Daily Archives: May 14, 2017

In BriefResearchers have developed a model to understand howTRAPPIST-1's seven planets manage to avoid colliding with oneanother. They learned that the system follows a chain of resonancesat a scale never before seen in a planetary system. Orbital Progression

Februarys discovery of the seven Earth-like planets orbiting a dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1 generated a great deal of excitement as the system seemed likea potential host for extraterrestrial life. However, further research revealed that the TRAPPIST planets seemed to be following an orbital path for destruction.

[I]n the original paper [when] they tried to simulate the system, planets would start colliding after a short time (astronomically speaking, about a million years), astrophysicist Dan Tamayo told Futurism via email. However, he and colleagues from the University of Toronto Scarboroughmay have found a way to explain how the TRAPPIST planets survive.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers explain thatthe mechanism that would lead to the TRAPPIST planets colliding with one another is the same one that keeps them stable their orbit. [I]n TRAPPIST-1, for every 2 orbits of the outermost planet, the next one in does 3 orbits, the next one 4, 6, 9, 15, and 24, Tamayo explained. This is called a chain of resonances, and this is the longest one that has ever been discovered in a planetary system.

One can liken the chain of resonances in the TRAPPIST system to how an orchestra works. The instruments create harmonious music by keeping time with one another and making sure each one is tuned to the rest.

Most planetary systems are like bands of amateur musicians playing their parts at different speeds, said Matt Russo, from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), who took the lead in developing an animation to demonstrate this phenomenon. TRAPPIST-1 is different; its a super-group with all seven members synchronizing their parts in nearly perfect time. He added,This means that early on, each planets orbit was tuned to make it harmonious with its neighbors, in the same way that instruments are tuned by a band before it begins to play.

Using computer simulations, the researchers modeled how the TRAPPIST system was formed and how the harmonies were finely tuned to create this unprecedented stable chain of resonances.

Certainly, this research has larger implications in our search for systems that could potentially host extraterrestrial life. While these resonances are rare in systems with massive stars like the Sun, they could be a common occurrence around smaller stars like TRAPPIST-1. It may be that the formation conditions around low mass stars are gentler and better able to form harmonious, long lived planetary systems, said Tamayo.

This has implications for the prevalence of planets in the universe, since there are many small stars for every big one, he concluded. The exciting part is that this will be tested by upcoming missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launching next year.

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Any Alien Life in the Trappist-1 System Exists in a Tenuous Balance - Futurism

In Brief A firm has created facial recognition software that works together with surveillance cameras to identify emotions on faces. This may allow for real time crime prevention as violent facial expressions are recognized. Recognizing Violence In Faces

A Russian firm called NTechLab has created a software that, when used in tandem with surveillance cameras, can detect emotions and identify people who are angry, nervous, or stressed in a crowd. The software then processes the emotions it perceives in the context of the age, gender, and identity (if known) of the people it is surveilling to decide who the potential criminals and terrorists are. Last year, the firms software was used to power the FindFace app, which works on the Russian version of Facebook to find anyone from missing family members to suspects in cold cases.

NTechLab claims that the technology is more than 94 percent accurate. If theyre proven right, municipalities that use it may be able to monitor situations in real time, stopping crime before it happens. Its clients mostly include retail businesses and security firms, but local, state/regional or even federal governments could conceivably use their technology.

Technology has already changed the way the authorities fight crime and work to prevent it. The FBI has been using the Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition system, which allows the agency to parse more than 411 million photos to identify suspects and not just the faces of people who have committed crimes. It also searches the visa and passport application photos of the State Department. In fact, experts estimate that about 117 million Americans around half of all adults in the U.S. are in the database. This kind of technology has also been implemented in airports since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Facial recognition is also being used to boost security in other contexts:HSBC uses facial recognition software rather than more traditional security measures, as does Lloyds in partnership with Microsoft. While this technology is primarily intended to boost online security, it is in essence also working to prevent crime and fraud.

So, can a dystopian future like the one shown in Minority Report in which innocent people are imprisoned without ever committing actual crimes be possible in a world that makes use of this technology? The FBI has responded to criticisms of its use of the NGI system by saying that it uses the software to generate leads not to make positive identifications. However, state and local law enforcement agencies also have access, and might have different policies or de facto procedures. As of October 2016, Wired reported that more than 40 civil liberties groups had requested that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department (now headed by Jeff Sessions) evaluate the use of the technology around the country and issue guidance. As yet, the matter remains unresolved.

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Software That Reads Emotions Could Be Used to Catch Criminals Before They Act - Futurism

In Brief FRB 150215 is the most recent "cosmic whistle" that's been detected and it appears to be different from other FRBs that have been discovered in the last decade. Mysterious Bursts

In February of 2015, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia detected some fast radio bursts (FRB) that havefascinated astronomers ever since.Dubbed cosmic whistles, an FRB is a quick flash of energy seen as split-second intergalactic radio wave blips. FRB 150215, however, seems to be different frompreviously recorded bursts.

What makes FRB 150215 even more intriguing is that it doesnt seem to leave any signal or trace of light behind. The Parkes researchers used 11 telescopes in an attempt to spot radio, optical, X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutrino emission from these signals but none were found. Neither transient nor variable emission was found to be associated with the burst, and no repeat pulses have been observed in 17.25 hours of observing,the researchers report in a new study(which hasyet to be peer reviewed).

How could such high energy bursts not leave any traces? As if that wasnt mysterious enough, consider that in order for FRB 150215 to have been detectedat all, it had to go through a rather dense region of the Milky Way. This means that it shouldnt have been detectable in the first place.

FRBs were first discovered in 2007, and since then, there have been 22 known FRB occurrences. It was only earlier this year that scientists finally identified the source of one of these FRBs:some distant dwarf galaxy. Back in April, another group of scientists confirmed that FRBs are indeed coming from space.

As we develop more advancedtools with which to see and hear the universe, the probabilityof discovering what really caused theses signals isimproving. For one, new and better space telescopes like the James Webb will give us a view of our cosmic surroundings like weve never seen before.

When we do see them, no doubt well definitely be in for a surprise. For now, though, astronomers are putting in additionalwork tobetter understand the phenomenon. Its not very often in science that you get to work on something thats so brand new and so unknown that you get to answer the fundamental questions, researcher Emily Petroff told Gizmodo. Its exciting to be in these very early stages of the field when you can make a big impact with your research and answer these really big questions.

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Mysterious Signals From Space Continue to Baffle Scientists - Futurism