Tag: computer (page 3 of 11)

Fresh fossil studies push the dawn of man back to 2.8 million years

March 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

(Reuters) - A 2.8-million-year-old jawbone fossil with five intact teeth unearthed in an Ethiopian desert is pushing back the dawn of humankind by about half a million years.Scientists said on Wednesday the fossil represents the oldest known repres...

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Strange find on Titan sparks chatter about life

March 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments


Titan


Excerpt from nbcnews.com

Studies may suggest methane-based organic processes ... but maybe not  
New findings have roused a great deal of hoopla over the possibility of life on Saturn's moon Titan, which some news reports have further hyped up as hints of extraterrestrials.
However, scientists also caution that aliens might have nothing to do with these findings.

All this excitement is rooted in analyses of chemical data returned by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. One study suggested that hydrogen was flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Astrobiologist Chris McKay at NASA's Ames Research Center speculated that this could be a tantalizing hint that hydrogen is getting consumed by life.

"It's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said.

Another study investigating hydrocarbons on Titan's surface found a lack of acetylene, a compound that could be consumed as food by life that relies on liquid methane instead of liquid water to live.
"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth," McKay said.
However, NASA scientists caution that aliens might not be involved at all.

"Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results."
McKay told Space.com that "both results are still preliminary."

To date, methane-based life forms are only speculative, with McKay proposing a set of conditions necessary for these kinds of organisms on Titan in 2005. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, although there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product. 

On Titan, where temperatures are around minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius), any organisms would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes. Water itself cannot do, because it is frozen solid on Titan's surface. The list of liquid candidates is very short — liquid methane and related molecules such as ethane. Previous studies have found Titan to have lakes of liquid methane.

Missing hydrogen? 

The dearth of hydrogen Cassini detected is consistent with conditions that could produce methane-based life, but do not conclusively prove its existence, cautioned researcher Darrell Strobel, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Strobel wrote the paper on hydrogen appearing online in the journal Icarus.

Strobel looked at densities of hydrogen in different parts of the atmosphere and at the surface. Previous models from scientists had predicted that hydrogen molecules, a byproduct of ultraviolet sunlight breaking apart acetylene and methane molecules in the upper atmosphere, should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the atmospheric layers.

Strobel's computer simulations suggest a hydrogen flow down to the surface at a rate of about 10,000 trillion trillion molecules per second. 

"It's as if you have a hose and you're squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it's disappearing," Strobel said. "I didn't expect this result, because molecular hydrogen is extremely chemically inert in the atmosphere, very light and buoyant. It should 'float' to the top of the atmosphere and escape."

Strobel said it is not likely that hydrogen is being stored in a cave or underground space on Titan. An unknown mineral could be acting as a catalyst on Titan's surface to help convert hydrogen molecules and acetylene back to methane.

Although Allen commended Strobel, he noted "a more sophisticated model might be needed to look into what the flow of hydrogen is."

Consumed acetylene? 

Scientists had expected the sun's interactions with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene that falls down to coat Titan's surface. But when Cassini mapped hydrocarbons on Titan's surface, it detected no acetylene on the surface, according to findings appearing online in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Instead of alien life on Titan, Allen said one possibility is that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.

In addition, Cassini detected an absence of water ice on Titan's surface, but loads of benzene and another as-yet-unidentified material, which appears to be an organic compound. The researchers said that a film of organic compounds is covering the water ice that makes up Titan's bedrock. This layer of hydrocarbons is at least a few millimeters to centimeters thick, but possibly much deeper in some places. 

"Titan's atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again," said Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. "All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."

All this speculation "is jumping the gun, in my opinion," Allen said.

"Typically in the search for the existence of life, one looks for the presence of evidence -- say, the methane seen in the atmosphere of Mars, which can't be made by normal photochemical processes," Allen added. "Here we're talking about absence of evidence rather than presence of evidence — missing hydrogen and acetylene — and oftentimes there are many non-life processes that can explain why things are missing."

These findings are "still a long way from evidence of life," McKay said. "But it could be interesting."

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Google’s AI Program Is Better At Video Games Than You

February 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments





pcmag.com

IBM's Watson supercomputer may be saving lives and educating children, but Google's new AI program can master video games without human guidance.

The artificial intelligence system from London-based DeepMind, which Google acquired last year for a reported $400 million, represents a major step toward a future of smart machines.

Computers running the deep Q-network (DQN) algorithm were exposed to 49 retro games on the Atari 2600 and told to play them, without any direction from researchers. Using the same network architecture and tuning parameters, the machines were given only raw screen pixels, available actions, and game score as input.

For each level passed or high score earned, the computer was automatically rewarded with a digital treat.

"Strikingly, DQN was able to work straight 'out of the box' across all these games," DeepMind's Dharshan Kumaran and Demis Hassabis wrote in a blog post. The executives cited classic titles like Breakout, River Raid, Boxing, and Enduro.

The AI crushed even the most expert humans at 29 games, sometimes composing what the creators called "surprisingly far-sighted strategies" that allowed maximum scoring possibilities. It also outperformed previous machine-learning methods in 43 of 49 instances.

VIEW ALL PHOTOS IN GALLERY
Google DeepMind's findings were presented in a paper published in this week's Nature journal, which describes the key DQN features that allow it to learn.

"This work offers the first demonstration of a general purpose learning agent that can be trained end-to-end to handle a wide variety of challenging tasks," the researchers said. "This kind of technology should help us build more useful products."

Imagine asking the Google app to complete a complex task—like plan a backpacking trip through Europe, for example.

Google's DeepMind also hopes its technology will give researchers new ways to make sense of large-scale data, opening the door to discoveries in fields like climate science, physics, medicine, and genomics.

"And it may even help scientists better understand the process by which humans learn," Kumaran and Hassabis said, citing physicist Richard Feynman, who famously said, "What I cannot create, I do not understand."

For more, see How DeepMind Can Bring Google Artificial Intelligence to Life in the slideshow above.

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Is playing ‘Space Invaders’ a milestone in artificial intelligence?

February 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments





Excerpt from latimes.com

Computers have beaten humans at chess and "Jeopardy!," and now they can master old Atari games such as "Space Invaders" or "Breakout" without knowing anything about their rules or strategies.

Playing Atari 2600 games from the 1980s may seem a bit "Back to the Future," but researchers with Google's DeepMind project say they have taken a small but crucial step toward a general learning machine that can mimic the way human brains learn from new experience.

Unlike the Watson and Deep Blue computers that beat "Jeopardy!" and chess champions with intensive programming specific to those games, the Deep-Q Network built its winning strategies from keystrokes up, through trial and error and constant reprocessing of feedback to find winning strategies.

Image result for space invaders

“The ultimate goal is to build smart, general-purpose [learning] machines. We’re many decades off from doing that," said artificial intelligence researcher Demis Hassabis, coauthor of the study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature. "But I do think this is the first significant rung of the ladder that we’re on." 
The Deep-Q Network computer, developed by the London-based Google DeepMind, played 49 old-school Atari games, scoring "at or better than human level," on 29 of them, according to the study.
The algorithm approach, based loosely on the architecture of human neural networks, could eventually be applied to any complex and multidimensional task requiring a series of decisions, according to the researchers. 

The algorithms employed in this type of machine learning depart strongly from approaches that rely on a computer's ability to weigh stunning amounts of inputs and outcomes and choose programmed models to "explain" the data. Those approaches, known as supervised learning, required artful tailoring of algorithms around specific problems, such as a chess game.

The computer instead relies on random exploration of keystrokes bolstered by human-like reinforcement learning, where a reward essentially takes the place of such supervision.
“In supervised learning, there’s a teacher that says what the right answer was," said study coauthor David Silver. "In reinforcement learning, there is no teacher. No one says what the right action was, and the system needs to discover by trial and error what the correct action or sequence of actions was that led to the best possible desired outcome.”

The computer "learned" over the course of several weeks of training, in hundreds of trials, based only on the video pixels of the game -- the equivalent of a human looking at screens and manipulating a cursor without reading any instructions, according to the study.

Over the course of that training, the computer built up progressively more abstract representations of the data in ways similar to human neural networks, according to the study.
There was nothing about the learning algorithms, however, that was specific to Atari, or to video games for that matter, the researchers said.
The computer eventually figured out such insider gaming strategies as carving a tunnel through the bricks in "Breakout" to reach the back of the wall. And it found a few tricks that were unknown to the programmers, such as keeping a submarine hovering just below the surface of the ocean in "Seaquest."

The computer's limits, however, became evident in the games at which it failed, sometimes spectacularly. It was miserable at "Montezuma's Revenge," and performed nearly as poorly at "Ms. Pac-Man." That's because those games also require more sophisticated exploration, planning and complex route-finding, said coauthor Volodymyr Mnih.

And though the computer may be able to match the video-gaming proficiency of a 1980s teenager, its overall "intelligence" hardly reaches that of a pre-verbal toddler. It cannot build conceptual or abstract knowledge, doesn't find novel solutions and can get stuck trying to exploit its accumulated knowledge rather than abandoning it and resort to random exploration, as humans do. 

“It’s mastering and understanding the construction of these games, but we wouldn’t say yet that it’s building conceptual knowledge, or abstract knowledge," said Hassabis.

The researchers chose the Atari 2600 platform in part because it offered an engineering sweet spot -- not too easy and not too hard. They plan to move into the 1990s, toward 3-D games involving complex environments, such as the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise. That milestone could come within five years, said Hassabis.

“With a few tweaks, it should be able to drive a real car,” Hassabis said.

DeepMind was formed in 2010 by Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman, and received funding from Tesla Motors' Elon Musk and Facebook investor Peter Thiel, among others. It was purchased by Google last year, for a reported $650 million. 

Hassabis, a chess prodigy and game designer, met Legg, an algorithm specialist, while studying at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College, London. Suleyman, an entrepreneur who dropped out of Oxford University, is a partner in Reos, a conflict-resolution consulting group.

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The Red and the Blue

February 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments


We have entered a new cycle, the Chinese year of the sheep. This is the time when victory is achieved by gentleness and not by brutal force:



Being in the new cycle, it is time now to release some intel about the Red and the Blue.
The Blue Dragons originate from secret Taoist groups connected with the Agartha network. Together with secret Pythagorean Order they have ignited the spark of Renaissance in Italy:
It may be interesting to note that Leonardo da Vinci was merely copying old Chinese texts for his famous »inventions«.
Nothing more can be said about the Blue, except that some of them are guardians of the portals. 
The Red Dragons originate from the military forces of the Ming dynasty. 
The Archons wanted to destroy the power of the Ming. Their first strike was to overthrow the Ming by Archon-controlled Manchu tribes that invaded from the north, took over Beijing and started the Qing dynasty:
Then Qing emperor Kangxi invited Jesuits to China:
The Red Dragons were working secretly in the Qing imperial court and in the military forces against Manchu and Jesuit invaders:


The events that took place in the Qing imperial court in the 18th century have much more influence on the present geopolitical situation than most people realize.
During early 19th century, the Rothschilds took control over China through the Opium wars:
The Red were forced to keep a low profile, but disguised as Eight Trigrams secret society they still managed later to organize the Boxer rebellion, an attempt to throw the Jesuits and the Rothschilds out of China:
The Rothschilds, however, tightened their grip over China in the 20th century:
Most intel in the above article is correct, except that Chiang Kaishek in reality was never supporting the Cabal, but the Dragons instead. 
Here, a few explanations are necessary. The triads are NOT working for the Dragons, but mostly for the Cabal. However, many Dragon agents have infiltrated the triads and recenly, some or even most triads may or may not be secretly assisting the overthrow of the Cabal:
The Rothschilds still have quite much control over mainland China, with many agents infiltrated into the government structure, with their operating base in Hong Kong. However, lately the Red are giving tactical support to the Chinese government to weed out Rothschild infiltration. 
Macau is the operating base for the Black Nobility and Jesuit operations in China. Henry Breakspear, the head of a major Archon bloodline, lives in Macau.
Taiwan is the operating base for many positive Dragon families. They were forced out of mainland China after the communist revolution.
The Red Dragon families originate from the positive faction of the Draconian race. Their purpose is to defeat their archenemies the Jesuits (Andromedan/Orion hybrids) and the Rothschilds (Orion black magi). They are valiant protectors and guardians of justice.
You need to understand that Red Dragons today are not the same as soldiers of a Ming emperor. They have kept up with the progress of technology and they have access to a considerable military power in a way that will not be described here. Also, their computer specialists are savvy enough to reset the global financial system with the push of a button if the need for that arises. 
Since the Chinese new year, the Red are becoming more active. They have their own plans with the unholy four. They are the secret force behind Putin:

The Breakthrough is near!

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Mysterious plumes in Mars’ atmosphere baffle astronomers

February 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from thespacereporter.com

Astronomers are baffled by images of plumes rising from Mars’ atmosphere in images taken by amateur astronomers in March and April 2012.

The plumes were present for about 10 days though their shapes and sizes changed rapidly during that time, from finger-like tendrils to spherical blobs.

Researchers have proposed several possible explanations for the plumes, which are discussed in an article just published in the journal Nature.

Each of the theories being considered poses problems. One theory, for instaqnce, proposes the plumes are caused by the same magnetic influence that causes the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, on Earth. The movement of electrically charged particles from the Sun, driven by the solar wind towards Earth’s poles, results in these particles colliding with molecules of gas. These collisions produce the strange lights known as aurorae.

In the study, the researchers admit, “Mars aurorae have been observed near where the plume occurs, a region with a large anomaly in the crustal magnetic field that can drive the precipitation of solar wind particles into the atmosphere.”
The problem with this theory is this would only happen if the Sun released an exceptional amount of energetic particles during the time the plumes were seen. Yet the level of solar output in 2012 was nowhere near sufficient to release such a powerful stream of particles, the authors of the paper acknowledge.

They move on to consider another option, namely that the plumes might be clouds high in the Martian atmosphere.

A highly reflective cloud of either water ice, carbon dioxide ice, or dust particles could explain the plumes. But according to computer models, the presence of these clouds “would require exceptional deviations from standard atmospheric circulation models to explain cloud formations at such high altitudes,” explained the paper’s lead author, Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain.

The plumes were seen approximately 120 miles (200 km) from Mars’ surface, which is problematic because the highest Martian clouds are seen is 60 miles (100 km) above the planet’s surface. The only way water can condense so far up is if the temperature in that part of Mars’ atmosphere drops 370 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Kelvin, below its norm.

Condensation of carbon dioxide would require twice this temperature drop.

A third theory posits the flumes are caused by atmospheric dust. A wind powerful enough to transport dust 111 miles (180 km) above Mars’ surface could occur only around noon, when the Sun’s heat would be strong enough to create such wind currents.

However, the plumes were seen not at noon but in the mornings along the terminator that separates the planet’s day and night sides.
Recently, data from the Hubble Space Telescope was found showing the plumes back in 1997.

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Was this Star Nibiru? Scientists Discover Star Made Closest Approach to Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago

February 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments


Astronomers identify the closest known flyby of a star to our solar system Photo Credit: Flickr


Excerpt from americanlivewire.com

A low-mass red dwarf star passed through the outer Oort Cloud 70,000 years back in the closest approach made by any star into our system, discovers a team of researchers from various countries.

Lying in the constellation Monoceros and known as Scholtz’s star, it is a part of a binary system and has 8% the mass of the sun. Its companion, a brown dwarf, is said to have 6%.
The lowest end of the stellar spectrum, brown dwarfs are larger than gas giants but not as much so as to sustain hydrogen fusion for a larger period of time.

Due to its faint appearance, Scholtz’s star was discovered only a year ago by astronomer Ralf Dieter-Scholz in Potsdam, Germany, through the use of NASA’s WISE (Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer), which mapped the entire sky in infrared during the years 2010 and 2011.

At the same time, the radial velocity of the star depicted that it was moving away from the solar system much faster than expected.
These motions led the researchers to conclude that either the star is headed toward our system, or moving away from it.

After analyzing the data, Mamajek concluded, “…The radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun’s vicinity–and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past.”

Through the use of computer models, it was seen that the star passed about 5 trillion miles from our solar system around 70,000 years ago.

Mamajek and his team are 98 percent certain Scholtz’s star traveled through the outer Oort Cloud.

Although Scholtz’s star is 10th magnitude, too dim to be seen with the naked eye, it is magnetically active, which can cause it to flare at times and become significantly brighter. If this happened during its close approach to our solar system, prehistoric humans might have actually seen it.

The researchers published their findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Striking Similarities Between Brain Cells and Our Universe

February 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments



The two pictures below illustrate the similarities. The top picture shows the neural network of a brain cell; the bottom picture shows the distribution of dark matter in the universe as simulated by Millennium Simulation.


Excerpt from  themindunleashed.org


The structures of the universe and the human brain are strikingly similar.

In the Eastern spiritual discipline of Daoism, the human body has long been viewed as a small universe, as a microcosm. As billion-dollar investments are made in the United States and Europe to research brain functioning, the correlations between the brain and the universe continue to emerge.

The two pictures below illustrate the similarities. The top picture shows the neural network of a brain cell; the bottom picture shows the distribution of dark matter in the universe as simulated by Millennium Simulation.

The pictures show a structural similarity in terms of connections and distribution of matter in the brain and in the universe. The photo on the left is a microscopic view, the one on the right is a macroscopic view.

The brain is like a microcosm.

A study conducted by Dmitri Krioukov of the University of California and a team of researchers published in Nature last year shows striking similarities between neural networks in the brain and network connections between galaxies.

Krioukov’s team created a computer simulation that broke the known universe down into tiny, subatomic units of space-time, explained Live Science. The simulation added more space-time units as the history of the universe progressed. The developing interactions between matter in galaxies was similar to the interactions that comprise neural networks in the human brain.
Physicist Kevin Bassler of the University of Houston, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that the study suggests a fundamental law governing these networks.

In May 2011, Seyed Hadi Anjamrooz of the Kerman University of Medical Sciences and other Iranian medical scientists published an article in the International Journal of the Physical Sciences on the similarities between cells and the universe. They explain that a black hole resembles the cell nucleus. A black hole’s event horizon—a sort of point of no return where the gravitational pull will suck objects into the black hole—also resembles the nuclear membrane.

The event horizon is double-layered, as is the nuclear membrane. Much like the event horizon, which prevents anything that enters from leaving, the nuclear membrane separates cell fluids, preventing mixing, and regulates the exchange of matter between the inside and outside of the nucleus. Black holes and living cells also both emit pockets of electromagnetic radiation, among other similarities.

The researchers wrote: “Nearly all that exists in the macrouniverse is mirrored in a biological cell as a microuniverse. Simply put, the universe can be pictured as a cell.”

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Robots Can Learn to Perform Tasks by “Watching” YouTube Videos

February 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments


https://i0.wp.com/www.darpa.mil/uploadedImages/Content/NewsEvents/Releases/2015/MSEEresearchers.png?resize=640%2C428
University of Maryland computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos (center) is developing robotic systems able to visually recognize objects and generate new behavior based on those observations. DARPA is funding this research through its Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation and Execution (MSEE) program. (University of Maryland Photo)

From darpa.mil

January 29, 2015

DARPA program advances robots’ ability to sense visual information and turn it into action  

Robots can learn to recognize objects and patterns fairly well, but to interpret and be able to act on visual input is much more difficult.  Researchers at the University of Maryland, funded by DARPA’s Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation and Execution (MSEE) program, recently developed a system that enabled robots to process visual data from a series of “how to” cooking videos on YouTube. Based on what was shown on a video, robots were able to recognize, grab and manipulate the correct kitchen utensil or object and perform the demonstrated task with high accuracy—without additional human input or programming.  

“The MSEE program initially focused on sensing, which involves perception and understanding of what’s happening in a visual scene, not simply recognizing and identifying objects,” said Reza Ghanadan, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Offices. “We’ve now taken the next step to execution, where a robot processes visual cues through a manipulation action-grammar module and translates them into actions.”

Another significant advance to come out of the research is the robots’ ability to accumulate and share knowledge with others. Current sensor systems typically view the world anew in each moment, without the ability to apply prior knowledge.

“This system allows robots to continuously build on previous learning—such as types of objects and grasps associated with them—which could have a huge impact on teaching and training,” Ghanadan said. “Instead of the long and expensive process of programming code to teach robots to do tasks, this research opens the potential for robots to learn much faster, at much lower cost and, to the extent they are authorized to do so, share that knowledge with other robots. This learning-based approach is a significant step towards developing technologies that could have benefits in areas such as military repair and logistics.”

The DARPA-funded researchers presented their work today at the 29th meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The University of Maryland paper is available here: http://ow.ly/I30im

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Neptune-Like Planets Could Transfom Into Habitable Worlds

January 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Strong irradiation from the host star can cause planets known as mini-Neptunes in the habitable zone to shed their gaseous envelopes and become potentially habitable worlds.Credit: Rodrigo Luger / NASA imagesExcerpt from sciencedaily.com Two ph...

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With innovators from around the globe digging in, public moon travel may be only 20 years away

January 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments



moon
Image Credit: hkeita/Shutterstock


Excerpt from  venturebeat.com
By Vivek Wadhwa

Five teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE have just been awarded a combined $5.25 million for meeting significant milestones in developing a robot that can safely land on the surface of the moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send mooncasts back to the Earth. A tiny startup from India, Team Indus, with no experience in robotics or space flight just won $1 million of this prize. It stood head to head with companies that had been funded by billionaires, had received the assistance of NASA, and had the support of leading universities.
The good news is that governments no longer have a monopoly on space exploration. In two or three decades, we will have entrepreneurs taking us on private spaceflights to the moon. That is what has become possible.

What has changed since the days of the Apollo moon landings is that the cost of building technologies has dropped exponentially. What cost billions of dollars then costs millions now, and sometimes even less. Our smartphones have computers that are more powerful than the Cray supercomputers of yesteryear — which had strict export controls and cost tens of millions of dollars. We carry high-definition cameras in our pockets that are more powerful than those on NASA spacecraft. The cameras in the Mars Curiosity Rover, for example, have a resolution of 2 megapixels with 8GB of flash memory, the same as our clunky first-generation iPhones. The Apollo Guidance Computer, which took humans to the moon in 1966, had a 2.048 MHz processor — slower than those you find in calculators and musical greeting cards.

The same technologies as are available in the United States and Europe are available worldwide. Innovation has globalized.
I met Team Indus while I was in Mumbai to speak at INK last November. When they told me they were competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. I didn’t take them seriously because I had seen their counterpart in Silicon Valley, Moon Express, which has the support of tech moguls such as Naveen Jain. How could a scrawny little startup in Bangalore take on Naveen Jain, former NASA engineer Bob Richards, and NASA itself, I thought. The Moon Express team is a force of nature, has the advantage of being on the NASA Ames Research campus, and has been given R&D worth billions of dollars by NASA.

Team Indus was also up against Astrobotic, which is a spinoff from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, and Israel-based SpaceIL, which has the backing of the country’s top research institutes.

The company’s win blew my mind. Even though the subject of my INK talk was how Indian entrepreneurs could help change the world, I didn’t think it was already happening.

(See my Jan. 1 story on the Indian tech scene and watch this talk to learn more: Why India shouldn’t be succeeding but is.)

The Bangalore-based startup was founded by former I.T. executive Rahul Narayan and four of his friends: an Air Force pilot, a marketing executive, an investment banker, and an aerospace engineer. None of the team had experience in building spacecraft or robots, yet they were able to build technology that could navigate to the moon.

Narayan says he expects completion of his space mission to cost around $30 million. Moon Express chief executive Bob Richards estimates $50 million. These numbers are higher than the $20 million prize that they hope to win. But both see far greater opportunities: They hope to be pioneers in what could be a trillion-dollar industry. Richards is looking to mine the moon for minerals and bring them back to Earth. Each payload could be worth billions.

The Google Lunar XPRIZE has 26 teams competing from around the world. Collectively, they will spend in the hundreds of millions of dollars on their efforts. For them, it is not all about winning the contest; many of the losers will still commercialize their space technologies or put their knowledge to use in other fields. This is the power of such competitions. They lead entrants to spend multiples of the offered purse on innovative solutions. And they motivate people outside the industry, such as Narayan, to enter it with out-of-the-box thinking.

Innovation prizes are not new. In fact, a number of celebrated historical feats were made possible, in part, by the desire to win these prizes. In the 1920s, New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize to the first person to fly non-stop between New York and Paris. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before an American airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh won the competition in 1927 with his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. 
Lindbergh’s achievement made him a national hero and a global celebrity. And it sparked the interest and investment that led to the modern aviation industry.

That is what I expect will come of the Lunar XPRIZE. And that is why I am looking forward to booking my round-trip ticket to the moon one summer in the 2030s.

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The Best Star Gazing Binoculars for 2015

January 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from space.com

Most people have two eyes. Humans evolved to use them together (not all animals do). People form a continuous, stereoscopic panorama movie of the world within in their minds. With your two eyes tilted upward on a clear night, there's nothing standing between you and the universe. The easiest way to enhance your enjoyment of the night sky is to paint your brain with two channels of stronger starlight with a pair of binoculars. Even if you live in — or near — a large, light-polluted city, you may be surprised at how much astronomical detail you'll see through the right binoculars!
Our editors have looked at the spectrum of current binocular offerings. Thanks to computer-aided design and manufacturing, there have never been more high-quality choices at reasonable prices. Sadly, there's also a bunch of junk out there masquerading as fine stargazing instrumentation. We've selected a few that we think will work for most skywatchers.
There was a lot to consider: magnification versus mass, field of view, prism type, optical quality ("sharpness"), light transmission, age of the user (to match "exit pupil" size, which changes as we grow older), shock resistance, waterproofing and more. 

The best binoculars for you

"Small" astronomy binoculars would probably be considered "medium" for bird watching, sports observation and other terrestrial purposes. This comes about as a consequence of optics (prism type and objective size, mostly). "Large" binoculars are difficult to use for terrestrial applications and have a narrow field of view. They begin to approach telescope quality in magnification, resolution and optical characteristics.

Most of our Editors' Choicesfor stargazing binoculars here are under $300. You can pay more than 10 times that for enormous binocular telescopes used by elite enthusiasts on special mounts! You'll also pay more for ruggedized ("mil spec," or military standard) binoculars, many of which suspend their prisms on shock mounts to keep the optics in precise alignment.

Also, our Editors' Choices use Porro prism optics. Compact binoculars usually employ "roof" prisms, which can be cast more cheaply, but whose quality can vary widely. [There's much more about Porro prisms in our Buyer's Guide.]
We think your needs are best served by reviewing in three categories.
  • Small, highly portable binoculars can be hand-held for viewing ease.
  • Medium binoculars offer higher powers of magnification, but still can be hand-held, if firmly braced.
  • Large binoculars have bigger "objective" lenses but must be mounted on a tripod or counterweighted arm for stability.
Here's a detailed look at our Editor's Choice selections for stargazing binoculars:

Best Small Binoculars 

Editor's Choice: Oberwerk Mariner 8x40 (Cost: $150)

Oberwerk in German means "above work." The brand does indeed perform high-level optical work, perfect for looking at objects above, as well as on the ground or water. Founder Kevin Busarow's Mariner series is not his top of the line, but it benefits greatly from engineering developed for his pricier models. The Oberwerk 8x40’s treat your eyes to an extremely wide field, at very high contrast, with razor-sharp focus; they are superb for observing the broad starscapes of the Milky Way. Just 5.5 inches (14 cm) from front to back and 6.5 inches wide (16.5 cm), the Mariners are compact and rugged enough to be your favorite "grab and go binoculars." But at 37 ounces, they may be more than a small person wants to carry for a long time.


Runner-Up: Celestron Cometron 7x50 (Cost: $30)

Yes, you read that price correctly! These Celestron lightweight, wide-field binoculars bring honest quality at a remarkably low price point. The compromise comes in the optics, particularly the prism's glass type (you might see a little more chromatic aberration around the edges of the moon, and the exit pupil isn't a nice, round circle). Optimized for "almost infinitely distant" celestial objects, these Cometrons won't focus closer than about 30 feet (9.1 meters).  But that's fine for most sports and other outdoor use. If you're gift-buying for multiple young astronomers – or you want an inexpensive second set for yourself – these binoculars could be your answer. Just maybe remind those young folks to be a little careful around water; Celestron claims only that the Cometrons are "water resistant," not waterproof. 


Honorable Mention: Swarovski Habicht 8x30 (Cost: $1,050)

From the legendary Austrian firm of Swarovski Optik, these "bins" are perfect. Really. Very sharp. Very lightweight. Very wide field. Very versatile. And very expensive! Our editors would have picked them if we could have afforded them. 

Honorable Mention: Nikon Aculon 7x50 (Cost: $110) 

Nikon's legendary optical quality and the large, 7mm exit pupil diameter make these appropriate as a gift for younger skywatchers. 

Best Medium Binoculars

Editor's Choice: Celestron SkyMaster 8x56 (Cost: $210)

A solid, chunky-feeling set of quality prisms and lenses makes these binoculars a pleasant, 38oz. handful. A medium wide 5.8 degrees filed of view and large 7mm exit pupil brings you gently into a sweet sky of bright, though perhaps not totally brilliant, stars. Fully dressed in a rubber wetsuit, these SkyMasters are waterproof. Feel free to take them boating or birding on a moist morning. Their optical tubes were blown out with dry nitrogen at the factory, then sealed. So you can expect them not to fog up, at least not from the inside. Celestron's strap-mounting points on the Skymaster 8x56 are recessed, so they don't bother your thumbs, but that location makes them hard to fasten. 


Runner-Up: Oberwerk Ultra 15x70 (Cost: $380)

The most rugged pair we evaluated, these 15x70s are optically outstanding. Seen through the Ultra's exquisitely multi-coated glass, you may find yourself falling in love with the sky all over again. Oberwerk's method of suspending their BAK4 glass Porro prisms offers greater shock-resistance than most competitors’ designs. While more costly than some comparable binoculars, they deliver superior value. Our only complaint is with their mass: At 5.5 lbs., these guys are heavy!  You can hand-hold them for a short while, if you’re lying down. But they are best placed on a tripod, or on a counterweighted arm, unless you like shaky squiggles where your point-source stars are supposed to be. Like most truly big binoculars, the eyepieces focus independently; there’s no center focus wheel. These "binos" are for true astronomers. 


Honorable Mention: Vixen Ascot 10x50 (Cost:$165)

These quirky binoculars present you with an extremely wide field. But they are not crash-worthy – don't drop them in the dark – nor are they waterproof, and the focus knob is not conveniently located. So care is needed if you opt for these Vixen optics. 

Best Large Binoculars

Don't even think about hand-holding this 156-ounce beast! The SkyMaster 25x100 is really a pair of side-by-side 100mm short-tube refractor telescopes. Factor the cost of a sturdy tripod into your purchase decision, if you want to go this big.  The monster Celestron comes with a sturdy support spar for mounting. Its properly multi-coated optics will haul in surprising detail from the sky.  Just make sure your skies are dark; with this much magnification, light pollution can render your images dingy. As with many in the giant and super-giant class of binoculars, the oculars (non-removable eyepieces) focus separately, each rotating through an unusually long 450 degrees.  Getting to critical focus can be challenging, but the view is worth it. You can resolve a bit of detail on face of the new moon (lit by "Earthshine") and pick out cloud bands on Jupiter; tha's pretty astonishing for binoculars. 


Runner-Up: Orion Astronomy 20x80 (Cost: $150)

These big Orions distinguish themselves by price point; they're an excellent value. You could pay 10 times more for the comparably sized Steiners Military Observer 20x80 binoculars! Yes, the Orions are more delicate, a bit less bright and not quite as sharp. But they do offer amazingly high contrast; you'll catch significant detail in galaxies, comets and other "fuzzies." Unusually among such big rigs, the Astronomy 20x80 uses a center focus ring and one "diopter" (rather than independently focusing oculars); if you’re graduating from smaller binoculars, which commonly use that approach, this may be a comfort. These binoculars are almost lightweight enough to hold them by hand. But don't do that, at least not for long periods. And don't drop them. They will go out of alignment if handled roughly. 


Honorable Mention: Barska Cosmos 25x100 (Cost: $230)

They are not pretty, but you're in the dark, right? Built around a tripod-mountable truss tube, these Barskas equilibrate to temperature quickly and give you decent viewing at rational cost. They make for a cheaper version of our Editors' Choice Celestron SkyMasters. 

Honorable Mention: Steiner Observer 20x80 (Cost: $1,500)

Not at all a practical cost choice for a beginning stargazer, but you can dream, can't you? These Steiner binoculars are essentially military optics "plowshared" for peaceful celestial observing. 

Why we chose NOT to review certain types

Image stabilized?

Binoculars with active internal image stabilization are a growing breed. Most use battery-powered gyroscope/accelerometer-driven dynamic optical elements. We have left this type out of our evaluation because they are highly specialized and pricey ($1,250 and up). But if you are considering active stabilization, you can apply the same judgment methods detailed in our Buyer's Guide.

Comes with a camera?

A few binoculars are sold with built-in cameras. That seems like a good idea. But it isn't, at least not for skywatching. Other than Earth's moon, objects in the night sky are stingy with their photons. It takes a lengthy, rock-steady time exposure to collect enough light for a respectable image. By all means, consider these binocular-camera combos for snapping Facebook shots of little Jenny on the soccer field. But stay away from them for astronomy.

Mega monster-sized?

Take your new binoculars out under the night sky on clear nights, and you will fall in love with the universe. You will crave more ancient light from those distant suns. That may translate into a strong desire for bigger stereo-light buckets.

Caution: The next level up is a quantum jump of at least one financial order of magnitude. But if you have the disposable income and frequent access to dark skies, you may want to go REALLY big. Binocular telescopes in this class can feature interchangeable matching eyepieces, individually focusing oculars, more than 30x magnification and sturdy special-purpose tripods. Amateurs using these elite-level stereoscopes have discovered several prominent comets.

Enjoy your universe

If you are new to lens-assisted stargazing, you'll find excellent enhanced views among the binocular choices above. To get in deeper and to understand how we picked the ones we did, jump to our Buyer's Guide: How to Choose Binoculars for Sky Watching.

You have just taken the first step to lighting up your brain with star fire. May the photons be with you. Always. 

Skywatching Events 2015

Once you have your new binoculars, it's time to take them for a spin. This year intrepid stargazers will have plenty of good opportunities to use new gear.

On March 20, for example, the sun will go through a total solar eclipse. You can check out the celestial sight using the right sun-blocking filters for binoculars, but NEVER look at the sun directly, even during a solar eclipse. It's important to find the proper filters in order to observe the rare cosmic show. 

Observers can also take a look at the craggy face of the moon during a lunar eclipse on April 4. Stargazers using binoculars should be able to pick out some details not usually seen by the naked eye when looking at Earth's natural satellite.

Skywatchers should also peek out from behind the binoculars for a chance to see a series of annual meteor showers throughout the year.

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Mountain-sized asteroid to fly by Earth Monday

January 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments


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Excerpt from reviewjournal.com
By AMANDA BARNETT
CNN


A big asteroid will fly by Earth on Monday, but NASA says don’t worry — we’ll be safe.

The asteroid is called 2004 BL86. It’ll come about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth, or about three times as far away as the moon at 11:19 a.m. ET, according to NASA.

You’re wondering, doesn’t this happen all the time? Yes and no. There are lots of asteroids that pose a threat to Earth — about 550 as of January 22. None are predicted to hit anytime soon.
But asteroid 2004 BL86 (yes, we also wish it had a catchier name) is big — about a third of a mile (a half-kilometer) in size. It will be the closest known asteroid this large to pass near Earth until 2027, that’s when an asteroid called 1999 AN10 flies by us.

“While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” Don Yeomans, the recently retired manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a NASA press release.

This asteroid is also interesting because you might be able to see it with strong binoculars or backyard telescopes. That’s a rare opportunity for most of us.

If you don’t have binoculars or a scope, you can watch from the comfort of your computer on The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.
The asteroid was discovered on January 30, 2004, by a telescope of the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico.

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