Lifeboat Foundation

Without GPS, autonomous systems get lost easily. Now a new algorithm developed at Caltech allows autonomous systems to recognize where they are simply by looking at the terrain around them—and for the first time, the technology works regardless of seasonal changes to that terrain.

Details about the process were published on June 23 in the journal Science Robotics.

The general process, known as visual terrain-relative navigation (VTRN), was first developed in the 1960s. By comparing nearby terrain to high-resolution satellite images, autonomous systems can locate themselves.

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In September 1983, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence produced a report: “Soviet Satellite Defense Against the US Miniature Vehicle Antisatellite Weapon.” The report stated that “Our estimates of Soviet technological advances and of Soviet perceptions of the ASAT threat indicate a moderate likelihood that the Soviets will develop additional defensives—decoys, electronic countermeasures, and signature reduction—by the late 1990s.”

“If we were to find [aliens] with whom we could carry on a conversation, I think they would be remarkably like us.”

When talking about aliens, zoologist Arik Kershenbaum believes we need to adopt a new language.

“We need a language to speak about aliens, which is not the language of Hollywood,” he tells Inverse. In fact, maybe we should scrap the term “alien” altogether.

Continue reading “To understand what aliens may look like, find a mirror: Cambridge biologist” »

University of Innsbruck researchers have developed a method to make previously hardly accessible properties in quantum systems measurable. The new method for determining the quantum state in quantum simulators reduces the number of necessary measurements and makes work with quantum simulators much more efficient.

In a few years, a new generation of quantum simulators could provide insights that would not be possible using simulations on conventional supercomputers. Quantum simulators are capable of processing a great amount of information since they quantum mechanically superimpose an enormously large number of bit states. For this reason, however, it also proves difficult to read this information out of the quantum simulator. In order to be able to reconstruct the quantum state, a very large number of individual measurements are necessary. The method used to read out the quantum state of a quantum simulator is called quantum state tomography.

“Each measurement provides a ‘cross-sectional image’ of the quantum state. You then put these cross-sectional images together to form the complete quantum state,” explains theoretical physicist Christian Kokail from Peter Zoller’s team at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck. The number of measurements needed in the lab increases very rapidly with the size of the system. “The number of measurements grows exponentially with the number of qubits,” the physicist says. The Innsbruck researchers have now succeeded in developing a much more efficient method for quantum simulators.

Cyber criminals are increasingly using virtual machines to compromise networks with ransomware.

By using virtual machines as part of the process, ransomware attackers are able to conduct their activity with additional subtlety, because running the payload within a virtual environment reduces the chances of the activity being discovered – until it’s too late and the ransomware has encrypted files on the host machine.

During a recent investigation into an attempted ransomware attack, cybersecurity researchers at Symantec found the ransomware operations had been using VirtualBox – a legitimate form of open-source virtual machine software – to run instances of Windows 7 to aid the installation of ransomware.

Scientists say in a new report that 1715 star systems have been in a position to view Earth over the past 5000 years.

According to the report published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the study could provide clues on where to look for extraterrestrial life that could have a view of Earth.

The authors wrote that while there has been much research on the position of stars, previous studies did not take into account how the view from star systems has changed over time.

Two brothers in South Africa have disappeared along with $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin that was housed on their cryptocurrency investment platform, according to a Cape Town law firm hired by investors to investigate the alleged heist.

The law firm, Hanekom Attorneys, said it has reported the incident to the Hawks, an elite unit of South Africa’s national police force. Hanekom has also reported the matter to South African financial regulators and crypto exchanges around the world.

The brothers, Ameer and Raees Cajee, set up their crypto investment service, Africrypt, in 2019.

University of Rochester researchers describe first highly chirped pulses created by a using a spectral filter in a Kerr resonator.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by researchers who pioneered a technique to create ultrashort, yet extremely high-energy laser pulses at the University of Rochester.

Now researchers at the University’s Institute of Optics have produced those same high-powered pulses—known as chirped pulses—in a way that works even with relatively low-quality, inexpensive equipment. The new work could pave the way for: