SpaceX Did It: The Falcon Heavy Mission Sends "Starman' Into Space

By Nick Lucchesi

After many long years of waiting, on Tuesday, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket into space. Though it seemed the launch was going to be scrubbed, the Elon Musk’s aerospace company pulled it off just in time — just 45 minutes before the launch window closed.

And damn, did they do it in style.

Those at Cape Canaveral — and others watching from home — witnessed the rocket system, comprised of three boosters with nine engines each, collectively generate 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off from launchpad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

As the rocket shot into the sky, worries that ice build-up on the central booster’s might fall onto the shorter side-cores was present, as the were concerns that the side boosters may snap off the central booster from the pressure. Luckily for SpaceX, those disaster scenarios didn’t occur as the rocket shot through the blue Floridian sky. There was no fireworks display of explosions on Tuesday, just controlled rocket science.

The real show was only beginning, though. The three boosters separated from each other on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, flipped according to plan, and headed back to Earth. The two side boosters landed side-by-side in perfect unison on landing pads near the launch site a few minutes after launch:

The central booster landed landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida, a feat dampened only by a video camera that shorted out because of the heat and force of the incoming rocket.

The best was yet to come though: The payload for this demonstration mission — SpaceX hopes to show how its reusable rockets can be combined to carry heavier payloads and astronauts to space — was made for an internet audience.

His midnight-cherry Tesla Roadster, with a dummy in the driver’s seat, complete with a SpaceX branded spacesuit, was sent on a billion-year Martian orbit around the sun. The car safely separated from the payload fairing and there’s even a live feed of its orbit.

Musk has been talking about the Falcon Heavy rocket since 2011. It seemed it would launch in September, but that was pushed back due to January, and then on January 27, Musk announced the launch date.

Then on Monday, SpaceX shared this incredible animation of what it expected the test launch to look like. 

If you missed it, here’s the full mission:

• Written by Nick Lucchesi

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Success! SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket on Historic Maiden Voyage

Scientists find TRAPPIST-1 planets are temperate and have more water than Earth

A set of new studies sheds light on the properties of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system that is considered the most optimal candidate for finding biological life outside of our solar system.

The recently published studies in the journals Nature Astronomy and Astronomy and Astrophysics shed light on the TRAPPIST-1 star system, and offer new insight into the planets’ composition.

The new studies suggest the tightly-packed planets located some 40 light years from Earth are the best chance of discovering alien life. Ever since the planets were discovered, scientists have been studying the star system to understand what the planets are like on their surface.

Now, the recently published studies suggest that the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1have great potential to host lie, although researchers caution they are  ‘far from establishing’ this for certain.

The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system is made up of seven planets (b, c, d, e, f, g, h) that orbit around the star and, although scientists argue their composition rocky, they are not sterile rocky worlds.

“We now know more about TRAPPIST-1 than any other planetary system apart from our own,” said Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, and co-author of the new study. “The improved densities in our study dramatically refine our understanding of the nature of these mysterious worlds.”

Based on the analysis of how starlight interacts with the planets’ atmospheres, scientists concluded that all seven alien worlds are made of rock just like the Earth, with water accounting for as much as five percent of their mass. Our planet, for example, only has 0.02%.

As for the size, density and amount of radiation the planets receive from their star, the fourth planet (TRAPPIST-1e) is the most similar to Earth; It seems to be the Earth-like in terms of its size and could house liquid water, as reported by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Furthermore, researchers also found that the seven planets are considered temperate, which means that under a certain set of geological and atmospheric conditions, all of the planets could meet the necessary requirements to allow water to remain in a liquid form on their surface.

Speaking about TRAPPIST-1, Dr. Amaury Triaud, from the University of Birmingham, a leading member of the international team, said:

“Of the seven planets, and of all the exoplanets that have been identified so far, Trappist-1e is the most resembling Earth, when we consider the amount of energy a planet receives from its star, and its density, which reflects its internal composition. As our next step, we would like to find out whether the planet has an atmosphere since our only method to detect the presence of biology beyond the solar system relies on studying the chemistry of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.”

More information about the TRAPPIST-1 system, and whether or not it’s an ideal place for alien life to thrive will become clearer once NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope is launched into orbit next year.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

 

Artist’s conception of the portion of the Square Kilometer Array to be built in South Africa

SKA Organisation

Astronomers ready to unveil prototype radio dish for landmark observatory

By Sarah Wild

A landmark radio astronomy project is about to unveil its first prototype dish antenna.

Tomorrow, researchers and engineers with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)—to be the largest radio telescope in the world—will inaugurate the dish at a test site in Shijiazhuang, China. And they expect to erect a sister prototype in South Africa by April. But funding, technical, and bureaucratic challenges have forced planners to downsize the first phase of the SKA—envisioned to include hundreds of dishes in South Africa and thousands in Australia—and delay completion by at least 2 years, to 2026.

Still, SKA officials are thrilled to see the first prototypes appear. “It’s great to actually see metal being deployed,” says Phil Diamond, director-general of the SKA Organisation, based in Manchester, U.K. “This is the culmination of a 5-year design program.”

When complete, the SKA will be much more sensitive than current radio telescopes that collect electromagnetic signals from space. In the first phase, Australia is expected to host some 130,000 dishes designed to collect low-frequency signals, while South Africa will host nearly 200 midfrequency dishes. Planners hope to substantially increase those numbers in a second phase. Researchers will use data collected by the linked arrays to investigate a wide range of questions, including what happened just after the big bang and whether there is other life in the universe.

The €674 million project, now backed by 10 partner countries, originally hoped to begin construction in 2018. But that date was pushed back to 2020 as a result of organizational hurdles, including the creation of an organization to oversee the SKA Observatory, and funding troubles forced a downsizing. Diamond says those issues have been resolved, but that countries still need to sign the legal documents.

In the meantime, the first prototype midfrequency dish, built by Chinese company CETC54 in collaboration European partner companies, will be unveiled tomorrow in China, to be joined within a few months by a second prototype in South Africa. The Chinese-led consortium’s design won out against Canadian and South African competitors, in part because of the dish’s superior structural integrity. The midfrequency dishes will need to survive the telescope’s 50-year operational life, so they will be rigorously tested.

Researchers expect to spend at least 6 months, and likely more, testing the two prototypes before attempting to move to full-scale production. “They’re at the start of a long road,” says Tony Beasley, head of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. (The United States is not a SKA partner.) “You need to make sure design is correct.”

{ http://www.sciencemag.org/}

Bryce Zabel – Hollywood and UFOs – February 6, 2018

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas 

Bryce Zabel

Bryce Zabel has a long list of achievements in the feature film and television industry. Much of this includes UFO and alien related projects. This includes writing and producing the NBC series Dark Skies and the Syfy movie Official Denial. He also was on the writing staff of Steven Spielberg’s Taken and ABC’s Lois and Clark (don’t forget, Superman is an alien). More recently, he co-wrote the book A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact with Richard Dolan. He is currently working on two UFO related movies. One is about the Betty and Barney Hill abductions and the other is a movie about the work of Roswell researchers Stanton Friedman and Don Schmitt.

In this interview, we discuss Bryce’s current project, some interest from a famous Hollywood actor/comedian and what it is like making UFO/Alien related entertainment projects. We also discuss Bryce’s upcoming talk at the 2018 International UFO Congress.

For more about Byce, visit his websites: www.StellarProductions.today – www.BryceZabel.com – www.AfterDisclosure.com – www.WhatIfBeatles.com

For more about the UFO Congress, visit: UFOCongress.com

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

The Pentagon has been chasing UFOs for a long, long time

Projects that began more than five decades ago and still continue to this day include efforts to evaluate bizarre sightings and exotic objects, scan the skies for signs of intelligent transmissions, and develop instruments capable of sniffing out signs of life on faraway worlds. The fact that the government chose to spend some cash on a supposedly scientific look at UFOs—particularly as they could be crucially related to national security threats—really should be no surprise, says Seth Shostak, one of the SETI Institute’s senior alien hunters.

1970s and ‘80s: CIA Investigations of Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena The 1970s and 1980s saw the CIA investigating a bunch of phenomena associated with UFO sightings, such as parapsychology and psychic happenings. According to CIA report “Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 (A Die-Hard Issue)”, “CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”

1976-1993: SETI/HRMS The only time the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has been written into a NASA budget line, this decade provided as much as $12 million a year for searches using the Arecibo and Goldstone antennas. Around 1990, the government’s SETI program—headquartered at NASA’s Ames Research Center—was renamed the High Resolution Microwave Survey in an attempt to avoid cancellation. Nevada senator Richard Bryan ended up cancelling the program anyway in 1993, right after actual observations had started.

1990s to now: NASA’s Astrobiology Institute Founded in 1998, the NASA Astrobiology Institute is one of many projects within the space agency aimed at investigating the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the cosmos. Scientists under its umbrella are currently thinking about whether life once existed on Mars, if there might be organisms tucked beneath the icy shells of the moons Europa and Enceladus, and how we would even recognize what life beyond Earth looks like if and when we see it. Now, and beyond.

Other ongoing work that continues to rely on federal funds includes developing instruments capable of detecting not only exoplanets but also alien biospheres, as well as work using organisms and environments on Earth as extraterrestrial analogs.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Why The Universe Does Not Need To Have A Beginning Or End

According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born about 13.8 billion years ago. All the matter that exists today was once squished into an infinitely dense, infinitely tiny, ultra-hot point called a singularity. This tiny fireball then exploded and gave rise to the early universe.  The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin allegedly.

Does the Universe have a beginning and thus an end state? I think that question itself is very short-sighted. I have a general problem with the word started. We must understand our place in the wonderous and almost entirely unknown mux of energy we call the Universe. Our brains developed with some severe biases. Like linear time, only seeing and experiencing a super slim sliver of reality with our poor biological senses. Our senses are all lockstep into an infinitesimal experience. We can only see a small infinitesimal small slice of the EM spectrum, hear an infinitesimal slice of auditory sensations, our skin and brains as in the other examples can only process an infinitesimal slice of motion, movement, and causation. Our intellects are just as hindered with infinitesimal perceptions and understanding. We are just the dominant animal on planet Earth. We must understand that we are woefully unsuited for any of this question to fall into colloquial understanding limits.

The Universe has no obligation to make colloquial sense to us. We can not (I suspect) even ask or comprehend the correct line of deductive reasoning yet alone understand the answers that must pour forth. We and our intellects are just fleas in a world of infinite. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

We and the Universe are more than just our 3 spatial axes of freedom plus time. The math works out for over 10 axes of freedom (dimensions). It is all this that we must at least try to consider when you think about the big bang, or how the observable Universe began.

First off there is no reason to think in our limited capacity of start and ends. That is a bias we have evolved to trust on our little dirty ball of dirt. That is our level of animal experience and intellect we must understand is by understanding what I wrote so far is incomplete. It is an asymptote that approaches zero. There does not have to be a beginning or an end.

We are 4D creatures in a Universe of many more dimensions. To a single dimensional creature, a single point is infinite. Consider a two-dimensional creature if it ever came upon a circle structure. To that creature the circle is infinite..it would if it could represent it by the symbol for infinity. Where does the circle start? Where does it end? Who created the symmetry of the circle?

We are predominately 3D creatures and the Universe looks infinite to us. It looks like it has a beginning and an end. But it is no truer for us as it is for the 2D creatures mentioned before.

As we go up the dimensional ladder the same questions can be asked ( I assume). What spatial geometry does a 5D creature see in the Universe? I wish I knew. I have some ideas which I have previously written about.

What I do know is that answering “GOD” to any of the questions we have considered so far is just a weak player, a pawn for intellectual stagnation which never answers anything.

There does not have to be a start/end to the grandeur of the Universe. It makes no sense unless you are looking with solely evolved monkey eyes. Eyes that are driven by imperfect cognition, billions of years of evolution in just one place, and a deep fear of death and non-existence. The human construct of “God” is just that a human construct to replace the ponderings which are imponderable by some people. Not their fault.

 “Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” 

~ Carl Sagan.

We could exist in just one slice of a continuum of Hubble volumes which all essentially look the same. What we see as spatial distances may and probably are illusions in the grand scheme of things. Spatial distance and time are different than we can comprehend at this point in our intellectual evolution. Serves us well on planet Earth at relativistic velocities but that is about it.

I suspect that the expansion and the question of the “Big Bang” are moot. Observable by our 3D instrumentation but is no more a complete picture than our vision is when considering the EM spectrum.

There certainly does not have to be a creator. That falls into that limited vision thing I spoke of earlier. The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe and it is still unable to comprehend the truth… so far. In time we will see the truth as prosaic. I know we will have to look forward to the answers not backward thousands of years to lies and deception which is so popular today.

[/responsivevoice]

{ http://www.theangryufologist.us/ }

Is the Tesla Roadster Flying on the Falcon Heavy's Maiden Flight Just Space Junk?

Broad Haven UFO sightings marked 41 years on

There were no alien invasions or tales of abduction, yet a UFO sighting by a group of Pembrokeshire school children remains one of the most famous cases in Wales.

It was 40 years ago when a class of pupils at Broad Haven Primary School said they spotted a UFO in a field near their playground.

It was one of a wave of sightings in the area in 1977 - dubbed the Dyfed Triangle.

David Davies was 10 at the time and heard reports of pupils seeing flying saucers throughout the day.

"I was a natural born sceptic so after the bell rang I decided to go to the area that the children said they had seen it," he told BBC Wales.

He described seeing a silver "cigar-shaped" craft with a "dome covering the middle third".

"My sighting only lasted a couple of seconds. It popped up and then went back behind a tree."

Mr Davies said he did not feel afraid, "more in awe and wonderment", although he admitted he had "a strange desire to run away".

None of the teachers believed the children and so the headmaster separated them and got them to draw what they saw. There were slight variations, but what they drew was basically the same.

Mr Davies described the days that followed as a "wild rollercoaster."

"It went crazy with the media and it was difficult to settle down and actually think about what we had seen."

Two months later, Rosa Granville, who ran the Haven Fort Hotel in nearby Little Haven, described seeing an object which looked like an "upside-down saucer" and two "faceless humanoid" creatures with pointed heads.

She said so much heat came off it, her "face felt burned".

"There was light coming from it and flames of all colours. Then [the creatures] came out of these flames, that's what I don't understand," she said.

When she visited the field she said there was "two inches of burned grounds".

Ms Granville said the incident left her "agitated and disturbed".

Image captionDavid Davies' 1977 drawing

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the sightings.

Then-MP for Pembroke, Nicholas Edwards contacted the Ministry of Defence after being "inundated" with UFO sightings.

Flt Lt Cowan, an officer from RAF Brawdy, visited Ms Granville's hotel and examined the site, but could find no evidence of a landing.

He joked: "Should a UFO arrive at RAF Brawdy we will charge normal landing fees."

In his report, he mentioned the possibility that a "local prankster was at work" and the description of aliens "fitted exactly the type of protection suit that would have been issued in the event of a fire at one of the local oil refineries".

This fits in with the account of businessman Glyn Edwards, who in 1996 revealed he wandered around the area in a silver suit in 1977 as a prank.

The National Archives also released files which examined UFO sightings across Wales, and the officials who investigated the Broad Haven sightings suspected pranksters.

"There is general speculation in the neighbourhood that a practical joker may be at work," wrote staff at S4 - the government department that investigated sightings at the time.

It was also thought school children could have confused a sewage tank as a UFO, although many were from farming backgrounds and would have been familiar with the machinery.

More recently, a former US Navy sailor said the figure in a silver suit was in fact a member of US military personnel wearing their standard fireproof uniform and the UFOs were new Harrier jets flying over.

To mark 40 years since the sightings, a conference is being held in Broad Haven on Saturday, organised by Swansea UFO Network.

Organiser Emyln Williams said the case started "worldwide interest".

Asked if he thought it was genuine, he said: "One child can lie, but can a whole class?

"Over 40 years at least one of them might have come forward to say they made it up - but they haven't."

Mr Williams said there were several sightings the day the children claimed to have seen a UFO, including at Hubberston School in Milford Haven.

"That year there was so much happening. It is what we know as a UFO flap," he said.

Eyewitness Mr Davies, who lives in Shropshire, will be a guest speaker.

He said he had always been open-minded to the theories which attempted to explain the sightings and at no time had he "ever sensationalised his story".

"So many people are ridiculed for saying they have seen a UFO," he said, describing his secondary school life as a "misery".

"I was beaten senseless purely because of what happened to me. It would have been so much easier to take back my story."

He admits UFOs has been a subject that has gone on to "dominate his life".

"At one point I must have had the largest library of books in Wales on the subject."

Attending alongside Mr Davies is Neil Spring, who wrote a book based on the Broad Haven sightings.

"The moment I heard of this small village plagued by UFO sightings, I was inspired to understand what really happened," he said.

His research uncovered a secret investigation by the military police.

"Whilst the government was telling the public they had no records of any unusual activity in the area, privately, officials were so concerned about the UFO sightings in Broad Haven that they asked the military police to conduct a 'discreet' investigation," he said.

Mr Spring believes local pranksters were behind some of the sightings, but said "people emulate what's happening around them" and the pranks were inspired by events which had been "sincerely reported".

"My research showed that there were strange occurrences in Broad Haven long before the incident at the school and for a long times afterwards.

"So you can take the children out of the story and you'll still have the story."

{ http://www.bbc.com/news }

Is this the truth about the 'UFO filmed crossing path of Epsilon 3 rocket launch'?

ALIENS could be watching the space programme on Earth after footage of a Japanese rocket launch was said to show a UFO crossing its path.

Secret space program? 'TWO TR-3B triangle UFOs’ filmed flying out of canyon near air base

A UFO hunter believes he may have filmed two genuine "triangle UFOs" flying out of a canyon near a US Air Force base.

ONDERGRONDSE GEHEIME BASIS ANTARCTICA ONTDEKT?

Toen het Amerikaanse leger maatregelen nam om het overgewicht van personeel te bestrijden, had niemand gedacht dat hiermee ook gevoelige geheimen aan het licht zouden komen. 

Door dit alles is er nu precies vast te stellen waar zich op Antarctica een geheime ondergrondse basis bevindt, alhoewel deze niet persé Amerikaans hoeft te zijn.

Men heeft er bij het Pentagon nooit bij stilgestaan dat door middel van dingen zoals zogenaamde Fitbit horloges exacte locaties van de gebruikers kunnen worden vastgesteld. Dit systeem houdt al je lichamelijke activiteiten bij en meet verschillende dingen zoals hoeveel je gelopen hebt. Het doet dit op basis van het GPS systeem zodat van iedere gebruiker de exacte locatie kan worden vastgesteld.

Het Amerikaanse leger vond dit een goed hulpmiddel bij het bestrijden van overgewicht onder hun personeel en waren zo enthousiast dat ze deze Fitbits volop hebben verspreid binnen het leger. 

Via een organisatie die Strava heet is er nu een zogenaamde heatmap gemaakt van de aarde, waarop je precies kunt zien waar de Fitbit gebruikers zich bevinden. Het zijn natuurlijk niet alleen Amerikaanse militairen die met deze dingen rondlopen, maar overal ter wereld worden deze Fitbits gebruikt. Op de volgende kaart zie je het gebruik in Nederland en België. Hoe lichter de kaart, des te meer Fitbits zijn er actief.

Bij ons valt er weinig af te leiden uit het gebruik, behalve dat het in bepaalde gebieden meer voor komt dan in andere, maar wanneer je naar een totaal verlaten gebied kijkt in Syrië, net ten noorden van de stad Raqqa, dan begint het wel op te vallen.

Kortom, we weten nu van bovenstaande locatie dat het geen totaal verlaten gebied is, maar dat er één of meerdere personen aanwezig zijn die daar rondjes lopen. 

Veel militaire complexen zijn op verzoek van overheden niet opgenomen in Google Maps en Apple Map. Een woordvoerder van de US Central Command heeft aan de Washington Post laten weten dat het leger aan het kijken is naar de implicaties die de kaart met zich meebrengt. De looproutes van de militairen kunnen nu de locaties van geheime basissen vrijgeven. 

En dan komt er op de zogenaamde heatmap van Strava iets bijzonders tevoorschijn, ergens in een totaal verlaten gebied op Antarctica.

Ergens lopen daar één of meerdere mensen rond met een Fitibit.

Maar, als je op Google Earth kijkt, dan is er helemaal niets te zien, behalve ijs, sneeuw en rotsen.

Echter, op ongeveer 12 kilometer afstand ligt een landingsbaan die de Union Glacier Blue-Ice Runway heet. De rode markering geeft de landingsbaan aan en de groene de plek waar de bewegingen zijn waargenomen.

Dan blijft er eigenlijk maar één conclusie over en dat is dat er zich onder de bergen een basis bevindt. Het signaal is opgevangen, één of meerdere mensen hebben daar een bepaalde weg afgelegd en aangezien het zo goed als onmogelijk is dat dit aan de oppervlakte is geweest, kan het alleen ondergronds zijn geweest.

De vraag die dan overblijft is: Van wie is die basis? Van de Amerikanen waar veel militairen met een Fitbit rondlopen of toch van iemand anders?

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

‘Machines That Think’ predicts the future of artificial intelligence

A new book explores how AI may change people’s lives

BY 

MARIA TEMMING 

 

FORWARD THINKING  Toby Walsh cuts through the hype to give a critical assessment of how much we should welcome or worry about a future full of “thinking” machines.

PHONLAMAIPHOTO/ISTOCKPHOTO

Machines That Think
Toby Walsh
Prometheus Books, $16

Movies and other media are full of mixed messages about the risks and rewards of building machines with minds of their own. For every manipulative automaton like Ex Machina’s Ava (SN: 5/16/15, p. 26), there’s a helpful Star Wars droid. And while some tech titans such as Elon Musk warn of the threats artificial intelligence presents, others, including Mark Zuckerberg, dismiss the doomsayers.

AI researcher Toby Walsh’s Machines That Think is for anyone who has heard the hype and is seeking a critical assessment of what the technology can do — and what it might do in the future. Walsh’s conversational style is welcoming to nonexperts while his endnotes point readers to opportunities for deeper dives into specific aspects of AI.

Walsh begins with a history of AI, from Aristotle’s foundation of formal logic to modern facial-recognition systems. Excerpts from computer-composed poetry and tales of computers trouncing humans at strategy games (SN: 11/11/17, p. 13) are a testament to how far AI has come. But Walsh also highlights weaknesses, such as machine-learning algorithms’ reliance on so much data to master a single task.

This 30,000-foot view of AI research packs a lot of history, as well as philosophical and technical explanation. Walsh personalizes the account with stories of his own programming experiences, anecdotes about AI in daily life — like his daughter’s use of Siri — and his absolute, unapologetic love of puns.

Later in the book, Walsh speculates about technical hurdles that may curb further AI development and legal limits that society may want to impose. He also explores the societal impact that increasingly intelligent computers may have.

For instance, Walsh evaluates how likely various jobs are to be outsourced to AI. Some occupations, like journalist, will almost certainly be automated, he argues. Others, like oral surgeon, are probably safe. For future job security, Walsh recommends pursuing careers that require programming acumen, emotional intelligence or creativity.

AI also has the potential to revolutionize warfare. “Like Moore’s law, we are likely to see exponential growth in the capabilities of autonomous weapons,” Walsh writes. “I have named this ‘Schwarzenegger’s law’ to remind us of where it will end.” Walsh isn’t resigned to a Terminator-like future, though. If governments ban killer robots and arms developers use automation to enhance defensive equipment, he believes military AI could actually save many lives.

In fact, Walsh argues, all aspects of AI’s future impacts are in our hands. “Artificial intelligence can lead us down many different paths, some good and some bad,” he writes. “Society must choose which path to take.” 

Buy Machines That Think from Amazon.com. Science News is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Please see our FAQ for more details.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Mankind Survived A ‘Civilization Changing’ Extraterrestrial Impact 12,800 Years Ago

In a massive study that included 24 researchers and published in two scientific papers, experts found that our planet suffered the impact of a space object as early as 12,800 years ago when humans were already sedentary and were beginning to form the very first complex societies around the planet.

The study titled Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago” analyzed geochemical and isotopic markers and found that massive fires would have been responsible, in part, for the disappearance of large mammals.

Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago” is divided into “Part I: Ice Cores and Glaciers” and “Part 2: Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments.”

“The study includes measurements made at more than 170 different sites around the world,” said Adrian Melott, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas and one of the authors of the research.

According to Melott and his colleagues, the new data indicates that the disaster was unleashed when the Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating comet that was approximately 100 kilometers in diameter, whose remains persist in our solar system to this day.

A chaotic time for early society

This impact would have caused fires so large that the resulting dust clogged the sky and prevented sunlight from entering.

The climate cooled rapidly, the plants died, the food sources were exhausted, and the glaciers moved forward again.

The oceanic currents moved, forming an almost glacial era that lasted a thousand years more.

Gobekli Tepe is considered one of the most mysterious places on the surface of the planet. Curiously, some authors believe that a similar catastrophic event was recorded at Gobekli Tepe by its builders.

“The hypothesis is that a massive comet fragmented and the pieces hit Earth, generating this disaster,” said Melott.

“A number of different chemical signatures – carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia, and others – seem to indicate that an astounding 10% of the earth’s surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires.”

Furthermore, according to Melott, pollen analysis suggests that pine forests were probably burned to be replaced by poplars, which is a species that colonizes cleared areas.

In fact, the authors postulate that the cosmic impact could have triggered the episode of the Recent Dryas, the burning of biomass, the extinction of the late Pleistocene of larger species (of which we were blamed) and the cultural changes in humans and the decrease in population.

“The estimates imply that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects,” said Melott.

“The impact hypothesis remains a hypothesis, but this study provides a large amount of evidence, which we argue can only be explained by a very large cosmic impact.”

If confirmed the hypothesis of this study which seems to have been recorded by ancient cultures, would indicate that humans not only survived a cataclysmic event, but we took advantage of it and we could start to repopulate the planet.

What Graham Hancock said

Curiously, that’s exactly what world-renowned author Graham Hancock said a few times already.

According to Mr. Hancock, 

an extremely advanced ancient civilization—that flourished during the Ice Age—was wiped out from the surface of the planet some 13,000 years ago due to a massive comet strike, and the ancients left us a warning of future events.

As explained in the book Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization, Mr. Hancock argues; “Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap.”

Source: New research suggests toward end of Ice Age, human beings witnessed fires larger than dinosaur killer, thanks to a cosmic impact

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SHOCK CLAIM: Nuclear WW3 between US and Russia 'prevented by aliens'

ALIENS have repeatedly switched off nuclear warheads in Russia and the United States, in a bid to stop world war three breaking out, an expert has claimed.

OBJECTEN NAAST DE ZON EN VREEMDE LICHTEN STRAND EGMOND AAN ZEE, NEDERELAND ( VIDEO )

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