Daily Archives: June 8, 2017

In Brief In a tweet today, Elon Musk said that the highly anticipated Falcon Heavy launch would take place within the next few months. The rocket will transport the first space tourists, and it could take humanity farther in space than ever before.

Elon Musk is having a rather goodweek. He put on an excellent showing at Teslas annual shareholders meeting,and today, the news broke that Teslas stock price has surged. The company is listed on the Fortune 500 list for the first time ever. But of course, we cannot forget about another of Musks revolutionary outfits: SpaceX.

Musks space company has a number of milestone eventplanned for the coming months. Case in point, afew moments ago, a question from a Twitter user sparked an update from Musk on the companys plans to launch the Falcon Heavy, SpaceXs massive rocket that will one day take humans to the Moon.

In the tweet, Musk confirmedthat we will beseeing the rocket launch in just four months, at theend of the summer.

The Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in the world, capable of launching 54 metric tons (119,000 lb) of cargo and crew into space. The rocket will be used to boost the first space tourists to the Moon in a launch expected to take place in 2018. The entire journey is expected to take about six to seven days.

The Falcon Heavy will likely also play a role in preparing SpaceX for the highly anticipated first manned missions to Mars, set to happen by 2025.

We look forward to the upcoming launch and all the promise that its success will bring.

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Elon Musk: The Rocket That Will Eventually Take Humans to the Moon Will Launch in 4 Months - Futurism

In BriefScientists have just discovered the oldest human fossils inMorocco. This find alters the narrative of human origins and helpsfill in missing details in our evolution as a species. Rediscovering Ourselves

On Wednesday, scientists reported they had discovered the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens in Morocco.The bones and other remains are approximately 300,000 years old. This revelation provides new insights into the origins of humankind: a consequence of such findings would be that human beingsevolved earlier than had previously believed. The fossils also indicate that despite fundamental differences in the brains of modern humans and early Homo sapiens, our faces strongly resemble those of our early ancestors.

Until this remarkable find at Jebel Irhoud, the oldest human fossils only dated back 195,000 years. These new fossils make experts believe that our species evolved not in Eastern Africa (specifically near Ethiopia) where later fossils were found, but across the continent in Western Africa where modern Morocco is situated.

We did not evolve from a single cradle of mankind somewhere in East Africa, paleoanthropologist Phillipp Gunz, a co-author of the two new studies on the fossils, told The New York Times.

Before now, fossils found in different places made paleoanthropologists believe that Homo sapiens arose in East Africa and then moved across the continent. However, mysterious human fossils from other parts of Africa didnt seem to fit in with this story, and caused scientists to wonder where they fit into the Homo sapiens puzzle. The remains discovered in Morocco will helpsolve these mysteries, even as it suggests new questions for further research.

For example, the recent finds at Jebel Irhoud confirm that Homo sapiens had flatter faces, similar to ours today. National Museum in London paleoanthropologist Christopher Stringer speculates that the flattened faces of early Homo sapiens may be related to the advent of speech. We really are at very early stages of trying to explain these things, Dr. Stringer told theThe New York Times.

The larger, rounder brain of modern humans is a more recent development. Dr. Gunz indicates that the human brain may have evolved into a rounder shapeduring a later phase of human existence. Two areas of the brain in particular the cerebellum and the parietal lobe, both toward the back of the head seem to have adapted over thousands of years. That being said,scientists dont yet know how the rounder brain changed how humans think.

Flint blades from around the same time have been found elsewhere across Africa, and the Jebel Irhoud fossils suggest that they may have been made by early humans. Dr. Gunz and his team believe that is this is true: Homo sapiens may have evolved across the continent as a network of groups. The only way well ever know for sure and resolve other questions these findings may bring up will bethrough additional research, which will require adequate funding.

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New Discovery of the Oldest Known Human Remains Will Change the Narrative of Human Evolution - Futurism

In Brief Astronomers have observered a phenomenon known as gravitational microlensing in stars for the first time. Predicted by Einstein as part of his theory of general relativity, this could help measure the mass of distant stars using gravitational deflection. Celestial Warping

According to Einsteins general relativity theory, spacetime bends or gets distorted when it crosses a massive object due to its gravity. In the same manner, Einstein theorized that such a distortion also happens tolight from a distant star when it passes another star along a line of sight from Earth like a near stellar eclipse, so to speak. In this case, gravity should act as a magnifying lens by brightening and bending the light from the distant star, warping its apparent position.

Einstein, however, wasnt particularly confident about ever seeing such this gravitational deflection of starlight. In an article published in Sciencein 1936, he said that because stars are so distant from one another there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly. An international team of researchers, however, have just proven Einstein wrong but also right by seeing a type of gravitational microlensing from a star other than the Sun.

The team, led by Kailash Sahu from the Space Telescope Science Institute, reported their findings in a new studypublished in the same journal.Einstein would be proud, Terry Oswalt saidin an interview with Wired. One of his key predictions has passed a very rigorous observational test.

Sahus team used the Hubble Space Telescope with its superior angular resolution to measure the shifts in a distant background stars apparent position around a nearby white dwarf star called Stein 2051 B as its light was deflected. The observations were made on eight dates in a two year period, between October 2013 and October 2015.

In the same way that a 1919 total solar eclipse provided the first observations of starlight curving and gave the initialconvincing proofs of Einsteins general theory of relativity, the new study confirms it anew. It also gave Sahus team a way to measure the mass of the foreground white dwarf star, which was previously unmeasurable.

The astrometric lensing approach used by Sahu et al. can be used equally well for any other nearby stars that happen to pass in front of background stars, Oswalt wrote in a perspective article in Science. In the coming era of truly massive sky surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, astronomers are bound to observe other similar events, despite their rarity.

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Scientists Finally Witnessed a Phenomenon That Einstein Thought Impossible - Futurism

In Brief The government of Hawaii signed two bills on Tuesday which formalizes its commitment to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. This comes after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to pull out of the climate deal.

Tuesday was a historic moment for Hawaii as it became the first state in the U.S. to make its stand on the Paris Climate Agreement formal. The Pacific state signed two bills to honor the climate deal after the federal governments decision to withdraw from it. In his statement during the signing of the two bills, Hawaii governor David Ige said that hes looking forward to working with other states to fight global climate change.

Governor Ige signed Senate Bill 559 which would ensure statewide support for Hawaiis green initiatives and to further theStates commitment to combat climate change by systematicallyreducing and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through theenactment of principles that mirror many of the provisions adopted in the Paris Agreement.

The governor also signed House Bill 1578, which creates a task force to help keep Hawaiis soil and air clean. It would identify agricultural and aquacultural practices to improve soil health and promote carbon sequestration the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change.

Hawaii isnt the only state that pledged to uphold the guidelines set by the Paris Agreement. Several governors and a dozen mayors across the U.S. have promised to do the same. The Hawaii State Legislature understands the importance of taking action, and I applaud its work this session to ensure that we continue to deliver the island Earth that we want to leave to our children, Ige said.

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Blazing a Trail: Hawaii Becomes the First US State to Commit to the Paris Climate Accords - Futurism

In BriefMark Cuban has attacked Bitcoin on Twitter, claiming it is nota currency, it is a bubble, and that the whole system of valuationconcerning it is wrong. But is he right? Mark Cubans Twitterstorm

Mark Cuban has recently raised a series of criticisms of bitcoin on Twitter, which has resulted in the cryptocurrencys exchange rate dropping rapidly illustrating many of the issues with the currency that he discussed in the Tweet themselves.

Mark Cuban rose to wealth by selling his start-up businesses MicroSolutions (a PC company that he sold to CompuServe for $6 Million) and Broadcast.com (which transmitted sports games over the internet, and was subsequently sold to Yahoo for $5.7 Billion) in the 1990s, and rose to prominence by becoming owner of the NBA team the Dallas Mavericks.

Earlier today he took his opinions of Bitcoin toTwitter:

Cuban crucially differentiates between blockchain and Bitcoin: the former being a means of transaction that is more secure, transparent, and distributive, and the latter a cryptocurrency.

However, Cuban likens bitcoin to the religious worship of gold as an asset and describes it as a stock, which is fundamentally different from a currency currencies measure how much of an asset you have. This is why Cuban progresses to state I am not questioning value. Im questioning valuation.

Just because bitcoins exchange rate has reached thousands of dollars, this doesnt mean that anyone would be willing to give you thousands of dollars for your bitcoin. Currencies are universal measures of value in the country you operate which allows anyone to trade with anyone as part of a universal system of value. This is in contrast to assets which you can buy with that value system but not necessarily trade anywhere as easily.

Currencies, in order to operate in this way, need to be relatively stable which Cuban showed bitcoin was not due to the almost instant drop after his tweetstorm. To analogise: can you imagine the dollar, pound, or euro drastically dropping in a matter of hours just because of a few tweets?

On the surface, Bitcoin looks monumentally impressive: it has grown every year apart from 2014, has climbed 141 percent in value this year alone, even peaking at $2,900 this past week. However, the precise reason for this success is the reason for its potential failure it is too turbulent, too successful.

This means that while Bitcoin may seem extremely seductive it has been billed as, among other things, the ultimate investment and a universal currency we must be careful when investing in it (particularly because it is difficult to convert back into dollars), putting faith in it, and being overoptimistic about its potential.

Bitcoin is one particularly famous use of a potentially more promising and widely applicable system called blockchain, which has the potential to revolutionize everything from the music industry to sustainable development and even banking accountability.

According to many, it is blockchain, not bitcoin, that has the potential to revolutionize future transactions: If the internet bought us near instant digital communication, then the blockchain brings us near instant asset transfer, asset movement and security of data movement said Simon Taylor, the previous head of Barclays cryptocurrency division.

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Mark Cuban Asserts That Bitcoin is Not Currency - Futurism

Wow! Messages From Space

In 1977, the sound of extraterrestrials was heard by human ears for the first time or so people at the time thought.The Wow! Signal was detected by astronomer Jerry Ehman using Ohio State Universitys Big Ear radio telescope. It isa radio signal detector that, at the time, was pointed at a group of stars called Chi Sagittariiin the constellation Sagittarius.

When scanning the skies around the stars, Ehmancaptured a 72 second burst of radio waves: He circled the reading and wrote Wow!: next to it, hence the signals name. Over the last 40 years, the signal has beencited as evidence that we are not alone in the galaxy. Experts and laypeople alike believed that, finally, we had evidence of alien life.

However, Professor Antonio Paris, of St Petersburg College, has now discovered the explanation: A pair of comets. The work was published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

These comets, known as 266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, have clouds of hydrogen gas millions of kilometers in diameter surrounding them. The Wow! Signal was detected at 1420MHz, which is the radio frequency hydrogen naturally emits. Notably, the team has verified that the comets were within the vicinity at the time, andtheyreport that the radio signals from 266/P Christensen matched those from the Wow! signal.

While this discovery is a disappointment to alien enthusiasts everywhere, as the Wow! Signal is the strongest signal we have ever received from space, it is a testament to our ability to accurately interpret signals and sounds from the cosmos. This gives us hope in our attempt to decode the hundreds of strange, alien signals coming from other stars that have been observed recently.

We have several weapons in our cosmic detection arsenal, most of which are used by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). Their main means of detection is using radio-telescopes, and their most ambitious project to date has been Project Phoenix; the worlds most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

For this project, they used three of worlds biggest radio telescopes: the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (210 feet indiameter), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia (140 feet in diameter), and Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (the worlds largest at 1,000 feet in diameter). They have also built The Allen Telescope Array with financial backing from Paul Allen.

While the technology for detecting alien messages is remaining relatively static, ideas for communicating better with our own satellites is advancing rapidly, with possibilities including communicating by a laser beam and establishing a space satellite network.

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The 40-Year Old Mystery of the Wow! Signal Was Just Solved - Futurism

In Brief Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed an AI that can analyze CT scans to predict if a patient will die within five years with 69 percent accuracy. This system could eventually be used to save lives by providing doctors with a way to detect illnesses sooner. Predicting the Future

While many researchers are looking for ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) to extend human life, scientists at the University of Adelaidecreated an AI that could help them better understand death. The system they created predicts ifa person will die within five years after analyzingCT scans of their organs, and it was able to do sowith 69 percent accuracy a rate comparable to that of trained medical professionals.

The system makes use of thetechnique of deep learning, and it was tested using images taken from 48 patients, all over the age of 60. Its the first study to combine medical imaging and artificial intelligence, and the results have been published in Scientific Reports.

Instead of focusing on diagnosing diseases, the automated systems can predict medical outcomes in a way that doctors are not trained to do, by incorporating large volumes of data and detecting subtle patterns, explained lead authorLuke Oakden-Rayner in a university press release. This method of analysis can explore the combination of genetic and environmental risks better than genome testing alone,according to the researchers.

While the findings are only preliminary given the small sample size, the next stage will apply the AI to tens of thousands of cases.

While this study does focus on death, the most obvious and exciting consequence of it is how it could help preserve life. Our research opens new avenues for the application of artificial intelligence technology in medical image analysis, and could offer new hope for the early detection of serious illness, requiring specific medical interventions, said Oakden-Rayner. Because it encourages more precise treatment using firmer foundational data, the system has the potential to save many lives and provide patients with less intrusive healthcare.

An added benefit of this AI is its wide array of potential uses. Because medical imaging of internal organs is a fairly routine part of modern healthcare, the data is already plentiful. The system could be used to predict medical outcomes beyond just death, such as the potential for treatment complications, and it could work with any number of images, such as MRIs or X-rays, not just CT scans. Researchers will just need to adjustthe AItotheir specifications, andtheyll be able to obtain predictions quickly and cheaply.

AIsystems are becoming more and more prevalentin the healthcare industry.Deepmind is being usedto fight blindness in the United Kingdom, and IBM Watson is already as competent as human doctors at detecting cancer. It is in medicine, perhaps more than any other field, that we see AIs huge potential to help the human race.

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An AI Can Now Predict How Much Longer You'll Live - Futurism