Everything (Tech, Space & Future)
Virtual Reality Tourism
Titans of Space 2.0 virtual reality app
theBlu virtual reality app
The concept of virtual reality has been around for decades. In the late 1970's, MIT created the Aspen Movie Map. "The program was a crude virtual simulation of Aspen, Colorado in which users could wander the streets in one of the three modes: summer, winter, and polygons. The first two were based on photographs—the researchers actually photographed every possible movement through the city's street grid in both seasons—and the third was a basic 3-D model of the city. Atari founded a research lab for virtual reality in 1982, but the lab was closed after two years due to Atari Shock (North American video game crash of 1983). However, its hired employees, such as Tom Zimmerman, Scott Fisher, Jaron Lanier and Brenda Laurel, kept their research and development on VR-related technologies. By the 1980s the term "virtual reality" was popularized by Jaron Lanier, one of the modern pioneers of the field. Lanier had founded the company VPL Research in 1985." (Wikipedia)
VR is finding more and more application in medicine, education, training in high-consequence industries, video games, and, more recently, tourism ("staycations"). Much as I enjoy traveling the old-fashioned way, I still like the idea of VR "travel" - especially for places that we will not ever go. "Thanks to major innovations in the last decade, virtual reality recently went from clunky 90’s gimmicky fad to hey-this-thing-might-actually-be-cool-now status. Mix VR together with other technologies such as Photogrammetry and 360-degree video capture, and suddenly you can virtually travel to destinations all over the world and beyond." (Lifewire, May 23, 2017) It can only get better as we move further into the 21st century. Above are two images from the Lifewire article, "8 Virtual Reality Travel Experiences That Will Blow Your Mind"
-RJC,2/17/2018
"[MIT and Harvard] researchers found that when they shone a very weak laser beam through a dense cloud of ultracold rubidium atoms, rather than exiting the cloud as single, randomly spaced photons, the photons bound together in pairs or triplets, suggesting some kind of interaction -- in this case, attraction -- taking place among them.
While photons normally have no mass and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second (the speed of light), the researchers found that the bound photons actually acquired a fraction of an electron's mass. These newly weighed-down light particles were also relatively sluggish, traveling about 100,000 times slower than normal noninteracting photons.
[Researcher Vladin] Vuletic says the results demonstrate that photons can indeed attract, or entangle each other. If they can be made to interact in other ways, photons may be harnessed to perform extremely fast, incredibly complex quantum computations." (ScienceDaily, Feb 15)
The fully autonomous self-driving car is just around the corner.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The Level 5 (fully autonomous) self-driving car is just around the corner. Advances in sensor technology, control systems, GPS mapping and artificial intelligence along with huge research and capital outlays by tech companies and automakers have brought driverless vehicles closer to commercialization. But are drivers ready to buy them? READ MORE
What is the singularity and will you live to see it?
As artificial intelligence and computing capabilities advance, the date of the technological singularity draws nearer. Technologists are moving us inexorably towards the singularity. What is the singularity? What will life be like after the singularity? When do futurists predict it will occur? There are ethical questions that need to be answered with every world-changing scientific advance. Besides the existential concerns, AI and other technological and scientific advances are giving humanity the possibility of directing its own evolution - deciding what kind of humans we want to become. READ MORE
China Wraps Up 1-Year Mock Moon Mission
POSTED 5/17/2018
Mars has been getting most of the attention these days, but planned moon landings are making a comeback.
NASA recently announced its intention to return to the moon as a stop on the way to Mars.
On May 15, Chinese student volunteers completed a one-year test living in a simulated space lab in Beijing setting a record for the longest stay in a self-contained facility....Liu Hong, chief designer of Yuegong-1, said the test marked the longest stay in a bioregenerative life support system (BLSS), in which humans, animals, plants and microorganisms co-exist in a closed environment, simulating a lunar base. Oxygen, water and food are recycled within the BLSS, creating an Earth-like environment. (space.com)
Photo Credit: Xinhua/Luo Xiangguang/Getty
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uncovers Building Blocks of Life on Mars
POSTED JUNE 7, 2018
It is not quite the proverbial "smoking gun." But what NASA's Curiosity uncovered on Mars will guide future searches for life on the planet. Organic matter has been found on Mars in soil samples taken from 3 billion-year-old mudstone in the Gale crater by the Curiosity rover, NASA announced Thursday. The rover has also detected methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Thanks to Curiosity, we now know that ancient Mars had carbon-based compounds - organic molecules - that are key for life as we know it. "A new study published in Science on Thursday presents the first conclusive evidence for large organic molecules on the surface of Mars, a pursuit that began with NASA’s Viking landers in the 1970s. Earlier tests may have hinted at organics, but the presence of chlorine in martian dirt complicated those interpretations.
Curiosity's latest data reveal that the watery lake that once filled Mars’s Gale Crater contained complex organic molecules about 3.5 billion years ago. Hints of them are still preserved in sulfur-spiked rocks derived from lake sediments....
By themselves, the new results aren't evidence for ancient life on Mars; non-living processes could have yielded identical molecules. At a minimum, the study shows how traces of bygone martians could have survived for eons—if they existed at all—and it hints at where future rovers might look for them.
“This is an important finding,” says Samuel Kounaves, a Tufts University chemist and former lead scientist for NASA's Phoenix Mars lander. “There are locations, especially subsurface, where organic molecules are well-preserved.”
In addition to ancient carbon, Curiosity has caught whiffs of organics that exist on Mars today. The rover has periodically sniffed Mars’s atmosphere since it landed, and in late 2014, researchers using these data showed that methane—the simplest organic molecule—is present in Mars’s atmosphere.
Methane’s presence on Mars is puzzling, because it survives only a few hundred years at a time, which means that somehow, something on the red planet keeps replenishing it. (National Geographic, June 7)
NASA's Curiosity rover drilled this two-inch-deep hole in a Martian rock as part of its examinations of the red planet's soil composition. PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA
IBM Supercomputer "Summit" to Vie for World's Fastest Computer
POSTED JUNE 10, 2018 / UPDATED
TOP500 released an update to its list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory leading the way. In its debut earlier this month, Summit clocked in at 122 petaflops of compute power on High Performance Linpack (HPL), a benchmark used to rank supercomputers ranked on the TOP500 list.
By combining artificial intelligence with two tennis court's worth of computer hardware, IBM hopes to be a top contender for the crown of fastest of the fast bestowed later this month by organizers of the Top500 supercomputer list.
The US lags China today for both the top supercomputer and the most total supercomputer capacity on the Top500 list, but Summit will deliver a speed boost with new processor designs, fast storage and internal communications, and a design that can use artificial intelligence methods to zero in on the right computing calculations to be running in the first place. (CNET)
"The marketplace is beginning to recognize that AI and high-performance computing are not separate domains but things that need be viewed as integrated," Dave Turek, vice president of high-performance computing and cognitive systems at IBM, said. "The incorporation of machine learning dramatically reduces the amount of simulation that needs to be done to get to optimal results."
What's Summit good for? At Oak Ridge, it'll be scientific research into subjects like designing chemical formula, exploring new materials, studying links between cancer and genes on a very large scale, investigating fusion energy, researching the universe through astrophysics and simulating the earth's changing climate.
Nuclear fusion reactors: we finally see light at the end of the tunnel
POSTED SEPTEMBER 16, 2018
Since the 1940's, researchers have been unsuccessful in creating a nuclear fusion reactor. Recent news stories indicate that the 70-plus-year wait may be coming to an end within the next 10 to 25 years.
A nuclear fusion reactor has been the chimera of energy research for decades. Based on the principal that powers the Sun, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The most common nuclear fusion reaction, and the one of most interest to scientists, is the merging of hydrogen nuclei to form helium nuclei - the one that occurs in stars such as our sun.
Nuclear fusion could supply almost limitless energy with no greenhouse gas emissions and no radioactive waste. The challenge has been controlling and containing the reaction. Nuclear fusion requires extremely high temperatures, on the order of tens of millions of degrees Celsius, and a confinement system to contain the reaction.
The major challenges in realizing practical fusion power are engineering "a system that can confine the plasma long enough at high enough temperature and density for a long term reaction to occur and managing neutrons that are released during the reaction, which over time can degrade many common materials used within the reaction chamber." (Wikipedia)
Interest in nuclear fusion is getting hot again (pun intended) thanks to stories like these:
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is 50 per cent complete. Often called the most complicated scientific instrument in the world, ITER is being built in southern France. The director of the ITER project says the facility is 50% complete and on track to produce low-cost energy. This energy will come from what is basically a very small star at ITER’s core. Although small, it will burn 10 times hotter than the Sun. (Voice of America, Dec 31, 2017)
A new project between MIT researchers and private partners suggests a radically different approach [from the traditional tokamak nuclear fusion reactor]. If successful, the team estimates that it could be able to bring nuclear fusion power to the grid in as little as 15 years, twice as fast as some analysts had thought. (Silicon Republic, Mar 9)
More than 60 top fusion scientists and engineers from around the world gathered at the 5th IAEA DEMO Programme Workshop in Daejeon, South Korea, from 7 to 10 May, to discuss critical issues and next steps on the road to the realization of fusion energy. DEMO would represent the next stage after ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment under way. The technological challenges of bringing fusion power to the electricity grid will be addressed by a DEMO-type reactor. Individual countries (including the European Union, Japan, India, South Korea, Russia and the US) are exploring ways to do this. (IAEA web page)
A UK-based private venture has built a fusion reactor that can generate temperatures that are hotter than the center of the sun. Tokamak Energy has successfully generated heat levels of 27 million degrees Fahrenheit or about 15 million degrees Celsius, taking humanity one more step closer toward achieving the holy grail of nuclear energy. (Tech Times, June 12)
German scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) built a stellarator nuclear fusion called the Wendelstein 7-X that was switched on for the first time in 2015. Previous tests pushed the plasma in the reactor to higher temperatures and densities than ever before achieved in a stellarator, and now the IPP reports that it has broken its old records in a new test with upgraded components on the Wendelstein 7-X. (Popular Mechanics, June 26)
The most recent piece of encouraging news is that scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have now found a way to help solve one of the major containment problems by eliminating a common instability (the "ELM"). Researcher Jong-Kyu Park and colleagues predicted a set of distortions that could control ELMs without any additional instabilities. They then tested these distortions at the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR)—a ring-shaped magnetic fusion confinement device. Their experiments worked. (Newsweek, Sep 12)
Left: A model of the ITER Tokamak fusion reactor. Currently under construction ITER is planned to have an output of 500 Megawatts. The experimental campaign that will be carried out at ITER is crucial to advancing fusion science and preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow.
ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy as well as the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time. ITER will also be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity. (ITER.org)
InSight Lands on Mars
POSTED NOV 28, 2018
The InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Mars lander touched down on Mars on Monday November 26. InSight's primary mission is expected to take two Earth years, or a little over one Mars year. InSight is designed to study the "inner space" of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core. The InSight mission seeks to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars. The mission will also determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts.
NASA provides us with a summary of the landing [link below left] , an overview of the mission [link below center], and three things we've learned in the ensuing two years [link below right-Dec 2020].
China lands a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon
POSTED JANUARY 4, 2019
"A Chinese spacecraft has become the first to land on the far side of the moon in a historic moment for human space exploration. The successful touch down was hailed as a major technical feat and is seen as a important step towards China’s wider ambitions in space. The robotic probe Chang’e 4* landed in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the biggest known impact structure in the solar system, at about 2.30am GMT on Thursday....
"Instruments onboard the Chang’e lander and rover will aim to study the local lunar geology, probe the moon’s interior, and analyse the solar wind – a stream of high-energy particles that flow from the sun. Onboard experiments will also test how well plants grow in the weak lunar gravity. The far side of the moon is of particular scientific interest as it is heavily pockmarked by deep craters – more so than the nearside, where a succession of lava flows have obscured many of the earliest impacts. Scientists are still trying to understand why there are differences between the two faces of the moon, but think that these probably date back to the moon’s origin." (The Guardian, Jan 3)
*Chang'e is the Chinese goddess of the moon.
----
Photos below appeared tin the Space News article on the landing. From the left: the first image of the lunar far side surface returned from the Chang’e-4 lander terrain camera. Credit: CNSA/CLEP ; a view of the surface of Von Kármán crater from the Chang’e-4 lander descent camera. Credit: CNSA/CLEP; an artist's rendering of the Chang'e-4 rover on the lunar surface, released Aug. 15, 2018 (Credit: CASC)
Virtual Reality in Education
POSTED JANUARY 14, 2019
"That VR should have value in the education space seems obvious. But exactly how it can be more effectively used, being such a new medium, is largely unknown. Before precious school-budget dollars are spent, therefore, researchers are trying to understand how to realize the promise of VR for students. One such researcher is Guido Makransky of the University of Copenhagen."
Read about his findings in the Big Think article [link right].
Feeding spacefarers on a journey that lasts millennia
POSTED FEBRUARY 10, 2019
Travel to the stars is a staple of science fiction. Sci-fi writers provide their spacefarers with advanced power sources, wormholes, and warp drives to get around the speed of light constraint. Occasionally writers, giving a nod to the laws of physics, will put their interstellar travellers in a "generation ship" - a recent example being Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora". [1]
Now, Cosmos Magazine [link below left] reports that European astronomers have calculated the amount of onboard space needed to feed the crew of a multi-generational ship – one of the many challenges of journeying to planets orbiting stars other than the sun.
“With our current technology, it is not feasible to reach an exoplanet in less than several centuries of travel,” explains Frédéric Marin, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France, who led the study. To reach even the closest exoplanet – Proxima Centauri b – would take about 6300 years. The team had previously calculated that 98 original crew members would be the minimum required to ensure a 100% chance of success of the journey. Of course, the original crew would die and their descendents would continue the journey. Building on their previous work, the astronomers have taken the next step in fleshing out the concept of a multi-generational ship.
In a related article, Cosmos reports on the work underway at NASA that could reduce the time required for space travel. [link below right]
Fascinating stuff.
[1] The Barnes & Noble website offers "5 Generation Ship Novels that Take You on a Journey." Besides Robinson's book, B&N gives a blurb on others by Robert Heinlein, Elizabeth Bear, Phoebe North, David Ramirez.
Advances in the world of artificial intelligence
POSTED MAY 22, 2019
AI holds the promise of making our lives better and of understanding the world around us more completely. Here are a few of the recent developments in the area from the web pages of Science Daily.
Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do -- take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions.
Nuclear fusion could supply us with almost limitless energy with no greenhouse gas emissions and no radioactive waste. As scientists and engineers wrestle with controlling the fusion reaction, they may be getting some help from research at the DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Researchers there are using Machine Learning (a form of artificial intelligence that recognizes faces, understands language and navigates self-driving cars) to create a model for rapid control of plasma -- the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions -- that fuels fusion reactions.
The majority of matter in the universe is dark matter - matter that we cannot see directly. Understanding dark matter will tell us much about the structure of the universe. Gravitational lensing, which distorts images of distant galaxies in a way determined by the amount of matter in the line of sight, is a powerful tool in the study if dark matter. But as experimental and theoretical data sets grow, along with the simulations needed to image and analyze this data, a new challenge has emerged: these simulations are increasingly -- even prohibitively -- computationally expensive. In a paper published May 6, 2019 in Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology, researchers at Lawrence Berkely National Lab discuss their new deep learning network and its ability to create high-fidelity, gravitational lensing maps.
Integration is the most important challenge facing the robotics field. A robot's sensors and the actuators that move it are separate systems, linked together by a central learning mechanism that infers a needed action given sensor data, or vice versa. Researchers at the University of Maryland have introduced a new way of combining perception and motor commands using the so-called hyperdimensional computing theory, which could fundamentally alter and improve the basic artificial intelligence (AI) task of robots translating what they sense into what they do.
Scientists at the University of Munster have succeeded in developing a piece of hardware which could pave the way for creating computers resembling the human brain. They produced a chip containing a network of artificial neurons that works with light and can imitate neurons and their synapses. This network is able to 'learn' information and use this as a basis for computing. The approach could be used later in many different fields for evaluating patterns in large quantities of data.
Related
Below: A.I. Timeline Infographic from digitalwellbeing.org
Moon Landing: Apollo 11's 50th Anniversary
POSTED JULY 9, 2019
On July 20, 1969, while their crew mate Michael Collins continued in lunar orbit, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, the first humans to do so. At 4:17 pm EDT, Armstrong radioed, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” It was the pinnacle of the space race that began in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. Witnessed on television by hundreds of millions of people around the world, the crowning achievement of the US space program was flawless from start to finish.
The pulse of humanity rose with the giant, 111-metre- (363-foot-) high, 3,038,500-kg (6,698,700-pound) Saturn V launch vehicle as it made its flawless flight from Pad 39A at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida, before hundreds of thousands of spectators. So accurate was the trans-lunar injection that three of the en route trajectory corrections planned were not necessary. (Brittanica.com)
This was decades before the exponential advances in computing power. With its 2k of memory and a clock speed of 1.024 Mhz, the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer had "1,300 times less processing power than iPhone 5s."
But the space program in the 1960s did two things to lay the foundation of the digital revolution. First, NASA used integrated circuits—the first computer chips—in the computers that flew the Apollo command module and the Apollo lunar module...NASA also introduced Americans, and the world, to the culture and power of technology—we watched on TV for a decade as staff members at Mission Control used computers to fly spaceships to the Moon. Part of that was NASA introducing the rest of the world to “real-time computing,” (Smithsonianmag.com)
A few more of the amazing facts about the mission:
The astronauts landed with only 25 seconds of fuel to spare.
A site on the Moon was picked as the landing site that was thought to be a clear choice. However, while the Apollo probe was descending, the two astronauts realized the site was filled with boulders and knew it would be hazardous to attempt their descent. Therefore, Armstrong began to manually navigate the probe which involved skimming over the risky site, a decision which meant more fuel would be consumed while skimming over the location. The probe had a fuel limit set where upon reaching it, automatic abort of the landing would begin. The probe landed 25 seconds before reaching this point. What this means is that if the probe were 25 seconds late on its landing, automatic abortion of the mission would have occurred, forcing them to travel back to the Columbia that was orbiting the Moon. (WorldAtlas.com)
The astronauts left pictures of human beings and the recordings of many languages on the Moon's surface.
The astronauts left several items on the surface of the Moon, including pictures of human beings as well as audio recordings of several different languages to represent the global significance of the mission. Medallions bearing names of the three astronauts who perished in Apollo 1 on the launch pad and the two cosmonauts who perished in a similar accident were all left on the surface of the Moon as well. (WorldAtlas.com)
Apollo 11 left behind medallions honouring Russian cosmonauts
Along with the American flag, the Apollo 11 mission left behind a small collection of items. Among them were medallions honouring Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Vladimir Komarov, both of whom died tragically. Komarov's death is particularly shocking. The story goes that he knew he was probably going to die on the 1967 mission to put a man into Earth orbit. He didn't back out, because Gagarin was his back-up and he didn't want Gagarin to die. (C-Net)
A pen saved the mission
The astronauts all carried Duro-brand felt-tip pens, and if not for these the mission would not have made it home. In the cramped environment, someone had broken off the switch to the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine. This is where Aldrin had a flash of ingenuity. "Since it was electrical, I decided not to put my finger in, or use anything that had metal on the end," he wrote in his 2016 memoir No Dream is Too High. "I had a felt-tipped pen in the shoulder pocket of my suit that might do the job. After moving the countdown procedure up by a couple of hours in case it didn't work, I inserted the pen into the small opening where the circuit breaker switch should have been, and pushed it in; sure enough, the circuit breaker held. We were going to get off the moon, after all."
You can re-live three hours of the historic event by viewing the restored NASA Apollo 11 moonwalk video [link below left]. The grainy black and white video is what the 600 million television viewers witnessed - the astronauts setting foot on the moon, describing the surface of the moon, collecting samples and setting up experiments. Some key (approximate) times in the video:
3 minutes - Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon surface
21 minutes - Buzz Aldrin exits the landing module
31 minutes - The plaque unveiling ("Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon...We came in peace for all mankind.")
49 minutes - Armstrong and Aldrin plant the American flag
55 minutes - President Nixon congratulates the astronauts, concluding "Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth."
Liftoff from Cape Kennedy, July 16
Earthrise from lunar orbit
Buzz Aldrin deploying the Passive Seismic Experiments Package (PSEP) on the Moon's surface.
Flag and camera from the Lunar Module
View of full lunar disc during return
Mission Control celebrates splashdown
Above: the restored moonwalk video; Right: from left to right:Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin
Recently discovered "missing link" planets may be able to support life
POSTED JULY 30, 2019
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (aka TESS) "has discovered three new exoplanets that are among the smallest and nearest found to date. They orbit a star just 73 light-years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes, which astronomers say may be a "missing link" in planetary formation. They are of an intermediate size and could help determine whether small rocky planets like Earth and larger icy worlds like Neptune formed in a similar or very different way...The sub-Neptune furthest out appears to be within a "temperate" zone, meaning that the very top of the planet's atmosphere is within a temperature range that could support some forms of life." (COSMOS, July 30)
Below left - Link to Cosmos article on the discovery; below right - Link to NASA's TESS homepage
Future Humans: Genetic Modifications for Space Travel and Climate Change
POSTED AUGUST 26, 2019
As nations contemplate space-faring and confront climate change, proposals are being floated for genetic modifications to increase our chances for success. Scientists are considering the ways humans might need to change to adapt to future environments, either here on the rapidly changing Earth or on another planet. Noting that "extreme space travel exists at an ethically unique spot that makes human experimentation much more palatable," Jacqueline Detwiler, an articles editor at Popular Mechanics, interviewed biologists and geneticists for Leapsmag [link below left]. Sidney Pierce, professor emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida studied human photosynethesis and concluded it could not be done. But others are actively pursuing possible genetic changes that could give humans a survival advantage and make us more adaptable.
*The NASA twin study compared astronauts Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station, and his brother Mark, who did not, to find out what effects space tends to have on genes.
Genetic Modifications (excerpts from Leapsmag post)
In his book Future Humans, Rice University biologist Scott Solomon "explores the environmental pressures that are likely to influence human evolution from this point forward." Solomon's believes radiation-resistant carotenoids present in pumpkins and carrots might offer a solution to radiation exposure and give humans in space orange skin. When asked about the most important ability we could give our future selves, he answered, “The empathy gene. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the world as they see it. I think it would solve a lot of our problems.”
Cornell geneticist Chris Mason's lab has studied genes in radiation-resistant bacteria, expressed proteins from tardigrades, tiny water bears that can survive in space, and looked into p53, a gene that is overexpressed in elephants and seems to protect them from cancer. The lab also developed a protocol to work on the NASA twin study* and "found that 8.7 percent of Scott Kelly’s genes—mostly those associated with immune function, DNA repair, and bone formation—did not return to normal after the astronaut had been home for six months. 'Some of these space genes, we could engineer them, activate them, have them be hyperactive when you go to space,' Mason said."
At Harvard, geneticist George Church wants to engineer cells to be resistant to viruses, such as the common cold and HIV.
At Columbia, synthetic biologist Harris Wang is addressing self-sufficient humans more directly—trying to spur kidney cells to produce amino acids that are normally only available from diet.
The promise of quantum computing
POSTED SEPTEMBER 17, 2019
The race is on. Companies and governments are competing to build a practical quantum computer. A Wikipedia entry lists more than 60 companies involved in quantum computing. China is reportedly pouring billions into the effort, and although lagging US companies at the moment, China appears well placed to take the lead.
The Chinese government has made quantum the focus of a "megaproject," and set its sights on major breakthroughs in quantum communications and quantum computing. It is reportedly investing $10bn in building the National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences in Hefei....The number of patents filed by Chinese companies relating to quantum computing has shot up in the last few years. In 2014, there were a similar number of patents filed in the United States and China, but by 2017 China filed almost twice as many. (Wired, Nov 2018)
With exponentially greater computing power, a quantum computer would be able to tackle problems impossible to solve with classical computing. Forbes put it this way: "Instead of troubleshooting issues bit by bit as we do now with classical computers, quantum computers tackle the entire problem at once...Quantum computers will disrupt every industry. They will change the way we do business and the security we have in place to safeguard data, how we fight disease and invent new materials, and solve health and climate problems." Among the "practical examples" where quantum computing would prove invaluable: online security, artificial intelligence, drug development, improved weather forecasting and climate change predictions, and traffic control. [link below right]
Quantum computing relies on the quantum mechanical principles of entanglement and superposition. [sidebar] The quantum bit (qubit) is the basic unit of quantum information, analogous to conventional computing's bit. For a quantum computer to reach its full potential, qubits need to be kept spinning in the superposition of multiple states for a long time. But qubits are notoriously fragile. Noise, temperature change, an electrical fluctuation or vibration—all of these things can disturb a qubit’s operation and cause it to lose its data.
For a quantum computer to exceed today's classical computers ("achieve quantum supremacy"), computer scientists estimate a size of 70 to 100 quality qubits with a depth of around 10. Depth refers to the number of gates where data manipulations are performed. As the number of gates and qubits increase the error rate also increases. The best of today's two qubit gate quantum computers has an error rate of 0.5%, astronomically high compared to today's classical computers.
A working quantum computer is still years in the future. Estimates vary from American firms' 5 to 10 year estimate to as much as 20 years (Chinese researcher Jian-Wei Pan).
When it does arrive, we may be working over a quantum internet and "solving some of the most complex questions facing the world today and not just in fields like physics or science...the financial, pharmaceutical, and security industries will see the most change in the shortest amount of time.” [See link to Futurism article below left]
A few definitions
Quantum theory/quantum mechanics Quantum theory is the theoretical basis of modern physics that explains the nature and behavior of matter and energy on the atomic and subatomic level. The nature and behavior of matter and energy at that level is sometimes referred to as quantum physics and quantum mechanics.
Superposition: The feature of a quantum (i.e., atomic/ subatomic) system whereby it exists in several separate quantum states at the same time.
Entanglement: occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently. Knowing the state of one entangled particle immediately lets you know the state of the other - even if the other particle is at the other side of the universe. Einstein famously referred to this as "spooky action at a distance."
Google reportedly attains "quantum supremacy" - what's next?
POSTED OCTOBER 8, 2019
News item: "Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online [in late September], the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer, Google reportedly said..."To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor," the research paper reportedly said." (CNET, Sep 25)
Quantum supremacy is a term coined by John Preskill, a professor of theoretical physics at Cal Tech, "to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, regardless of whether those tasks are useful." [link below right]
The experiment ("to execute a sequence of random instructions on the quantum computer, then output the result of looking at its qubits") is not very useful and was specifically designed by Google to demonstrate quantum supremacy. Because of the engineering challenges, a practical quantum computer lies a decade or more in the future. Among the challenges:
Scaleup - Google's quantum computer ran on 53 functioning qubits. A practical quantum computer will require thousands. Qubits are sensitive to vibration and scaleup will be difficult.
Error-correcting codes - conventional computers have mechanisms that automatically correct small errors when they occur. Quantum computers will also need such coding. Because of the delicate nature of qubits, this error-correcting is especially important.
Do something useful - There is great hope for quantum computing, but the Google experiment, as noted above, did not come anywhere close to begin practical or useful.
Still, there are reasons to be excited by Google's accomplishment, because, as Christopher Ferrie writes in Cosmos [link below right] "these new devices give us new scientific tools... Just running these devices produces exotic physics that we have never encountered in nature. Simulating quantum physics in this new regime could provide new insights into all areas of science, all the way from more detailed understandings of biological processes to probing the possible effects quantum physics has on spacetime. Quantum computation represents a fundamental shift that is now under way."
AI: Neural Networks and Neuroevolution
POSTED NOVEMBER X, 2019
Some recent news from the world of artificial intelligence:
Neural networks that borrow strategies from biology are making profound leaps in their abilities. And computer games are part of the test program. (Quanta, Nov 6 - link below right)
Kenneth Stanley, now at Uber AI, is a pioneer in the AI sub-field of neuroevolution, which co-opts the principles of biological evolution to design smarter algorithms. . . He discusses how a computer game he designed on 2007 with his students at the University of Central Florida led to the insight that he calls the steppingstone principle — and, with it, a way of designing algorithms that more fully embraces the endlessly creative potential of biological evolution.
Moving beyond the video game, Stanley aimed to show that completely ignoring an objective can get you there faster than pursuing it. He did this through an approach called novelty search. To test the steppingstone principle, Stanley and his student Joel Lehman tweaked the selection process. Instead of selecting the networks that performed best on a task, novelty search selected them for how different they were from the ones with behaviors most similar to theirs. In a test involving wheeled robots, they succeeded in demonstrating the superiority of their method.
Within the past year, AI based on the steppingstone principle finally managed to crack a number of long-standing challenges in the field, including beating experts in the video games "Montezuma's Revenge", "Pitfall!" and "Star Craft II". “Novelty search is important because it turned everything on its head,” said Julian Togelius, a computer scientist at New York University, “and basically asked what happens when we don’t have an objective.”
A neural network that teaches itself the laws of physics could help to solve quantum-mechanics mysteries. (Nature, Nov 7 - link below left)
Physicist Renato Renner at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and his collaborators wanted to design an algorithm that could distill large data sets down into a few basic formulae, mimicking the way that physicists come up with concise equations like E = mc2. To do this, the researchers had to design a new type of neural network, a machine-learning system inspired by the structure of the brain.
Their new neural network consisted of two sub-networks that were connected to each other through only a handful of links. The first sub-network would learn from the data, as in a typical neural network, and the second would use that ‘experience’ to make and test new predictions.
The team’s neural network came up with Copernicus-style formulas for Mars’s trajectory, rediscovering “one of the most important shifts of paradigms in the history of science”, says Mario Krenn, a physicist at the University of Toronto in Canada who works on applying artificial intelligence to scientific discovery.
Renner and his team want to develop machine-learning technologies that could help physicists to solve apparent contradictions in quantum mechanics. “It’s possible that the current way [quantum mechanics is] formulated is in some way just a historical artifact,” says Renner, adding that a computer could come up with a formulation that is free of such contradictions. To move towards that goal, he and his collaborators are trying to develop a version of their neural network that can not only learn from experimental data, but also propose entirely new experiments to test its hypotheses.
What is a neural network?
Artificial neural networks (ANN) are computing systems that are inspired by biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. Such systems "learn" to perform tasks by considering examples, generally without being programmed with task-specific rules. (Wikipedia)
-search and rescue robots, dark matter, computing, nuclear fusion
Fusion Energy Breakthroughs
POSTED MARCH 3, 2020
A nuclear fusion reactor has been the chimera of energy research for decades. Based on the principal that powers the Sun, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The most common nuclear fusion reaction, and the one of most interest to scientists, is the merging of hydrogen nuclei to form helium nuclei - the one that occurs in stars such as our sun.
Nuclear fusion could supply almost limitless energy with no greenhouse gas emissions and no radioactive waste. The difficulty has been controlling and containing the reaction. Nuclear fusion requires extremely high temperatures, on the order of tens of millions of degrees Celsius, and a confinement system to contain the reaction.
The major challenges in realizing practical fusion power are engineering "a system that can confine the plasma long enough at high enough temperature and density for a long term reaction to occur and managing neutrons that are released during the reaction, which over time can degrade many common materials used within the reaction chamber." (Wikipedia)
Since the 1940's, researchers have tried unsuccessfully to create a stable nuclear fusion reactor that created more energy than it used. Over the past year or so, several developments indicate that the long wait may be coming to an end within the next 10 years. (video link below right) The four breakthroughs of the video's title are:
- China's "artificial sun" reaches 100 million degrees Centigrade
This is considered the minimum temperature needed for viable nuclear fusion reactors The Chinese researchers were able to sustain the temperature for 10 seconds, which doesn't sound like much but it appears to be the longest time at the highest temperature achieved to date. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, they were planning to bring a commercial reactor online this year.
- The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (see link below left) demonstrated a unique method to stabilize plasma - with radio-frequency waves. The new technique could prove useful for an experimental European reactor (ITER) scheduled to go online in 2025.
The work, described in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, deals with a type of structure in plasma that researchers call a “magnetic island.” Magnetic islands can cause complex plasma disruptions capable of shutting down fusion experiments and even damaging reactors. The researchers found that by bombarding plasma with radio-frequency waves while creating small fluctuations in its temperature, they could stabilize the material and prevent the dangerous magnetic islands from forming.
- Private companies such as TAE Technologies are entering the race to commercialize a fusion reactor. A year ago. TAE's CEO announced that the company will bring a fusion-reactor technology to commercialization in the next five years.
"It would put TAE ahead of two formidable competitors. The 35-nation ITER project expects to complete its demonstration reactor in France in 2025. Vancouver-based General Fusion Inc. is devoting the next five years, with support from the Canadian government, to developing a prototype of its fusion reactor. And the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced last March that it expects to bring its fusion reactor to market in ten years. For more than 20 years TAE has been pursuing a reactor that would fuse hydrogen and boron at extremely high temperatures, releasing excess energy much as the sun does when it fuses hydrogen atoms. Its next device, dubbed Copernicus, is designed to demonstrate an energy gain. It will involve deuterium-tritium fusion, the aim of most competitors, but a milestone on TAE's path to a hotter, but safer, hydrogen-boron reaction." (Forbes, Jan 14, 2019)
- Scientists at UC-San Diego reconfigured a "tokamak" reactor and achieved surprisingly good results.
- The pressure ramped up to reach values equivalent to those required in a fusion reactor, and the energy stored in the plasma was much higher than expected based on the normal mode—both very promising signs. (Ars Techinca, Mar 20, 2019)
Isaac Asimov and the future that is now
POSTED JUNE 15, 2020
One of the most renowned science fiction writers of his generation, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was also a professor of biochemistry and well grounded in science. Reading through his short stories, I was struck by the elements that were speculative at the time but now are considered commonplace. On several occasions, Asimov made predictions of what the world would be like in the future - among them, when inspired by the New York World's Fair of 1964 and as George Orwell's 1984 approached.
In 1964, the New York World's Fair was hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding", dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." Mid-century American technology and the promises of the Space Age were everywhere on display. Asimov wrote a piece for the New York Times in which he made some predictions about what the world would be like 50 years in the future.
He got a lot of it right. (sidebar) His predictions included automatic coffee makers; mobile phones; vehicles with "robot brains"; widespread teaching of technology skills; the replacement of human workers by automation for routine jobs; and "an experimental fusion power plant or two".
Even the ones he "botched" were not too far off - predicted world population to be 6.5 billion - it was over 7 billion in 2014 - and underestimated how much of a role robots would play in 2014. This "under-prediction" was from a writer from whose stories are filled with robots following the "Three Laws of Robotics"! Guess he didn't want to overplay his hand.
As the Orwellian year of 1984 approached, the Toronto Star asked Isaac Asimov to predict what the world of 2019 might look like. He broke down his predictions under two main themes: computerization and space utilization. (sidebar)
Among his predictions for computerization: "The growing complexity of society will make it impossible to do without them."; the "mobile computerized object" will "penetrate the home"; computers will disrupt work habits and replace old jobs with ones that are radically different; robotics will kill "routine clerical and assembly-line jobs."
His space utilization predictions for 2019 were a bit more fanciful, but one thing he got mostly right was "We will enter space to stay." The International Space Station has been continuously occupied for almost 20 years.
Predicting future technological advances is difficult. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, futurists cannot know what future generations will prioritize, where they will invest their energy and money. Futurists also cannot know how future generations will use the technology at their disposal, which creates a feedback loop and opens up new possibilities. A final reason is that even the best futurists cannot imagine some advances and developments. Isaac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry and a highly imaginative person, and yet he made no predictions of the great advances in genetics that we've seen over the past decades.
Related posts
FUSION ENERGY Fusion Energy Breakthroughs ; Nuclear fusion reactors: we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel [These posts are on this page above]
COMPUTERS AND AI What is the singularity and will you live to see it? ; The fully autonomous self-driving car is just around the corner. The following posts are on this page above: AI: Neural Networks and Neuroevolution; Google reportedly attains "quantum supremacy": what's next?; The promise of quantum computing; Advances in the world of artificial intelligence ;
GENETICS US gene-editing trials underway; Future Humans: genetic modifications for space travel and climate change; The Human Microbiome Project [These posts are on the Life page.]
It's 2020. Where are all the self-driving cars?
POSTED AUGUST 26, 2020
A few years ago, automakers and tech companies were giving optimistic projections about the arrival of fully autonomous self-driving cars. In 2017 German automaker BMW announced it would have a fully autonomous self-driving car by 2021. In January 2018, G.M. submitted a petition to the United States Department of Transportation seeking permission to begin operating fully autonomous cars — without steering wheels or pedals — in a commercial ride-hailing service in 2019.
While advances in AI have made driving safer and easier, we are still some years away from the Level 5 (fully automated) or even the Level 4 (highly automated) vehicle. Development has been more difficult than expected. Weather has proved tricky as have "edge cases" when someone else on the road does something unexpected. Then in 2018, an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. In the wake of that tragedy and with the realization that no amount of hype would solve the technical challenges of autonomy, companies have adjusted their self-driving timelines.
Carmakers are limiting their fleet-scale testing to a few "islands of autonomy" - relatively static areas that have been thoroughly scanned, mapped and stress-tested by artificial intelligence algorithms. This year, the coronavirus has both strengthened the case for robot delivery drivers and shuttered labs and factories where the technology was being refined. [1, 2]
SAE International has designated 5 categories of automation (sidebar). Many cars manufactured in the past few years are already at Level 2. A Level 2 vehicle has two or more advanced driver assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control, active lane-keep assist or automatic emergency braking. Level 2 automated cars still require total attention on the part of the driver. It's at level 4 or 5 that the term self-driving really applies. Self-driving cars employ GPS systems, sensors, actuators, complex algorithms, and powerful computer processors to navigate. (sidebar)
Why did we even go down this road? What are the potential advantages of self-driving cars? At the top of the list is improved safety. Studies from the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that human error (e.g., misjudgment, speeding, fatigue, intoxicated or distracted driving, etc.) is the cause of 94-96% of all motor vehicle accidents. Ideally,self-driving cars would also provide personal transportation and independence for people unable to drive safely, and, according to some studies, reduce CO2 emissions in conjunction with other technological advancements. A 2017 report produced by the University of California, Davis, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy contends that there can be an 80% cut in CO2 emissions if cities embrace 3 revolutions (3R) in vehicle technology: automation, electrification, and, most importantly, ride sharing.
The consensus industry leader is the Google spinoff, Waymo. Waymo has formed partnerships with Volvo, Fiat Chrysler, Jaguar Land Rover and the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance. It is the only platform taking passengers in fully driverless vehicles and recently announced it would begin testing self-driving trucks in New Mexico and Texas. Besides potential savings, the demand for driverless trucks is also a result of the shortage of drivers.
Tesla is considered by some as the principal challenger to Waymo. Here's a link to a discussion of the different approaches taken by the two companies.
As for public acceptance, there is a long way to go. Two 2019 surveys found that 64% of Americans said they would not buy a self-driving car and 71% of U.S. drivers would be afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle.
Below: Waymo produced a video of a ride in a self-driving car
Levels of automation
From Business Insider "This is what the evolution of self-driving cars looks like"
How They Work
Self-driving cars "rely on sensors, actuators, complex algorithms, machine learning systems, and powerful processors to execute software. They create and maintain a map of their surroundings based on a variety of sensors situated in different parts of the vehicle. Radar sensors monitor the position of nearby vehicles. Video cameras detect traffic lights, read road signs, track other vehicles, and look for pedestrians. Lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors bounce pulses of light off the car’s surroundings to measure distances, detect road edges, and identify lane markings. Ultrasonic sensors in the wheels detect curbs and other vehicles when parking."
"Sophisticated software then processes all this sensory input, plots a path, and sends instructions to the car’s actuators, which control acceleration, braking, and steering. Hard-coded rules, obstacle avoidance algorithms, predictive modeling, and object recognition help the software follow traffic rules and navigate obstacles." [3]
For more on the challenges of driverless cars, see link to Vox article below.
We are going back to the Moon
POSTED SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
On December 14, 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts lifted off from the moon. We have not been back since. Since December 2017, NASA has been developing a plan to return to the moon and establish a permanent base camp there in preparation for a manned mission to Mars.
In April, NASA released a 13-page plan outlining its long-term approach to lunar exploration that involves establishing a “base camp” at the south pole of the Moon. It's called the Artemis Program.
The first mission – Artemis I – is on track for 2021 without astronauts, and Artemis II will fly with crew in 2023. In 2024, Artemis III will be humanity’s return to the surface of the Moon - landing the first astronauts - including the first woman - on the lunar South Pole.
NASA says that establishing a permanent base camp on the Moon is a key step in sending the first manned missions to Mars. The report identified three key capabilities needed for that base camp. The first is a lunar terrain vehicle, an unpressurized rover analogous to the lunar rover used on the later Apollo missions. That would be followed by a larger pressurized rover called a “habitable mobility platform” used for trips lasting up to 45 days, and a “foundation surface habitat” capable of hosting four people.
"After Artemis III, the overall plan is to conduct operations on and around the Moon that help prepare us for the mission durations and activities that we will experience during the first human mission to Mars, while also emplacing and building the infrastructure, systems, and robotic missions that can enable a sustained lunar surface presence."
Click on the "Artemis Program" link to the right for NASA's latest news on the Artemis missions.
On September 21, NASA issued an update on the Artemis Program. Some key points:
Wearing modern spacesuits that allow for greater flexibility and movement than those of their Apollo predecessors, Artemis astronauts will collect samples and conduct a range of science experiments over the course of nearly seven days. Using the lander, they will return to lunar orbit before ultimately heading home to Earth aboard Orion.
Work is progressing rapidly on the Gateway. NASA will integrate the first two components to launch – the power and propulsion element and the habitation and logistics outpost – in 2023. This foundation for the Gateway will be able to operate autonomously, conducting remote science experiments when astronauts are not aboard. NASA has selected the first two science instrument suites to conduct space weather investigations in lunar orbit before crew visits.
An incremental buildup of infrastructure on the surface will follow later this decade, allowing for longer surface expeditions with more crew. That concept calls for an Artemis Base Camp that would include new rovers, power systems, habitats, and more on the surface for long-term exploration of the Moon.
Throughout the Artemis program, robots and humans will search for, and potentially extract, resources such as water that can be converted into other usable resources, including oxygen and fuel.
Above: A schematic from Futurism showing the development of the base camp.
Going to Mars
POSTED FEBRUARY 23, 2021
Last Thursday, the NASA Perseverance rover safely landed on Mars after a 300 million-mile, 7-month journey from Earth. "Mars 2020" was the ninth NASA mission to land on the planet. Besides the rover Perseverance, a small robotic helicopter named Ingenuity also made the trip.
A primary objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will also characterize the planet’s geology and past climate and will the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Mars is the planet in our solar system that most closely resembles Earth. Mars is a cold, inhospitable desert today, but features like dry riverbeds and minerals that only form with liquid water indicate that long ago it had a thick atmosphere that retained enough heat for liquid water – a necessary ingredient for life – to flow on the surface. It appears that Mars lost much of its atmosphere over billions of years [sidebar], transforming its climate from one that might have supported life into the desiccated and frozen environment of today.
The landing site for Perseverance is the 50-kilometer-wide Jezero crater, which once held a large lake. Water being essential for life as we know it, the crater is an excellent place to search for signs of earlier life. NASA believes that the best places to look for "biosignatures" would be in Jezero’s lakebed or in shoreline sediments that could be encrusted with carbonate minerals, which are especially good at preserving certain kinds of fossilized life on Earth.
Perseverance will collect and cache samples to be returned to Earth for analysis in a future mission. These samples will not only be checked for signs of ancient microbial life but will also play a critical role in preparing for a manned mission to Mars.
What are the incentives for going to Mars? For that matter, what are the benefits of a space program?
Our place in the universe: the origin and ubiquity of life
A primary objective of NASA's Mars 2020 mission is the search for extraterrestrial life. Mars is the planet most closely resembling Earth, the existence of dried riverbeds there indicate the former presence of water, and is the closest planet or moon where life may have existed. There are other places in the solar system where exotic forms of life may exist - chief among them Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's Titan [sidebar - "Top 10 places life may be hiding in the solar system] - but Mars is the closest.
Earth is the only place in the universe known to have life of any kind. Evidence of life on Mars would be the first proof that we may not be alone. If life could arise somewhere else, life could evolve to intelligence somewhere else.
Extrapolating from NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission, scientists believe there may be as many as 300,000,000 habitable planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, with at least four potentially within 30 light-years of our Sun. [sidebar - "About Half of Sun-like Stars..."]
If signs of ancient life are found on Mars, with this huge inventory of planetary "laboratories", it is likely that intelligent life did arise on another planet in another star system (notes a, b).
Discovery of life on Mars would have philosophical implications. It would be the latest in a line of discoveries helping us understand the Earth's and mankind's place in the universe.
Before the 1500's, most people believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe with all the other heavenly bodies including the Sun revolving around it. Then, in the early years of the 16th century, the Polish scientist Copernicus hypothesized that the Sun was the center of the solar system, a fact that we take for granted today. Darwin's work in the 1800's showed that humans were one of many species that had evolved on Earth, and decades of effort by biologists revealed a multi million-year procession of species, most of which are now extinct. "The next milestone in the changing worldview that started with the Copernican Revolution came in the 1920s, when astronomers proved that the Sun is not at the center of our gigantic disk-shaped galaxy, but at its outskirts. Moreover, our galaxy is only one of millions of visible galaxies." [1]
WITW post 10/23/20: The Search for Life: Superhabitable Planets
Challenge
In addition to its search for extraterrestrial life, NASA's "Mars 2020" mission is also the next step towards sending a crew of humans to the planet. The data collected by Perseverance will be critical in preparing for that mission, which will be the culmination of NASA's "Moon to Mars" project. This project consists of a series of steps that will transition space exploration activities from low-Earth-orbit (the International Space Station) to the Moon and then to Mars. NASA's plan is for Americans to orbit the Moon starting in 2023, to land astronauts on the surface in the late 2020s, and then to land a human mission on Mars in the 2030's.
It promises to be an incredible undertaking, tapping into the best of the human spirit and our sense of adventure. In announcing the Apollo Program, President John Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept." Going to Mars will be an even greater challenge.
The Existential Imperative
Since life began on Earth, there have been five mass extinctions that have wiped out a majority of the species on the planet, and many scientists warn that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event. [and sidebar - "Six Extinctions..."] The human race itself was almost wiped out 75,000 years ago after a super-volcanic eruption on Sumatra reduced humanity to about 1000 reproductive adults.
All of the known intelligent life in the universe exists on an 8,000 mile diameter planet 93 million miles from a yellow dwarf star in an arm of a spiral galaxy. If anything - an asteroid strike, a supernova explosion, runaway climate change, a nuclear war - destroys the Earth or its ability to support us, humanity would perish. Colonization of other planets such as Mars would make that catastrophe less likely. Humanity would survive.
Technological advances and inventions
From its Apollo beginnings, the space program has been a continuing force in the development of new technology. Inventions developed from the 1960's space program still in use today include the Dustbuster, thermal blankets, advanced cameras, fireproof firefighter uniforms, shock-absorbing sneaker soles, vacuum-sealed food, and bridge shock absorbers.
Space research has also played a role in advanced technologies that have had a great impact on our lives. In the area of safety, we have developed tools that can more quickly extricate people out of crashed cars, clear landmines, and monitor forest fires. Healthcare advances from the space program include lasers for precise heart surgery, better pacemakers, and advanced imaging processes for the study of internal organs and chromosomes. Clean energy advances, such as solar power and LED chips, and water purification technology are improving the lives of millions.
Commercial benefits
The asteroids and rocky planets of the solar system contain minerals that can be mined. Rare elements on Earth may be more abundant in space. The Moon to Mars project will likely develop suitable mining technology to take advantage of these possibilities.
For the wealthy among us, there is space tourism on the horizon. In preparation for the manned mission to Mars, we will see improved engineering for space docking, launches, and reentry. We will gain "additional experience about the impact of space travel on the human body. Figuring out how weightlessness and low gravity situations alter human performance and how space radiation affects people represent just a couple areas where there are likely to be positive by-products for future travel." [sidebar - Five reasons to explore Mars]
Perseverance lands on Mars
Why did Mars lose its atmosphere?
For hundreds of millions of years, Mars had an atmosphere, protected from the solar wind by its global magnetic field. Like Earth's magnetic field, Mars' field was result of the dynamo effect of a liquid outer core revolving around a solid inner core. Because Mars is smaller and further from the Sun than Earth, its liquid core cooled more quickly and eventually solidified, stopping the dynamo effect. Mars lost its magnetic field and the solar wind gradually stripped Mars of its atmosphere.
The Drake Equation
where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible
and
R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space
Besides the NASA projects, other countries - China, United Arab Emirates, a joint Russia- European Space Agncy effort, Japan and India - have plans for exploring Mars in the coming decades, and Elon Musk's SpaceX has an "aspirational" goal of launching a cargo-only mission in 2022, and a human mission in 2024. The next 20 years promise excitement and heroics as Humankind returns to space.
Notes:
(a) The possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe becomes even greater if Mars life has a different biology from Earth's DNA-based life.
(b) In the sidebar is the Drake Equation which uses probabilities to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. Solution of the equation is dependent on variables and probabilites that are not well, or at all, known. The attendees at the conference at which Drake proposed his equation estimated that there were probably between 1000 and 100,000,000 planets with civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. More recent estimates have ranged from the "rare Earth" hypothesis of 1 (i.e., we are alone) to 15,600,000. [2]
References: [1] Teach Astronomy [2] Wikipedia
Can we stop a killer asteroid from hitting Earth?
POSTED MAY 20, 2021
Sixty-five million years ago, a single asteroid wiped out 75% of Earth's animals, including the dominant life form of the time - the non-avian dinosaurs. The impact site of the asteroid is now an enormous crater buried on the sea floor off the coast of Mexico. The asteroid that created the 150 kilometer wide Chicxulub Crater is thought to have been 10 - 15 kilometers in diameter and travelling at a speed of 10-20 kilometers/sec (22,000 - 44,000 mph). Professor Paul Barret of Britain's Natural History Museum explains, "The asteroid hit at high velocity and effectively vaporized. It made a huge crater, so in the immediate area there was total devastation. A huge blast wave and heatwave went out and it threw vast amounts of material up into the atmosphere. It sent soot travelling all around the world [and] reduced the amount of sunlight that reached the Earth's surface. So it had an impact on plant growth." The entire food chain was disrupted and whole species, from ammonites to dinosaurs, went extinct. [link below]
Asteroids have struck Earth many times since the Chicxulub event. Fortunately these asteroids were much smaller and the effect was limited. One of the best-known recorded impacts in modern times was the Tunguska event, which occurred in Siberia, Russia, in 1908. This incident involved an explosion that was probably caused by the airburst of an asteroid or comet 5 to 10 km (3.1 to 6.2 mi) above the Earth's surface, felling an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi). More recently, in February 2013, an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia as a fireball and exploded above the city of Chelyabinsk during its passage through the Ural Mountains region. The object's air burst occurred at an altitude between 30 and 50 km (19 and 31 mi) above the ground, and about 1,500 people were injured, mainly by broken window glass shattered by the shock wave. [1]
Near Earth Object (NEO) is the name scientists have given to a comets or asteroid that has been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood - specifically, within 1.3 astronomical units* of the Sun. There are over 25,000 known NEO's, of which more than 4,500 are classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA's). To be classified as a PHA, an asteroid must pass within 4.6 million miles from Earth or 20 times the distance from the Earth to the moon (the lunar distance or LD).**
NASA tracks NEO's closely. Their listing of May 20, for example, showed 8 close approaches over the coming 3 days. Although none of these are PHA's because of their small size, one asteroid is predicted to pass within 2 LD's of Earth on May 22. As for larger objects, within the next year, there will be 8 relatively close approaches of PHA's. On January 18, 2022 one of these PHA's will pass within 6 LD's of Earth.
Defending against a possible asteroid strike is part of NASA's charge. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be the first demonstration of the "kinetic impactor" technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space. The launch window for the DART mission begins November 24, 2021; the target for the DART demonstration, the binary near-Earth asteroid nicknamed Didymos and Dimorphus. [2] and [link below]
Other space agencies are also preparing planetary defense plans. Once every two years, asteroid experts around the globe meet up at the IAA Planetary Defense Conference and pretend an asteroid impact is imminent. The exercise is intended to prepare for the unlikely, but plausible, scenario in which this actually occurs. International space agencies use the scenario to investigate how near-Earth object (NEO) observers, space agency officials, emergency managers, decision makers, and citizens might respond and work together to an actual impact prediction. [3, 4]
This year's simulation was led by NASA. The question the attendees sought to answer was this: If we discovered a potentially deadly asteroid destined to hit Earth in six months, was there anything we could do to prevent a horrifying catastrophe? The disturbing answer is "no," not with currently available technology. [link below]
The exercise points to the need for more extensive efforts at detection of NEO's and the development of processes for the rapid deployment of kinetic impactors such as the one being tested in the DART mission or other methods of altering an asteroid's path.
The world's ability to find near-Earth objects is woefully incomplete. Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer, says that NASA believes that "we've only found about a third of the population of asteroids that are out there that could represent an impact hazard to the Earth." [5]
Besides kinetic impactor technology, NASA has investigated other options scientists would have if they were to find a dangerous asteroid on a collision course with Earth. These include detonating an explosive device near the space rock, as the exercise participants suggested, or firing lasers that could heat up and vaporize the asteroid enough to change its path. [5] One of the dangers of planting an explosive device would be the unpredictable paths of the smaller pieces that would result from the explosion. Instead of one large object hurtling towards Earth, there would be hundreds.
So, fingers crossed for NASA's DART mission and for increased funding for the detection of NEO's. Right now, that apparently is all we can do.
Notes
*An astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.
**There is also a size component to a PHA based on the damage that would occur should the object strike Earth.
References: [1] Wikipedia [2] NASA [3] European Space Agency [4] SciTechDaily [5] Business Insider
Advances in the world of artificial intelligence
POSTED JULY 30, 2021
Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds the promise of making our lives better and of increasing our understanding of the world around us.
It may even help us tackle global warming. Shortly after the EU Parliament declared a climate emergency in November of 2019, AI consultant Simon Greenman posted on the ways AI was being used to help address this existential threat. A link to his Towards Data Science post along with an extract from his list of AI applications addressing climate change is in the sidebar.
Turning to a few of the most recent developments in the area, here's a look at advances in the AI field with implications for, among other things, combatting terminal illnesses, fighting wildfires, extending human lifespans and resolving previously unsolvable scientific questions.
Uncovering the building blocks of life [1, 2, sidebar]
For half a century, scientists have been trying to identify the basic building blocks of life - essential knowledge in the battle against terminal illnesses. DeepMind, a London-based AI company owned by Google’s parent company (Alphabet),and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) published more than 350,000 structures on July 22, including some 20,000 human proteins and those of 20 other organisms, such as a lab mouse and the tuberculosis bacteria. In terms of significance, some are comparing the latest advances to the first draft human genome sequence 20 years ago. Some organizations are already working with the new database. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, a global non-profit set up with the aid of Doctors Without Borders, uses the structure of proteins to seek new treatments. Practically all diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer’s, and including Covid-19, are related to the structure of one protein or another.
Fighting wildfires [3]
Using space-based technology and real-time imaging, artificial intelligence is the latest tool for fighting wildfires. Over the past year, Silicon Valley has developed technology that can identify dry areas for controlled burns, predict where a fire will move next, and help protect lives and property by mapping fires in real-time and improving situational awareness and communication for those fighting the fire.
Understanding supermassive black holes and star formation [4]
Decades of observations and theoretical modeling of star formation has resulted in a good understanding of how gas collapses to form new stars both in and beyond our own Milky Way. However, astronomers realized that not all galaxies are actively star-forming — with many forming stars at significantly lower rates. Using machine learning and three state-of-the-art simulations to back up results from a large sky survey, researchers resolved a 20-year long debate on the formation of stars. They found that it is supermassive black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns that are putting a brake on the birth of new stars in these galaxies.
Extending human lifespans [5]
The University of Surrey has built an artificial intelligence (AI) model that identifies chemical compounds that promote healthy aging — paving the way towards pharmaceutical innovations that extend a person’s lifespan. Ok, so the study was actually done with translucent worms that share a similar metabolism to humans, but it's a first step. The AI singled out three compounds that have an 80 percent chance of increasing the lifespan of the worms: flavonoids (anti-oxidant pigments found in plants that promote cardiovascular health), fatty acids (such as omega 3), and Organooxygens (compounds that contain carbon to oxygen bonds, such as alcohol).
The next frontier in AI: emotional AI [6]
The next frontier for AI (Artificial Intelligence) is to teach machines to touch, feel and respond to human emotions—or what is broadly described as Emotional Intelligence. Machines are being created with amazing capabilities to analyze and continuously monitor our hidden emotional responses. Emotional AI has broad applications across mental health, remote monitoring (through voice and other biometrics e.g. blood pressure, heart beat) and telehealth.
Other recent articles summarize how AI is finding a place in pharmaceutical manufacturing, banking, health care, education and child psychology.
Related posts: The role of AI in the coronavirus battle (Mar 2020), AI: Neural Networks and Neuroevolution (Nov 2019), Advances in the world of artificial intelligence (May 2019), What is the singularity and will you live to see it? (May 2018)
Sources: [1] El Pais, 7/28 [2] Nature, 7/27 [3] NBC News, 7/28 [4] SciTech Daily 7/26 [5] Phys.org, 7/22 [6] Med City News, 7/28
10 ways AI is tackling climate change
Build better models. AI is being used to build better predictions of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and unlock new insights from the myriads of climate data that is collected.
Increase monitoring, measuring and accountability of pollutants.
Optimise traffic flow and make smarter cities. reducing the number of cars stopping at red lights by optimising flows through better timing of traffic signals can have material impact on carbon emissions.
Improve building energy consumption with intelligence AI powered devices that measure, predict and control heating and cooling systems based on actual need.
Rollout autonomous trucks. It has been estimated that smart automated driving systems could see a 15% reduction in fuel consumption over human operators.
Better match electricity supply and demand in a smart grid that allows communication between networks of consumers, transmission lines, substations, transformers and suppliers. Google’s DeepMind developed a neural network system that increases the value of wind power by 20% by predicting supply based on weather forecasts and historic turbine data.
Improve efficiency of logistics and supply chain by better matching supply and demand.
Optimise the food supply chain and improve agricultural yields.
Improve manufacturing efficiency by digitising, connecting and analysing end to end manufacturing processes.
Help consumers reduce their carbon footprint — AI driven consumer applications are being offering to help us measure and predict the level of our carbon footprint.
The increasingly encouraging pursuit of limitless clean energy: a nuclear fusion update
POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2021
Nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy research. Since the 1940's, researchers have tried to create a stable nuclear fusion reactor that created more energy than it used. Based on the principal that powers the Sun, nuclear fusion could supply almost limitless energy with no greenhouse gas emissions and no radioactive waste.
The challenges that scientists and engineers have faced are three-fold: 1) controlling and containing the reaction, 2) achieving a net energy production after expending the energy to ignite and contain the reaction, and 3) doing all this with a competitive level of investment.
Recent developments in the area indicate that the long wait may be coming to an end within a decade.
Control and contain the fusion reaction [1]
Nuclear fusion requires extremely high temperatures, on the order of tens of millions of degrees Celsius, and a confinement system to contain the reaction. To realize practical fusion power, there must be a system that can confine the plasma long enough at high enough temperature and density for a long term reaction to occur and that can control the neutrons that are released during the reaction.
The most common design used in fusion research that accomplishes this prodigious feat is the tokamak reactor. Tokamaks have been around for more than 60 years. The first tokamak began operation in Russia in 1958. Subsequent advances led to the construction of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Joint European Torus in England in the 1990s with ever higher temperatures being reached. A schematic of a tokamak reactor is below left. For more on nuclear fusion terms, see the "primer" in the sidebar.
In June, China's "artificial sun", the tokamak reactor at the EAST Fusion Facility in Heifei, created a plasma gas that was heated to 120° million Celsius—three-times hotter than the sun—and kept it there for 101 seconds before it dissipated, setting a new world record both for heat and duration. The ultimate goal of EAST is to create nuclear fusion like the Sun, using deuterium abound in the sea. Deuterium from one-liter of seawater can produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline through a nuclear fusion reaction.
China’s EAST project is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility The ITER Members—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States—are now engaged in a collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device, and together bring fusion to the point where a demonstration fusion reactor can be designed.
Achieve net energy production [2, 3]
While the technology for controlling and confining fusion reactions is well known and demonstrated, nearly all research demonstrations have required more energy to start and control the reaction than the fusion energy produced. Net energy production is the major technical challenge to a practical fusion reactor.
Even here, in the elusive quest for net energy production, there has been some recent good news.
In August, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory got closer to producing net energy than ever before, using 192 huge lasers to generate 70% as much energy as went into the reaction. Net energy production was not achieved, but the results make “a significant step toward ignition,” said a statement from the Laboratory. Ignition is the tipping point in the fusion process which establishes a feedback loop eventually leading to net energy production.
In September, using high-temperature superconductors, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) completed a test that successfully demonstrated production of a strong magnetic field with orders of magnitude less energy then the traditional copper-conducting magnet MIT tested previously. The new magnet from CFS and MIT is strong enough that when the team builds its tokamak with these magnets, it should be able to achieve “net energy.”
Build a cost competitive nuclear fusion plant [4, 5, sidebar]
Once a net energy production fusion reactor is developed, the question becomes: can nuclear fusion power plants compete with conventional power plants and "renewable energy" power plants? ITER projects the total price of construction and operations to be in the range of $25 billion; other estimates place the total cost between $45 billion and $65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER.
The steady fall of renewable energy prices challenges the economic competitiveness of fusion power, and some economists suggest fusion power is unlikely to match other renewable energy costs.
But don't tell that to the Canadian-based nuclear fusion company General Fusion. In June, the company announced that it would accept the UK government's offer to host the world's first substantial public-private partnership fusion demonstration plant. The plant will be constructed from 2022 to 2025 and is intended to lead the way for commercial scale plants later in the decade. Instead of relying on enormous magnets, such as the first of six 110 ton magnets that recently arrived in the south of France for the ITER project, General Fusion uses "Magnetized Target Fusion" which reduces the costs significantly. [sidebar and video below right]
Even if nuclear fusion does not become the clean energy of choice in the short term, it will at some point play a role because of some significant advantages over other forms of clean energy. It is not dependent on weather conditions such as wind, and it can produce almost limitless amounts of energy from an abundant raw material - sea water. With private and government investments reaching the tens of billions of dollars, the long marathon towards practical nuclear fusion has become a sprint to the finish line.
A Fusion Primer
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The most common nuclear fusion reaction, and the one of most interest to scientists and engineers, is the merging of hydrogen nuclei to form helium nuclei - the one that occurs in stars such as our sun.
In a tokamak, magnetic field coils confine plasma particles to allow the plasma to achieve the conditions necessary for fusion. One set of magnetic coils generates an intense “toroidal” field, directed the long way around the torus. A central solenoid (a magnet that carries electric current) creates a second magnetic field directed along the “poloidal” direction, the short way around the torus. The two field components result in a twisted magnetic field that confines the particles in the plasma. A third set of field coils generates an outer poloidal field that shapes and positions the plasma. (US DOE)
A magnetic field such as that produced in a tokamak is created by an electrical current flowing through a wire made of conductive material, such as copper. The amount of electrical current that passes through a wire depends on the resistance of the wiring.
Superconductors are materials that have no resistance to electrical flow below a certain critical temperature. The critical temperature for most materials is between absolute zero (-273 C) and -263 C. "High temperature" superconductors have critical temperatures between -150 C and 0 C, the freezing point of water.
General Fusion's Alternate Technology
Instead of using magnets to heat and contain the plasma, General Fusion uses a plasma injector—a separate machine—to create a plasma and inject it into the fusion reactor’s main chamber. Inside the chamber is a spinning wall of liquid lithium, which is compressed into a tiny sphere by the pistons. The compression heats the plasma to fusion temperatures, releasing huge amounts of heat, which the liquid metal absorbs easily. It is that heat that is exacted to create steam, which is used to power a turbine, which creates electricity with only helium as the waste product.
Tokamak Schematic
General Fusion Video of its MTF Process
[1] Downtoearth.org [2] CNBC - 1 [3] CNBC - 2 [4] Wikipedia [5] Due to continuing security issues with this link, it has been permanently removed.
A.I. trends and developments: the pandemic and beyond
POSTED NOVEMBER 8, 2021
Artificial intelligence is the endeavor to replicate human intelligence in machines. The term was coined in the mid-1950's by computer scientist John McCarthy. While at Dartmouth in 1955, McCarthy authored a proposal for a two-month, 10-person summer research conference on "artificial intelligence" – the first use of the term in publication. In proposing the conference, McCarthy wrote, "The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." The subsequent conference, held in 1956, is considered a watershed moment in computer science.
Professor McCarthy was a visionary, to say the least. In the 1950's computers ran on vacuum tubes and took up entire rooms. Sprawling over 15,000 square feet, weighing up to 8 tons, the computers of the day had a computing ability many tens of thousands of times less than today. Even after transistors replaced vacuum tubes and integrated circuits replaced transistors, gains in computing power were modest through the 1960's. [sidebar]
We've come a long way. Computers have become smaller and enormously more powerful. Artificial intelligence has become a reality and is changing society in a myriad of ways. Healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, media, and education are a few of the fields where A.I. is already making an impact.
In this post, we'll take a look at recent trends in A.I., including some that were accelerated by the pandemic.
Data analysis, vaccine development and pandemic control
The ongoing pandemic initiated a wave of research directed at stopping its spread. There was an urgent need for data analysis - where the virus was spreading - what paths to vaccines and antivirals were most promising. The growth in the amount of scientific and medical literature was enormous, with tens of thousands of papers published relating to Covid-19. A dedicated search engine powered by natural language processing (NLP) algorithms has already been made available.
The record speed of vaccine development was partly due to AI models that helped researchers analyze vast amounts of data about coronavirus. By developing our ability to apply machine learning problem-solving to these massive, real-time global datasets, we will spot outbreaks more easily, track contact between infected people, enable more accurate diagnoses, and, by predicting ways that a virus might evolve in the future, develop more effective and lasting vaccinations.
Future pandemics might be stopped even before they begin to spread by A.I. applications. Global cooperation will be needed to allow access to medical data sets. Barriers to the international exchange of information will need to be removed.
Autonomous transport
As nations emerge from the pandemic and economies pick up, the demand for goods and services increases. The pandemic had led many to leave their jobs - the so-called "Big Quit". The increased demand for goods and services coupled with the shortage of workers led to a breakdown in the supply chain.
The trucking industry, which was already having trouble meeting demand, is now short 80,000 drivers. To my mind, after miners, long distance truck drivers have one of the most difficult jobs imaginable. It is little wonder that there is such a great shortage. Anything that would lessen the negatives would help. At first, it could be some type of augmented intelligence - such as a super-charged GPS to warn of hazards, weather, and road conditions or improved computerized braking to slow the truck in emergencies or when the driver does not see an upcoming hazard.
In the longer term, autonomous trucks could reduce the shortage - not necessarily by replacing drivers but by making driving a long haul truck less onerous and thus more attractive as a profession. A leader in this field is Daimler. The automotive manufacturer is partnering with Waymo and Torc Robotics to develop what it calls a "Level 4" autonomous truck, fully tested and on th4e road by the end of the decade. [sidebar]
Automation
Automation and robotics have long been a part of manufacturing, being ideally suited to repetitive tasks. The pandemic moved the automation plans of many companies forward. Recent developments include new automation applications in grocery stores, myriad forms of packaging, firefighting, helping in flood zones, and on the factory floor. More advanced automation concepts are being developed constantly. Some significant trends in the automation area are:
Hyper-automation deals with the application of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to increasingly automate processes and augment humans.
Multi experience replaces technology-literate people with people-literate technology. In this trend, the traditional idea of a computer evolves from a single point of interaction to include multi sensory and multi touchpoint interfaces like wearables and advanced computer sensors.
Smart manufacturing, a complete digital transformation of manufacturing, sometimes referred to as an Industry 4.0*, employs a plethora of tools including robots, AI, virtual reality and augmented reality. The manufacturing process is shifting to smart systems that are tied into ERP systems and the supply chain. [sidebar]
Applied natural language processing
The pandemic also drove research in A.I. One was in advancing the capabilities of natural language processing. Natural language systems became significantly more advanced at processing aspects of human language like sentiment and intent, generating language that aligns with human speaking and writing patterns, and even visual understanding - the capability to express understanding about an image through language. The results: more accurate searches and more sophisticated chatbots and virtual assistants.
Hardware Advances
AI hardware continued to develop in 2020, with the launch of several AI chips customized for specialized tasks. While an ordinary processor is capable of supporting AI tasks, AI-specific processors are modified with particular systems that can optimize performance for tasks like deep learning.
Quantum computing has the potential to supercharge AI applications compared to binary-based classical computers. A quantum computer would be able to handle a significantly larger dataset than a classical computer can process, thus making the model more accurate and useful in real-world settings. Unlike AI chips that are already in use, quantum computing is a decade or more away from the point at which it would replace today's binary-based computing.
Artificial Intelligence Primer
(Excerpted from an article at medium.com)
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) refers to the endeavor to replicate human intelligence in machines. As the field develops, higher levels of machine intelligence are attained. Three broad categories describe of the different possible levels of artificial intelligence:
Narrow Intelligence: These AI systems are focused on doing specific tasks and doing them really well. Most of the applications used these days fall under this category. Examples of narrow AI are Google search, IBM Watson, Siri, Alexa, etc.
General Intelligence: This AI system can do what a human can. These AIs exist only in sci-fi stories and it will be many years before they develop.
Super Intelligence: This AI agent will surpass human intelligence and capabilities. They are even further in the future.
And then there is the Singularity, on which I posted previously: What is the Singularity and will you live to see it?
But...back to the present day. There are a number of useful terms that describe the types of artificial intelligence being developed:
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an instrument of AI that deals with human language. NLP Algorithms can read, decipher, understand and generate language. Some examples: voice activated NPS systems, Google Trnaslate, Grammarly, Siri, Cortana, Alexa.
Machine Learning is an instrument of AI that provides machines with the capability to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed.
Deep learning, a form of machine learning, is able to learn without human supervision, drawing from data that is both unstructured and unlabeled. Deep learning employs neural networks, layers through which data is transformed and fine-tuned until a satisfactory answer is reached. An example is Tesla, which uses deep neural networks to detect roads, cars, objects, and people in video feeds from cameras installed around the vehicle.
Note: *As autonomous vehicles were being designed and developed, a scale from 0 to 5 was created to indicate the level of autonomy with 0 indicating no automation and 5, full automation. Industry 4.0 would be the equivalent of "high automation."
Sources: WebFX, Wikipedia, Stanford University News, History.com, Forbes, M.I.T. Technology Review, medium.com
The Return to Space: An Update
POSTED DECEMBER 2, 2021
On December 14, 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts lifted off from the moon. We have not been back since. Since December 2017, NASA has been developing a plan to return to the moon and establish a permanent base camp there in preparation for a manned mission to Mars.
NASA's Artemis Program program began in December 2017 as the reorganization and continuation of efforts to revitalize the U.S. space program that have been ongoing since 2009. Its stated short-term goal is landing the first woman on the Moon. Artemis is, after all, Apollo's twin sister. Mid-term objectives include establishing an international expedition team and a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Long-term objectives are laying the foundations for the extraction of lunar resources, and eventually, make crewed missions to Mars and beyond feasible.
See the BBC article [link sidebar] for an excellent introduction to the program: NASA's women astronauts, the Orion crew module and Space Launch System, the Lunar Gateway, the challenges of the moon landing and of lunar habitation.
Both the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) [sidebar] are contributing to the Artemis Effort, and a total of 13 countries have now signed the Artemis Accords. The Artemis Accords are an international agreement between governments participating in the Artemis Program, an American-led effort to return humans to the Moon with the ultimate goal of expanding space exploration
A few recent general news items provide an update on the return to space.
NASA had been working towards 2024 as the target year when the United States would land a crew on the moon after an absence of more than 50 years. It was a stretch, perhaps unrealistic, goal. On November 9, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced a "new timeline for near-term Artemis missions, pushing back the first post-Apollo lunar landing until at least 2025. The schedule changes were driven by budgetary constraints, COVID delays, infrastructure and testing delays for the Space Launch System (SLS), and more than six months of litigation" related to the lunar lander contract. [1]
NASA aims to put astronauts on the Red Planet in the 2030s. The agency is currently performing research aboard the International Space Station (ISS) — "monitoring astronaut health, behavior and performance on year-long orbital missions, for example, to better understand the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body and mind. But the ISS is 23 years old and may not be around long enough to see this work through." The agency is now encouraging "the development of private space stations to fill any orbital research gaps that may arise, with the goal of having at least one such commercial outpost up and running by 2028." [2]
In a reminder of the business risk that private companies take when they enter the space race, Elon Musk warned of possible bankruptcy because of SpaceX's worsening production crisis with their Raptor rocket engines. Raptor engines power the company’s Starship rocket, the massive, next-generation rocket SpaceX is developing to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. [3]
You can follow the progress of the Artemis Program at NASA's Artemis blog
Related Posts
We are going back to the Moon - Sep 30, 2020
We're going to Mars - Feb 23, 2021
In a future post, we'll look at the Chinese and Russian efforts to return to space.
Sources: [1] Astronomy.com [2] Space.com [3] CNBC
BBC
The Orion crew module, whose "conical contours recall the Apollo command modules" evoke "a golden age of space exploration, when anything seemed possible."
