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Astronomers find a star pulling its giant exoplanet into a death spiral

Kepler-1658b’s orbit is getting a little shorter — and therefore a little closer to the blazing surface of its star — every year.


Finding doomed planets is slow, painstaking work. It took thirteen years of close observation — first with Kepler and some of the most powerful telescopes here on Earth, and then with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in 2018 — to notice the slow shrinking of Kepler-1658b’s orbit. Recognizing the signs of deadly orbital decay in other exoplanets is going to take a similar amount of time and a similar volume of data, but Vissapragada and his colleagues say they’re getting there.

“We should begin to see hints of orbital decay for these planets within the next decade,” he and his colleagues write in their recent paper.

As for Kepler-1658b, it’s got about 2.5 million years left. When the time comes, whoever is watching (from whatever alien world harbors astronomers in the distant future) won’t see the planet simply fall into the star’s outer layers and burn up, like a meteor falling into Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, the same tidal forces that sealed its fate will probably rip the planet apart shortly before it takes the final plunge. Something similar probably happened to long-dead moons of planets like Saturn, which now make up parts of the planet’s famous ring system.

Kenya Case Study Part I: M-PESA story

“M-PESA”: that is a name in global fintech history that can never be erased. Not that anybody would want to. Forever it will be the perfect example of a viable financial ecosystem based on rules unthinkable before. A living masterpiece that was created by a mosaic of unique circumstances, choices and risks taken at a particular time and place, and that continues to evolve in the changes it brought to the country.

Since I’m neither a local, nor deeply involved with the African markets (yet), I would not dare to simply impose my DIY analytics on my readers. Instead, I invite you to listen to my conversation with M-PESA’s own Kevin Amateshe reflecting on Kenya’s digital financial services space, M-PESA’s role, the past, present and future: https://youtu.be/QlZuKwnsAS4

Carrying on from the video part, let us have a deeper look at M-PESA.

Precise FAST observations reveal circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts

A research team led by Prof. Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has revealed circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts based on precise observations of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).

Their findings were published in Science Bulletin.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are the most luminous radio flashes in the universe. The estimated equivalent energy of one FRB event can rival the energy output the sun over a whole day or even a month to a year.

Comet to approach Earth for first time since Neanderthals lived

A comet that only orbits the sun once every 50,000 years is expected to be visible from Earth with the naked eye. The last time the comet visited, the Sahara desert was wet and fertile, Neanderthals and woolly mammoths still walked the Earth, and humans were—as far as we know—yet to reach North America.

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was first spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) on March 2, 2022, and is set to reach its closest point to the sun, or perihelion, on January 12, 2023. ZTF is an astronomical survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in California.

Comets are “cosmic snowballs” made up of frozen gases, dust and rock that orbit the sun. As they approach our star, these fragile constructs are blasted with increasing amounts of radiation, a process that can produce two vast tails of gas and dust.

Is AI Translation the Future of Video Games?

In the midst of the Anti AI Art movement and the ever evolving complexity of the algorithms they are rallying against, this video essay discusses current flaws and future potential of AI Translation technology within Retro Game Emulation. Through rigorous testing of 3 games that never got localizations or fan translations (Tokimeki Memorial 2, Sakura Wars 2 & Boku No Natsuyasami 2), we will see how well Retroarch and ZTranslate’s AI Translator works for the average player. We will also discuss the ways in which this technology could one day be used in more formal localisations by professional teams, and wel will come to understand the nuances of the AI debate.

#AI #FanTranslation #Emulation.

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 — Introduction.
02:09 — Short Interlude.
02:45 — The Monolingual Dilemma.
03:31 — The Arrival of a Solution.
05:40 — Over Analyzing Someone Else’s Tweet.
09:32 — Preparing the Test.
11:04 — Test 1: Tokimeki Memorial 2
17:23 — Test 2: Sakura Wars 2
23:13 — Test 3: Boku No Natsuyasami 2
30:29 — Dejection & Regret.
32:05 — What I Learnt.
37:26 — Outro / Special Thanks.

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