Science & TechnologyS


MIB

AI algorithm being developed to identify people in CCTV footage without using facial recognition


RT
Wed, 24 Oct 2018 18:57 UTC
CCTV footage
© Reuters / Denis Balibouse
In the latest ominous AI news, a team of researchers has created a tool that can find people in CCTV footage by searching for their clothing, height and gender.

Indian researchers have built an algorithm that would allow surveillance footage to be searched and filtered for the purpose of "person retrieval."

At the moment, surveillance footage must be searched manually to find a person based on common descriptors like clothing and gender. These identifying factors are known as soft biometrics.

Comment: The NSA and other intel agencies surely already have tech far beyond this.

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Mars

NASA is hiding something: Mars 'explosion' intrigues conspiracy theorists


RT
Tue, 23 Oct 2018 19:37 UTC
Mars anomoly
© ESA - European Space Agency
Conspiracy theorists went into overdrive after spotting a 'mysterious plume of smoke' near a dormant Martian volcano, with many claiming this as proof that alien life exists on the red planet and we're being lied to here on Earth.

Allegations of a NASA-led cover up spread like wildfire online, with popular conspiracy theory YouTube channel secureteam10 producing an eight-minute long exposé entitled, 'Something MAJOR Happened On Mars.. Are They Hiding It?'

"There was an explosion - I don't know whether it was a volcano or something detonated," Tyler Glockner of secureteam10 told his audience, during a video which has amassed almost 390,000 views since publication on October 20.
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Mars

Study finds Mars' salty water likely to have enough oxygen to support life

Marlowe Hood
PhysOrg
Mon, 22 Oct 2018 23:00 UTC
salty water mars oxygen
© NASAThe new research was made possible by the discovery by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover of manganese oxides
Salty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported Monday.

In some locations, the amount of oxygen available could even keep alive a primitive, multicellular animal such as a sponge, they reported in the journal Nature Geosciences.

"We discovered that brines"-water with high concentrations of salt-"on Mars can contain enough oxygen for microbes to breathe," said lead author Vlada Stamenkovic, a theoretical physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Comment:

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Satellite

UK MoD report warns future International space station nukes may hit Earth


Sputnik
Sun, 21 Oct 2018 10:49 UTC
Space Station
© CC0
The warning comes as part of the so-called Doomsday predictions, that more nations will possess nuclear weapons, chemical weapon bans will not work and terrorists will obtain sophisticated missiles.

A UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) think tank has warned of "space-based weapons systems" with nuclear capabilities that could be deployed to space stations orbiting Earth by 2050, according to The Sun.

In the Future Starts Today report, the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre also suggested that in the next thirty years, the space outposts will be equipped with nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons capable of detonating in the air rather than on the ground.

"Electromagnetic pulses can shut down anything running on electrical power, meaning lights, communications and heating systems would all stop working in an instant," the survey said.
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Cassiopaea

'Kilonovae' explosions could be flinging gold and platinum across the universe

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Tue, 16 Oct 2018 16:11 UTC
kilo nova precious metals gold
© NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/CI LabThis illustration shows the hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from two neutron stars just before they collided. Within this neutron-rich debris, large quantities of some of the universe's heaviest elements were forged, including hundreds of Earth masses of gold and platinum
Such kilonovae could shed light on some of the most spectacular parts of space

Vast explosions, throwing out gold, platinum and many of the world's most precious elements, could be happening throughout the universe.

Nasa scientists have spotted what they think are immense explosions caused by neutron stars colliding into each other in distant space.

When that catastrophic event happened, it sent an intense jet of of high-energy particles through space that made their way past the scientists who spotted them using Nasa's array of space telescopes.
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Camcorder

Southern Ocean's 'headless chicken monster' captured on video for the first time


RT
Mon, 22 Oct 2018 15:42 UTC
headless chicken monster
© The Australian Antarctic Division
Australian scientists, using specialist equipment, have reported disturbing findings made three kilometers below the surface of the Antarctic's Southern Ocean: the discovery of a 'headless chicken monster.'

"Some of the footage we are getting back from the cameras is breathtaking, including species we have never seen in this part of the world," Australian Antarctic Division Program Leader Dirk Welsford said.

The monster, alternatively known as the 'Spanish Dancer', or Enypniastes eximia, is a deep-sea swimming sea cucumber typically found bottom-feeding in certain parts of the world. The creature has previously only been filmed much farther north in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Car Black

China set to open world's longest sea bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau


RT
Mon, 22 Oct 2018 14:58 UTC
Bridge
© AFP / Anthony WallaceA section of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is seen from Lantau island in Hong Kong.
A $20 billion sea-crossing bridge, connecting mainland China to Hong Kong and Macau is to finally open on Tuesday. The six-lane bridge has been constructed in just nine years.

The 55-kilometer long bridge (34 miles) will cut travel time from Hong Kong to Zhuhai (in China's southern Guangdong province) from three hours to 30 minutes. It is a key element of Beijing's plan for a Greater Bay Area covering 56,500 square kilometers across southern China. The long-awaited bridge will encompass 11 cities that are home to a combined 68 million people.

Hong Kong's transport secretary Frank Chan said: "With the bridge, the travel time between Hong Kong and the Western Pearl River Delta region will be shortened significantly, thereby bringing the Western Pearl River Delta region within three hours' drive from Hong Kong."
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Fire

World's oldest fossils aren't actually fossils, new research suggests


Gizmodo
Mon, 22 Oct 2018 13:03 UTC
stromatolites
© Abigail AllwoodSigns of life? Or just normal geology? New research suggests the latter.
Two years ago, researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia shook the science world by claiming to have discovered 3.7 billion-year-old fossils in a rock formation in Greenland, a finding that pushed back the origin of life on Earth by 200 million years. New research is now casting doubt on this discovery, with scientists saying the rock structures are of non-biological origin.

In the original 2016 study, geologist Allen Nutman and colleagues identified cone-like structures, ranging between 1 and 4 centimeters in length, in 3.7-billion-year-old rock found in the Isua formation in southwest Greenland. These structures, the researchers said, were evidence of stromatolites-sedimentary formations created by the layered growth of microbial organisms in shallow waters. At the time, it was considered the oldest evidence of life on Earth, demonstrating the rapidity with which life emerged after the formation of our planet some 4 billion years ago. The finding carried profound implications not just for our situation here on Earth, but for other habitable planets in the galaxy.

The apparent stromatolites were identified in badly deformed "metamorphic" rocks, which have been heated, twisted, crushed, and contorted over the vastness of geologic time. Despite this, Nutman's team said they were able to see the signs of sedimentary history within the rocks, including the alleged stromatolites. No organic compounds or biomarkers (so-called "chemical fossils") were found, but the conical-shaped structures and finely layered textures were interpreted as the remnants of ancient microbial life. At the same time, Nutman ruled out other possibilities, such as weirdly folded rock.

Comment: Mainstream geologists operate on the premise of gradualism, that the processes on our planet occur in a gradual manner (which is probably why the 'tectonic compression' hypothesis was proposed). However, what if these scientists were to consider the well documented fact that our planet regularly undergoes cataclysmic upheavals (aka: catastrophism) and that these unusual patterns could be the result of rock being super heated (due to immense volcanic activity or cometary bombardment) where it begins to behave like a like a liquid, like lava, hence the "waves" of "heated, twisted, crushed, and contorted" rock?

The debate continues, but by ignoring a fundamental component in the history of our planet the scientists are missing a glaring piece of the puzzle.

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Blue Planet

Climate change likely killer of "specialized" Australian marsupial lion


unsw.edu.au
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 12:00 UTC
Thylacoleo Carnifex
© Heraldo MussoliniHorizontal Beach Towel featuring the digital art Thylacoleo Carnifex, A Marsupial by Heraldo Mussolini
The extinction of one of Australia's top predators, Thylacoleo carnifex - aka the marsupial lion - was likely a result of changing weather patterns and loss of habitat rather than human impacts, new research has found.

Palaeontologists from UNSW Sydney, University of Queensland and Vanderbilt University (Tennessee) addressed the question about the demise of the marsupial lion by looking into the powerful carnivore's chemistry.

By studying the chemical signature preserved within fossil teeth, the team was able to determine that the marsupial lion hunted primarily in forests, rather than open habitats. This is supported by features of the skeleton that indicate it was an ambush hunter, relying on catching its prey unaware rather than running them down across an open landscape.

Comment: The 'drying out' of Australia began 350,000 years ago and helped bring about the demise of Thylacoleo Carnifex; then. 10,000 years later. Aboriginal stories, backed up by science, reveal dramatic rises in sea levels; and in 2018, Australia's climate is shifting once again, with brutally cold winters and extreme drought during summer. When we consider the wealth of evidence on the greatest drivers to Earth's climate, it's quite clear that these shifts are a cyclical occurrence and are the norm.

See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Frog

Rethinking evolution: Researchers find evidence of rapid genome adaptation of Burmese pythons

Louisa Kellie
University of Texas Arlington
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 00:01 UTC
burmese python

Florida has become a haven for invasive species in the United States, but perhaps the most well-known of the state's alien residents is the Burmese python. These giant snakes, native to Southeast Asia, have become well-established over the past few decades and even flourish in their new environment.

"In Burmese pythons, we observed the rapid establishment and expansion of an invasive population in Florida, which is quite ecologically distinct from Southeast Asia and likely imposes significant ecological selection on the invasive Burmese python population," said Todd Castoe, biology professor at The University of Texas at Arlington and director of the Castoe Lab. "This situation had all of the hallmarks of a system where rapid adaptation could occur, so we were excited to test for this possibility using cutting-edge genomic approaches."

Comment: The neo-Darwinist view of evolution as a long and slow process of random mutation and selection over millions of years doesn't account for many scientific observations, including the above. It seems the evolution can happen in much more rapid spurts in response to environmental pressures in real time, and doesn't require natural selection to allow for genetic mutations to spread throughout a population over the course of many generations. This is truly fascinating, but no-doubt angers many of the materialists crowd as it throws a rather large wrench into the "it's all random chance" narrative.

See also:

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