Category: futurism – Page 810
Watch this electric wingsuit take flight at 300 km/h (186 mph)
BMW i EV technology isn’t only working in two dimensions — now it’s taking to the skies in an electric wingsuit.
It’s not the most conventional electric flight, but that hasn’t stopped the concept from progressing to its maiden flight. The electric wingsuit project has been in the works for three years, since it began as just a concept in the mind of air sports pioneer Peter Salzmann.
With the collaboration of BMW i and Designworks, the group brought the electric wingsuit to life for Peter to test.
How to live in space: what we’ve learned from 20 years of the International Space Station
Twenty straight years of life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” to understand how societies function beyond Earth.
The ISS is a collaboration between 25 space agencies and organisations. It has hosted 241 crew and a few tourists from 19 countries. This is 43% of all the people who have ever travelled in space.
As future missions to the Moon and Mars are planned, it’s important to know what people need to thrive in remote, dangerous and enclosed environments, where there is no easy way back home.
Crystals reveal the danger of sleeping volcanoes
Most active volcanoes on Earth are dormant, meaning that they have not erupted for hundreds or even thousands of years, and are normally not considered hazardous by the local population. A team of volcanologists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), working in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has devised a technique that can predict the devastating potential of volcanoes. The scientists used zircon, a tiny crystal contained in volcanic rocks, to estimate the volume of magma that could erupted if Nevado de Toluca volcano (Mexico) wakes up from its dormancy. Up to 350 km3 of magma —about four times the volume of water stored in Lake Geneva— are currently lying below Nevado de Toluca and an eruption could bring devastation. The new technique, applicable to most types of volcanoes across the globe, is described in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
The largest volcanic eruptions in the last 100 years were sourced from volcanoes that do not erupt frequently and therefore fly under the radar of scientists. Yet today, 800 million people around the world live close to volcanoes and are potentially at risk. A determining factor for the dangerousness of volcanoes is the volume of eruptible magma stored in their bellies, as this is related to the magnitude of future eruptions. Unfortunately, this magma is stored at inaccessible depths of 6 to 10 km and cannot be directly measured.
Nissan Leaf owner upgrades EV battery for under $A3,500
An early model Nissan Leaf has been given a new lease of life with a battery upgrade for a fraction of the price it would cost if done by Nissan.
The 2011 Nissan Leaf came with a 24kWh battery, and even when new had a very modest driving range of 117km based on the US EPA ratings.
But after nine years of use, this particular Nissan Leaf’s maximum range had degraded to around 100km, prompting owner Daniel Öster to undertake an upgrade using a 30kWh battery from a 2017 Nissan Leaf.
The Future of AI is Artificial Sentience
How do you *feel* about that?
Much of today’s discussion around the future of artificial intelligence is focused on the possibility of achieving artificial general intelligence. Essentially, an AI capable of tackling an array of random tasks and working out how to tackle a new task on its own, much like a human, is the ultimate goal. But the discussion around this kind of intelligence seems less about if and more about when at this stage in the game. With the advent of neural networks and deep learning, the sky is the actual limit, at least that will be true once other areas of technology overcome their remaining obstructions.
For deep learning to successfully support general intelligence, it’s going to need the ability to access and store much more information than any individual system currently does. It’s also going to need to process that information more quickly than current technology will allow. If these things can catch up with the advancements in neural networks and deep learning, we might end up with an intelligence capable of solving some major world problems. Of course, we will still need to spoon-feed it since it only has access to the digital world, for the most part.
If we desire an AGI that can consume its own information, there are a few more advancements in technology that only time can deliver. In addition to the increased volume of information and processing speed, before any AI will be much use as an automaton, it will need to possess fine motor skills. An AGI with control of its own faculty can move around the world and consume information through its various sensors. However, this is another case of just waiting. It’s also another form of when not if these technologies will catch up to the others. Google has successfully experimented with fine motor skills technology. Boston Dynamics has canine robots with stable motor skills that will only improve in the coming years. Who says our AGI automaton needs to stand erect?