Category Archives: Singularity

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Almost exactly three years ago in 2016, Apple launched the iPhone 7s. Among the usual announcements and upgrades, it revealed the smartphones new portrait mode, which would allow users to take images that are able to isolate the subject and make the background blurry. The idea? A mechanical technique generally achieved by the actual SLR cameras using the kind of wide lens that is able to achieve a shallow depth of field depending on the distance between the subject and the background.

The size of the phones lens being what it is, phone manufacturers dont have the luxury of making phones with interchangeable and big lenses. Their solution was artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, a subset of AI. While the phones lens might struggle to tell the distance between the subject and the background, the AI technology, trained on a massive amount of photographic data, is able to identify the face on a selfie, and then separate that from the background, making the latter blurry.

Portrait mode, or Live Focus as it is known in some Android phones, is just one among many and some far more consequential examples of how artificial intelligence and machine learning has become a ubiquitous part of our lives through our smartphones. Much of this technology has increased our efficiency, whether its a navigation app warning us of traffic and finding us the best route, or for journalists like this one, a transcription app that can transcribe a 30-minute long interview in a matter of seconds.

Over the last few years, platforms like Gmail and their accompanying smartphone apps have become frighteningly good at classifying our email and identifying spam, chain letters and promotional material wed rather not see, and sticking it all into folders where the sun doesnt shine.

There are also the somewhat bothersome and eerily accurately targeted adverts that pop up on our phone apps. Admittedly not always on target; at times even after youve done your online shopping, that item might keep popping up in ads for a few more days. To be fair, marketers for whom this particular kind of advertising works might find them a tad less bothersome.

On the dark side of AI, we have algorithms on social media platforms that only feed us more of what we want to see, sometimes reaffirming the beliefs we hold, with little regard for factual integrity. Harmless when they feed you happy cat videos every hour if thats your groove. Not so harmless when your YouTube feed is a long list of conspiracy videos about how the Clintons run a child trafficking ring, aka Pizzagate.

However, AI goes far beyond phones, and into areas such as smart cars, smart homes, banking, and even employee procurement. The ubiquity of the smartphone as the primary way in which many of us interact with the internet makes it one of the most prevalent ways in which we experience AI. And we expect it to work every time. We expect that Uber app to know the shortest and least busy route, and predict a fair fare without fail. And, indeed, in many instances, our interactions with AI are so predictable as to be unremarkable. However, for most of us not directly working in tech, we have no way of predicting where our ecstatic embrace of AI, and our growing dependency on it, championed by the smartphone, will lead us.

On 28 August 2019, at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been vocal on his concerns about the future of AI, took to the stage in conversation with Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma.

Well, computers actually are already much smarter than people on so many dimensions. We just keep moving the goalposts. So we used to think like, for example, being good at chess was an example of a smart human. And then Kasparov was crushed by [IBM supercomputer] Deep Blue in 97. That was a long time ago, 22 years. I mean, right now your cellphone could crush the world champion at chess, literally. Go used to be thought of as something that humans were better at than computers. Then Lee Sedol was beaten four to one by [Google DeepMind program] Alpha Zero, said Musk, referring to the popular Chinese-invented board game.

Humans trying to play a computer at Go is like trying to fight Zeus. Its not going to work. Hopeless, we are hopeless. Hopelessly inadequate basically theres just a smaller and smaller corner of what of intellectual pursuits that humans are better than computers. Every year it gets smaller and smaller, and soon will be far surpassed in every single way.

He went on compare the difference between human intelligence and the future of AI to the difference between chimpanzee intelligence and human intelligence, the human being the equivalent of the chimpanzee in this scenario when compared to AI.

In fact, if the difference is only that small, that would be amazing. Probably its much, much greater. So, like, the biggest mistake that I see artificial intelligence researchers making is assuming that theyre intelligent. Yeah, theyre not, compared to AI. A lot of them cannot imagine something smarter than themselves, but AI will be vastly smarter vastly.

Over the past two decades, the idea of a superior artificial intelligence has grown in popularity and is encompassed in the concept of the singularity. Scholars, fiction writers and futurists have defined in different ways the idea that there will come a time where technology will advance so exponentially that the human systems we know will be obliterated. All will become irreversible as a superior machine intelligence takes over in ways we cannot yet imagine.

Other definitions focus on our eventual merging with the machines, to become a different type of being. One of the most prominent voices is futurist, entrepreneur and inventor Ray Kurzweil who wrote the 2005 book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. He predicts the exact year of the realisation of the Singularity to be 2045.

We are entering a new era. I call it the Singularity. Its a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself. Its the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that its actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because theres no indication that its occurred anywhere else. To me, that is what human civilization is all about. It is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially.

To contemplate stopping that to think human beings are fine the way they are is a misplaced, fond remembrance of what human beings used to be. What human beings are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and its the nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and thats what were talking about. The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our technology, said Kurzweil in a 2001 talk published on Edge.

Others like Musk are as vocal about the potential pitfalls of AI, and Musk has even written a cautionary open letter about it. Yet, he believes, If you cant beat them, join them.

In July 2019, he announced the first product from his company Neuralink, a computer chip that can be stitched into the human brain, which is able to pick up signals from the brain and translate them into machine-readable code, effectively merging us with machines in one way, and offering up potential health benefits, like helping the blind see, or returning certain functions to body parts that have lost them. At the highly futuristic end, the chip could allow humans to interact directly with AI, sans smartphone.

By Musks own admission, they have tested it on rats and monkeys, and: A monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain, just FYI. Human clinical trials are expected to begin in 2020.

Says Musk: Can we be able to go along for the ride with AI? I mean, I really think that there should be other companies like Neuralink, essentially, to create a high bandwidth interface to the brain. Because right now, we are already a cyborg. People dont realize we are already a cyborg. Because we are so well integrated with our phones and our computers. ML

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Goodbye humans, hello cyborgs: The moment of Singularity is nigh - Daily Maverick

Governments around the world are rushing to keep up with emerging technologies. No one wants to be left behind as more industries and facets of life are impacted by the transition from analogue to digital, manual to automated, and authentic to synthetic.

One of the countries at the front of the pack is China. Its government is aiming to lead the world in AI by 2030. Tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are rivaled in size and clout only by the likes of Amazon and Google. Its pouring huge amounts of venture capital into tech. And its scientists are moving forward with gene editing even as other countries grapple with its ethical concerns.

This all points to likely success for China as a tech superpower. But as it moves swiftly into the future, it can be easy to forget that, in terms of development, much of the worlds most populous country hasnt yet left the past behind.

Last week world leaders convened in New York for the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, which included a summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Much of the focus for the SDGs falls on the African continent, home to the countries with the highest poverty ratesand highest birth ratesin the world. Having reduced its extreme poverty rate from 88 percent in 1981 to less than 2 percent in 2013in whats been aptly dubbed the Chinese MiracleChina doesnt get mentioned as often in global development conversations anymore.

But its still an important player in the field, not least because of its massive population, which at nearly 1.5 billion outnumbers all African countries put together. Its size gives it a huge weight in overall global statistics, and we should still be keeping close tabs on its progress.

In a recent paper published in Science Advances, a research team examined regional divisions, gaps between urban and rural populations, social inequality, and other factors to evaluate where Chinas development progress measures up and where its falling short.

Even in the worlds richest countries, wealth is by no means evenly distributed across geographic lines. 2018 average per capita income in the US, for example, was $74,561 in Connecticutand $37,994 in Mississippi. People who live in or near big cities tend to have greater access to opportunity and wealth creation.

China is no exception; significant gaps exist between coastal and inland regions and between urban and rural areas, not just in wealth and employment, but also in access to education and healthcare. According to the paper, though these gaps have narrowed, they havent yet closed.

The widest gap is in education between urban and rural areas. The good news is that across the board, people are getting more years of educationbut urbanites are still getting 3 more years on average and are 7 times more likely to go to college.

The figures for healthcare are less stark. The infant mortality rate as of 2016 was 0.4 percent in urban areas and 0.9 percent in rural areas. The disparity in maternal mortality has disappeared, standing at 2 per million across the board.

Rural residents overall mortality rate used to be almost double that of urbanites, but theres been a leveling effect with the explosive growth of Chinese cities. While moving to cities has upped peoples incomes and educational attainment, its also exposed them to the ills of urban livingnamely, more pollution, less cardiovascular activity, and a less healthy diet, all contributing to higher rates of illnesses like cancer and heart disease.

Its important to note that while the paper details death and disease rates, it doesnt include information about access to care or quality of care, which are more indicative of equity.

Chinas urban migration between 19882015 was so massive that its been called not just the biggest human exodus in history, but the biggest migration of any type of mammal. A 2015 estimate put the number of migrant workers at 277 million. According to the paper, both urban and rural incomes increased more than 10-fold since the early 1990sbut the income gap increased even more. Factory and office workers in cities make on average three times more than agricultural workers in the countryside, and people working in coastal areas have by far the highest per capita disposable incomes.

While millions in China are no longer extremely poor, millions are still poor; 43 million people were estimated to be living below the poverty line in 2018. The governments main strategy in its declared war on poverty consists of moving rural residents to cities. But big cities are already sprawling and overcrowded, and plunking farmers down in high-rise apartments doesnt guarantee a better life, especially if they dont have the skills to get a city job.

The conditions that enabled the Chinese Miraclean authoritarian government, a huge working-age population, and population control via the one-child policycan only keep on giving for so long. In particular, the working population is aging, and as millions of workers approach retirement, the ranks available to take their placeand to fund the countrys pension systemarent as plentiful.

In short, China is approaching a fascinating (and potentially treacherous) inflection point. In the wake of its incredible 30 years, its path to sustained progress will likely be more complex. If its going to produce a second miracle and eradicate poverty across the country, its commitment to becoming a tech superpower may be an apt starting point. And its lax approach to privacy and the powerful tools already in place to collect data on multiple aspects of its citizens lives will give China a technological edge over its Western counterparts.

Whether Chinas ambitions will pan out remains to be seen, but its got its work cut out for it on multiple fronts.

For one, its economic growth has come with a hefty environmental price tag. As the paper put it, growth has been achieved at the expense of natural resources and the environment, which has led to excessive emissions including wastewater, waste gas, solid waste, and carbon dioxide that extended from the developed east region to the undeveloped west region. Though its already begun to take drastic measures to improve its environmental recordand safeguard the health of its land and peopleChinas size and clout mean it should be aiming to be a world leader in caring for the planet, rather than reactively combating an abysmal environmental record.

Its human rights record also leaves much to be desired. International outcry has grown over the CCPs treatment of Uighurs in the north-west Xinjiang province, and tensions have been building for months in Hong Kong. On the business side, a trade war with the US has escalated, and telecoms giant Huawei was banned from US communications networks in May (though theres since been a reprieve).

China has set its sights high, and the hurdles it will have to clear to reach its goals arent small. A country that can reduce poverty by 86 percent in 30 years has some experience solving tough problemsbut unlike 30 years ago, China is now at the center of the world stage, and the world should thus hold it to a high standard. Well soon see if it has another miracle up its sleeve.

Image Credit: Photo bywu yionUnsplash

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The End of the Chinese Miracle Is in Sight. What's Next? - Singularity Hub

When I imagine the inner workings of a robot, I think hard, cold mechanics running on physics: shafts, wheels, gears. Human bodies, in contrast, are more of a contained molecular soup operating on the principles of biochemistry.

Yet similar to robots, our cells are also attuned to mechanical forcesjust at a much smaller scale. Tiny pushes and pulls, for example, can urge stem cells to continue dividing, or nudge them into maturity to replace broken tissues. Chemistry isnt king when it comes to governing our bodies; physical forces are similarly powerful. The problem is how to tap into them.

In a new perspectives article in Science, Dr. Khalid Salaita and graduate student Aaron Blanchard from Emory University in Atlanta point to DNA as the solution. The team painted a futuristic picture of DNA mechanotechnology, in which we use DNA machines to control our biology. Rather than a toxic chemotherapy drip, for example, a cancer patient may one day be injected with DNA nanodevices that help their immune cells better grab ontoand snuff outcancerous ones.

For a long time, said Salaita, scientists have been good at making micro devices, hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair. Its been more challenging to make functional nano devices, thousands of times smaller than that. But using DNA as the component parts is making it possible to build extremely elaborate nano devices because the DNA parts self-assemble.

Just as the steam engine propelled civilization through the first industrial revolution, DNA devices may fundamentally change medicine, biological research, and the development of biomaterials, further merging man and machine.

When picturing a tiny, whirling machine surveying the body, DNA probably isnt the first candidate that comes to mind. Made up of long chains of four lettersA, T, C, and GDNA is normally secluded inside a tiny porous cage in every cell, in the shape of long chains wrapped around a protein core.

Yet several properties make DNA a fascinating substrate for making mechano-machines, the authors said. One is its predictability: like soulmates, A always binds to T, and C with G. This chemical linking in turn forms the famous double helix structure. By giving the letters little chemical additions, or swapping them out altogether with unnatural synthetic letters, scientists have been able to form entirely new DNA assemblies, folded into various 3D structures.

Rather than an unbreakable, immutable chain, DNA components are more like Japanese origami paper, or Lego blocks. While they cant make every single shapetry building a completely spherical Death Star out of Legothe chemistry is flexible enough that scientists can tweak its structure, stiffness, and coiling by shifting around the letters or replacing them with entirely new ones.

In the late fall of 1980, Dr. Nadrian Seeman was relaxing at the campus pub at New York University when he noticed a mind-bending woodcut, Depth, by MC Escher. With a spark of insight, he realized that he could form similar lattice shapes using DNA, which would make it a lot easier for him to study the molecules shape. More than a decade later, his lab engineered the first artificial 3D nanostructurea cube made out of DNA molecules. The field of DNA nanotechnology was born.

Originally considered a novelty, technologists rushed to make increasingly complex shapes, such as smiley faces, snowflakes, a tiny world map, and more recently, the worlds smallest playable tic-tac-toe set. It wasnt just fun. Along the way, scientists uncovered sophisticated principles and engineering techniques to shape DNA strands into their desired structures, forming a blueprint of DNA engineering.

Then came the DNA revolution. Reading and writing the molecule from scratch became increasingly cheaper, making it easier to experiment with brand-new designs. Additional chemical or fluorescent tags or other modifications gave scientists a direct view of their creations. Rather than a fringe academic pursuit, DNA origami became accessible to most labs, and the number of devices rapidly explodeddevices that can sense, transmit, and generate mechanical forces inside cells.

If you put together these three main components of mechanical devices, you begin to get hammers and cogs and wheels and you can start building nano machines, said Salaita.

Salaita is among several dozen labs demoing the practical uses of DNA devices.

For example, our cells are full of long-haul driver proteins that carry nutrients and other cargo throughout their interior by following specific highways (it eerily looks like a person walking down a tightrope). Just as too much traffic damages our roadways, changes in our cells logistical players can also harm the cells skeleton. Here, scientists have used DNA handles to measure force-induced changes like stretching, unfolding, and rupture of molecules involved in our cells distribution system to look for signs of trouble.

Then there are DNA tension sensors, which act like scales and other force gauges in our macroscopic world. Made up of a stretchable DNA spring to extend with force, and a fluorescent ruler that measures the extension, each sensor is anchored at one end (generally, the glass bottom of a Petri dish) and binds to a cell at the other. If the pulling force exceeds a certain threshold, the spring unfolds and quenches the fluorescent light in the ruler, giving scientists a warning that the cellular tugging is too strong.

The work may sound abstruse, but its implications are plenty. One is for CAR-T, the revolutionary cancer treatment that uses gene therapy to amp up immune cells with better graspers to target tumor cells. The kiss of death between graspers and tumors are extremely difficult to measure because its light and fleeting. Using a DNA tension sensor, the team was able to track the force during the interaction, which could help scientists engineer better CAR-T therapies. A similar construct, the DNA tension gauge tether, irreversibly ruptures under too much force. The gauge is used to track how stem cells develop into brain cells under mechanical forces, and how immune cells track down and recognize foreign invasion.

[Immune] T cells are constantly sampling cells throughout your body using these mechanical tugs. They bind and pull on proteins on a cells surface and, if the bond is strong, thats a signal that the T cell has found a foreign agent, explained Salaita. DNA devices provide an unprecedented look at these forces in the immune system, which in turn could predict how strongly the body will mount an immune response.

To the authors, however, the most promising emerging DNA devices dont just observethey can also generate forces. DNA walkers, for example, uses DNA feet to transport (and sort) molecular cargo while walking down a track also made of DNA strands. When the feet bind to the track (A to T, C to G), it releases energy that propel the walker forward.

Even more exciting are self-assembling DNA machines. The field has DNA-based devices that transmit, sense and generate mechanical forces, the authors said. But eventually, their integration will produce nanomachines that exert mechanical control over living systems.

As costs keep dropping, the authors believe well witness even more creative and sophisticated DNA nanomachines.

Several hiccups do stand in the way. Like other biomolecules, foreign DNA can be chopped up by the bodys immune system as an invader. However, the team believes that the limitation wont be a problem in the next few years as biochemistry develops chemically-modified artificial DNA letters that resist the bodys scissors.

Another problem is that the DNA devices can generate very little forceless than a billionth the weight of a paperclip, which is a little too low to efficiently control forces in our cells. The authors have a solution here too: coupling many force-generating DNA units together, or engineer translators that can turn electrical energy into mechanical forcesimilar to the way our muscles work.

Fundamentally, any advancements in DNA mechanotechnology wont just benefit medicine; they will also feed back into the design of nanomaterials. The techniques, tools and design principlesare not specific to DNA, the authors said. Add in computer-aided design templates, similar to those used in 3D printing, and potentially anyone can dream up a nano-machine design and make it a reality, said Salaita.

Image Credit: Emory University. DNA mechanotechnology expands the opportunities for research involving biomedicine and materials sciences, says Khalid Salaita, right, professor of chemistry at Emory University and co-author of the article, along with Aaron Blanchard, left, a graduate student in the Salaita Lab.

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DNA Nanomachines Are Opening Medicine to the World of Physics - Singularity Hub

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to disrupt our world. With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving and decision making, coupled with advances in data collection and aggregation, analytics and computer processing power, AI presents opportunities to complement and supplement human intelligence and enrich the way people live and work.

On the other hand, some of the leading scientists and thinkers have warned about 'technological singularity'. Technological singularity refers to the belief that ordinary humans will someday be overtaken by artificially intelligent machines or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence, or both.

It is a technology that takes in huge amounts of information from a specific domain and uses it to make a decision in the service of a specified goal.

For example, AI technology can be used to analyze loan repayment histories (information) of a person to decide whether to give an individual a loan or not (decision) so as to maximize the profits for the lender (goal).

In 2016, Google-run artificial intelligence (AI) programme "AlphaGo" defeated legendary player Lee Se-dol in Go - a complex Chinese board game that is considered the "quintessential unsolved problem" for machine intelligence.Though the AI has many benefits, it has sparked up a debate about its dangers to humanity.

AI machines are like other human beings in terms of their capacities for decision and action. They cannot be compared to other machines as the degree of independence that AI technologies have is much more complex.

AI is an attempt to reproduce super intelligent humans. It chooses one aspect of human beings, namely the intelligence, and artificially magnifies it to an extent that allows the machine to do things far better than humans can.

AI is associated with superlative memory, calculative power, decision-making capacity, high speeds of action, etc. These machines thus become super-beings, and a society filled with many super-beings is a recipe for disaster.AI machines are a mirror to our desire for immortality and the absence of human weaknesses.

Most importantly, the AI has not been used to get rid of poverty, to have a more equitable distribution of wealth, or to make people more content with what they have. Instead, they will primarily be dictated by profit for the companies that make them.

Healthcare and medicine become affordable and accessible with AI taking centre stage in telemedicine and quick diagnosis. Water and energy networks become accessible and widely usable when AI can mediate the use of different sources.

Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the AI revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with computers).

Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs - mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too. This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies that develop AI, as well as for the companies that adopt it.

For example, imagine how much money a car-aggregators make if they remodel their business to userobots as drivers.

Thus, the world is facing two developments that cannot be placed together: enormous wealth concentrated in few hands and large numbers of people out of work.

Part of the solution lies in educating or retraining people in tasks that AI tools aren't good at. For example, artificial intelligence is not suited for jobs involving creativity, planning and "cross-domain" thinking.

A more promising solution is creating lower-paying jobs involving the "people skills" that AI lacks, such as social workers, bartenders etc. these professions require nuanced human interaction. But the question is how many such workers does a society really need?

The NITI Aayog has published an ambitious discussion paper on kick-starting the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem in India.

The paper talks about powering five sectors - agriculture, education, healthcare, smart cities/infrastructure and transport - with AI.

The discussion paper accepts that adoption of AI till date has been driven primarily from a commercial perspective.Further, it notes that technology disruptions like AI are once-in-a-generation phenomenon, and hence large-scale adoption strategies need to strike a balance between narrow definitions of financial impact and the greater good.

Data is one of the primary drivers of AI solutions, and thus appropriate handling of data, ensuring privacy and security is of prime importance. In order for India to ride the AI innovation wave, a robust data protection framework and intellectual property framework are required.

Despite the beneficial uses of AI, scientists and leading thinkers like Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, and Elon Musk warn us about the dangers of AI and the coming technological singularity.

It is believed that the purely intelligent creatures, whether people or machines are bad for humanity.

On the other hand, AI, by itself, is not looking to destroy humanity. Whether we use AI to augment ourselves, create new species, or use it to destroy lives and what we've built is entirely in our hands - at least for now.

No matter how dangerous AI might be for humanity, it's clear that there's no slowing down the pace of progress. Regardless of how many deponents come out against AI, there's no way to stop its advancement.

Future discussions will help in directing AI for good rather than bad, but no matter what happens, there's certainly no stopping the wheels of progress as they slowly grind forward.

(Article by ClearIAS Team. ClearIAS.com is a popular website which helps IAS aspirants to prepare for UPSC Civil Services Exam online)

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Is Artificial Intelligence a danger to humanity? Take a look at the truth - India Today

SUPERMASSIVE black holes are such a huge force in the universe that you'd think they'd be easy to spot from a distance.

However, an image released by Nasa proves this is not the case as the black hole in the photo below can be hard to pinpoint.

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The black hole in this image is within the bright elliptical galaxy called Messier 87 (M87).

If you look really closely to the upper left-hand side of the picture you should be able to spot jets of brightness sprouting from the centre of a cloud-like glow.

These jet-like strands are gas and dust particles being pulled into the black hole, which give off heat during the process and can be captured by an infrared camera.

Earlier this year, a close up image of this black hole was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope for the first time ever.

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The infrared image above was taken by the Spitzer Space telescope, which was focusing on M87 with its bright blue hues.

The jets of light sprouting from it are thought to spread for thousands of light-years.

Nasa annotated the image so it was easier for people to imagine the black hole in context.

The black hole, described by scientists as a "monster", is 24billion miles across - 3million times the size of the Earth.

Sitting about 300 million trillion miles away from our planet, it was photographed up close by a network of eight telescopes across the globe known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

When used together, the telescopes combine with the power of a single telescope "the size of our planet", scientists said.

The black hole is so far away, that taking the up close photo of it was equivalent to snapping a DVD on the surface of the moon.

Black holes are technically invisible because no light escapes from them but in certain circumstances, like in a bright galaxy, an outline of a black hole and the light it's swallowing can be seen.

What is a black hole? The key facts

Here's what you need to know...

What is a black hole?

What is an event horizon?

What is a singularity?

How are black holes created?

In other space news, a cannibalistic nearby galaxy has devoured several of its neighbours and scientists think our Milky Way is next.

Aplanet so massive it should not existhas been found by baffled astronomers in a nearby star system.

MATT JAMN Space fans cough up 5000 to live in Spanish cave to 'experience life on Mars'

FIRST CONTACT? Nasa scientist says 'we're close' to huge reveal about life on Mars

ANCIENT APOCALYPSE Asteroid massacred early humans in collision with Earth 13,000 years ago

MUMMY MIA Long-lost temple of Egyptian king found sparking 'curse of the pharaoh' fears

SPACE MYSTERY Mysterious 'cosmic web' that sticks universe together pictured for first time

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UFO MYSTERY 'Alien tech' found by Blink-182 singer 'could be scrap from Roswell crash'

And, distant planets may host even more life than we have here on Earth,according to one shock study.

Did you spot the black hole? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

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Theres an enormous black hole lurking in this Nasa photo can you find it? - The Sun

THE COSMIC web responsible for 'gluing' the far-flung galaxies of the universe together has been directly observed for the first time ever.

Scientists using the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope were able to spot an ancient cluster of galaxies 12billion light years away that are linked together by a network of gas filaments.

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The cosmic web theory is central to current explanations of how the universe formed after the Big Bang.

However, until this observation, there had only been indirect evidence to suggest it existed.

Prof Michele Fumagalli, an astrophysicist at Durham University and co-author of the work, said: It is very exciting to clearly see for the first time multiple and extended filaments in the early universe.

"We finally have a way to map these structures directly and to understand in detail their role in regulating the formation of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

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The research team were able to directly detect the web by using intensive equipment designed to pick up the faintest of structures.

Galaxy clusters are known for being the most tightly gravitationally-bound structures in the universe.

They can contain hundreds of thousands of galaxies.

It has been predicted that 60% of the hydrogen created during the Big Bang can be seen as long filaments strung out across space in the cosmic web.

By mapping out some of the light emitted by hydrogen within a galaxy cluster called SSA22, the team were able to identify individual filaments of gas that make up a web-like structure between galaxies.

Erika Hamden, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona said: "These observations of the faintest, largest structures in the universe are a key to understanding how our universe evolved through time, how galaxies grow and mature, and how the changing environments around galaxies created what we see around us."

It is thought that the cosmic web is the scaffolding of the cosmos and provides the framework for galaxies to form and evolve.

The latest observations support this theory by revealing supermassive black holes, starbursting galaxies and lots of active stars all at the intersections between the filaments.

First author of the research Hideki Umehata said: "This suggests very strongly that gas falling along the filaments under the force of gravity triggers the formation of starbursting galaxies and supermassive black holes, giving the universe the structure that we see today."

The cosmic web has been observed before but only as short blobs of gas beyond galaxies.

Umehata noted: "Now we have been able to clearly show that these filaments are extremely long, going even beyond the edge of the field that we viewed.

"This adds credence to the idea that these filaments are actually powering the intense activity that we see within the galaxies inside the filaments."

The findings have been published in the journal Science.

What is a black hole? The key facts

Here's what you need to know...

What is a black hole?

What is an event horizon?

What is a singularity?

How are black holes created?

In other space news, acannibalistic nearby galaxyhas devoured several of its neighbours and scientists think our Milky Way is next.

Aplanet so massive it should not existhas been found by baffled astronomers in a nearby star system.

MATT JAMN Space fans cough up 5000 to live in Spanish cave to 'experience life on Mars'

FIRST CONTACT? Nasa scientist says 'we're close' to huge reveal about life on Mars

ANCIENT APOCALYPSE Asteroid massacred early humans in collision with Earth 13,000 years ago

MUMMY MIA Long-lost temple of Egyptian king found sparking 'curse of the pharaoh' fears

Exclusive

UFO MYSTERY 'Alien tech' found by Blink-182 singer 'could be scrap from Roswell crash'

And, there's an enormous black hole lurking in this Nasa photo can you find it?

What do you think about this cosmic web revelation? Let us know in the comments...

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

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Mysterious cosmic web that sticks the universe together pictured for first time - The Sun

AUTOMATION

UPS Gets FAA Clearance to Roll Out a Fleet of Delivery DronesAllison Matyus | Digital TrendsThe move essentially will allow UPS to create its own drone airline. The companysUPS Flight Forward programnow has full FAA Part 135 Standard certification to operate a fleet of drones beyond an operators line of sight and the ability to fly drones at night. The companys Matternet drones will at first be used for the delivery of medical products and specimens.

Boston Dynamics Spot Robot Dog Goes on SaleErico Guizzo | IEEE SpectrumThe machines animal-like behavior regularly electrifies crowds at tech conferences, and like other Boston Dynamics robots, Spot is a YouTube sensation whosevideos amass millions of views. Now anyone interested in buying a Spotor a pack of themcan go to the companyswebsiteand submit anorder form.

Should Central Banks Issue Digital Currency? Suddenly, Its an Urgent Question.Mike Orcutt | MIT Technology ReviewFor years, powerful central banks around the world have claimed to be studying digital currencies, and most have left open the possibility that one day they might launch their own. That day may be dawningmuch earlier than anyone expected.

Elon Musk Just UnveiledStarship, SpaceXs Human-Carrying RocketDaniel Oberhaus | WiredBehind [Elon Musk] stood the hull of a gleaming, bullet-shaped rocket clad in stainless steel. It looked like something pulled straight from the pages of a pulp science fiction novel, but this is no fantasy. Starshipis quite unlike anything thats ever been sent to space. Its a vehicle that Musk hasdescribed as a strange cross between a rocket booster, a crew capsule, and a skydiver.

Artificial Skin Gives Haptic Feedback, Could Let You Feel VRGeorgina Torbet | Digital TrendsThe skin is made of silicone and electrodes, and it can conform to shapes such as wrapping around a fingertip or wrist to provide feedback in the form of pressure or vibration. The next step will be to develop a fully wearable prototype for applications in rehabilitation and virtual and augmented reality, Sonar said.

Image Credit:drmakete lab /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 5) - Singularity Hub

Windows Central

Ashes of the Singularity v2.4 hits Steam with Vulkan support ... Windows Central Vulkan isn't a new unit in Ashes of the Singularity. But it is a superb feature for AMD GPU owners to enjoy a more stable experience. There's also a whole lot ... Vulkan support added to massive-scale RTS, Ashes of the SingularityNeowin Ashes of the Singularity Pairs Massive 2.4 Update With 50% Off Sale ...Shacknews Major Update, Free DLC, and Vulkan Support Now AvailableGamasutra all 5 news articles »

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Ashes of the Singularity v2.4 hits Steam with Vulkan support ... - Windows Central

Technological disruptors like Elon Musk, Google and Amazon will force industries and companies to accelerate or die. Companies will have to accelerate innovation and move to bolder innovation and attempt to shift to technological leapfrogging and shoot for far more aggressive productivity gains.

Toyota is reacting to the Tesla Electric cars with a plan to leapfrog batteries to solid state batteries in 2022 with triple the energy density of current batteries and lower costs and faster charging times.

Compute power increased by a trillion times over the last fifty years but the adoption of IT was generally manageable for most companies and industries. Bill Gates was more aggressive than his competitors in driving the PC age. Steve Jobs combined technologies and design to produce the smartphone and tablet.

It is the combination of technological capabilities (artificial intelligence, cloud computing, sensors, robotics etc) and aggressive and well capitalized bold business innovators that will force a shift to moonshot innovation as a mainstream part of business.

Amazon will use Whole Foods to go after market share and worry about profit later. They will use a low price halo on key products. Whole Foods will also be par to of Amazons distribution chain and the reward program will be Amazon Prime.

Walmart is teaming up with Google and Google Express to compete.

Amazon has announced plans to have a huge impact on global logistics (shipping, trucking).

Amazon will force competition and adaptation in more areas of retail and logistics.

Elon Musk has the lowest priced space launch services with Spacex. Soon with the Falcon Heavy Spacex will have the largest cargo capacity into space. Mastering reusability and higher launch rate will crush most of the space launch competition. Competitors will need massive national government support in order to get back into the game. This will be similar to the support that received in order to become a competitor to Boeing in the commercial jet business.

The rocket technologies that Elon Musk is leveraging have mostly existed since the 1970s. There is some additional computer capabilities and improved materials as well, but much of the reusability of rockets was already envisioned for the Space Shuttle. The cheap reusability that was envisioned for the Space Shuttle was killed with compromises to bureaucracy and politics.

Elon and Googles plan for a large high speed internet satellite network will bring competition to mobile and cable internet providers around the world. Mobile companies will try to respond with 5G for higher speed but the rate of innovation has been one generation every ten years and cable has made very little improvement over the last 20 years.

For electric cars and batteries and solar, Elon Musk has talked about making factories ten times better every ten years by reinventing the factory every two years.

Chinas competitive capabilities rest more with the innovation in Shenzhens smartphone technology hub and with new economy leaders like Alibaba and Tencent than with overall industry and market size. China has a section of its economy with aggressive technological leadership and innovation.

Singapore is using rapid legislative change (weeks instead of years) and targeted policy like the Smart Nation initiative to be the first to achieve smart driving cars and buses at city scale.

Chinas government supports transforming city scale and larger regions into massive factory zones.

Big bold bets on disruptive innovation at scale will transform industries to a new era of hypercompetition.

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Technological Disruptors and not Tech Singularity will force companies to accelerate or die - Next Big Future

In April of this year, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading over 410 parts per million (ppm). This is a brand-new state of affairs, as humans have never existed on Earth with CO2 levels over 300 ppm. If carbon emissions continue their current trend, our atmosphere could get to a point it hasnt been at in 50 million yearswhen temperatures were 18F (10C) higher and there was almost no ice on the planet (meaning there was a lot more water and a lot less land).

Theres long been a consensus between multiple countries to try to limit the temperature change from global warming to two degrees Celsius. This is critical for many reasons, not least the effect hotter temperatures will have (and have already had) on food production.

But author and activist Paul Hawken says two degrees isnt enoughnot nearly enough, in fact. In a moving presentation at Singularity Universitys Global Summit last week in San Francisco, Hawken shared details from his recently-released book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

The term drawdown refers to the point in time when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. To figure out how to reach that point, Project Drawdown brought together researchers in various fields from around the world to identify, measure, and model the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. The book describes each solutions history, its carbon impact, its relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works.

We found that the mantra for global warming is all about energy, energy, energy, Hawken said. Those are critical solutions, dont get me wrong, but somehow we have this idea that if we get energy right then we get a hall pass to the 22nd centuryand nothing could be further from the truth.

Below are the top solutions from Drawdowns model. Its likely at least one will surprise you.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) largely replaced ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigeration systems after the 1987 Montreal Protocol. While HFCs are better for the ozone, though, theyre a lot worse for the atmosphere, with 1,000 to 9,000 times the capacity to warm the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Countries are now aiming to phase out HFCs, too, starting with high-income countries in 2019. Natural refrigerant substitutes like propane and ammonium are already on the market.

Drawdown found that over thirty years, containing 87 percent of refrigerants likely to be released could avoid emissions equal to 89.7 gigatons of CO2with a projected net price tag of $903 billion by 2050

Wind turbines currently supply around 4 percent of global energy, and could account for up to 30 percent by 2040. In some areas, wind energy is already cheaper than energy from coal, and costs will continue to drop as the technology improves.

Drawdown research found that increasing onshore wind to 21.6 percent of global energy supply by 2050 could reduce emissions by 84.6 gigatons of CO2. The estimated cost is a hefty $1.23 trillion, but it would pay for itself several times over, as wind turbines could produce net savings of $7.4 trillion over three decades of operation.

Since winds not always blowing in most parts of the world, growing wind infrastructure needs to be accompanied by investment in storage and transmission infrastructure too.

One third of all the food thats grown or prepared gets thrown away. In a world where hunger is still a very real problem for millions of people, this is nothing short of absurd. And not only does the food itself get wasted, so do all the components that went into producing it, like water, energy, and human labor. Food production also generates greenhouse gases, and organic trash produces methane. Add up all these components, and food waste accounts for about eight percent of global emissions.

In poorer countries food waste tends to happen earlier in the supply chain, as when produce rots on farms or spoils during storage or distribution. This can be remedied by improving infrastructure for storage, processing, and transportation.

In wealthier nations, retailers and consumers reject food based on cosmetic imperfections, or throw it out when its expiration date passes. National policies against food waste like those enacted in France last year are needed to encourage change, as is a loosening of cosmetic standards for produce by both end consumers and retail chains.

After taking into account the adoption of plant-rich diets, Drawdown found that if 50 percent of food waste is reduced by 2050, avoided emissions could be equal to 26.2 gigatons of CO2. Reducing waste also avoids the deforestation for additional farmland, preventing 44.4 gigatons of additional emissions.

If cattle were their own nation, they would be the worlds third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As of 2014, the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization found that 14.5 percent of all emissions stemming from human activity come from livestock.

Thats just one good reason to eat more plants. A plant-based diet is also healthier and in many cases more affordable than meat (especially if you consider the impact of government subsidies, such as those benefiting the US livestock industry).

Altering our diet is easier said than done, as peoples food choices are highly personal as well as culturalbut making plant-based options widely available and educating populations about plants health benefits are a good starting point.

Drawdown found that if 50 percent of the worlds population restricted their diet to a healthy 2,500 calories per day and reduced meat consumption overall, at least 26.7 gigatons of emissions could be avoided, plus another 39.3 gigatons from avoided deforestation from land use change.

Tropical forests once covered 12 percent of the worlds land, but now cover just five percent. Much of the clearing has been to make way for agriculture (either crops or livestock). These forests continue to be cleared in some parts of the world, but in others, theyre being restored.

As a forest ecosystem recovers, trees, soil, leaf litter, and other vegetation absorb and hold carbon, Drawdowns tropical forests page says. As flora and fauna return and interactions between organisms and species revive, the forest regains its multidimensional roles: supporting the water cycle, conserving soil, protecting habitat and pollinators, providing food, medicine, and fiber, and giving people places to live, adventure, and worship.

Forests can be restored by releasing land from non-forest use and letting nature do its thing. People can also cultivate and plant native seedlings and remove invasive species to accelerate the process.

Drawdowns model assumes restoration could occur on 435 million acres of degraded tropical land. Through natural regrowth, committed land could sequester 1.4 tons of CO2 per acre annually, for a total of 61.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050.

Women with more education have fewer children, and the children they do have are healthier. Maternal and infant mortality rates are lower for educated women. Girls who stay in school longer are less likely to marry as children or against their will, they have lower rates of HIV/AIDS and malaria, and their agricultural plots are more productive and their families better nourished.

Drawdown found that economic, cultural, and safety-related barriers prevent 62 million girls around the world from realizing their right to education, and lists these strategies as being key to change:

The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization estimates universal education in low- and lower-middle-income countries could be achieved by closing an annual financing gap of $39 billion. This could result in an emissions reduction of 59.6 gigatons by 2050.

Drawdowns family planning page states 225 million women in lower-income countries say they want the ability to choose whether and when to become pregnant but lack the necessary access to contraception. The need persists in some high-income countries as well, including the United States, where 45 percent of pregnancies are unintended.

The UNs medium variant global population projectionof 9.7 billion people by 2050 assumes a decline in fertility levels in countries where large families are still common. To achieve this figure (as opposed to the high variant), improving womens access to reproductive health services and family planning is essential, above all in less-developed countries.

Drawdown modeled the impact of family planning based on the difference in how much energy, building space, food, waste, and transportation would be used in a world with little to no investment in family planning compared to one in which the 9.7 billion projection is realized. The resulting emissions reductions could be 119.2 gigatons of CO2. Half this total was allocated to educating girls.

Family planning and educating girls are closely linked in that the former is highly affected by the latterand theyre both key to managing global population growth. Drawdown realized the exact dynamic between these two solutions is impossible to determine, and thus allocated 50 percent of the total potential impact59.6 gigatonsto each. Their models assume these impacts result from thirteen years of schooling, including primary through secondary education.

The total atmospheric CO2 reduction of 119.2 gigatons that could result from empowering and educating women and girls makes this the number one solution to reversing global warming.

A girl who is allowed to be in school and come to be a woman on her termsmakes very different reproductive choices, Hawken said. And when we modeled this we modeled family planning clinics everywhere. Not just in Africa, but in Arkansas. Women everywhere should be supported in their reproductive health and well-being for their families.

Hawken concluded his talk with a perspective on climate change I had never heard before, and most of the audience likely hadnt either.

Global warming isnt happening to us. Its happening for us. Its a gift. Every system without feedback dies. This is feedback. Its an offering to re-imagine who we are and what we can create with our minds, our hearts, and our brilliance.

His presentation received a standing ovation.

Stock Media provided by nito/ Pond5

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Why Empowering Women Is the Best Way to Solve Climate Change - Singularity Hub