There’s never been a radio silence quite like this one. After long months with no way of making contact with Voyager 2, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the record-setting interstellar spacecraft.
The breakdown in communications – lasting since March, almost eight months and a whole pandemic ago – wasn’t due to some rogue malfunction, nor any run-in with interstellar space weirdness (although there’s that too).
Borrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing.
In the world of subatomic particles and giant particle detectors, and distant galaxies and giant telescopes, scientists have learned to live, and to work, with uncertainty. They are often trying to tease out ultra-rare particle interactions from a massive tangle of other particle interactions and background “noise” that can complicate their hunt, or trying to filter out the effects of atmospheric distortions and interstellar dust to improve the resolution of astronomical imaging.
Also, inherent problems with detectors, such as with their ability to record all particle interactions or to exactly measure particles’ energies, can result in data getting misread by the electronics they are connected to, so scientists need to design complex filters, in the form of computer algorithms, to reduce the margin of error and return the most accurate results.
Article. Reasearchers from Japan are making cyborg cockroaches. 😃 The article has videos as well.
I guess it’s justified considering roaches are some of the most resilient organisms on our planet. Are you ready for the cyber-roaches?
😃
Looks like inventory robots won’t be replacing humans in Walmart for now. 😃
I’m a bit sad for the supplier of the robots. But I’m glad that people will keep their jobs in Walmart.
Bitter Reality
Unfortunately, the news was devastating for Bossa Nova, the robotics firm that provided Walmart with its inventory robots. The firm, a Carnegie Mellon University-born startup, laid off half of its staff as it tries to drum up replacement business.
Evasive Maneuvers
In order to broadcast the 4G and eventually 5G signals, the satellites would come equipped with massive antennas up to 900 square meters in size. Given their planned proximity to other satellites, NASA says that’s a disaster waiting to happen.
“For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities,” reads NASA’s statement. “This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”
If last week was a heavy political week in Canada, then this Tuesday was the culmination of an unprecedented period of political turmoil in the US. We’re going to take a look at what the alternative media, but not what the legacy media, is saying about this.
We’ve also reconnected with Henry Hildebrandt, the pastor of the Church of God in Aylmer Ontario. He’s been at the centre of the anti-lockdown protest movement in Ontario almost since the beginning of this so-called pandemic in March 2020.
He’s been so effective, the local Mayor has declared a “state of emergency” in an effort to shut down a planned protest featuring him in Aylmer Ontario on November 7th.
For the show notes, check out http://acuriousguy.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-us-election-aylm…enry.html.
Circa 2017
Today, 15th October 2017, marks the 20th anniversary of the Thrust SSC team setting the World Land Speed Record of 763.035mph — making it the first and only car to reach speeds faster than the speed of the sound.
A giant stone city was discovered in South Africa, approximately 150 km west of port Maputo, Mozambique. By calculating the erosion rate of the dolerite, it became possible to assess the age of the site.
Researchers reveal they misidentified a fossil encased in amber. Originally thought to be a chameleon, the creature is instead a kind of amphibian.
