Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that defies previously established trends. Although a hot Neptune, the exoplanet HAT-P-26b has an atmospheric composition that's more Jupiter-like, giving clues as to how it was formed. Warm and Unusual

The easiest way to make sense of the various unfamiliar objects we find floating around in the cosmos is by thinking about them in the context ofcelestial bodies we are familiar with. Our Solar System has become the starting point for our analysis of other bodies, especially exoplanets.

Thats how the termhot Neptunecame about its our way of describing exoplanets as massive as Uranus or Neptune but that orbit closer to their stars. Weve already come across a number of these hot Neptunes, but one of the most recently discovered defies all expectations astronomers have about the exoplanets.

Located about 437 light-years away from Earth, HAT-P-26b is a hot Neptune that has a primordial atmosphere composed mostly of hydrogen and helium an unusual mixture for planets very close to their stars. Astronomers have just begun to investigate the atmospheres of these distant Neptune-mass planets, and almost right away, we found an example that goes against the trend in our Solar System, said researcher Hannah Wakefordfrom NASAs Goddard Space Flight Centerin a news release.

Usually, massive planets have lower metallicities a lower presence of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in their atmosphere. For example, Jupiter and Saturns are five and ten times than that of the Sun, respectively. Smaller planets like Uranus and Neptune, on the other hand, have higher metallicities, about a hundred times greater than the Sun.

For hot Neptune HAT-P-26b, however, this standard fails. Its metallicity is only about 4.8 times that of the Sun much closer to Jupiters than to Neptunes.

Such a discovery just confirms that theres so much we dont know about the universe and whats in it. Assumptions that may be true for Earth or for the planets in our solar system may not necessarily be true for others out there. This analysis shows that there is a lot more diversity in the atmospheres of these exoplanets than we were expecting, which is providing insight into how planets can form and evolve differently than in our solar system, said University of Exeters David K. Sing, second author of the paper, which is published in Nature.

For Wakeford, its discoveries like this that make her work exciting. This kind of unexpected result is why I really love exploring the atmospheres of alien planets, she said.

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Astronomers Just Found a Planet They Didn't Know Was Possible - Futurism

In BriefResearchers have developed a model to understand howTRAPPIST-1's seven planets manage to avoid colliding with oneanother. They learned that the system follows a chain of resonancesat a scale never before seen in a planetary system. Orbital Progression

Februarys discovery of the seven Earth-like planets orbiting a dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1 generated a great deal of excitement as the system seemed likea potential host for extraterrestrial life. However, further research revealed that the TRAPPIST planets seemed to be following an orbital path for destruction.

[I]n the original paper [when] they tried to simulate the system, planets would start colliding after a short time (astronomically speaking, about a million years), astrophysicist Dan Tamayo told Futurism via email. However, he and colleagues from the University of Toronto Scarboroughmay have found a way to explain how the TRAPPIST planets survive.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers explain thatthe mechanism that would lead to the TRAPPIST planets colliding with one another is the same one that keeps them stable their orbit. [I]n TRAPPIST-1, for every 2 orbits of the outermost planet, the next one in does 3 orbits, the next one 4, 6, 9, 15, and 24, Tamayo explained. This is called a chain of resonances, and this is the longest one that has ever been discovered in a planetary system.

One can liken the chain of resonances in the TRAPPIST system to how an orchestra works. The instruments create harmonious music by keeping time with one another and making sure each one is tuned to the rest.

Most planetary systems are like bands of amateur musicians playing their parts at different speeds, said Matt Russo, from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), who took the lead in developing an animation to demonstrate this phenomenon. TRAPPIST-1 is different; its a super-group with all seven members synchronizing their parts in nearly perfect time. He added,This means that early on, each planets orbit was tuned to make it harmonious with its neighbors, in the same way that instruments are tuned by a band before it begins to play.

Using computer simulations, the researchers modeled how the TRAPPIST system was formed and how the harmonies were finely tuned to create this unprecedented stable chain of resonances.

Certainly, this research has larger implications in our search for systems that could potentially host extraterrestrial life. While these resonances are rare in systems with massive stars like the Sun, they could be a common occurrence around smaller stars like TRAPPIST-1. It may be that the formation conditions around low mass stars are gentler and better able to form harmonious, long lived planetary systems, said Tamayo.

This has implications for the prevalence of planets in the universe, since there are many small stars for every big one, he concluded. The exciting part is that this will be tested by upcoming missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launching next year.

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Any Alien Life in the Trappist-1 System Exists in a Tenuous Balance - Futurism

In Brief A firm has created facial recognition software that works together with surveillance cameras to identify emotions on faces. This may allow for real time crime prevention as violent facial expressions are recognized. Recognizing Violence In Faces

A Russian firm called NTechLab has created a software that, when used in tandem with surveillance cameras, can detect emotions and identify people who are angry, nervous, or stressed in a crowd. The software then processes the emotions it perceives in the context of the age, gender, and identity (if known) of the people it is surveilling to decide who the potential criminals and terrorists are. Last year, the firms software was used to power the FindFace app, which works on the Russian version of Facebook to find anyone from missing family members to suspects in cold cases.

NTechLab claims that the technology is more than 94 percent accurate. If theyre proven right, municipalities that use it may be able to monitor situations in real time, stopping crime before it happens. Its clients mostly include retail businesses and security firms, but local, state/regional or even federal governments could conceivably use their technology.

Technology has already changed the way the authorities fight crime and work to prevent it. The FBI has been using the Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition system, which allows the agency to parse more than 411 million photos to identify suspects and not just the faces of people who have committed crimes. It also searches the visa and passport application photos of the State Department. In fact, experts estimate that about 117 million Americans around half of all adults in the U.S. are in the database. This kind of technology has also been implemented in airports since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Facial recognition is also being used to boost security in other contexts:HSBC uses facial recognition software rather than more traditional security measures, as does Lloyds in partnership with Microsoft. While this technology is primarily intended to boost online security, it is in essence also working to prevent crime and fraud.

So, can a dystopian future like the one shown in Minority Report in which innocent people are imprisoned without ever committing actual crimes be possible in a world that makes use of this technology? The FBI has responded to criticisms of its use of the NGI system by saying that it uses the software to generate leads not to make positive identifications. However, state and local law enforcement agencies also have access, and might have different policies or de facto procedures. As of October 2016, Wired reported that more than 40 civil liberties groups had requested that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department (now headed by Jeff Sessions) evaluate the use of the technology around the country and issue guidance. As yet, the matter remains unresolved.

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Software That Reads Emotions Could Be Used to Catch Criminals Before They Act - Futurism

Sleep and Pain

Coffee is full of surprises, and one more was uncovered this week by researchers fromthe Boston Childrens Hospital (BCH). They found that coffees secret weapon, caffeine, and another stimulating chemical helped sleep-deprived mice deal with pain. They concluded that if we want to help people with chronic pain, we must first addresswith the fatigue that so many endure.

BCH neurologists and neurobiologists induced chronic sleep deprivation in mice by entertaining them with toys when they would normally be sleeping. Then, they introduced mice to different forms of pain, and measured how long it took the mice to remove themselves from the source of the negative stimulus. As the mice became more exhausted, they became more sensitive to pain and reacted more quickly.

Then the scientists treated the mice with drugs to help them deal with the pain. Instead of responding to normalpain relievers like ibuprofen or even morphine, the researchers found that mice responded best to wakefulness drugs, namely caffeine and modafinil. However, the two drugs did not have an analgesic effect in well-rested mice, confirming that they weretargeting the mices fatigue rather than the pain itself.Theywrote their result in apaper, published in the journal Nature Medicine.

This represents a new kind of analgesic that hadnt been considered before, one that depends on the biological state of the animal, said Clifford Woolf, director of the Kirby Center at BCH, in an interview for a press release. Such drugs could help disrupt the chronic pain cycle, in which pain disrupts sleep, which then promotes pain, which further disrupts sleep.

While these results have not been demonstrated in humans yet, the researchers believe that the study underscores the importance of helping people who suffer from chronic pain get the rest they need, said BCH sleep specialist Kiran Maski.

Many patients with chronic pain suffer from poor sleep and daytime fatigue, and some pain medications themselves can contribute to these co-morbidities, Maski, who didnot participate in the study, said in the press release. This study suggests a novel approach to pain management that would be relatively easy to implement in clinical care.

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Scientists Say That Caffeine Has More Pain-Relieving Power Than Morphine - Futurism

In BriefElon Musk released a string of tweets and Instagram postsgiving updates on the Boring Company's progress in constructing ahigh-speed underground transportation system. So Boring

Our modern-day DaVinci, Elon Musk, is hard at work bringing his latest venture,the Boring Company,to fruition. The companys aim is to create a network of tunnels to accommodate a high-speed transit system, and Musk just sent out a torrent of updates via Twitter and Instagram containing pictures and video of its latest achievements.

His first tweet signaled that the beginningsof the tunnel are complete. The tunneling machine, Boring 1 (or Godot), now has a proper entry hole, staging area, and starting tunnel.

Musk plans for the first tunnel to run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks and for future extensionsto cover the entirety of greater Los Angeles, an area spanning87,940 square kilometers (33,954 square miles).

Naturally, given the nature of the geography of Southern California, many commenters are concerned about how the tunnels would stand up to earthquakes. Musk allayed those fears by responding in the affirmative when asked if the tunnels will be earthquake-proof.

Godot is a massive machine whose speed has been compared to that of a snail. However, Musk has plans to ratchet up its pace by a factor of ten. The machine, once completely assembled, will be more than 100 feet long.

The purpose of the Boring Company is to cut travel time in the notoriously congested Los Angeles area. To that end, Musk claims the tunnel will allow travel between the L.A. neighborhood of Westwood and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in only five minutes.

Vehicles will be transported through the tunnels on platforms, called skates or sleds, powered by electricity at speeds of up to 200 kmh (125 mph). He posted a video of a skate at work.

It seems like Musk is a man of his word. Less than six months after tweeting that he was going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging, he has done just that. At the beginning, even he emphatically admitted, We have no idea what were doingI want to be clear about that. Now, he is well on his way to making this dream a reality.

With a hand inSpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop, and now the Boring Company, Musk seems poised to monopolize the future of ground (and apparently underground) transportation.

Link:
Elon Musk Just Released Breakthrough Updates About His New Company - Futurism

In BriefA heated debate has sparked between two groups of physicistsvia an exchange of published articles and letters. One groupasserts that the cosmic inflation theory doesn't hold up, while theother argues that it does. An Inflated Discussion

The players: 36 of the worlds top physicists. The arena: the entire cosmos, sort of. For physicists and cosmologists, the origin of the universe is proving to be a battle worth fighting over or, more accurately, writing an angry letter about.

Back in February,three physicistssparked a debate within the scientific community by writing acontroversial article criticizing the cosmic inflation theory.Now, 33 other physicists, including Stephen Hawking, Lisa Randall, Reiner Weiss, Frank Wilczek, and cosmologist Alan Guth the author of the theory himself have writtenan (angry) letter in defense of the theory.Both the original article and the response werepublished in Scientific American.

A quick refresher onthe cosmic inflation theory.First proposed in 1980 by Guth, the theory describes how the universe quickly expanded after the Big Bang, producing galaxies from quantum fluctuations. Most people are familiar with the theory as its whats taught in schools when discussing the origin of the universe.

In their article, Princeton physicist Anna Ijjas, Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb, and physicist Paul Steinhardt who is actually a former colleague of Guth criticized some assumptions about the inflation theory, including recent studies on cosmic microwave background that dont support cosmic inflation. They also pointed out that such an inflation should have generated primordial gravitational waves, but these are yet to be found.

We should not just accept the assumption that inflation happened, especially because it does not offer a simple explanation of the observed features of the universe, the trio wrote.

Testing theories over and over is a normal part of science,and no credible scientist would argue that questioning and scrutinizing assumptions is important. It was another part of the trios article that turned out to be highly debatable:

That last bit was the kicker. Guth and the other 32 physicists heartily disagreed with the idea that the inflation theory couldnt be tested with evidenceand decided tovoice their opinion on the trios accusations:

We have no idea what scientists they are referring to.

Indeed, the ability to test a theory is anessential aspect of science. No real science is done by just wildly making and sticking by assumptions without testing them. Guth, Hawking, and the 31 other experts explain in their letter that the inflation theory hasnt been blindly accepted by the scientific community. On the contrary, more evidence has come to light that tests the theory.

Thats is to be expected as our current understanding of the universe is limited. However, Guth and the other the authors assert that those limitationsshouldnt prevent us from exploring possibilities: The fact that our knowledge of the universe is still incomplete is absolutely no reason to ignore the impressive empirical success of the standard inflationary models.

[A]s time passes, the successful [theories] become better and better established by improved experimental tests and theoretical advances. This has happened with inflation, they argue. Progress continues, supported by the enthusiastic efforts of many scientists who have chosen to participate in this vibrant branch of cosmology.

This debate clearly shows one thing, though. As Guth and his 32 colleagues concluded: Empirical science is alive and well!

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Stephen Hawking Responds to Colleagues' Critical Article on the Origins of the Universe - Futurism