technology | M Thomas Apple Author Page

Gateway not to be used until Artemis 4

September 4, 2023
MThomas

ESA image. Gateway is planned to be much smaller and more cramped than ISS (about 1/6 the size).

NASA and its international partners see Gateway as a key platform to support the agency’s Artemis moon program and to build the technology required for future deep-space missions. Although the first elements of the small space station are expected to launch before the Artemis 3 mission lifts off in 2025 or 2026, NASA previously said that those astronauts will not use Gateway to “make that mission have a higher probability of success.”
https://www.space.com/artemis-4-first-astronauts-visit-gateway-moon-space-station

While it’s a good idea to see some planning for this, I think maybe NASA should focus on getting Artemis 1 to work properly before they go on about Artemis 3 and 4.

Taking advantage of Gateway’s orbit far away from Earth’s protective magnetic field, three instruments will study risks due to radiation from the sun and from cosmic rays. Scientists hope this knowledge can help inform future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.

Since Gateway will orbit the Moon and not the Earth, the biggest problem will be preventing astronauts (and instruments!) from getting fried by solar radiation. Scientists need to come up with materials to shield people on Gateway and the Moon, or else we’re going nowhere…

(That said, regolith – soil, basically – has already been proposed and even tested: Llamas et al. (2022). “Effectiveness of Martian regolith as a radiation shield,” Planetary and Space Science, 218, 105517 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0032063322001039)

Dear Diary – January 24, 1998

September 2, 2023
MThomas

For all these technological “advances,” we are no better than the ancients. We are still prisoners to our emotions — or to the biological impulses of electricity and hormones whose results we deem emotive.

Chandraan-3 rover finds…sulfur on the Moon?

September 1, 2023
MThomas

India’s Moon rover is making tracks…

One main reason for landing at the Moon’s South Pole is that the presence of water would help us build permanent settlements…

This region on the moon is an attractive place for humans to build a lasting presence due to the fact that water ice is located underfoot. Future moon-dwellers can potentially tap into that water for consumption, or even to create rocket propellant, instead of depending on water shipped from Earth.
https://www.space.com/chandrayaan-3-sulfur-surprising-composition-lunar-south-pole-soil

Another reason has now been found…iron, manganese, aluminum, titanium…and “surprisingly” sulfur. Why should they be surprised? It’s already been established that the Moon has ice, and sulfur forms every time hydrocarbon and sulfates combine. Plus sulfur obviously results from volcanic activity, and it’s likely the Moon was volcanic when it first formed. And sulfur is also produced through nuclear fusion – i.e., the Sun.

So what can we do with this knowledge?

Having a more complete chemical composition of the lunar south pole area means future travelers to — and possible inhabitants of — the region can also plan for what else they don’t need to bring from Earth. In particular, some scientists have suggested moon-dwellers could use sulfur in bits of infrastructure such as building materials, solar cells and batteries.

Hmmm…I think more studies are needed first…define “bits,” for example.

Trapping light within metamaterial = ?

August 27, 2023
MThomas

To explore new ways to control this fundamental force of nature, scientists from the City College of New York (CCNY) trapped light inside a magnetic metamaterial and made the material itself 10 times more magnetic in the process.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a44843071/scientists-trapped-light-inside-metamaterial-magnetic/

Next up, magnetic lasers and lots and lots of more magnetic memory savings.

(Note that Popular Mechanics links the phrase “magneto-optical technologies” to an article claiming that the US has somehow managed to reverse-engineer alien technology from crashed UFOs…Um…OK…)

Chandrayaan-3 successfully lands on the Moon!

August 24, 2023
MThomas

Taken just prior to landing…the “image” shown of it actually landing was not real but a simulation.

India and Russia had been locked in a race to the lunar south pole. The Luna-25 spacecraft that crashed was the first moon-landing spacecraft launched by Russia’s space agency in almost five decades. Roscosmos officials said Sunday they lost contact with the lander after it fired its engines in preparation for a descent to the surface.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-chandrayaan-3-landing-moon-south-pole-rcna101296

It wasn’t much of a “race,” tbh. India had been planning this for years, while Russia randomly launched a craft that had virtually no chance of succeeding.

Congratulations, ISRO! You should have some company over the next couple of years. Here’s hoping that international cooperation and not competition will lead humanity to permanent settlements on the Moon. Mars, and beyond…

AI “loses its mind” when fed AI-created drivel

August 19, 2023
MThomas

Source: https://twitter.com/tomgoldsteincs/status/1677439914886176768 (@tomgoldsteincs)

In other words, without “fresh real data” — translation: original human work, as opposed to stuff spit out by AI — to feed the beast, we can expect its outputs to suffer drastically. When trained repeatedly on synthetic content, say the researchers, outlying, less-represented information at the outskirts of a model’s training data will start to disappear. The model will then start pulling from increasingly converging and less-varied data, and as a result, it’ll soon start to crumble into itself.
https://futurism.com/ai-trained-ai-generated-data

So, as more and more lazy people ask AI to “write” for them, the programs get less and less accurate…

Or, as the authors of the study conclude, “…without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease.”

I.e., the use of AI-generated content to train AI doesn’t work, and since there is already way too much AI-generated garbage all over the internet, it’s almost impossible to sort out which is which when the AI-creators “scrape” data from the web.

So…

See, machines can’t replace us entirely — their brains will melt!

But then again, that might not be so hopeful after all. When AI takes over the world, maybe it won’t kill humans; perhaps it’ll just corral us into content farms…

At least we won’t wind up as batteries.

Yet.

PS. I find it both hysterically amusing and disturbing that my blog program offers an “experimental AI assistant.” Granted, the program does let you know that AI-generated content accuracy is not guaranteed, but wth would I want to use AI for a personal blog? The whole purpose of a blog is to WRITE. AI-generated text is not writing. It is intellectual property theft.

“Superconductor”? Color me skeptical

August 11, 2023
MThomas

Superconductors are materials that allow electrical current to flow with no resistance, a property that would revolutionize power grids where energy is lost in transmission as well as advance fields such as computing chips, where electrical resistance acts as a speed limit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/superconductor-claims-spark-investor-frenzy-scientists-are-skeptical-rcna98123

I’ve heard claims like this before.

The hallmark of science is replicability. I.e., can two independent teams of researchers, using similar means, methods, and materials in completely different settings, replicate the findings of the original team?

So…

Researchers from at least three Chinese universities have in recent days said they produced versions of LK-99 with varying results. One team from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology posted a video purporting to show the material levitating over a magnet, which is important because true superconductors can float over a magnet in any orientation, without spinning like a compass.

But…

…another team, from Qufu Normal University, said they did not observe zero resistance, one of required characteristics of a superconductor. A third, from the Southeast University in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, said they measured zero resistance, but only at a temperature of 110 Kelvin (-163 degree Celsius).

And…

The possible bad news for LK-99 is that the superconducting field is full of materials that hold promise at first but fall apart under scrutiny. Researchers even have a handy name for them — unidentified superconducting objects.

A.k.a “USOs.” As the linked article points out, plenty of smart, hardworking researchers have claimed to have found a “superconductor,” but then their claims simply fall apart under scrutiny.

Be careful of finding what you seek.

UA what?

July 28, 2023
MThomas

US Congress: We want the truth!

Former military pilots: UAP is real!

Me: Wtf is a “UAP”?

Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon!

July 19, 2023
MThomas

I love the helpful explanation about the scale…

“If we want to develop the Moon as an outpost, a gateway to deep space, then we need to carry out many more explorations to see what sort of habitat would we be able to build there with the locally-available material and how will we carry supplies to our people there,” Mr Annadurai says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66185565

Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first successful Moon launch in 2008 — it deliberately crashed in order to measure the amount of water at the South Pole.

Chandrayaan-2 was only partly successful, as it did put an orbiter around the Moon, but the rover crashed. (The orbiter is still there, sending back information on a regular basis.)

Now, Chandrayaan-3 aims to finally land a rover and do some research exploring.

Let’s hope they can get it to land safely this time…

10 things I know to be absolutely certain

July 17, 2023
MThomas

List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

1. I know it to be certain that the wording of this prompt is a bit odd. Is this meant to mean “know to be true”?

2. I know it to be absolutely certain that there are many things about which I am far from certain.

3. I also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things I know to be certain will annoy at least one person who reads this.

4. I also also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things to know to be certain will amuse at least one person.

5. One of these things I know to be absolutely certain may even irritate and amuse the same person (👈 maybe even this one right here).

6. I even know it to be absolutely certain that writing a list of ten things that are absolutely certain takes a considerably longer time than I had initially anticipated.

7. Just to be sure I irritate someone, it is absolutely certain that the world is a warmer place than it was when I was a kid 40 years ago.

8. The fact that June 2023 was the hottest month on record is absolutely certain.

9. I know it to be absolutely certain, however, that we have only been keeping records on temperatures worldwide since the late 1880s, and records were measured using different instruments

10. But the most important thing to be absolutely certain that I know is that Sony says they have the technology to make humanoid robots but can’t figure out what to use them for. I have an idea or two about that…

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