Science & TechnologyS


Jet3

US Navy has patents on tech it says will 'engineer the fabric of reality'

Matthew Gault
Vice
Sat, 06 Feb 2021 10:20 UTC
aircraft carrier
© Lt. Steve Smith/U.S. Navy via Getty Images
The U.S. Navy's "UFO patents" sound like they've been ripped from a science fiction novel.

The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using "inertial mass reduction," and a "hybrid aerospace-underwater craft." Dubbed the "UFO patents", The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build prototypes of some of the outlandish tech to prove it worked.

Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to "provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the warfighter." It's responsible for developing the technology behind the Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines.

Comment: See also:

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Hourglass

Neanderthal gut microbiota and the bacteria helping our health

Università di Bologna
Phys.org
Fri, 05 Feb 2021 21:19 UTC
Neanderthal
© University of BolognaThe research group analysed the ancient DNA extracted from 50,000 years old sedimentary faeces (the oldest sample of faecal material available to date). The samples were collected in El Salt (Spain), a site where many Neanderthals lived.
Neanderthals' gut microbiota included beneficial microorganisms that are also found in the modern human microbiome. An international research group led by the University of Bologna achieved this result by extracting and analyzing ancient DNA from 50,000-year-old fecal sediments sampled at the archaeological site of El Salt, near Alicante (Spain).

Published in Communication Biology, their paper puts forward the hypothesis of the existence of ancestral components of human microbiota that have been living in the human gastrointestinal tract since before the separation between the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals that occurred more than 700,000 years ago.

Comment: See also:

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Blue Planet

120,000 year old bone etchings believed to be 'among oldest evidence of human use of symbols'

Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Phys.org
Fri, 05 Feb 2021 21:20 UTC
bone
© Marion PrévostPhotograph of the bone and the engravings.
While scientists and historians have long surmised that etchings on stones and bones have been used as a form of symbolism dating back as early as the Middle Paleolithic period (250,000-45,000 BCE), findings to support that theory are extremely rare.

A recent discovery by archeologists from the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa alongside a team from the Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France have uncovered evidence of what may be the earliest-known use of symbols. The symbols were found on a bone fragment in the Ramle region in central Israel and are believed to be approximately 120,000 years old.

Remarkably the fragment remained largely intact and the researchers were able to detect six similar etchings on one side of the bone, leading them to believe that they were in the possession of something which held symbolic or spiritual significance. The find, which was recently published in the scientific journal Quaternary International, was discovered in a trove of flint tools and animal bones exposed at a site during archaeological excavations.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Galaxy

A giant black hole suddenly went dark, and no one knows why

Rafi Letzter
Live Science
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
black hole
© Brian Christensen/Stocktrek ImagesWhat blotted out GRS 1915+105's bright light?
Beginning in 2018, one of the brightest X-ray lights in the sky went dark, and scientists still aren't sure why.

The black hole responsible for creating the lights-out mystery lives in GRS 1915+105, a star system 36,000 light-years from Earth containing both a normal star and the second-heaviest known black hole in the Milky Way. That heavyweight is 10 to 18 times the mass of the sun and second in mass only to Sagittarius A* (or SgrA*), the supermassive black hole in the galactic center. The region around the GRS 1915+105 black hole typically shines with an intense X-ray light, as it feeds on its companion star. As the material circles the cosmic drain, the particles within rub together, generating energy before dropping into the darkness at the black hole's center. That swirling material is the black hole's accretion disk, which lights up with X-rays as the black hole devours more and more sustenance.

Comment: The number of recent unexpected and unexplained events in space further leads one to suspect that mainstream science is missing a significant piece of the puzzle: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Comet 2

New Comet C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Fri, 05 Feb 2021 14:13 UTC
CBET 4929 & MPEC 2021-C16, issued on 2021, February 04, announce the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~19) in infrared images obtained during Jan. 22 UT with the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (or NEOWISE; formerly the WISE earth-orbiting satellite). The new comet has been designated C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.

Stacking of 50 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, January 27.1 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 10" arcsecond in diameter. (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott):
Comet C/2021 B3 NEOWISE
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Meteor

Meteorite fragments recovered after 'very bright, rumbling' fireball filmed in Sweden's skies in November

Karl Antier
International Meteor Organisation
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
sweden fireball
© IMO/AMSMore than 15 witnesses reported their sighting of the November 7, 2020, 21h27min UT fireball to the IMO.
On November 7, 2020, around 21h 27min UT, a very bright fireball was observed and caught on camera over Scandinavia. Witnesses which were close to the trajectory were affected by cloudy skies and did not see the fireball, but some heard a "deep exploding sounds" or "long rumbling sounds like thunder or a motor".


Comment: For an idea of the sounds fireballs have been making, check out this story from just a week ago: Loud blast recorded on dashcam as meteorite explodes over Sarawak, Indonesia - Locals felt earth shake


The event has been caught on cameras, some associated to a meteor observing network like the Norsk Meteornettwerk or by CCTV video recordings. Those show a slow moving meteor lasting a few seconds and which brightness lit up the ground and the sky. Another video is available here.

Comment: James Gage of VARF.se comments:
[...] It may be of interest to IMO readers that we have confirmation of a find from this meteorite. Several small pieces were recovered 22 november and analysis has confirmed them to be from an iron nickel meteorite. So far, only these have been reported, and they are very small, 1 to 6 mm. We will begin searching again when the snow has melted. The pieces were found within the calculated strewn field, but I have no information as to the exact location as of yet.
Activity in our skies certainly appears to be increasing:

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Info

Second Earth orbiting Trojan asteroid discovered

Jeff Hecht
Sky & Telescope
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 21:35 UTC
A recently discovered asteroid appears to be an Earth Trojan, orbiting a gravitationally stable area with only one other known occupant.

Earth has a second Trojan asteroid sharing its orbit, reports amateur Tony Dunn on the Minor Planet Mailing List. The asteroid, dubbed 2020 XL5, is a few hundred meters across and its orbit is tied to a gravitationally stable ahead of the Earth in its orbit.
Earth-Sun Lagrange points
© NASA / WMAP Science TeamThis diagram shows the Earth-Sun Lagrange points (not to scale). Trojans orbit near the L4 and L5 regions, though their orbits may stray from those exact points.
Trojans are asteroids gravitationally locked to stable Lagrange points either 60° ahead (L4) or behind (L5) the planets in their orbits around the Sun. 2020 XL5 was found around the L4 point. Massive Jupiter has more than 9,000 Trojans. In theory, Trojan orbits would be stable around every planet except Saturn, where Jupiter's gravity pulls them away. So far, Trojans have been found sharing orbits — at least temporarily — with Neptune, Uranus, Mars, Venus, and Earth.

Earth Trojans are hard to find because during most of their orbits, they appear close to the Sun in the sky. Not only that, but the gravitational resonance does not hold them in lockstep at 60° ahead and behind of the Earth, explains Dunn. Instead, the objects trace paths around the L4 and L5 points, which are themselves moving as Earth orbits the Sun.
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Display

Supercomputer in your bedroom


University of Sussex
Wed, 03 Feb 2021 22:47 UTC
Super Computer
© Wikipedia
University of Sussex academics have established a method of turbocharging desktop PCs to give them the same capability as supercomputers worth tens of millions of pounds.

Dr James Knight and Prof Thomas Nowotny from the University of Sussex's School of Engineering and Informatics used the latest Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to give a single desktop PC the capacity to simulate brain models of almost unlimited size.

The researchers believe the innovation, detailed in Nature Computational Science, will make it possible for many more researchers around the world to carry out research on large-scale brain simulation, including the investigation of neurological disorders.

Currently, the cost of supercomputers is so prohibitive they are only affordable to very large institutions and government agencies and so are not accessible for large numbers of researchers.

As well as shaving tens of millions of pounds off the costs of a supercomputer, the simulations run on the desktop PC require approximately 10 times less energy bringing a significant sustainability benefit too.

Dr Knight, Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Sussex, said: "I think the main benefit of our research is one of accessibility. Outside of these very large organisations, academics typically have to apply to get even limited time on a supercomputer for a particular scientific purpose. This is quite a high barrier for entry which is potentially holding back a lot of significant research.
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Eye 1

Flashback Secretive agency uses AI, human 'forecasters' to predict the future

Paul Ratner
Big Think
Sun, 17 May 2020 00:00 UTC
IARPA
A U.S. government intelligence agency develops cutting-edge tech to predict future events.

As far as secretive government projects go, the objectives of IARPA may be the riskiest and most far-reaching. With its mission to foster "high-risk, high-payoff" programs, this research arm of the U.S. intelligence community literally tries to predict the future. Staffed by spies and Ph.D.s, this organization aims to provide decision makers with real, accurate predictions of geopolitical events, using artificial intelligence and human "forecasters."

IARPA, which stands for Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, was founded in 2006 as part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Some of the projects that it has funded focused on advancements in quantum computing, cryogenic computing, face recognition, universal language translators, and other initiatives that would fit well in a Hollywood action movie plot. But perhaps its main goal is to produce "anticipatory intelligence." It's a spy agency, after all.

Comment: Intelligence agencies have been working on predictive technology, both human and AI-related, for many years:

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HAL9000

Microsoft heralds 'key milestone' for quantum computing

Joel Khalili
TechRadar
Tue, 02 Feb 2021 18:21 UTC
quantum computer
© Graham Carlow/IBM
Microsoft has revealed that its cloud-based quantum computing platform, Azure Quantum, is now available in public preview.

The company has described the move as a "key milestone", allowing developers and researchers to harness opportunities afforded by access to quantum resources, but via a familiar toolset.

According to a Microsoft blog post, Azure Quantum gives users access to services from a range of quantum industry partners, including Honeywell, IonQ, Quantum Circuits and more.

The platform operates on a pay-as-you-go model and can be scaled up or down in line with usage needs. As per the pricing page, Azure Quantum can be sampled for as little as £7.45/compute hour (roughly $10.30/hour), although more complex workloads are considerably more expensive.
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