No architecture hasexisted since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons of modern houses is called modern architecture. The new beauty of cement and iron are profaned by the superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins are in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity and impotence that took the name ofneoclassicism.

These architectonic prostitutions are welcomed in Italy, and rapacious alien ineptitude is passed off as talented invention and as extremely up-to-date architecture. Young Italian architects (those who borroworiginality from clandestine and compulsive devouring of art journals) flaunt their talents in the new quarters of our towns, where a hilarious salad of little ogival columns, seventeenth-century foliation, Gothic pointed arches, Egyptian pilasters, rococo scrolls,fifteenth-century cherubs, swollen caryatids, take the place of style in all seriousness, and presumptuously put on monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearanceand reappearance of forms, the multiplying of machinery, the daily increasing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the concentration of population, by hygiene, and by a hundred other phenomena of modern life, never cause these self-styled renovators of architecture a moment's perplexity or hesitation. They persevere obstinately with the rules of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino plus gleanings from any published scrap of information on German architecture that happens to be at hand. Using these, they continue to stamp the image of imbecility on our cities, our cities which should be theimmediate and faithful projection of ourselves.

And so this expressive and synthetic art has become in their hands avacuous stylistic exercise, a jumble of ill-mixed formulae to disguise a run-of-the-mill traditionalist box of bricks and stone as a modern building. As if we who are accumulators and generators of movement, with all our added mechanical limbs, with all the noise and speed of our life, could live in streets built for the needs of men four, five or six centuries ago.

This is the supreme imbecility of modern architecture, perpetuated by the venal complicity of the academies, the internment camps of the intelligentsia, where the young are forced into the onanistic recopying of classical models instead of throwing their minds open in the search for new frontiers and in the solution of the new and pressing problem:the Futurist house and city.The house and the city that are oursboth spiritually and materially, in which our tumult can rage without seeming a grotesque anachronism.

The problem posed inFuturistarchitecture is not one of linear rearrangement. It is not a question of finding new moldings and frames for windows and doors, of replacing columns, pilasters and corbels with caryatids, flies and frogs. Neither has it anything to do with leaving a faade in bare brick, or plastering it, or facing it with stone or in determining formal differences between the new building and the oldone. It is a question of tending the healthy growth of the Futurist house, of constructing it with all the resources of technology and science, satisfying magisterially all the demands of our habits and our spirit, trampling down all that is grotesque and antithetical (tradition, style, aesthetics, proportion), determining new forms, new lines, a new harmony of profiles and volumes, an architecture whose reason for existence can be found solely in the unique conditions of modern life, and in its correspondence with the aesthetic values of our sensibilities. Thisarchitecture cannot be subjected to any law of historical continuity. It must be new, just as our state of mind is new.

The art of construction has been able to evolve with time, and topass from one style to another, while maintaining unaltered the generalcharacteristics of architecture, because in the course of history changesof fashion are frequent and are determined by the alternations of religious conviction and political disposition. But profound changes in the state of the environment are extremely rare, changes that unhingeand renew, such as the discovery of natural laws, the perfecting of mechanical means, the rational and scientific use of material. In modern life the process of stylistic development in architecture has been brought to a halt.Architecture now makes a break with tradition. It must perforce make a fresh start.

Calculations based on the resistance of materials, on the use of reinforced concrete and steel, exclude "architecture" in the classical and traditional sense. Modern constructional materials and scientific concepts are absolutely incompatible with the disciplines of historical styles, and are the principal cause of the grotesque appearance of "fashionable" buildings in which attempts are made to employ the lightness, the superb grace of the steel beam, the delicacy of reinforced concrete, in order to obtain the heavy curve of the arch and the bulkiness of marble.

The utter antithesis between the modern world and the old is determined by all those things that formerly did not exist. Our lives have been enriched by elements the possibility of whose existence the ancients didnot even suspect. Men have identified material contingencies, and revealed spiritual attitudes, whose repercussions are felt in a thousand ways. Principal among these is the formation of a new ideal of beauty that is still obscure and embryonic, but whose fascination is already felt even by the masses. We have lost our predilection for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and we have enriched our sensibility with ataste for the light, the practical, the ephemeral and the swift. We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the palaces and the podiums. We are the men of the great hotels, the railway stations, the immense streets, colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, straight roads and beneficial demolitions.

We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every detail; andthe Futurist house must be like a gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away like tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the faades like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel, stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and relief, extraordinarily "ugly" in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws. It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no longer lie like a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the earth, embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up for necessary interconnections by metal gangways and swift-moving pavements.

The decorative must be abolished.The problem of Futurist architecture must be resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian or Japanese photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but through flashes of genius and through scientific and technical expertise. Everything must be revolutionized. Roofs and underground spaces must be used; the importance of the faade mustbe diminished; issues of taste must be transplanted from the field of fussy moldings, finicky capitals and flimsy doorways to the broader concerns ofbold groupings and masses, and large-scale disposition of planes.Let us make an end of monumental, funereal and commemorative architecture. Let us overturn monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of steps; let us sink the streets and squares; let usraise the level of the city.

I COMBAT AND DESPISE:

AND PROCLAIM:

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futurism - unknown.nu

The Reformation preachers unanimously identified the papal system as the Antichrist, and the Roman Church as Babyloncausing a mass exodus of believers out of the Catholic institution.

Because Rome realized that the Reformation could jeopardize her position as a religio-political power, she employed five strategies in what became known as the Counter Reformation. One of those strategies was the creation of futurism and preterism, two different interpretations of the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. These interpretations contradicted the reformers' stance of historicism.

Martin Luther. Source: Wikimedia Commons...

The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology says that futurism argues that Revelation looks beyond the first century to the period immediately before the end times. Thus the book was not written for those who received it, but for those living much later. Jesuit scholars after the Reformation refined this approach to prove that current attempts to identify the Pope as the Antichrist could not possibly be true since the Antichrist will not be revealed until far into the future, just before the Parousia (Christs Second Coming)."i

The same book explains that preterism sees Revelation only in terms of its immediate historical context: Revelation [is] described [as] the plight of Christians in the late first century, and its apocalyptic symbols pointed directly to [the city of] Rome as the churchs persecutor...Most modern [preterist] interpreters...insist that the book was never intended to predict conditions or events beyond the first century.ii

According to futurism, the Antichrist is still to come. According to preterism, the Antichrist was in the past. However, this is not Biblical, as Jesus spoke in Matthew 24 of the great apostasy taking place in the future. Both of these false systems disagree with the reformers belief that the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy is taking place throughout history.

Throughout the Counter Reformation, preterism and futurism diverted attention away from prophecies identifying the Roman Church as Babylon and the papal system as the Antichrist.

Here is a diagram to help us understand how these false interpretations were created and spread.In this diagram, you can see that the 1260 years of the Dark Ages was the period of papal supremacy prophesied in Daniel and Revelation.iii

Francisco RiberaIn 1585 Jesuit scholar Francisco Ribera (1537 - 1591) appears. He started the futurist interpretation by publishing a 500-page commentary on the book of Revelation. Ribera took the last week (seven day-years) of the 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:25, divided it into two 3 year periods, and applied it to a future Antichrist, while avoiding any application to the papal system.

Robert BellarmineRiberas views would have fallen away quickly if not for Robert Bellarmine (1542 - 1621), a cardinal who promoted Riberas ideas. His lectures were published as Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of the Christian Belief Against Heretics of This Time. Froom describes these lectures as the most detailed apology of the Catholic faith ever produced. Froom also says they became the arsenal for all future defenders and expositors.iv

Luis de AlcasarThe diagram shows Jesuit scholar Luis de Alcasar (preterisms creator) in 1604. His book, Investigation of the Hidden Sense of the Apocalypse, was published in 1614. Froom states this:

Applying the New Jerusalem to the Catholic Church, Alcazar contended that the Apocalypse describes the twofold war of the church in the early centuriesone with the Jewish synagogue, and the other with paganismresulting in victory over both adversaries. Revelation 1 to 11 he applied to the rejection of the Jews and the desolation of Jerusalem by the Romans. Revelation 12 to 19 Alcazar allotted to the overthrow of Roman paganism and the conversion of the empire to the church, the judgment of the great Harlot being effected by the downfall of pagan idolatry; Revelation 20 he applied to the final persecution by Antichrist, and the day of judgment; and chapters 21 and 22, referring to the New Jerusalem, he made descriptive of the glorious and endless triumphant state of the Roman church.v

The Roman Church produced two contradictory interpretations of end-time prophecy, neither of which were true to Scripture.

In his book Truth Matters, Professor Walter Veith explains the following:

To counter the stand of the Reformers, the Catholic Church launched the counter-reformation spearheaded by the Jesuit Order. The doctrines of Preterism and Futurism, published by Alcasar and Ribera, two Jesuit priests, in 1585, redefined the reformation position on the Antichrist and shifted the emphasis away from the papacy to the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanus IV and to some tyrant who would persecute the Jews some time in the future.vi

Further, Professor Veith observes that by accepting these alternative approaches to Biblical prophecy, the Protestant world...saw in it an opportunity to cease hostilities with Rome.vii

Here the true danger is exposed: if Protestantism ceases to protest against the falsehoods of Rome, then there is no opposition to the Roman plans, and no check against the corruption of Biblical Christianity found in the Roman Catholic system. The Dark Ages can come again with a vengeance.

Want to learn more? Here is a list of informative resources from Walter Veith and Victor Gill:

Total Onslaught DVD seriesRekindling the Reformation DVD seriesProfessor Veiths bookTruth MattersThese resources and many more are available from the Amazing Discoveries online store.

i. Jerry L. Walls, The Oxford handbook of eschatology (Oxford University Press, 2007).

ii. ibid.

iii. This diagram is adapted from a similar diagram on page 508 of Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers Volume 2 (Washington DC: Review and Herald, 1948).

iv. Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers Volume 2 (Washington DC: Review and Herald, 1948).

v. ibid.

vi. Walter Veith, Truth Matters (Amazing Discoveries, 2002).

vii. ibid.

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Futurism and Preterism - Amazing Discoveries

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling.

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls.

Suddenly we jumped, hearing the mighty noise of the huge double-decker trams that rumbled by outside, ablaze with colored lights, like villages on holiday suddenly struck and uprooted by the flooding Po and dragged over falls and through gourges to the sea.

Then the silence deepened. But, as we listened to the old canal muttering its feeble prayers and the creaking bones of sickly palaces above their damp green beards, under the windows we suddenly heard the famished roar of automobiles.

Lets go! I said. Friends, away! Lets go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are defeated at last. Were about to see the Centaurs birth and, soon after, the first flight of Angels!... We must shake at the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Lets go! Look there, on the earth, the very first dawn! Theres nothing to match the splendor of the suns red sword, slashing for the first time through our millennial gloom!

We went up to the three snorting beasts, to lay amorous hands on their torrid breasts. I stretched out on my car like a corpse on its bier, but revived at once under the steering wheel, a guillotine blade that threatened my stomach.

The raging broom of madness swept us out of ourselves and drove us through streets as rough and deep as the beds of torrents. Here and there, sick lamplight through window glass taught us to distrust the deceitful mathematics of our perishing eyes.

I cried, The scent, the scent alone is enough for our beasts.

And like young lions we ran after Death, its dark pelt blotched with pale crosses as it escaped down the vast violet living and throbbing sky.

But we had no ideal Mistress raising her divine form to the clouds, nor any cruel Queen to whom to offer our bodies, twisted like Byzantine rings! There was nothing to make us wish for death, unless the wish to be free at last from the weight of our courage!

And on we raced, hurling watchdogs against doorsteps, curling them under our burning tires like collars under a flatiron. Death, domesticated, met me at every turn, gracefully holding out a paw, or once in a while hunkering down, making velvety caressing eyes at me from every puddle.

Lets break out of the horrible shell of wisdom and throw ourselves like pride-ripened fruit into the wide, contorted mouth of the wind! Lets give ourselves utterly to the Unknown, not in desperation but only to replenish the deep wells of the Absurd!

The words were scarcely out of my mouth when I spun my car around with the frenzy of a dog trying to bite its tail, and there, suddenly, were two cyclists coming towards me, shaking their fists, wobbling like two equally convincing but nevertheless contradictory arguments. Their stupid dilemma was blocking my wayDamn! Ouch!... I stopped short and to my disgust rolled over into a ditch with my wheels in the air...

O maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain! I gulped down your nourishing sludge; and I remembered the blessed black beast of my Sudanese nurse... When I came uptorn, filthy, and stinkingfrom under the capsized car, I felt the white-hot iron of joy deliciously pass through my heart!

A crowd of fishermen with handlines and gouty naturalists were already swarming around the prodigy. With patient, loving care those people rigged a tall derrick and iron grapnels to fish out my car, like a big beached shark. Up it came from the ditch, slowly, leaving in the bottom, like scales, its heavy framework of good sense and its soft upholstery of comfort.

They thought it was dead, my beautiful shark, but a caress from me was enough to revive it; and there it was, alive again, running on its powerful fins!

And so, faces smeared with good factory muckplastered with metallic waste, with senseless sweat, with celestial sootwe, bruised, our arms in slings, but unafraid, declared our high intentions to all the living of the earth:

It is from Italy that we launch through the world this violently upsetting incendiary manifesto of ours. With it, today, we establish Futurism, because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni and antiquarians. For too long has Italy been a dealer in second-hand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many graveyards.

Museums: cemeteries!... Identical, surely, in the sinister promiscuity of so many bodies unknown to one another. Museums: public dormitories where one lies forever beside hated or unknown beings. Museums: absurd abattoirs of painters and sculptors ferociously slaughtering each other with color-blows and line-blows, the length of the fought-over walls!

That one should make an annual pilgrimage, just as one goes to the graveyard on All Souls Daythat I grant. That once a year one should leave a floral tribute beneath the Gioconda, I grant you that... But I dont admit that our sorrows, our fragile courage, our morbid restlessness should be given a daily conducted tour through the museums. Why poison ourselves? Why rot?

And what is there to see in an old picture except the laborious contortions of an artist throwing himself against the barriers that thwart his desire to express his dream completely?... Admiring an old picture is the same as pouring our sensibility into a funerary urn instead of hurtling it far off, in violent spasms of action and creation.

Do you, then, wish to waste all your best powers in this eternal and futile worship of the past, from which you emerge fatally exhausted, shrunken, beaten down?

In truth I tell you that daily visits to museums, libraries, and academies (cemeteries of empty exertion, Calvaries of crucified dreams, registries of aborted beginnings!) are, for artists, as damaging as the prolonged supervision by parents of certain young people drunk with their talent and their ambitious wills. When the future is barred to them, the admirable past may be a solace for the ills of the moribund, the sickly, the prisoner... But we want no part of it, the past, we the young and strong Futurists!

So let them come, the gay incendiaries with charred fingers! Here they are! Here they are!... Come on! set fire to the library shelves! Turn aside the canals to flood the museums!... Oh, the joy of seeing the glorious old canvases bobbing adrift on those waters, discolored and shredded!... Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers and wreck, wreck the venerable cities, pitilessly!

The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade for finishing our work. When we are forty, other younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscriptswe want it to happen!

They will come against us, our successors, will come from far away, from every quarter, dancing to the winged cadence of their first songs, flexing the hooked claws of predators, sniffing doglike at the academy doors the strong odor of our decaying minds, which will have already been promised to the literary catacombs.

But we wont be there... At last theyll find usone winters nightin open country, beneath a sad roof drummed by a monotonous rain. Theyll see us crouched beside our trembling aeroplanes in the act of warming our hands at the poor little blaze that our books of today will give out when they take fire from the flight of our images.

Theyll storm around us, panting with scorn and anguish, and all of them, exasperated by our proud daring, will hurtle to kill us, driven by a hatred the more implacable the more their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us.

Injustice, strong and sane, will break out radiantly in their eyes.

Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice.

The oldest of us is thirty: even so we have already scattered treasures, a thousand treasures of force, love, courage, astuteness, and raw will-power; have thrown them impatiently away, with fury, carelessly, unhesitatingly, breathless, and unresting... Look at us! We are still untired! Our hearts know no weariness because they are fed with fire, hatred, and speed!... Does that amaze you? It should, because you can never remember having lived! Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl our defiance at the stars!

You have objections?Enough! Enough! We know them... Weve understood!... Our fine deceitful intelligence tells us that we are the revival and extension of our ancestorsPerhaps!... If only it were so!But who cares? We dont want to understand!... Woe to anyone who says those infamous words to us again!

Lift up your heads!

Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the stars!

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The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism

In BriefNASA has detailed a plan to prevent the Yellowstonesupervolcano from ever erupting. By drilling into the volcano andpumping water into and out of it at high speeds, they believe theycould cool the volcano and use the emerging hot water to generateelectricity. FromThreat to Ally

When people think of Yellowstone, its usually in relation to the national park, a massive 8,983 square kilometer (3,468.4 square mile) area comprising mountains, rivers, and forests. Less commonly considered is the Yellowstone Caldera, a supervolcano whose eruption could be devastating for our planet.

Thankfully, such an explosion is highly unlikely, and now,NASA has come up with a way to not only ensure that the volcano remains inactive, but also use it to provide the surrounding area with electricity.

Following their release of a story on supervolcanoes, the BBC was contacted by a few NASA members who wanted to share details on a previously unreleased plan to deal with Yellowstone. Even NASA admits their incredibly ambitious plan is risky, but the potential benefits resulting from its success cant be completely ignored.

First, they would drill into the volcano from the lower sides, outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. Coming from this direction would prevent the intense heat from making its way to the top of the chamber, where it would cause further problems.

Once drilling is complete, water would be pumped into and back out of the supervolcano at high pressures, with the exiting water heated to a temperature of around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit). The water going in would slowly cool the volcano, while the hot water coming out of it could be used to generate electricity.

Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat, Brian Wilcox, a researcher at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained to the BBC. Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh.

Aside from the dangers inherent in any plan to drill into a volcano, the NASA proposal is also largely theoretical no one knows for sure that it would work, and the cost of finding out would bean estimated$3.46 billion. Wilcox doesnt think this cost is insurmountable, however.

You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years, he noted. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.

Even if the system can effectively cool Yellowstone at NASAs estimated rate of 1 meter (3.2 feet) per year,it would take thousands of years before only cool rock was left and longer than that to actually confirm that the process had permanently eliminated the threat of an eruption.

Despite all of these variables, the plan is worth consideration, especially given that Yellowstone is just one of about 20 supervolcanoes on the planet. NASA hopes that their proposal will encourage more practical discussions and debates on what to do about these massive structures prior to an eruption, at which point the Earth could be thrust into a volcanic winter.

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NASA Has a $3.46 Billion Plan to Ensure the Yellowstone ... - Futurism - Futurism

In BriefMicrosoft unveiled a new cloud-based programmable hardwarethat's capable of handling deep learning operations faster and inreal-time. Dubbed Brainwave, the system operates on a massivehardware network of Intel's latest Statix 10 chips. Accelerating Machine Learning

At the 2017 Hot Chips symposium today, Microsoft unveiled a new hardware capable of boosting artificial intelligence (AI) programs. CalledBrainwave, Microsoft believes itll boost how machine learning models functionby designing them forprogrammable silicon.

We designed the system for real-time AI, which means the system processes requests as fast as it receives them, with ultra-low latency, Microsoft explained in a press release. Real-time AI is becoming increasingly important as cloud infrastructures process live data streams, whether they be search queries, videos, sensor streams, or interactions with users.

The model is larger than other AI-dedicated hardware available. It features a Gated Recurrent Unit model running at a speed of 39.5 teraflops on Intels new Stratix 10 field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Plus, it doesnt use so-called batching operations, which means it provides real-time insights for machine learning systems by handling requests as they come in.

We call it real-time AI because the idea here is that you send in a request, you want the answer back, Microsoft Research engineer Doug Burger said at the symposium, Venture Beat reports. If its a video stream, if its a conversation, if its looking for intruders, anomaly detection, all the things where you care about interaction and quick results, you want those in real time.

Brainwave allows for cloud-based deep learning models to be performed seamlessly across a the massive FPGA infrastructure Microsoft has installed in its data centers over the past few years. According to Burger, this means that AI features in applications receive more rapid support from Microsoft services. By running on a host of FPGAs, machine learning models that might be too big for just one FPGA chip receive simultaneous support from multiple hardware boards.Click to View Full Infographic

In addition toperformance speeds faster and more flexible than other CPUs or GPUs, Brainwave also incorporates software designed to support a host of popular deep learning frameworks. So, as Burger said, its thuspossible for Microsofts programmable hardware to operate at par with chips dedicated for machine learning operations like Googles Tensor Processing Unit. In fact, he believes that its possible to increase performance in the future from 39.5 teraflops to 90 teraflops by further improving operations with the Stratix 10 chip.

As machine learning models and algorithms see greater employmentby a plethora of applications, hooking these to Brainwave would reduce user waiting timefor these apps to respond. Microsoft hasnt yet made Brainwave available to customers, and no timeline has been set. But they areworking to make it accessible to third-party customers through Microsofts Azure cloud platform.

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Microsoft Releases a New Deep Learning Acceleration Platform Called Brainwave - Futurism

A New Kind of Composer

Break Free is the first sone released in a new album by Taryn Southern. The song, indeed, the entire album, features an artist known asAmperbut what looks like a typical collaboration between artists is actually much more than that.

Taryn is no stranger to the music and entertainment industry. She is a singer and digital storyteller who has amassed more than 500 million views on YouTube, and she has over 450 thousand subscribers. On the other hand, Amper is making his debutexcept hes (its?) not a person.

Amper is an artificially intelligent music composer, producer, and performer. The AI was developed by a team of professional musicians and technology experts, and its the the very first AI to compose and produced an entire music album. The album is called I AM AI, and the featured single is set to release on August 21, 2017.

Check out the song Break Free in the video below:

Asfilm composer Drew Silverstein, one of Ampers founders, explained to TechCrunch, Amper isnt meant to act totally on its own, but was designed specifically to work in collaboration with human musicians: One of our core beliefs as a company is that the future of music is going to be created in the collaboration between humans and AI. Wewant that collaborative experience to propel the creative process forward.

That said, the team notes that, contrary to the other songs that have beenreleased by AI composers, the chord structures and instrumentation of Break Free are entirely the work of Ampers AI.

Ultimately, Amper breaks the model followed by todays music-making AIs. Usually, the original work done by the AI is largely reinterpreted by humans. This means that humans are really doing most of the legwork. As the team notes in their press release, the process of releasing AI music has involved humans making signicant manual changesincluding alteration to chords and melodiesto the AI notation.

Thats not the case with Amper. As previously noted, the chord structures and instrumentationis purely Ampers; it just works with manual inputs from the human artist when it comes to style and overall rhythm.

And most notably, Amper can make music through machine learning in just seconds.Heres an example of a song made by Amper,andre-arranged by Taryn.

Yet, while IAMAI may be the first album thats entirely composed and produced by an AI, its not the first time an AI has displayed creativity in music or in other arts.

For example, an AI called Aiva has been taught to compose classical music, like how DeepBach was designed to create music inspired by Baroque artist Johann Sebastian Bach. With this in mind, the album is likely just the first step into a new eraan era in which humans will share artistry (and perhaps even compete creatively) with AI.

Editors Note: This article has been updated to clarify what songs were made by Amper and rearranged by Taryn.

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The World's First Album Composed and Produced by an AI Has Been Unveiled - Futurism

In Brief Built by Lockheed Martin in the 1960s and decommissioned in 1998 due to high operational costs, the SR-71 Blackbird remains the fastest aircraft to have ever been flown. Now, Lockheed Martin wants to build an even faster plane: the SR-72.

Now that Lockheed Martin has confirmed that they are building the SR-72, which could be the first hypersonic plane, NASA has released video footage of its predecessor: the SR-71 Blackbird.

Built in the 1960s by Lockheed using designs that were kept secret in the 1950s, the SR-71 Blackbird is the fastest manned aircraft to have ever flown the skies. To get an idea of how fast, watch the below video of the plane taking off.

Capable of reaching speeds up to Mach 3 (2,200 mph) with a maximum altitude of almost 26,000 meters (85,000 feet), the two-seater SR-71 Blackbird was used as a reconnaissance plane from 1964 to 1998. Lockheed built only 32 of these super-fast planes, and now, they want to build an even faster one that will act asa strike and recon aircraft.

The SR-72, the leading project under Lockheeds Advanced Development Programs (ADP) or Skunk Works, promises to be even faster than the Blackbird. The company wants to develop a plane capable of hypersonic flight speeds of Mach 5 (3,836 mph) and higher and the SR-72 is expected to reach a Mach 6 (4,600 mph) top speed.

The inspiration for this hypersonic plane may come from the past, but it is poised to take military aircraft well into the future.

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See Newly Released NASA Footage of the Fastest Plane Ever Flown - Futurism

In Brief Scientists at MIT have discovered a way to make nuclear fusion more efficient. By adding a third ion to the traditional two-ion plasma mix, the researchers were able to increase their energy output ten-fold, putting us one step closer to a future powered solely by clean energy. More Ions, More Power Nuclear fusion is a highly complicated process, and right now, the energy were able to output from that process isnt enough to justify the work that goes into it. If we can find a way to increase this output, however, fusion could put us one step closer to a future powered solely by clean energy.Click to View Full Infographic

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have found a way to do just that.

In a new study published in Nature Physics, they detail how adjusting the nuclear fusion recipe has allowed them to significantly increase the energy output. Their results were replicated by researchers at the largest fusion device in Europe, the Joint European Torus.

The MIT teams fusion method involved the addition of trace amounts of another ion, helium-3, to the traditional two-ion plasma mix of five percent hydrogen and 95 percent deuterium. They placed their mix inside the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a magnetic containment device used to hold hot plasma, at MITs Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Then, the researchers used a process known as ion cyclotron resonance heating to activate the particles.

Not only did this experiment provide the researchers with more insight into how charged particles move while inside nuclear reactors and in stars, it also increased the energy output ten-fold, with ions reaching a magnitude of energy never before achieved in a non-activated device: megaelectron-volts

These higher energy ranges are in the same range as activated fusion products, research scientist John C. Wright explained in PSFC news release. To be able to create such energetic ions in a non-activated device not doing a huge amount of fusion is beneficial, because we can study how ions with energies comparable to fusion reaction products behave, how well they would be confined.

More work needs to be done before this study could lead to practical applications of efficient fusion energy at the soonest, we wont be using fusion energy as our primary energy source until 2030, according to experts. That said, MITs efforts, alongside breakthroughs by others around the world, are undeniably bringing us closer to a reality in which fossil fuels are no longer a consideration.

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In Brief A group of planetary scientists studying Mars' atmosphere have finally obtained proof that it snows on the red planet. The snowstorms don't drop a lot of snow, but the way they form can make landings harder for future spacecraft.

We now have evidence that Mars gets its share of snow and that far from being only light flurries, theyre sometimes violent snowstorms.

These storms are much different from what was previously thought of the red planets weather, which only occurs at night and comes with intense gusts of wind. This new forecastcame from a combination of data on water-ice clouds, collected by the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft over the years, and data gathered by NASAs Phoenix Lander, which ventured to Mars in 2008.

Its the first time anyone has shown that snowstorms, or water-ice microbursts, occur presently on Mars, said lead researcher Aymeric Spiga, a planetary scientist from the Universit Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, to New Scientist. Any snow particles formed were thought to fall only very slowly through their own weight.

Spiga explains that previous attempts to find snowstorms were unsuccessfulbecause scientists were using the wrong models, or only one model at a time. Spiga and his team used more sophisticated and fine-scale modelling, allowing them to simulate Mars atmosphere in greater detail.

Many of the snowstorms will gradually come to an end before reaching the planets surface, but others can make it to ground level if a cloud forms closer to the surface. That said, the amount of snow isnt enough to ski on, or even to make a decent snowman.

The way it forms, however, could have an impact onfuture attempts to land on the planet for colonization.

Well, the associated winds found in the storm are rather vigorous, explained Franck Montmessin, another member of Spigas team studying Mars atmosphere, to ResearchGates blog. Since they occur in the lower part of the atmosphere, one might want to avoid these turbulent events to ensure a safe landing.

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In Brief The top three cryptocurrencies have gone through some changes in the last day, with Bitcoin and Ethereum dropping in price and Bitcoin Cash sharply falling, only to see another meteoric rise.

Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum experienced a few changes since Monday, with some rising to new heights and others dipping down.

As reported by Business Insider, both Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two biggest cryptocurrencies, have seen a single-digit percentage drop, while Bitcoin Cash has seen a double-digit rise.

Bitcoin dropped 2.2 percent against the US dollar as of Tuesday morning, and is now valued at $4,004.67. Ethereum, which recently announced its Metropolis update, saw a slightly larger drop than Bitcoin, dropping 3 percent to $310.32. This drop continued the currencys struggles to hit $350, and its unclear how the Metropolis update will further affect Ether token prices.

Although Bitcoin Cash only split from Bitcoin very recently,at the beginning of August, it quickly became the third-biggest cryptocurrencyin the world. Compared to the top two, Bitcoin Cash rose by 15.6 percent, to $696.39. As impressive as this may be, Business Insider notes the young currency managed to top $1,000 last weekend, but skepticism about its staying power caused it to fall sharply.

Expect prices to fluctuate, as they often tend to do, especially when regarding Bitcoin. Trusted trader masterluc predicts the top digital currency will hit $15,000 by the end of 2017.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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In Brief New data from GTM Research suggests that rapid adoption of solar power could mean that its global gigawatt capacity rivals that of nuclear power by the end of 2017. While nuclear currently far exceeds solar in terms of energy generation, some predict solar could be the world's largest source of energy by 2050. Sunny Forecast

Solar energy has been on the rise, and based on new data from GTM Research, it could rival nuclear energy in terms of global capacity by the end of 2017.

The data, which is available in the most recent edition of Global Solar Demand Monitor, indicates that solar power will reach a capacity of roughly 390 gigawatts this year. Meanwhile, the latest figures from the Nuclear Energy Institute suggest that the world is currently home to 391.5 gigawatts of nuclear plants.

Solar growth is slowing slightly following a massive jump from 50.3 gigawatts added in 2015 to 77.8 gigawatts added in 2016, 81.1 gigawatts will likely be added in 2017. However, GTM Research expects that growth will continue at a steady rate, with total global capacity reaching 871 gigawatts by 2022.

Capacity is just one piece of the puzzle, though. Nuclear energy is still well ahead of solar in terms of electricity generated, outputting 2,476,671 gigawatt-hours compared to solars 375,000. That being said, the International Energy Agency projects that solar could feasibly become the worlds largest source of energy by 2050 due to its falling cost and increasing convenience.

Solar energy can help us reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which we desperately need to do as our net emission of 37 gigatonnes of CO per year are wreaking havoc on the planet, causing global warming, extreme weather events, and millions of deaths.

Building solar panels has become much more cost-effective in recent years, which has fostered large-scale solar initiatives all over the world. Now, with Teslas solar roof panels set to provide homeowners with an inexpensive, aesthetically pleasing, and convenient way to take advantage of solar on an individual basis, the technology seems more poised than ever before for energy domination.

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In BriefBitcoin is the world's most popular cryptocurrency, and itsvalue continues to reach new heights. Here are a few reasons thisrelatively unknown digital coin was able to make the climb fromobscurity to the mainstream consciousness. Outstanding Performance

So far, 2017 has been an eventful year for Bitcoin.

The platform recentlyendured a hard fork that saw it split in two and come out seemingly unscathed. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency has risen from relative obscurity to become a popular topic of discussion in the mainstream, with everyone from Bloomberg to Forbes covering it regularly. The year isnt even over, and bitcoin has reached numerous milestonesalready, both in terms of its own history and that ofcryptocurrency in general.

Overall, Bitcoin seems to be steadily trending upward, with even greater heights predicted for the platforms future. So, how did a cryptocoin originally associated with the internets darkest corners become a popular contender for the future of financial and other transactions?

Longevity seems to play a factor. After years of trading, the coin has proven itself as here to stay, leading to years of value increases first a steady rise from 2012 through 2016, and then a more dramatic surge that is still ongoing today.

A cryptocurrency researcher who goes by the Twitter handle Jack Sparrow shared a comparative overview of just how fast bitcoins value has risen.

After it was created in 2009, bitcoin needed roughly seven years to reach a $2,000 valuation. However, the crypto saw the same level of increase from $2,000 to $4,000 in a matter of just 85 days.

The numbers are backed up, of course, by confidence fromlarger institutions. Big financial firms like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Fidelity Investments are now invested in the crypto, and nations such asChina, Japan, and, more recently, Australiahave started considering more permanent roles for cryptocurrencies in their respective economies as well.

All of this large-scale support is giving smaller organizations and individual investors confidencein the crypto.

The growing popularity of blockchain enterprise use has also contributed to the successes of Bitcoin and other platforms. As more institutions in the financial industry and beyondlook for ways to utilizethe decentralized and secure digital ledger, the cryptocurrencies that spring from these blockchains also get a boost.

Still, even with Bitcoins seemingly unstoppable successes, experts advise caution. As with any hot item, investing in bitcoin can be risky. Some, such as billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and veteran investor Peter Schiff, even warn that the current cryptocoin craze is simply a bubble. However, while Schiff claims cryptocurrencies will never be money, many others thinkotherwise.

Are we witnessing the beginnings ofa truly cashless future? Only time will tell, and as with any revolution, Bitcoinhas many hurdles to overcome before it can truly transform our society. Right now, though, the crypto is clearly on the rise.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Here's Why Bitcoin Rose More than $1000 in Two Months - Futurism

In BriefIn an effort to improve the efficiency of naturalphotosynthesis, a researcher at the University of California,Berkeley, has created cyborg bacteria. These bacteria were trainedto grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystalsthat act as efficient solar panels for harvesting sunlight. Cyborg Bacteria

Although most life on Earth relies upon photosynthesis as its source of energy, the process has a weak link: chlorophyll. Plants and other organisms use the green pigment to harvest sunlight during photosynthesis, but it is rather inefficient. To that end, scientists have been searching for ways to upgrade natural photosynthesis sohumans would be able to capture and use energy from the Sun more efficiently.

Now, Kelsey K. Sakimoto, a researcher at Peidong Yangs lab at the University of California, Berkeley, has come up with a new alternative to natural photosynthesis: cyborg bacteria that were trained to cover themselves in solar panels that are much more efficient than chlorophyll at converting sunlight into useful compounds.

Rather than rely on inefficient chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, Ive taught bacteria how to grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals, Sakimotosaid in a press release. These nanocrystals are much more efficient than chlorophyll and can be grown at a fraction of the cost of manufactured solar panels.

To produce his cyborg bacteria, Sakimoto fed them the amino acid cysteine and the element cadmium. The bacteria then synthesized cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticles, which efficiently absorb light, functioning as solar panels on the bacterias surfaces. The new hybrid organism, called M. thermoacetica-CdS, produces useful acetic acid from light energy, water, and CO2 at a rate that outperforms any sources of natural photosynthesis.

Today, Sakimoto is presenting his work at the 254th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Humanity is facing an ever-growing need for alternatives to fossil fuels as we face down the consequences of greenhouse gas emissionsand a rapidly increasing population that requires energy to sustain.

Artificial photosynthesisisnot a new concept, and a system that requires only sunlight and simple organic chemicals to generate renewable energy cheaply and cleanly is understandably highly desirable.

While some limited progress has been made in this area, until now, no proposed solution has been nearly efficient enough to warrant commercial use.

Sakiomotos bacteria, however, operate at an efficiency of more than 80 percent and are both self-replicating and self-regenerating, making this a zero-waste technology with multiple uses. Once covered with these tiny solar panels, the bacteria can synthesize food, fuels, and plastics, all using solar energy, he explained. These bacteria outperform natural photosynthesis.

While he does acknowledge that more research is needed, Sakiomotois hopefully that his cyborg bacteria could prove to be a viable alternative to fossil fuels, helping the world produce energy more cheaply and cleanly.

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Cyborg Bacteria Could Be the Key to Commercially Viable Artificial Photosynthesis - Futurism

In Brief A team of astronomers created the first ever two-dimensional velocity map of a star and the movement of its atmospheric gasses, a feat never before done in a star other than the Sun. Their technique could be used to study other stars in the future. Look at the Stars

Red supergiant (RSG) stars are considered the most voluminous starsin the universe. The two most famous examples of RSGs are Betelgeuse and Antares, and to the naked eye the latter appears to shine with a strong red tint as it sits at the heart of the constellation Scorpius. However, RSGs are known to exhibit a certain kind of behavior thats baffled astronomers for a long while.Click to View Full Infographic

A team of astronomers decided to figure out this strange phenomenon by taking a closer look at Antares, a star already at near the end of its life. How stars like Antares lose mass so quickly in the final phase of their evolution has been a problem for over half a century, Keiichi Ohnaka from the Universidad Catlica del Norte in Chile and lead author of the study said in a press release.

His team used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, with which they mapped the surface and movement of the surface material of Antares. The result: they managed to take the best image of an extra-solar stars surface ever. Their research has been published by the ESO.

This was made possible by the VLTIs ability to combine light from four of its telescopes to create a virtual telescope that works like a single mirror thats 200 meters across. It, in turn, allowed the team to recreate a two-dimensional velocity map of a star, the first such beyond our solar system.

The VLTI is the only facility that can directly measure the gas motions in the extended atmosphere of Antares a crucial step towards clarifying this problem, Ohnaka explained in the release. By calculating the difference between the speed of the atmospheric gas in Antares at different positions and the average speed of the entire star relative to the VLTIs imaging array, he made it possible to map the relative speed of atmospheric gas across the surface area of Antares, on the ground, as it were. While this revealed the motions of gas clumps, it merely hinted at a process behind suchmovement thats still to be identified.The next challenge is to identify whats driving the turbulent motions, he added.

Ohnakas team has made it possible to study a stars surface from a far more effective viewpoint. They hope to duplicate this successin the study ofother stars. In the future, this observing technique can be applied to different types of stars to study their surfaces and atmospheres in unprecedented detail. This has been limited to just the Sun up to now, Ohnaka said. Our work brings stellar astrophysics to a new dimension and opens an entirely new window to observe stars.

The method Ohnaka and his team used could also provide better imaging of exoplanets that could help us glimpse atmospheric movements in these planets. Learning about what goes on in the atmospheres of exoplanets is crucial to knowingwhich of these could sustain life.

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In Brief The top three cryptocurrencies have gone through some changes in the last day, with Bitcoin and Ethereum dropping in price and Bitcoin Cash sharply falling, only to see another meteoric rise.

Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum experienced a few changes since Monday, with some rising to new heights and others dipping down.

As reported by Business Insider, both Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two biggest cryptocurrencies, have seen a single-digit percentage drop, while Bitcoin Cash has seen a double-digit rise.

Bitcoin dropped 2.2 percent against the US dollar as of Tuesday morning, and is now valued at $4,004.67. Ethereum, which recently announced its Metropolis update, saw a slightly larger drop than Bitcoin, dropping 3 percent to $310.32. This drop continued the currencys struggles to hit $350, and its unclear how the Metropolis update will further affect Ether token prices.

Although Bitcoin Cash only split from Bitcoin very recently,at the beginning of August, it quickly became the third-biggest cryptocurrencyin the world. Compared to the top two, Bitcoin Cash rose by 15.6 percent, to $696.39. As impressive as this may be, Business Insider notes the young currency managed to top $1,000 last weekend, but skepticism about its staying power caused it to fall sharply.

Expect prices to fluctuate, as they often tend to do, especially when regarding Bitcoin. Trusted trader masterluc predicts the top digital currency will hit $15,000 by the end of 2017.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Bitcoin Cash Price Rises While Bitcoin and Ethereum Drop - Futurism

In BriefNASA has detailed a plan to prevent the Yellowstonesupervolcano from ever erupting. By drilling into the volcano andpumping water into and out of it at high speeds, they believe theycould cool the volcano and use the emerging hot water to generateelectricity. FromThreat to Ally

When people think of Yellowstone, its usually in relation to the national park, a massive 8,983 square kilometer (3,468.4 square mile) area comprising mountains, rivers, and forests. Less commonly considered is the Yellowstone Caldera, a supervolcano whose eruption could be devastating for our planet.

Thankfully, such an explosion is highly unlikely, and now,NASA has come up with a way to not only ensure that the volcano remains inactive, but also use it to provide the surrounding area with electricity.

Following their release of a story on supervolcanoes, the BBC was contacted by a few NASA members who wanted to share details on a previously unreleased plan to deal with Yellowstone. Even NASA admits their incredibly ambitious plan is risky, but the potential benefits resulting from its success cant be completely ignored.

First, they would drill into the volcano from the lower sides, outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. Coming from this direction would prevent the intense heat from making its way to the top of the chamber, where it would cause further problems.

Once drilling is complete, water would be pumped into and back out of the supervolcano at high pressures, with the exiting water heated to a temperature of around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit). The water going in would slowly cool the volcano, while the hot water coming out of it could be used to generate electricity.

Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat, Brian Wilcox, a researcher at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained to the BBC. Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh.

Aside from the dangers inherent in any plan to drill into a volcano, the NASA proposal is also largely theoretical no one knows for sure that it would work, and the cost of finding out would bean estimated$3.46 billion. Wilcox doesnt think this cost is insurmountable, however.

You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years, he noted. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.

Even if the system can effectively cool Yellowstone at NASAs estimated rate of 1 meter (3.2 feet) per year,it would take thousands of years before only cool rock was left and longer than that to actually confirm that the process had permanently eliminated the threat of an eruption.

Despite all of these variables, the plan is worth consideration, especially given that Yellowstone is just one of about 20 supervolcanoes on the planet. NASA hopes that their proposal will encourage more practical discussions and debates on what to do about these massive structures prior to an eruption, at which point the Earth could be thrust into a volcanic winter.

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NASA Has a $3.46 Billion Plan to Ensure the Yellowstone Supervolcano Doesn't Erupt - Futurism

A New Kind of Composer

Break Free is the first sone released in a new album by Taryn Southern. The song, indeed, the entire album, features an artist known asAmperbut what looks like a typical collaboration between artists is actually much more than that.

Taryn is no stranger to the music and entertainment industry. She is a singer and digital storyteller who has amassed more than 500 million views on YouTube, and she has over 450 thousand subscribers. On the other hand, Amper is making his debutexcept hes (its?) not a person.

Amper is an artificially intelligent music composer, producer, and performer. The AI was developed by a team of professional musicians and technology experts, and its the the very first AI to compose and produced an entire music album. The album is called I AM AI, and the featured single is set to release on August 21, 2017.

Check out the song Break Free in the video below:

Asfilm composer Drew Silverstein, one of Ampers founders, explained to TechCrunch, Amper isnt meant to act totally on its own, but was designed specifically to work in collaboration with human musicians: One of our core beliefs as a company is that the future of music is going to be created in the collaboration between humans and AI. Wewant that collaborative experience to propel the creative process forward.

That said, the team notes that, contrary to the other songs that have beenreleased by AI composers, the chord structures and instrumentation of Break Free are entirely the work of Ampers AI.

Ultimately, Amper breaks the model followed by todays music-making AIs. Usually, the original work done by the AI is largely reinterpreted by humans. This means that humans are really doing most of the legwork. As the team notes in their press release, the process of releasing AI music has involved humans making signicant manual changesincluding alteration to chords and melodiesto the AI notation.

Thats not the case with Amper. As previously noted, the chord structures and instrumentationis purely Ampers; it just works with manual inputs from the human artist when it comes to style and overall rhythm.

And most notably, Amper can make music through machine learning in just seconds.Heres an example of a song made by Amper,andre-arranged by Taryn.

Yet, while IAMAI may be the first album thats entirely composed and produced by an AI, its not the first time an AI has displayed creativity in music or in other arts.

For example, an AI called Aiva has been taught to compose classical music, like how DeepBach was designed to create music inspired by Baroque artist Johann Sebastian Bach. With this in mind, the album is likely just the first step into a new eraan era in which humans will share artistry (and perhaps even compete creatively) with AI.

Editors Note: This article has been updated to clarify what songs were made by Amper and rearranged by Taryn.

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In BriefNEO is going head-to-head with Ethereum, claiming that itsplatform provides more options for scripting smart contracts andenhanced reliability. New Kid on the Blockchain

Cryptocurrency is on the riseand, as a result, theres no shortage of companies looking to establish themselves as an essential part of the trading process. In addition to organizations fielding new coins, there are firms that handle other pieces of infrastructure, like Blockchain specialist NEO (formerly known as AntShares).

NEOs biggest competition is currently Ethereum, the blockchain platform behind the prosperous Ether token. Both offer support for programming languages Vitalik Buterin, who originally conceived Ethereum, has felt that the absence of such support has been a major detriment to cryptocurrency but the group behind NEO maintains that its implementation has several advantages.

Smart contracts are automated agreements between traders that can call upon all kinds of different checks and triggers, ranging from a particular date to the balance of a particular account. NEO allows developers to write smart contracts and other projects using familiar programming languages like .NET and Java, with plans to support Python, Go, and JS in the future.

NEO also diverts from the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum in eschewing the need for anonymity. The platform uses a digital identity system thats intended to help it integrate with the real-world economy. Digital identity is expected to give NEO a major advantage as it attempts to spur adoption in its origin country China.

Bitcoin and Ethereum use proof-of-work (POW) to validate transactions, but NEO instead uses a delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus method.

POW has strong availability, but it also has a big disadvantage, because it cannot ensure finality. Forks and lone blocks will occur easily, explained company co-founder and CEO Da Hongfei. dBFT ensures finality, which means that once a transaction is confirmed by a block, it is confirmed permanently without being rolled back or revoked. In our point of view, finality is far more important than availability in an important financial system.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to really make a splash, and it still leads the pack. However, it is still too early to determine the ramifications of itsrecent fork, which could turn out to be either ablessing or a curse.

NEO has been designed with a focus on avoiding the security issues that might prompt a fork. Reliability and stability are a big priority for its creators, having seen projects like Bitcoin Unlimited come undone as a result of such issues.

It certainly seems like NEO is being set up to fulfill the needs of tomorrows cryptocurrency market. That being said, competition from the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum wont be easy to overcome.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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A New Blockchain Platform is Taking on Ethereum - Futurism

In BriefEstonia is considering plans to expand upon its e-Residencyprogram with a new form of cyrptocurrency dubbed estcoin. Birth of the Estcoin

Estonia is mulling over the idea of issuing its own cryptocurrency, known as estcoins, which would make the country the first in the world to complete an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Previously, China hastested its own coin, and Russia demonstrates an interest in Ethereum.

The proposal is an extension of Estonias e-Residency program, which allows non-residents and people who want to establish a business in the country virtually to take advantage of elements of the governments online infrastructure.

A blog post from the project manager of the e-Residency program, Kaspar Korjus, states that the program currently receives more applications in a week than there are births across the whole of Estonia in the same timeframe.

One of the biggest concerns for any government looking to accept crypto tokens is the threat of illicit usage. One of the requirements expected to be included in the cryptocurrency bill, which is set to be submitted to the US Congress, is a demonstration that the currency cant be used for money laundering.

Estcoin could dodge this thorny issue by being tied to the digital profiles associated with e-Residency. This idea is backed by Vitalik Buterin a co-founder of Ethereum who has been advising the Estonian government on the project.

An ICO within the e-Residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together, said Buterin.

While Estonia is using the term estcoin at the moment, there are hopes that the project could stretch far beyond the Baltic state.

Its use could grow far bigger than Estonia, writes Korjus. The same thing is happening to e-Residency as a whole, which was initially thought of as a way to be part of the Estonian nation but is now creating a new global digital nation, powered by the Republic of Estonia.

This kind of project has the potential to further blur the boundaries between nation states. A business owner could be a virtual resident of Estonia, and use the country as the home base for their company without ever stepping foot there.

The world is changing, and Estonia clearly wants to remain on the cutting edge. Keeping abreast of dcryptocurrency developments could have huge benefits for the country as a whole, as the proposal states that profits from estcoin could be poured into a community-run VC fund.

The authors of the proposal are currently gauging interest, but plan to demonstrate how the project would benefit Estonia. Its expected that estcoin would start as a pilot project before being scaled up as demand rises.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team are personal investors in cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Estonia Could Be the First Country in the World to Introduce Its Own Cryptocurrency - Futurism

In BriefAstrophysicists have discovered a probable Earth-likeexoplanet that is 23 light-years closer than the Trappist-1 system.It has sparked new hope for finding extraterrestrial life in theuniverse. Hope for Exoplanets

Last year, the Trappist-1 system was discovered, and it reignitedhumanitys hope of finding planets that could one day (or currently) sustain life. Butthere has been much debate over the probability that planets within that system, which is located 39 light-years away,could hold life as we know it. While Trappist planets might fall within what is known as the habitable zone, other factors, such as the factthat they orbit a red dwarf, might make them less prone to sustaining life than initially thought.

This uncertainty might get you down until you read that astrophysicistsat the University of Texas at Arlington(UTA) have predicted the existence of a much closer planet that is Earth-like in nature. Published as Dynamics of a probable Earth-Like Planet in the GJ 832 System in The Astrophysical Journal, this planet is only 16 light-years away, within the star system Gliese 832, and it appears to be both stable and Earth-like.

Lead author Suman Satyal, UTA physics researcher, stated in an UTA press release that, According to our calculations, this hypothetical alien world would probably have a mass between 1 to 15 Earths masses.

This is an important breakthrough demonstrating the possible existence of a potential new planet orbiting a star close to our own, UTA Physics Chair Alexander Weiss said in the press release.The fact that Dr. Satyal was able to demonstrate that the planet could maintain a stable orbit in the habitable zone of a red dwarf for more than 1 billion years is extremely impressive and demonstrates the world class capabilities of our departments astrophysics group.

According to Satyal, The existence of this possible planet is supported by long-term orbital stability of the system, orbital dynamics and the synthetic radial velocity signal analysisAt the same time, a significantly large number of radial velocity observations, transit method studies, as well as direct imaging are still needed to confirm the presence of possible new planets in the Gliese 832 system.

So, it is not yet 100 percent certain that this unicorn of a planet exists. However, these predictions are strongly supported by evidence garnered by the research group. But what could this mean if and when these scientists prove the existence of such a planet?

Technologies which allow us to explore further and further into the cosmos continue to develop. From SpaceXs advances to the Breakthrough Initiatives, it is becoming ever-more possible to reach previously unseen corners of the universe. Now, Mars is only an average of 12.5 light-minutes from Earth, so 16 light-years might seem like an unconquerable distance.

However, compared to the distances of other promising exoplanets, this could be one of the best shots we have to survey and study an exoplanet that fits many habitable criteria. The exploration of the universe is a never-ending journey that will only continue to further our knowledge and curiosity.

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Astrophysicists Believe They've Found Another Earth-Like Planet in a Nearby Star System - Futurism