time travel, parallel universes, and other useful illusions
We’re only a week into 2019, and already we’ve seen two pretty amazing events in space exploration: New Horizons’ visit to Ultima Thule, and China’s landing on the far side of the Moon.
In 1984, The Terminator promised me a robot apocalypse circa 2029. And yet, we haven’t quite reached our inevitable obliteration via some Skynet-esque artificial intelligence.
“What are your commands?” asks the spherical robot as it floats through space. Inch by little inch, we’re getting closer to the futures dreamt up in science fiction. In this video, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst introduces us to Cimon, a robot created to assist astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
China’s Xinhua News Agency, alongside the Chinese search engine Sogou.com, have revealed what they call the “world’s first artificial intelligence news anchor.” Its appearance, facial expressions, and voice were modeled after the real news anchor Zhang Zhao, using machine learning algorithms that essentially “taught” it to recreate his likeness. The final product, what you see …
Continue reading “Virtual News Anchors Hit Airwaves In China”
There was a time when you may have looked at Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot and thought, hey, I could outrun that. It was a lumbering hunk of metal, after all. Sure, it could open doors and go for quiet walks in the freshly fallen snow, even lift 10-pound boxes. But in a robot apocalypse scenario? …
Continue reading “Boston Dynamics Shows Off “Parkour Atlas” Robot”
Repeated and unexplained radio pulses from deep space have led astronomers to consider some intriguing possibilities. On August 26, 2017, the Breakthrough Listen program detected a number of fast radio bursts (FRBs) originating from the ‘repeater’ object FRB 121102, located about three billion light years away. Astronomers observed 21 FRBs in total, all within one …
Continue reading “AI Discovers Even More Unexplained Radio Bursts 3 Billion Light Years Away”
I don’t know if anyone noticed, but this website erupted in a nightmare the other day. Stranger Dimensions went down for nearly a full 24 hours. I’m talking down. I had to use a backup from August 11 to get things running again. Let’s just say it was a fun and enlightening experience, and it’s …
Continue reading “Japan’s Space Agency Successfully Lands Rovers On Asteroid”
