way of predicting whether the final movie would be a box office hit - as those with more neural similarity made more money at the box office, with better engagement. The team tested over a dozen movie trailers, with X-Men: Days of Future Past coming in at #1 on the brain scans, while Mr. Peabody and Sherman came in dead last. The researchers added that neural similarity ratings accurately predicted the box office performance of both of these movies, and that this technology is at least 20% more accurate at predicting box office success than "less scientific" survey options.

Stephen Hawking, a well-known English physicist, and cosmologist has announced that he has accepted Sir Richard Branson's invitation to fly to space on board Virgin Galactic's new spacecraft.

In an interview on Monday with the British program Good Morning Britain, Hawking said he's been waiting to visit space for a while.

"My ambition is to fly into space. I thought no one would take me, but Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes", said Hawking.

Skynet is coming, and it'll be here sooner than you think: 2029. That's at least according to Google's Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil - who said: "By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence".

This new claim is a big one, as the Singularity has been teased by the smartest people in the world - the point where computers become smarter than humans. Others have said that the Singularity would take place in 2045 or so, with British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking staking claims on the Singularity happening in 2045.

Softbank recently acquired ARM Holdings, with plans of bringing the Singularity to us within the next 30 years. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son explained in a press conference last October: "I think a big paradigm shift is coming. The biggest theme in my view is the Singularity. I think it is coming into reality in the next 30 years. For that vision, I am exercising that strategy. $100 billion is an interesting size of ammunition. In my view, that is the beginning. My passion is bigger than many people think".