Daily Archives: May 13, 2017

In BriefElon Musk released a string of tweets and Instagram postsgiving updates on the Boring Company's progress in constructing ahigh-speed underground transportation system. So Boring

Our modern-day DaVinci, Elon Musk, is hard at work bringing his latest venture,the Boring Company,to fruition. The companys aim is to create a network of tunnels to accommodate a high-speed transit system, and Musk just sent out a torrent of updates via Twitter and Instagram containing pictures and video of its latest achievements.

His first tweet signaled that the beginningsof the tunnel are complete. The tunneling machine, Boring 1 (or Godot), now has a proper entry hole, staging area, and starting tunnel.

Musk plans for the first tunnel to run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks and for future extensionsto cover the entirety of greater Los Angeles, an area spanning87,940 square kilometers (33,954 square miles).

Naturally, given the nature of the geography of Southern California, many commenters are concerned about how the tunnels would stand up to earthquakes. Musk allayed those fears by responding in the affirmative when asked if the tunnels will be earthquake-proof.

Godot is a massive machine whose speed has been compared to that of a snail. However, Musk has plans to ratchet up its pace by a factor of ten. The machine, once completely assembled, will be more than 100 feet long.

The purpose of the Boring Company is to cut travel time in the notoriously congested Los Angeles area. To that end, Musk claims the tunnel will allow travel between the L.A. neighborhood of Westwood and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in only five minutes.

Vehicles will be transported through the tunnels on platforms, called skates or sleds, powered by electricity at speeds of up to 200 kmh (125 mph). He posted a video of a skate at work.

It seems like Musk is a man of his word. Less than six months after tweeting that he was going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging, he has done just that. At the beginning, even he emphatically admitted, We have no idea what were doingI want to be clear about that. Now, he is well on his way to making this dream a reality.

With a hand inSpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop, and now the Boring Company, Musk seems poised to monopolize the future of ground (and apparently underground) transportation.

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Elon Musk Just Released Breakthrough Updates About His New Company - Futurism

In Brief MIT engineering students have invented a portable device that translates text into braille in real time, and they hope to sell it for less than $200. This cheap alternative to existing technologies will make both books and braille more accessible to the blind community. Team Tactile

Six engineering undergraduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) have designed a portable device that converts text to braille in real time. Their first prototype was created in a 15-hour hackathon in early 2016. Since that time, the device, called Tactile, has undergone extensive development. Now, its the size of a candy bar and completely portable. The students have applied for a patent for the device, although they are already working on its next iteration.

What really sets Tactile apart from other braille translators, though, is its low cost. Most of these devices are expensive and limited to the translation of text that is available digitally. For example, the HumanWare Braillant attaches to a computer or mobile device to translate text into braille, and it costs $2,595. Tactiles creators hope to sell their device for less than$200.

The students who invented the translation device have plans to improve Tactile, and theyve also got the means to do it. They recently won one of the $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prizes for 2017, which they will spend refining and improving the device.

Currently, the camera only takes a picture of its field of view,team member Chandani Doshi explainedin an email to Smithsonian.We are aiming to make the device similar to a handheld scanner that allows the user to scan the entire page in one go. If theyre successful, this would make the device simpler to use and eliminate the readers need to remember where they are on the page.

Accessibility for people with disabilities is getting more attention now than it has in the past as the movement for inclusion grows. The European Union has drafted rules that will mandate that products and services be more accessible to people with disabilities, including the blind. The Womens March on Washington even added a virtual branch so people with disabilities could attend that way if they chose to.

There are 1.3 million legally blind people in the U.S., and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired 39 million of them are blind, and the remaining 246 million have low vision. The American Foundation for the Blind estimatesthat fewerthan 10 percent of blind people can understand braille, mostly due toa chronic teacher shortage in this area.

Even so, Tactile, which should be on the market within two years, will make any book in any library accessible to those who do understand braille and it will also make braille itself far more accessible and easy to learn. In fact, using Tactile might be the revolution braille needs to bring a higher level of literacy back to the blind community.

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MIT's Portable Translator Can Convert Text to Braille in Real-Time - Futurism

In Brief Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that defies previously established trends. Although a hot Neptune, the exoplanet HAT-P-26b has an atmospheric composition that's more Jupiter-like, giving clues as to how it was formed. Warm and Unusual

The easiest way to make sense of the various unfamiliar objects we find floating around in the cosmos is by thinking about them in the context ofcelestial bodies we are familiar with. Our Solar System has become the starting point for our analysis of other bodies, especially exoplanets.

Thats how the termhot Neptunecame about its our way of describing exoplanets as massive as Uranus or Neptune but that orbit closer to their stars. Weve already come across a number of these hot Neptunes, but one of the most recently discovered defies all expectations astronomers have about the exoplanets.

Located about 437 light-years away from Earth, HAT-P-26b is a hot Neptune that has a primordial atmosphere composed mostly of hydrogen and helium an unusual mixture for planets very close to their stars. Astronomers have just begun to investigate the atmospheres of these distant Neptune-mass planets, and almost right away, we found an example that goes against the trend in our Solar System, said researcher Hannah Wakefordfrom NASAs Goddard Space Flight Centerin a news release.

Usually, massive planets have lower metallicities a lower presence of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in their atmosphere. For example, Jupiter and Saturns are five and ten times than that of the Sun, respectively. Smaller planets like Uranus and Neptune, on the other hand, have higher metallicities, about a hundred times greater than the Sun.

For hot Neptune HAT-P-26b, however, this standard fails. Its metallicity is only about 4.8 times that of the Sun much closer to Jupiters than to Neptunes.

Such a discovery just confirms that theres so much we dont know about the universe and whats in it. Assumptions that may be true for Earth or for the planets in our solar system may not necessarily be true for others out there. This analysis shows that there is a lot more diversity in the atmospheres of these exoplanets than we were expecting, which is providing insight into how planets can form and evolve differently than in our solar system, said University of Exeters David K. Sing, second author of the paper, which is published in Nature.

For Wakeford, its discoveries like this that make her work exciting. This kind of unexpected result is why I really love exploring the atmospheres of alien planets, she said.

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Astronomers Just Found a Planet They Didn't Know Was Possible - Futurism

In BriefSigns of extra dimensions may reveal themselves in the waythey impact gravitational waves. Scientists hope that further studyof these waves might allow for a single, coherent theory of theuniverse. Hunting for Extra Dimensions

As important as gravity is to us here on Earth, it is actually surprisingly weak in comparison to other fundamental forces in our universe, such as electromagnetism. In fact, as researchers struggle to unite quantum effects and gravity in single theories that make sense, they find that extra dimensions, usually with gravity, are implied.

However, theorizing the existence of these extra dimensions is much easier than actually proving that they exist. Scientists were hopeful that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might reveal evidence of their existence.After all, the device gives them the abilityto run specialized experiments searching for massive particle traces, microscopic black holes, and missing energy caused by the migration of gravitons to higher dimensions. So far, however, definitive proof has not been discovered with the LHC.

In their search for answers, researchers Gustavo Lucena Gmez and David Andriot at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, have honed in on two strange effects: high frequency gravitational waves and the breathing mode, a modification of how gravitational waves stretch space.

The researchers calculated that extra dimensions should result in the creation of extra, high frequency gravitational waves. Unfortunately, we dont currently haveobservatories that can detect frequencies in the range they predict, nor are any in development.

However, we do have the tech needed to observe the breathing mode. Space changes shape as it reacts to gravity passing through it. The breathing mode is seen when, in addition to stretching and squishing, space expands and contracts in reaction to additional gravitational waves.With more detectors we will be able to see whether this breathing mode is happening, LucenaGmez told New Scientist.

Based on the researchers calculations, the additional waves at high frequencies wouldpoint decisively to extra dimensions. However, the breathing mode could have explanations beyond those theoretical dimensions, but its detection would be a significant clue pointing toward their existence.

Even without definitive proof, were making progress in our hunt for other dimensions. Since 2015, scientists have been able to observe gravitational waves, and becausegravity probably exists in other dimensions, observing and analyzing the behavior of these waves under different conditions might provide clues about those extra dimensions. The existence of another dimension makes weak gravitational force more understandable if gravity exists throughout all of these extra dimensions as well, it should be weaker.

Put another way, the existence of extra dimensions would allow for a coherent, comprehensive theory of the universe. It would also explain uncertainties about the nature of gravity. It would even put us on the road to explaining why the universe is expanding faster and faster. If extra dimensions are in our universe, this would stretch or shrink space-time in a different way that standard gravitational waves would never do, explainedLucena Gmez.

Proof of an extra dimension would be extraordinarily exciting for physicists working to explain the laws of the universe with a single, coherent theory. If we were able to reconcile the conflicts between quantum field theory and general principles of relativity, for example, things like antigravity, instantaneous communication and transport, transmutation of matter, and faster-than-light travel might all be possible. For now, we dont havea definitive answer, but understanding the behaviors of gravitational waves would be aremarkable step in the right direction.

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Ripples in Space-Time Might Indicate That We Live in a Multiverse - Futurism