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Getting scary - AI generated people

Jordan Pearson
Motherboard
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 21:50 UTC
Fake People
© Screengrab arXiv
Computers are getting better at generating fake images and video of people saying or doing things they never did in real life. The latest work from chip maker Nvidia takes this a step further by generating convincing-looking images of people who never existed in the first place-they're AI creations, but they look incredibly real.

Machine-learning enthusiasts have been freaking out about the results of Nvidia's latest work-published to the arXiv preprint server this week-and for good reason. Not only do the images produced by the AI program look crystal clear and hyper-realistic, but the process for creating them was rather novel and opens up some mind-blowing possibilities.
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Moon

China's 'dark side of the moon' lander successfully entered lunar orbit

Jon Christian
Science Alert
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Chang'e-4 lunarlander
© CNSAChang'e-4
A Chinese lander destined for the far side of the Moon - the side that always faces away from the Earth - has now entered lunar orbit, Space News reports.

Early Wednesday morning, the spacecraft carrying the Chang'e-4 lander completed its journey from Earth, which took nearly five days, and settled into an elliptical orbit around the Moon.

If the mission is successful, Chang'e-4 will be the first-ever lander to explore the so-called "dark side of the Moon". It'll rove the lunar surface, examine the Moon's composition, and even dabble in amateur gardening with a small pod that'll grow seeds and silkworm larvae.

To communicate with the Earth, Chang'e-4 will bounce signals off a relay satellite launched earlier this year. Chinese officials haven't announced a firm date or location for the craft's landing, but it's expected to touch down in early January 2019, probably in the spacious Von Kármán crater.

China is already planning Chang'e-5, the mission to come after Chang'e-4. If all goes according to plan, that will be China's first Moon mission to return samples back to Earth and it'll launch in late 2019.
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Solar Flares

Record-setting spacecraft captures intense closeup image of the sun


RT
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 15:15 UTC
Parker Solar Probe picture of sun
© NASA / Naval Research Laboratory / Parker Solar Probe
NASA has flown a probe closer to the sun than any spacecraft ever ventured before, capturing an incredible picture just 16.9 million miles from the surface of our star.

The Parker Solar Probe flew extremely close to the sun, smashing the previous distance record of 26.55 million miles (42.72 million kilometers) and speeding through space at 213,2000 miles per hour - the fastest any man-made spacecraft has ever traveled.

Now, NASA has revealed the groundbreaking image Parker captured during a speeding flyby on November 8. It shows a bright coronal streamer (essentially, solar material within the sun's atmosphere) emanating from the left of the image.

The space agency says that the bright object near the center of the image is Mercury, while the dark spots are a result of background correction.
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Cow Skull

We still don't know why the reign of the dinosaurs ended

Brian Switek
Smithsonian
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 12:50 UTC
dinosaurs strike
© Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock PhotoAlthough the asteroid strike that created Chicxulub crater in modern-day Mexico dramatically affected life on Earth, the fiery crash isn't the whole story of the fate of the dinosaurs.
The reason our planet lost the terrible lizards of eras long past may seem self-evident. About 66 million years ago, an asteroid came screaming out of the sky and smacked into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The devastation that followed was unprecedented, with tsunamis, an overheated atmosphere, darkened skies, a terrible cold snap, and other apocalyptic ecological events clearing away an estimated seventy five percent of known life on Earth.

Paleontologists know this catastrophe as the K/Pg extinction event because it marks the transition from the Cretaceous into the Paleogene period of Earth's history. But even though it has been studied constantly, the details of this event still puzzle experts. The case wasn't closed with the recognition of the impact crater in the 1990s, and exactly how the extinction played out-what differentiated the living from the dead-continues to inspire paleontologists to dig into the cataclysm of the Cretaceous.

To better understand the full story, researchers are pulling back from the moment of impact to examine the broader patterns of life at the time. Dinosaurs were not living in a stable and lush Mesozoic utopia, nor were they the only organisms around at the time-far from it. The world was changing around them as it always had. As the Cretaceous drew to a close, sea levels were dropping, the climate was trending toward a cooler world, and a part of prehistoric India called the Deccan Traps was bubbling with intense volcanic activity. Sorting through how these changes affected life on Earth is no simple task, particularly after the cataclysmic meteorite mixed things up in the rock record, but paleontologists are sifting through the wreckage to better understand what happened.

Comment: An interesting post from MalagaBay may help highlight the key points involved when investigating extinction phenomena, as well providing a possible but as yet unacknowledged change in the environment that led to extinctions. And it may not be the only factor. You'll need to check out the full post for all the details but selected parts are quoted below:
[...]

The academic authorities also understand that Extinction Events are very much like Death Certificates in so far as games can be played by misdirecting and muddling the debate regarding the Immediate, Intermediate and [especially] Underlying Causes.
● Immediate cause - - - - - carbon monoxide poisoning
● Intermediate cause - - - gas burning appliance
● Underlying causes - - - lack of: maintenance / ventilation / appliance isolation / regulation / inspection / risk assessment / understanding / education and so on and so forth...
Accordingly, academic authorities enthusiastically encourages a diversionary [and diversified] agenda focused upon the Underlying Causes of Extinction Events.
Most widely supported explanations

Macleod (2001) summarized the relationship between mass extinctions and events which are most often cited as causes of mass extinctions, using data from Courtillot et al. (1996), Hallam (1992) and Grieve et al. (1996):

● Flood basalt events: 11 occurrences, all associated with significant extinctions
But Wignall (2001) concluded that only five of the major extinctions coincided with flood basalt eruptions and that the main phase of extinctions started before the eruptions.

● Sea-level falls: 12, of which seven were associated with significant extinctions.

● Asteroid impacts: one large impact is associated with a mass extinction, i.e. the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event; there have been many smaller impacts but they are not associated with significant extinctions.
A wonderful example of this diversionary [and diversified] agenda playing out is a recent article that emphasises the asteroid and volcanic extinction explanations [Hat Tip to CW].
The Nastiest Feud in Science

A Princeton geologist has endured decades of ridicule for arguing that the fifth extinction was caused not by an asteroid but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions.

But she's reopened that debate.

The Atlantic - Bianca Bosker - September 2018 Issue
[...]

This agenda very cleverly sidesteps the most important question of all:

What turns a Disaster into an Extinction?

Put another way:

Why didn't the survivor population recover?

The underlying principle of extinction is:

Life forms don't survive when the environment doesn't support their life form.

For example:

Stephen Hurrell realised large dinosaurs couldn't survive when gravity increased.

[...]

The Extinction Certificate for large dinosaurs based upon the work of Stephen Hurrell would read as follows.
● Immediate cause - - - - - Physical collapse / life form failure
● Intermediate cause - - - - Increased Gravity
● Underlying causes - - - - Earth Expansion
The Extinction Certificate for most ancient aquatic species is very straight forward once it's recognised that aquatic fossils are only found on dry land.

Thus an ancient historical narrative begins to emerges of an inflating Water World which was once covered by a network of interconnected inland seas.

These inland seas have since [in the main] drained away into the [recently created] oceans basins leaving behind isolated lakes [many of which have evaporated away] and some isolated populations of seals.

The beastly Basilosaurus has been banished to "30 to 40 million years ago".

And the dreadful Dorudon has been dispatched to "40.4 to 33.9 million years ago".

The remains of this dangerous duo that "lived in warm seas around the world" have been found in the dessicated desert of Wadi Al-Hitan - West of Faiyum in Egypt.

● Immediate cause - - - - - Dehydration evaporation / osmosis
● Intermediate cause - - - -Drainage of Inland Seas
● Underlying causes - - - - Earth Expansion

[...]
See also:

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People 2

Neanderthal genes influence modern human skull shape

Dyani Lewis
Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:11 UTC
neanderthal human brain
© Philipp GunzCT scans revealing the different shapes of a Neanderthal skull (left) and the skulls of modern humans at adult, juvenile and foetal stages.
Neanderthal genes influence human head shape Research suggests the effects of long-distant interspecies breeding finds expression in modern skulls.

Researchers have gleaned insights into what makes human brains bulbous from our closest evolutionary relative - the Neanderthal - despite them having died out millennia ago, according to an analysis in the journal Current Biology.

Neanderthals and anatomically modern Homo sapiens coexisted in Eurasia for several thousand years before the former vanished about 40,000 years ago.

But Neanderthals shared more than just their geography with our direct ancestors. They walked like us, made jewellery and bone tools like us, and they even bred with us.

Comment: While it may not be directly related, the discoveries of naturally elongated skulls throughout the ancient world as well as the practice of cranial deformation, with evidence of the practice even up to the modern day, is notable:

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Satellite

Cosmic coincidence: NASA's Voyager 2 went interstellar the same day a Solar Probe touched the Sun

Meghan Bartels
Space.com
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 07:25 UTC
The Voyager probes are both outside the heliosphere
© NASA/JPLThe Voyager probes are both outside the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends beyond the orbit of Pluto
Call it a cosmic coincidence: Two probes launched four decades apart, traveled in opposite directions - and used similar instruments to gather milestone data within hours of each other.

That scientific poetry took place on Nov. 5. Without orchestrated calculations or trajectory maneuvers, the grizzled Voyager 2 probe crossed into interstellar space the same day that the freshly launched Parker Solar Probe made its first close approach to our sun. Both spacecraft were equipped with unique Faraday cup instruments, which they used to gather milestone data about nearby highly charged plasma particles streaming off the sun.

"To be crossing into new territory on both edges of the heliosphere at the same time to within a day - you couldn't plan that if you wanted to," Justin Kasper, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan and principal investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons, or SWEAP, instrument on the Parker Solar Probe, told Space.com here during the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where both missions' accomplishments were conversation starters.

As a human, Kasper loved the coincidence, although as an astrophysicist he does have one small worry. "I am not going to be able to keep up with writing these papers," he said.

The differences between the two missions are staggering. They launched 41 years apart. Where Voyager 2 has enjoyed a leisurely stroll among the outer planets and beyond, the Parker Solar Probe made a mad dash to the center of our solar system in just three months. It would take nearly a quarter-million copies of the Voyager 2 computer to equal the memory of the smartphone in the pocket of a Parker Solar Probe engineer. When the Voyagers launched, bell-bottoms were hip - and they're back on the runways for Parker's first winter in orbit.
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Brain

Roots of neuropsychiatric risk in the developing brain


Technology Networks
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 18:48 UTC
neurons
© Pixabay
The most comprehensive genomic analysis of the human brain ever undertaken has revealed new insights into the changes it undergoes through development, how it varies among individuals, and the roots of neuropsychiatric illnesses such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.

The multi-institutional analysis of almost 2,000 brains integrates the complex choreography of brain development and function and was published Dec. 14 in 11 studies appearing in a special edition of the journal Science and two sister publications.

Four of the major studies were spearheaded by researchers from a variety of disciplines at Yale University, which is leading an ambitious initiative wedding neuroscience and data science. The Yale-led research papers illustrate the host of new tools scientists at 15 institutions are employing to find the molecular basis of neuropsychiatric diseases - the goal of the PsychENCODE Consortium founded in 2015 by the National Institutes of Health.

The sheer scope of data gathered on the activity of single genes and regulatory networks that control them over the course of development allowed data scientists to evaluate the risk of diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with up to six times more accuracy than by traditional analysis of known genetic risk variants, according to research headed by Mark Gerstein, Yale's Albert L Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics; professor of molecular biophysics & biochemistry, computer science, and statistics & data science; and co-corresponding author of two of the major Science papers.

Comment: See also: It should be noted that there are various factors that can cause neuropsychiatric disorders. See:

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Fire

Data from Kilauea suggests the eruption was unprecedented

Bob Yirka
Phys.org
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:35 UTC
Kilauea lava flows
© USGS / ReutersLava flows downhill in this image from a helicopter over Kilauea's lower East Rift Zone during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii on May 19, 2018.
A very large team of researchers from multiple institutions in the U.S. has concluded that the Kilauea volcanic eruption that occurred over this past summer represented an unprecedented volcanic event. In their paper published in the journal Science, the researchers describe the sequence of events that transpired and what set them apart from other volcanic eruptions.

Kilauea, a volcano on Hawaii's big island underwent a long, drawn-out eruption over this past summer. It made headlines due to the spread of lava that destroyed many homes and changed some of the island's landscape. And it is now making news again as data from the eruption reveals that it erupted in ways that have not been seen before.

Kilauea is the most active volcano in the world, and because of that, scientists have installed many sensors in and around the area in hopes of learning more about how it and other volcanoes work. Thus, the volcano's eruption in May provided massive amounts of data, offering an unprecedented view of the eruption.

The researchers discovered that the caldera did not collapse in a way that was expected. First, it deflated by approximately 500 meters. Second, it happened incrementally-62 times in all. They were also surprised to find that groundwater did not play much of a role in the explosions that resulted as the caldera collapsed-instead, they were caused by piston-type pressure resulting from each deflation.

Comment: Heaven to Hell Timeline: Kilauea's Ruthless Eruption: 18,000+ Earthquakes and so Much More

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Meteor

Fireball that exploded over Greenland shook Earth, triggering seismic sensors

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 05:53 UTC
Asteroidi
© Getty
When a blazing fireball from space exploded over Earth on July 25, scientists captured the first-ever seismic recordings of a meteor impact on ice in Greenland.

At approximately 8 p.m. local time on that day, residents of the town of Qaanaaq on Greenland's northwestern coast reported seeing a bright light in the sky and feeling the ground shake as a meteor combusted over the nearby Thule Air Base.

But the fleeting event was detected by more than just human observers, according to unpublished research presented Dec. 12 here at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Seismographic equipment, which had been installed near Qaanaaq just a few months earlier to monitor how ground shaking affected the ice, also recorded the fiery meteor blast. The Qaanaaq fireball provided scientists with the first evidence of how an icy environment - and, possibly, a distant ice-covered world - could respond to a meteor impact.

The first sign of the meteor was a brilliant flash in the sky over Greenland; the meteor was at its brightest at an altitude of approximately 27 miles (43 kilometers) above the ground, and it was traveling at nearly 54,000 mph (87,000 km/h), according to the International Meteor Organization (IMO).

Comment: Fireball above US base in Greenland puzzles NASA scientist - jokes about 'Russian strike'

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Oil Well

Flashback Best of the Web: Cornell professor: Vast biosphere exists deep under Earth's crust (and it's where oil comes from)

David Brand
Cornell Chronicles
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 22:11 UTC
abiotic oil book
© Copernicus BooksThe Deep Hot Biosphere, by Thomas Gold
The ideas come crowding in: Deep within the Earth's crust is a vast ecosystem of primitive bacteria nurtured by a reservoir of hydrocarbons of unimaginable size, much of it untapped. Even more: The microbes predate all of the planet's other life forms, existing even before photosynthesis became the preferred life-giving form.

In a new book, The Deep Hot Biosphere (Copernicus/Springer-Verlag, $27), Cornell professor emeritus of astronomy Thomas Gold argues that subterranean bugs are us -- or at least they started the whole evolutionary process, and that there's no looming energy shortage because oil reserves are far greater than predicted.

In the hands of anyone other than Gold, the reaction to all this might be a skeptical raised eyebrow. But Gold, as ever the Cornellian gadfly, makes his argument with erudition and conviction. Founder and director of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research for two decades, Gold is hardly a stranger to sticking his neck out. He has been proven right in such diverse realms as a theory of hearing, the interpretation of pulsars and a theory of the Earth's axis of rotation.

But Gold's most controversial idea, as physicist Freeman Dyson notes in the book's forward, is that of the nonbiological origin of natural gas and oil, which he first proposed more than 20 years ago. These hydrocarbons, Gold postulated, come from deep reservoirs and are composed of the material from which the Earth condensed. The idea that hydrocarbons coalesced from organic material is, he says, quite wrong. The biological molecules found in oil, he avers, show only that the oil is contaminated by microbes, not that it was produced by them.

Comment: Dr. Gold's and others' research have been proposing this idea for decades. But it doesn't suit the elites to allow it into the mainstream. Power is maintained by creating the collective delusion that enables the 'hoarding of essential resources'. This article was published in 1999. The redoubtable Col. Fletcher Prouty was saying the same thing in the mid-90s.



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