Tag: pace (page 1 of 11)

An Encounter with Our Helpers

By Mercedes Kirkel   This past week I went on a hike with my good friend, Susan. We chose a trail by the San Francisco Bay that Susan used to frequent but hadn’t been on in a number of years. The weather was beautiful, the wildflowers bursting forth, birds gracing our path, and all seemed […]

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Stephen Hawking Says Artificial Intelligence Will Take over Humanity in the Near Future





Excerpt from regaltribune.com

Technology has advanced so much that some scientists fear that one day robots will take over the world and humans will not be able to do anything about it.  
One of those scientists is Stephen Hawking, the most famous physicist and cosmologist in the world.
Hawking stated during a recent conference that robots and artificial intelligence in particular, could conquer humanity in the next 100 years.
The renowned scientist spoke at the Zeitgeist conference held in London, saying that computers will one day overtake us humans with their artificial intelligence and this could happen in less than 100 years.
Hawking added that if this happens, humans need to be sure that the robots have similar goals, or else.
But this is not the first time the author of “A Brief History of Time” made this kind of “doomy” statements about the future of humanity at the robotic hands of artificial intelligence.

At the beginning of this year, Stephen Hawking expressed his opinions on this matter, saying that artificial intelligence will advance so much that it could bring the end of human race.
Also, in an interview for BBC Hawking said that even though A.I. is not a threat to us humans at the present time, in the future the robots would get more intelligent, bigger and much stronger than their makers, the humans.
The scientist added that robots would start to redesign themselves and will evolve at an increasing rate that humans will not be able to keep the pace.
Hawking added that:
“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
And Hawking is not the only famous scientist who has a gloomy vision regarding our future.
Ellon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO, said that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to human race.

According to Musk, humans must be extremely careful about artificial intelligence, because it could turn out to be our “biggest existential threat”. Musk even compared A.I. with a “demon”.
However, not every scientist envisions a dark future for human race. While many think of artificial intelligence as the driving force behind robots, A.I. is also used to power many devices, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and apps.
Artificial intelligence is also used to protect emails from receiving spam.
Giant companies like Google and Facebook are currently working on developing new systems, which will one day lead to advanced artificial intelligence.

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New research shows Universe expansion pace isn’t as fast as assumed earlier



universe


Excerpt from thewestsidestory.net

The Universe is expanding and any student of astronomy will vouch to this fact. However according to a team of astronomers the acceleration of the universe may not be as quick as it was assumed earlier.

A team of astronomers have discovered that certain types of supernova are more varied than earlier thought of and in the process have led to the biggest mystery of the universe-how fast is the universe expanding after the big bang?

Peter A. Milne of the University of Arizona said, “We found that the differences are not random, but lead to separating Ia supernovae into two groups, where the group that is in the minority near us are in the majority at large distances — and thus when the universe was younger, there are different populations out there, and they have not been recognized. The big assumption has been that as you go from near to far, type Ia supernovae are the same. That doesn’t appear to be the case.”
The discovery throws new light on the currently accepted view of the universe expanding at a faster and faster rate pulled apart by an unknown force called dark energy this observation resulted in 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Milne said, “The idea behind this reasoning, is that type Ia supernovae happen to be the same brightness — they all end up pretty similar when they explode. Once people knew why, they started using them as mileposts for the far side of the universe.The faraway supernovae should be like the ones nearby because they look like them, but because they’re fainter than expected, it led people to conclude they’re farther away than expected, and this in turn has led to the conclusion that the universe is expanding faster than it did in the past.”
The researchers felt that the accelerating universe can be explained on the basis of color difference in between two groups of supernova leaving less acceleration than earlier assumed and in the process will require lesser dark energy.

Milne said, “We’re proposing that our data suggest there might be less dark energy than textbook knowledge, but we can’t put a number on it, until our paper, the two populations of supernovae were treated as the same population. To get that final answer, you need to do all that work again, separately for the red and for the blue population.

Type la supernovae are considered as a benchmark for far away sources of light they do have a fraction of variability which has limited our knowledge of the size of the universe.
The distance of objects with the aid of our binocular vision and the best space-based telescopes and most sophisticated techniques works out in the range of ten or twenty thousand light years. 
However as compared to the vastness of space, this is just pea nuts.
For Distances greater than that it is imperative to compare the absolute and observed brightness of well understood objects and to use the difference to determine the object’s distance.

In astronomy it is difficult to find an object of known brightness since there are examples of both bright and dim stars and galaxies. However there is one event which can be used to work out its absolute brightness. Supernovas are the final stages of a dying star and it explodes with such violence, the flash can be seen across the vast universe.

Type la Supernovae occurs in a binary star system when a white dwarf scoops off mass from its fellow star. This reproducible mechanism gives a well determined brightness and therefore scientists term such Type la supernovae as ‘standard candles’.

Astronomers found that the Type la supernovae is so uniform that it has been designated as cosmic beacons and used to assess the depths of the universe. It is now revealed that they fall into different populations and are not very uniform as previously thought. .

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Why the U.S. Gave Up on the Moon

Moon nearside



Excerpt from spacenews.com


Recently, several space advocacy groups joined forces to form the Alliance for Space Development. Their published objectives include a mention of obvious near-term goals such as supporting the commercial crew program, transitioning from use of the International Space Station to future private space stations and finding ways to reduce the cost of access to space.  What is notably missing from these objectives and those of many other space agencies, companies and advocacy groups is any mention of building a permanent settlement on the moon. It’s as if the lunar surface has become our crazy uncle that we all acknowledge exists but we’d prefer not to mention (or visit).  What made the next logical step in mankind’s progression beyond the bounds of Earth such a taboo subject?  If, as the Alliance for Space Development suggests, our nation wishes to move toward a path of permanent space settlements, the most logical step is our own planet’s satellite.

Lunar base conception
A 2006 NASA conception of a lunar base. Credit: NASA


A base on the lunar surface is a better place to study space settlement than a space station or Mars for many reasons. Unlike a space station, the base does not have to contend with aerodynamic drag, attitude control issues or contamination and impingement from its own thrusters. Unlike a space station, which exists in a total vacuum and resource void, a lunar base has access to at least some surface resources in the forms of minerals, albeit fewer than might be available on Mars.  Many people naturally want to go directly to Mars as our next step. Even SpaceX has publicly stated this as its ultimate goal, with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell noting that “we’re not moon people.” However, Mars makes sense only if we think the technology is ready to safely support humans on another surface for long periods of time. Furthermore, budget restrictions make an ambitious goal like going immediately to Mars an unlikely prospect. Why are we afraid to take the seemingly necessary baby steps of developing the technology for a long-term base on a surface that can be reached in mere days instead of months?  The tendency to want to skip a lunar settlement is not a new phenomenon. Even before the first landing on the moon, U.S. and NASA political leadership was contemplating the future of manned space, and few of the visions involved a lunar base. The early space program was driven by Cold War competition with Moscow, and the kinds of ideas that circulated at the time involved milestones that seemed novel such as reusable spaceplanes, nuclear-powered rockets, space stations and missions to Mars. 

When the United States was on the verge of a series of landings on the moon, building a permanent base just didn’t seem like much of a new giant leap. NASA's ConstellationNASA’s Constellation program, featuring the Orion manned capsule set atop the Ares 1 launch vehicle, was meant to send astronauts back to the moon. Credit: NASA  The idea of a lunar landing mission was not reintroduced seriously until the George W. Bush administration and the introduction of the Constellation program. This program came at a complex time for NASA: The space shuttle was recovering from the Columbia disaster, the space station was in the midst of construction and the United States found itself with large budget deficits. However, despite its budgetary and schedule problems, which are common in any serious aerospace development project from space programs to jumbo-jet development, it provided NASA with a vision and a goal that were reasonable and sensible as next steps toward a long-term future of exploration beyond Earth. 

Constellation was nevertheless canceled, and we have since returned to a most uncommon sense.  The decision to avoid any sort of lunar activity in current space policy may have been biased by the Obama administration’s desire to move as far away as possible from the policies of the previous administration. 

Regardless of the cause, discussion of returning to the moon is no longer on the table.  Without the moon, the only feasible mission that NASA could come up with that is within reach given the current technology and budget is the Asteroid Redirect Mission.  
Even planetary scientists have spoken out against the mission, finding that it will provide little scientific value. It will also provide limited engineering and technology value, if we assume that our long-term goal is to permanently settle space. The experience gained from this sort of flight has little applicability to planetary resource utilization, long-term life support or other technologies needed for settlement.  

If we are to have a program of manned space exploration, we must decide what the long-term goals of such a program should be, and we should align our actions with those goals. When resources such as funding are limited, space agencies and political leaders should not squander these limited resources on missions that make no sense. Instead, the limited funding should be used to continue toward our long-term goals, accepting a slower pace or slight scale-back in mission scope.  Establishing a permanent human settlement in space is a noble goal, one that will eventually redefine humanity. Like explorers before us, it is also not a goal that will be achieved in a short period of time. We would be wise to keep our eyes on that goal and the road needed to get us there. And the next likely stop on that road is a permanent home just above our heads, on the surface of the brightest light in the night sky.  

Paul Brower is an aerospace systems engineer on the operations team for the O3b Networks satellite fleet. He previously worked in mission control at NASA for 10 years.
Recently, several space advocacy groups joined forces to form the Alliance for Space Development. Their published objectives include a mention of obvious near-term goals such as supporting the commercial crew program, transitioning from use of the International Space Station to future private space stations and finding ways to reduce the cost of access to space.
What is notably missing from these objectives and those of many other space agencies, companies and advocacy groups is any mention of building a permanent settlement on the moon. It’s as if the lunar surface has become our crazy uncle that we all acknowledge exists but we’d prefer not to mention (or visit).
What made the next logical step in mankind’s progression beyond the bounds of Earth such a taboo subject?
If, as the Alliance for Space Development suggests, our nation wishes to move toward a path of permanent space settlements, the most logical step is our own planet’s satellite.
Lunar base conception
A 2006 NASA conception of a lunar base. Credit: NASA
A base on the lunar surface is a better place to study space settlement than a space station or Mars for many reasons. Unlike a space station, the base does not have to contend with aerodynamic drag, attitude control issues or contamination and impingement from its own thrusters. Unlike a space station, which exists in a total vacuum and resource void, a lunar base has access to at least some surface resources in the forms of minerals, albeit fewer than might be available on Mars.
Many people naturally want to go directly to Mars as our next step. Even SpaceX has publicly stated this as its ultimate goal, with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell noting that “we’re not moon people.” However, Mars makes sense only if we think the technology is ready to safely support humans on another surface for long periods of time. Furthermore, budget restrictions make an ambitious goal like going immediately to Mars an unlikely prospect. Why are we afraid to take the seemingly necessary baby steps of developing the technology for a long-term base on a surface that can be reached in mere days instead of months?
The tendency to want to skip a lunar settlement is not a new phenomenon. Even before the first landing on the moon, U.S. and NASA political leadership was contemplating the future of manned space, and few of the visions involved a lunar base. The early space program was driven by Cold War competition with Moscow, and the kinds of ideas that circulated at the time involved milestones that seemed novel such as reusable spaceplanes, nuclear-powered rockets, space stations and missions to Mars. When the United States was on the verge of a series of landings on the moon, building a permanent base just didn’t seem like much of a new giant leap.
NASA's Constellation
NASA’s Constellation program, featuring the Orion manned capsule set atop the Ares 1 launch vehicle, was meant to send astronauts back to the moon. Credit: NASA
The idea of a lunar landing mission was not reintroduced seriously until the George W. Bush administration and the introduction of the Constellation program. This program came at a complex time for NASA: The space shuttle was recovering from the Columbia disaster, the space station was in the midst of construction and the United States found itself with large budget deficits. However, despite its budgetary and schedule problems, which are common in any serious aerospace development project from space programs to jumbo-jet development, it provided NASA with a vision and a goal that were reasonable and sensible as next steps toward a long-term future of exploration beyond Earth.
Constellation was nevertheless canceled, and we have since returned to a most uncommon sense.
The decision to avoid any sort of lunar activity in current space policy may have been biased by the Obama administration’s desire to move as far away as possible from the policies of the previous administration. Regardless of the cause, discussion of returning to the moon is no longer on the table.
Without the moon, the only feasible mission that NASA could come up with that is within reach given the current technology and budget is the Asteroid Redirect Mission.
Even planetary scientists have spoken out against the mission, finding that it will provide little scientific value. It will also provide limited engineering and technology value, if we assume that our long-term goal is to permanently settle space. The experience gained from this sort of flight has little applicability to planetary resource utilization, long-term life support or other technologies needed for settlement.
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If we are to have a program of manned space exploration, we must decide what the long-term goals of such a program should be, and we should align our actions with those goals. When resources such as funding are limited, space agencies and political leaders should not squander these limited resources on missions that make no sense. Instead, the limited funding should be used to continue toward our long-term goals, accepting a slower pace or slight scale-back in mission scope.
Establishing a permanent human settlement in space is a noble goal, one that will eventually redefine humanity. Like explorers before us, it is also not a goal that will be achieved in a short period of time. We would be wise to keep our eyes on that goal and the road needed to get us there. And the next likely stop on that road is a permanent home just above our heads, on the surface of the brightest light in the night sky.

Paul Brower is an aerospace systems engineer on the operations team for the O3b Networks satellite fleet. He previously worked in mission control at NASA for 10 years.
- See more at: http://spacenews.com/op-ed-why-the-u-s-gave-up-on-the-moon/#sthash.czfTscvg.dpuf

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Let’s go back to the moon. No, Mars. No, the moon. The debate continues.




Excerpt from washingtonpost.com
By Christian Davenport 

To the moon again? Or Mars?
The questions have hung over NASA for years, and emerged again at a Senate committee hearing Tuesday.

Under President George W. Bush, the target was the moon. Under Obama, who said “we’ve been there before,” Mars became the mission.

But now as his term nears its end, there is some increasingly vocal criticism of that decision, saying there isn’t the funding or political will to get to Mars.

Focusing on Mars is a “flawed policy direction,” Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University testified on Tuesday. The shift in goals “blindsided” the international space community, he said. The moon “is the next logical target for all of our potential international partners.”

Russia has endorsed sending astronauts there, he said. China sent an unmanned rover to the moon, and unveiled designs for a new heavy rocket for deep space exploration. It even has plans to build its own space station. “Growing space powers such as the Republic of Korea and India have their own unmanned lunar ambitions,” Pace said, while adding that the private sector has also made huge advancements.

To regain its prominence in space, the United States should “lead a multinational program to explore the moon," Pace said.

If it doesn’t, he could imagine a “post-American space world, with a full range of manned and unmanned space activities, but without American leadership or even, in many cases, an American presence.”

Testifying before the same committee, Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 pilot who was the second man to walk on the moon, said NASA is right to focus on going beyond the moon. "American leadership is more than simply getting one step ahead of our global competitors," he said. "American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing."

Aldrin said he's working on a plan to get to Mars, and the next president should press ahead with the mission.

“I believe that early in the next administration, the nation must commit to developing a permanent presence on Mars,” he said.
With much fanfare, NASA has trumpeted its “Journey to Mars” campaign. And it has highlighted the unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule last year as evidence of its progress toward reaching the Red Planet. It is also developing a new heavy rocket, known as the Space Launch System, designed to go to Mars and deep space.

But critics have maintained that without the funding to support such an endeavor, the attempt is a little more than a public relations stunt. And while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other members the committee on Tuesday said they were committed to the new rocket, others have been less supportive.

“We made a wrong decision when we went down this road,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said at a hearing late last year.

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Astronomers search for missing brown dwarf star



Excerpt from sciencerecorder.com





Armed with one of the largest telescopes in the world, the aptly named Very Large Telescope at the ESO Observatory in Chile, astronomers are conducting a search for what they once were certain had to be a brown dwarf star. The only problem is that now the star seems to have vanished without evidence.

What happened? Brown dwarfs, compared to their better known red dwarf counterparts are significantly cooler, dimmer objects which at a glance bear more resemblance to planets than to other stars.

Although they release heat and bear a chemical composition similar to that of the sun, astronomers tend to refer to them as “failed stars,” since they are too small to set off any thermonuclear reactions within their cores. This particular vanishing dwarf was thought to be part of a double-star system, the V471 Tauri, located within the Taurus constellation, only 163 light years from Earth. Within this system, the stars orbit each other in 12 hour intervals, which causes the brightness to diminish every six hours, when one star crosses directly in front of the other. 



However, the timing of this eclipse never happened at an entirely predictable pace, leading the researchers to suspect that a brown dwarf’s gravitational pull was pushing on the stars and causing the lapse – it’s the only thing consistent with the minimal lapsing patterns. With the use of a new powerful camera called SPHERE, they set out to plot out the location of the brown dwarf, but found nothing where they predicted it would be. 

“This is how science works,” said Adam Hardy, the study’s lead author who remains undaunted by the road ahead. The new study was published this week by the journal, Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Observations with new technology can either confirm or, as in this case, disprove earlier ideas.”
Perhaps most intriguing is that while a brown dwarf appears to be hiding from them, the cluster it waxes influence over is among the brightest and largest of deep-sky objects visible in the evening sky.
The binary star system is found in what astronomers call the Hyades cluster, named for the nymphs of Greek mythology who are responsible for the rain.

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Elon Musk fears our progress in artificial intelligence is ‘seriously dangerous’


 


Excerpt from
sciencerecorder.com



Visionary technology figure Elon Musk has been warning the public for months about possible threats posed by artificial intelligence. But now he has a timeline.

Musk, the South African-born CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, wrote that “the risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year time frame. 10 years at most.”

Musk penned this comment at the bottom of an essay written by virtual pioneer Jaron Lanier called “The Myth of A.I.” The essay appeared in the publication Edge.org last week and was followed by comments from such technology notables as George Dyson, Peter Diamandis, and Kevin Kelly.

While Musk’s comment was deleted, it was picked up by sites such as Mashable and Reddit, which preserved it for a larger audience. According to these sites, Musk zeroed in on companies such as DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence company that Musk once invested in before it was purchased by Google.

“The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast,” Musk’s piece read. “Unless you have direct exposure to groups like DeepMind, you have no idea how fast-it is growing at a pace close to exponential.”

Musk mentioned that AI companies “recognize the danger” and were working to ameliorate any negative intelligences “from escaping into the Internet.”

While Musk had sent his comment privately to Edge.org by email, it was published by a site editor before it was taken down. A Musk spokesperson has said that Musk will write a longer piece outlining his thoughts on the dangers of artificial intelligence, presumably to be published on the same website.

Previously, Musk has compared AI to “summoning the demon,” nuclear war, and the “Terminator” series.

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Researchers make 32 differently-shaped DNA crystals – is this the future of nanotech?



Researchers have achieved 32 different–shaped crystal structures using the DNA–brick self–assembly method. (Photo : Harvard’s Wyss Institute)

Excerpt from
zmescience.com 

A team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering demonstrated the latest advances in programmable DNA self-assembly by crystallizing 32 structures with precisely prescribed depths and complex 3D features. The DNA crystals could potentially be used as the basis of a programmable material platform that would allow scientists to build extremely precise and complex structures rivaling the complexity of many molecular machines we see in nature – all from the bottom up!

Nanotechnology like Lego

For the past twenty years or so, there’s been a lot of interest shown into designing large DNA crystals of various desired shapes by exploiting DNA’s inherent ability to self-assemble. We’re recently beginning to see the fruits of this labor, first in 2012 when the same team described their “DNA-brick self-assembly” method that allowed them to build more than 100 3D complex nanostructures about the size of viruses. The 32 designs reported in this latest research are 1000 times larger, close to the size of a speck of dust, which makes them closer to applicable scale where they can be used practically.

With conventional methods of DNA assembly, the resulting design tends to become more and more imperfect as you scale the design because at each step there’s a risk of error. The technique developed at Harvard is different because since it uses short, synthetic strands of DNA that work like interlocking Lego® bricks to build complex structures – it’s a modular design. Each structure first starts off as a computer model of a molecular cube (the master canvas), then individual DNA bricks are removed or added independently until a desired shape is met. These bricks bind to as many as four neighboring strands or bricks. Thus, two bricks connect to one another at a 90-degree angle to form a 3D shape, just like a pair of two-stud Lego bricks. Each individual brick is coded in such a way that they self-assemble in a desired 3-D shape. What’s fantastic is that this method allows for intricate shapes to built on an extremely tiny scale opening up a slew of applications. For instance, a cube built up from 1,000 such bricks (10 by 10 by 10) measures just 25 nanometers in width – thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair!
“Therein lies the key distinguishing feature of our design strategy—its modularity,” said co-lead author Yonggang Ke, Ph.D., formerly a Wyss Institute Postdoctoral Fellow and now an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. “The ability to simply add or remove pieces from the master canvas makes it easy to create virtually any design.”

Precision controlled DNA

Most importantly, this modularity allows precision control of the structure’s depth. This is the first time that anyone has been able to design crystal depth with nanometer precision, up to 80 nm, as opposed to  two-dimensional DNA lattices which are typically single-layer structures with only 2 nm depth.
“DNA crystals are attractive for nanotechnology applications because they are comprised of repeating structural units that provide an ideal template for scalable design features”, said co-lead author graduate student Luvena Ong.

 “Peng’s team is using the DNA-brick self-assembly method to build the foundation for the new landscape of DNA nanotechnology at an impressive pace,” said Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. “What have been mere visions of how the DNA molecule could be used to advance everything from the semiconductor industry to biophysics are fast becoming realities.”

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Galactic Federation of Light ~ El Morya June-08-2013

Konstantinos-Sharing of some experiences, drawings, photos and a message from El Morya
Thanks to Méline Lafont: http://pleiadedolphininfos.blogspot.com/2013/06/konstantinos-sharing-of-some.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Pleiadedolphininfos+%28pleiadedolphininfos%29
What is Wisdom without the human?
Not rechanneled and at the same time,

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Heaven Letters June-05-2013

Bells Ring, Gongs Clang, and All Clap Hands
Heavenletter #4576 Published on: June 5, 2013
God said:
You are My life. Do you get what I mean? You are the fulfillment of My

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Heaven Letters June-03-2013

Be an Inspirer
Heavenletter #4574 Published on: June 3, 2013
Gloria Windroff
http://www.heavenletters.org/be-an-inspirer.html

God said:
It’s good to accept life as it comes. Fighting life is pretty much a losing battle. Maybe

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Heaven Letters June-02-2013

Heavenletter #4573 Life Is Many-Winged, June 2, 2013
Posted on Juni 2, 2013 by Sirian Heaven
Thanks to Sirian Heaven: http://sirianheaven.wordpress.com/
God said:

Beloveds, you want to come to the aid

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Galactic Federation of Light Sheldan Nidle May-14-2013

Sheldan’s update for May 14, 2013
http://www.paoweb.com/sn051413.htm

2 Kan, 12 Moan, 9 Eb
Dratzo! We return with more to tell you. The coming changes in your reality are vital because

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