Science & TechnologyS


Airplane Paper

Facebook reality creators unveil virtual social space for Oculus users


Yahoo! News
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 16:28 UTC
Facebook Oculus user
© AFP/Amy Osborne
Facebook said Wednesday it will launch a virtual social community where users of its Oculus headgear can "explore new places" and "create their own new experiences."

The Horizon virtual world set for a beta launch in 2020 represents a new initiative for the Oculus virtual reality unit of the leading social network.

Oculus users will be able to choose an avatar and interact with others in the virtual social community, Facebook said as it opened its Oculus Connect 6 conference.

"Our goal is to put people at the center of computing, not just with great hardware, but with amazing software experiences as well," Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook Horizon will be "a new social experience in VR where you can build your own worlds with easy-to-use tools (no coding skills required)," the company said.
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Moon

Mystery of the gargantuan crater on the dark side of the Moon

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 07:35 UTC
moon
© NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/University of ArizonaThe South Pole-Aitken basin (represented by the shades of blue at the center) stretches 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) across and is one of the solar system’s largest craters. The dashed circle indicates the spot where researchers found a weird material beneath the basin that contains metal.
Billions of years ago, something slammed into the dark side of the moon and carved out a very, very large hole. Stretching 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide and 8 miles (13 km) deep, the South Pole-Aitken basin, as the tremendous hole is known to Earthlings, is the oldest and deepest crater on the moon, and one of the largest craters in the entire solar system.

For decades, researchers have suspected that the gargantuan basin was created by a head-on collision with a very large, very fast meteor. Such an impact would have ripped the moon's crust apart and scattered chunks of lunar mantle across the crater's surface, providing a rare glimpse at what the moon is really made of. (Spoiler: It's not cheese.) That theory gained some credence earlier this year, when China's Yutu-2 rover, which settled into the bottom of the crater aboard the Chang'e 4 lander in January, discovered traces of minerals that seemed to originate from the moon's mantle.

Comment: See also:

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UFO

Examining aspects of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) from a scientific perspective: The Skinwalker Ranch

Keith Basterfield
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 01:49 UTC
skinwalker ranch
Skinwalker Ranch front gate
Background 1

AAWSAP 2010-2016

The16 December 2017 edition of the New York Times featured an article written by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, which revealed the fact that the US Department of Defense had spent $M22.5 on a program titled the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. One particular paragraph of the article caught my eye. There was mention of former Senator Harry Reid, and Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow.

"Mr Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr Bigelow. In 2007 Mr Reid said in the interview, Mr Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA -KB] had approached him wanting to visit Mr Bigelow's ranch in Utah, where he conducted research."

"Mr Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s."
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Comet 2

Two sightings in two years suggest there could be lots more interstellar comets

Richard A Lovett
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 23:16 UTC
Interstellar Comets
© VW PICS/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGESIt’s possible that other solar systems are flinging comets into interstellar space, and we might be able to see them in the next few years as technology improves.
For the second time in two years, astronomers have spotted an interstellar interloper heading into our Solar System.

The first, dubbed 'Oumuamua, was spotted on 19 October 2017.

This one, named 2I/Borisov, was discovered on 30 August 2019 by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov of Nauchnij, Crimea, using a home-built 65-centimeter telescope.

It was initially thought to be an ordinary comet, says Davide Farnocchia of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, Pasadena, California.

But a week of observations by amateur and professional astronomers revealed that it was on an orbit that must have originated outside the Solar System and is now in the process of slingshotting around the Sun before heading back into interstellar space. (The "2I" in its name means it is "interstellar object number 2.")

Already, it is proving to be quite different from its predecessor. To begin with, it's much larger. 'Oumuamua (now officially called 1I/'Oumuamua) was a cigar-shaped object, only 800 meters long. 2I/Borisov is probably several kilometers in diameter.
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Robot

By leaps and bounds a new twist on robotics: Atlas' agility in gymnastic routine


RT
Tue, 24 Sep 2019 15:19 UTC
Robotic gymnastic
© Boston Dynamics'Sticking the landing'
The Boston Dynamics humanoid robot Atlas has channeled his inner Simone Biles to put on a gymnastics display showcasing the machine's uncanny fluidity of movement. A new clip posted by its developers shows the robot running through its floor routine, including a handstand, some impressive rolls, and a 360-degree mid-air twist.

The team wrote that the robot uses all of its 'body' to run through the movements and that new techniques were used to "streamline" the processes.

"First, an optimization algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions," they explain. "Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one maneuver to the next."

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Comet 2

Comet 67P surprises scientists with 'bright outbursts', collapsing cliffs and rolling boulders during Rosetta mission

Evan Gough
Universe Today
Fri, 20 Sep 2019 12:00 UTC
comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
© Rosetta/NASABouncing boulder on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
It seems that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is not the stoic, unchanging Solar System traveller that it might seem to be. Scientists working through the vast warehouse of images from the Rosetta spacecraft have discovered there's lots going on on 67P. Among the activity are collapsing cliffs and bouncing boulders.

Rosetta spent almost two years at 67P, ending its mission with a hard landing on the comet's surface. During the spacecraft's journey and its two years at the comet, it captured almost 100,000 images. About 3/4 of them are from OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) and the rest are from the NAVCAM. (You can enjoy archives of its images here.)

These images are all being analyzed by scientists, and part of that analysis involves images from during and after perihelion. Perihelion is when an object is closest to the Sun, and scientists expect to see the most changes on the comet during that time. By comparing perihelion images with those following perihelion, they hope to gain a better understanding of how the comet evolves.

Comment: In Did Earth 'Steal' Martian Water? Pierre Lescaudron provides insight into why these events on Comet 67P occurred, particularly as it approached the Sun:
Interplanetary Electric Discharge

The Electric Universe theory, as described in our book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection, shows how celestial bodies (planets, stars, moons, comets, etc) are electrically charged. In addition, such bodies are surrounded by a sort of "insulation bubble" (Double Layer).

When two astronomical bodies, like two planets, get close enough, an electric discharge forms from the most negative planet to the most positive one, in order to re-balance the electric charge of the two planets. Electric discharges between celestial bodies have been observed several times.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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No Entry

Gene-editing unintentionally adds bovine DNA, goat DNA, and bacterial DNA, mouse researchers find

Jonathan Latham
Independent Science News
Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:01 UTC
gene editing
The gene-editing of DNA inside living cells is considered by many to be the preeminent technological breakthrough of the new millennium. Researchers in medicine and agriculture have rapidly adopted it as a technique for discovering cell and organism functions. But its commercial prospects are much more complicated.

Gene-editing has many potential uses. These include altering cells to treat human disease, altering crops and livestock for breeding and agriculture. Furthermore, in a move that has been widely criticised, Chinese researcher He Jiankui claims to have edited human babies to resist HIV by altering a gene called CCR5.

For most commercial applications gene-editing's appeal is simplicity and precision: it alters genomes at precise sites and without inserting foreign DNA. This why, in popular articles, gene-editing is often referred to as 'tweaking'.
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Palette

Neural network discovers never-before-seen Picasso painting


MIT Technology Review
Fri, 20 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
picasso painting
© Courtesy of the researchers
The Old Guitarist is probably the most famous painting from Picasso's Blue Period. It dates from 1903-1904, when the young artist was living in poverty in Paris. Picasso used the color blue to represent the emotional pain and desolation he was experiencing at the time.

But The Old Guitarist is interesting for another reason. Art historians have long noted the presence of a ghostly woman's face faintly visible beneath the paint. In 1998, conservators at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting hangs, photographed it using x-rays and infrared light to see what lies beneath the surface.

These images show an entirely different painting. It depicts a seated woman holding out her left arm. The researchers then matched this painting to a composition Picasso had sketched out in a letter to a colleague at the time.
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Black Cat 2

Despite appearances, your cat does love you

Kat Eschner
Popular Science
Mon, 23 Sep 2019 23:02 UTC
cat person bonding
© PixabayThis is the first study to look at cat attachment by looking at bonding styles, the same way researchers study dogs and human babies.
Cats can seem mysterious and aloof. They stare at nothing for hours on end and have very specific petting requirements. These and similarly strange behaviors have baffled and amused long-suffering human companions since they sailed with the Vikings (and probably long before that, too). But a new study from animal behavior researchers suggests they're not actually above it all. It's possible that felines attach to their people just like dogs and babies do.

This is the first study to look at cat attachment by looking at bonding styles, the same way researchers study dogs and human babies, says Kristyn Vitale, who researches cat behavior at Oregon State University. Studying these loyalty methods in animals can show us how similar our bonds with our pets are to those with other humans.

Both babies and dogs display the same basic attachment styles — secure or one of two types of insecure attachment — although they manifest differently in different species, Vitale says. Individuals with secure attachment are able to use their caregiver as a base and approach the world with confidence. Those who have avoidant-insecure attachment will try to stay away from their caregiver, because they don't feel safe, and those with ambivalent-insecure attachment will go to their caregiver and demand attention, but not be able to use their caregiver as a source of genuine confidence. This study shows that cats do these things just like other dependents beings. For cats, "the biggest difference is that a secure cat can use their owners as a sense of security to explore out from, and an insecure cat can't do that," Vitale says.

Comment: See also:

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Fireball

Venus may have been habitable until mysterious catastrophe millions of years ago

Peter Dockrill
Science Alert
Mon, 23 Sep 2019 20:53 UTC
venus
© (NASA)Artist's representation of Venus with water.
Venus is not a nice place, by human standards. For a world named after a Roman goddess of love and beauty, it really is quite the toxic, super-heated hellscape. But it wasn't always this way.

In a new study, scientists make the case for how ancient Venus could have once supported life alongside oceans of liquid water, until a mysterious resurfacing event took all that away about 700 million years ago.

"Our hypothesis is that Venus may have had a stable climate for billions of years," says planetary scientist Michael Way from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

"It is possible that the near-global resurfacing event is responsible for its transformation from an Earth-like climate to the hellish hot-house we see today."

Comment: For fascinating insight into Venus' history, check out: Did Earth 'Steal' Martian Water?

See also:

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