Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘space’ category

May 23, 2024

Study: Experiments That Could Show Gravity’s ‘Quantumness’ Are Achievable

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, space

I found this on NewsBreak: Study: Experiments That Could Show Gravity’s ‘Quantumness’ Are Achievable #Astronomy


Gravity permeates every part of our world, yanking us down to Earth and stringing together the Solar System, galaxies, and Universe through which our planet glides…

May 23, 2024

Turning up the heat on next-generation semiconductors

Posted by in category: space

Caption :

Researchers studied how temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius would affect electronic devices made from gallium nitride, a key step in their multiyear research effort to develop electronics that can operate in extremely hot environments, like the surface of Venus.

May 23, 2024

Sun’s magnetic field discovered 20,000 miles below surface: Study

Posted by in categories: space, supercomputing

Researchers use NASA supercomputer:


The new discovery not only enhances our understanding of the Sun’s dynamics but can also help in more precise prediction of solar storms.

May 23, 2024

No, Today’s AI Isn’t Sentient. Here’s How We Know

Posted by in categories: food, mathematics, robotics/AI, space

All sensations—hunger, feeling pain, seeing red, falling in love—are the result of physiological states that an LLM simply doesn’t have. Consequently we know that an LLM cannot have subjective experiences of those states. In other words, it cannot be sentient.

An LLM is a mathematical model coded on silicon chips. It is not an embodied being like humans. It does not have a “life” that needs to eat, drink, reproduce, experience emotion, get sick, and eventually die.

It is important to understand the profound difference between how humans generate sequences of words and how an LLM generates those same sequences. When I say “I am hungry,” I am reporting on my sensed physiological states. When an LLM generates the sequence “I am hungry,” it is simply generating the most probable completion of the sequence of words in its current prompt. It is doing exactly the same thing as when, with a different prompt, it generates “I am not hungry,” or with yet another prompt, “The moon is made of green cheese.” None of these are reports of its (nonexistent) physiological states. They are simply probabilistic completions.

May 22, 2024

New Discovery Pinpoints Origin of Sun’s Magnetic Field

Posted by in categories: space, supercomputing

The Sun’s magnetic field is an incredibly powerful mechanism that produces equally powerful solar storms, some of which resulted in the recent aurora activity observed as far south as the State of Florida. However, in the 400 years since Galileo Galilei first discovered the Sun’s magnetic field, scientists have been stumped regarding where inside the Sun the magnetic field originates. This is what a study published today in Nature hopes to address as a team of international researchers have discovered how deep inside the Sun the magnetic field originates, which holds the potential to help scientists better understand and predict solar storms.

“Understanding the origin of the sun’s magnetic field has been an open question since Galileo and is important for predicting future solar activity, like flares that could hit the Earth,” said Dr. Daniel Lecoanet, who is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University and a co-author on the study. “This work proposes a new hypothesis for how the sun’s magnetic field is generated that better matches solar observations, and, we hope, could be used to make better predictions of solar activity.”

For the study, the researchers used a NASA supercomputer to conduct several calculations to ascertain if the source of the Sun’s magnetic field was close to the surface or much deeper, as previous hypotheses have stated the magnetic field’s source is more than 130,000 miles beneath the surface of the Sun. In the end, the researchers of this latest study estimated the source of the Sun’s magnetic field is approximately 20,000 miles beneath the surface. For context, the diameter of the Sun is just over 865,000 miles across, so these new findings indicate the magnetic field originates approximately 2 percent beneath the Sun’s surface, as opposed to 15 percent based on the previous hypotheses.

May 22, 2024

NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission is in trouble—but it’s a Vital Step to Sending Humans to the Red Planet

Posted by in categories: drones, space

NASA recently asked the scientific community to help come up with innovative ideas for ways to carry out its Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This was in response to a report by an independent board that deemed that its US$11 billion (£8.7 billion) price tag was too expensive and its 2040 timeline too far in the future.

In brief, the ambitious plan was to collect rock samples cached inside containers by NASA’s Perseverance rover and deliver them to laboratories on Earth. Perseverance has been exploring Mars’ Jezero Crater, thought to have once hosted an ancient lake, since 2021. The mission would deliver the samples by sending a lander that carries a rocket (NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander) down to the surface of Mars.

Perseverance would then deliver the cached rock samples to the lander, with small drone helicopters delivered on the lander as a back up. Perseverance’s samples would then be launched into Mars’ orbit using the lander’s rocket. A spacecraft already in Martian orbit, the Earth Return Orbiter, would then intercept these samples and deliver them to Earth.

May 21, 2024

Nicoll-Dyson Beams: Weaponizing Stars

Posted by in category: space

Continuing our look at Dyson Spheres we examine the concept of the Nicoll-Dyson Beam, a type of advanced weapon that uses the output of an entire sun to create a laser that can strike target across the galaxy.

May 21, 2024

Project Astra demo | Solving math problems

Posted by in categories: mathematics, robotics/AI, space

Watch Project Astra factorise a maths problem and even correct a graph. All shot on a prototype glasses device, in a single take in real time.

Project Astra is a prototype that explores the future of AI assistants. Building on our Gemini models, we’ve developed AI agents that can quickly process multimodal information, reason about the context you’re in, and respond to questions at a conversational pace, making interactions feel much more natural.

Continue reading “Project Astra demo | Solving math problems” »

May 21, 2024

Citizen Scientists help Discover Record-Breaking Exoplanet in Binary Star System

Posted by in category: space

A team of astronomers and citizen scientists has discovered a planet in the habitable zone of an unusual star system, including two stars and potentially another exoplanet.

The planet hunters spotted the Neptune-like planet as it crossed in front of its host star, temporarily dimming the star’s light in a way akin to a solar eclipse on Earth. This “transit method” usually identifies planets with tight orbits, as they are more likely to follow paths that put them between Earth and their host star and, when following such paths, move into light-blocking positions more frequently. That’s why this newly discovered planet is considered unusually far out, with the planet taking 272 days to lap its star.

Furthermore, the star is now by far the brightest one known to host a transiting planet in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist.

May 20, 2024

Could Dyson spheres exist in our galaxy?

Posted by in category: space

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical giant structure that surrounds a star and can capture its solar output. Two separate groups of astronomers have claimed that they have detected dozens of possible Dyson spheres within the Milky Way galaxy. NBC’s Gadi Schwartz speaks with Dr. Michio Kaku about what it would take to create a Dyson sphere and how advanced a civilization would need to be to make it happen.

Page 1 of 96512345678Last