Asimov was optimistic in his timeline, but pretty accurate in general outline in this article from 1984.
(I’m reading a book about him and some other SF “greats” at the moment. They were not wonderful people.)
Via Keith Wilson.
Originally shared by Filippo Salustri
35 years ago, Isaac Asimov predicted what 2019 would be like.
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
Stability of a rotating asteroid housing a space station
Today there are numerous studies on asteroid mining. They elaborate on selecting the right objects, prospecting missions, potential asteroid redirection, and the mining process itself. For economic reasons, most studies focus on mining candidates in the 100-500m size-range.
Also, suggestions regarding the design and implementation of space stations or even colonies inside the caverns of mined asteroids exist. Caverns provide the advantages of confined material in near-zero gravity during mining and later the hull will shield the inside from radiation.
Existing studies focus on creating the necessary artificial gravity by rotating structures that are built inside the asteroid. Here, we assume the entire mined asteroid to rotate at a sufficient rate for artificial gravity and investigate its use for housing a habitat inside. In this study we present how to estimate the necessary spin rate assuming a cylindrical space station inside a mined asteroid and discuss the implications arising from substantial material stress given the required rotation rate. We estimate the required material strength using two relatively simple analytical models and apply them to fictitious, yet realistic rocky near-Earth asteroids.
Via Raja Mitra, a long, well-written, interesting piece on identity and the ways it’s tracked. Key takeaway for me: the ideal system would allow users to prove eligibility for a specific service (for example, confirming their age when buying alcohol) without revealing anything else about them.
Originally shared by John Hagel
Who controls your identity? The control of the state may be eroded as the ability to unbundle identities increases but there are far more dystopian outcomes as well
Samuel Smith, this reminds me of what we were discussing on my other post yesterday.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Educating the Wise Cyborgs of the Future
Oh, excellent, Uncanny magazine is opening for their Disabled People Destroy Fantasy in mid-January.
I could submit to that.
I could submit my story that only recently got a good ending and that I’ve run out of pro markets for.
Oh, or could I? I’ll have to check whether I’ve already subbed it to Uncanny.
So, seriously, why is it that every urban fantasy these days has a heroine with a man’s name, like Hank or Charlie or Fred?
Is it like the green eyes thing in YA?
(Which I don’t understand either.)
So, picture it: A civilisation past its peak, that’s invented AI but can no longer build it, relying on ancient black boxes to tell it what to do. Nobody understands how the box knows, but experience suggests that it’s better to follow its advice.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Life-or-Death Algorithms: The Black Box of AI in Medicine, and How to Avoid It
So all those space operas with oxygen-atmosphere planets that have no apparent biome are not necessarily complete bollocks. Huh.
(Via Winchell Chung.)
Originally shared by Thorfinn Hrolfsson
Alien imposters: Planets with oxygen don’t necessarily have life
Source: Johns Hopkins University
In their search for life in solar systems near and far, researchers have often accepted the presence of oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere as the surest sign that life may be present there. A new Johns Hopkins study, however, recommends a reconsideration of that rule of thumb.
Simulating in the lab the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system, researchers successfully created both organic compounds and oxygen, absent of life.
The findings, published on Dec. 11, 2018, in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, serve as a cautionary tale for researchers who suggest the presence of oxygen and organics on distant worlds is evidence of life there.
Oxygen makes up 20 percent of Earth’s atmosphere and is considered one of the most robust biosignature gases in Earth’s atmosphere. In the search for life beyond Earth’s solar system, however, little is known about how different energy sources initiate chemical reactions and how those reactions can create biosignatures like oxygen. While other researchers have run photochemical models on computers to predict what exoplanet atmospheres might be able to create, no such simulations to He’s knowledge have before now been conducted in the lab.
The research team performed the simulation experiments in a specially designed Planetary HAZE (PHAZER) chamber in the lab of Sarah Hörst, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences and the paper’s co-author. The researchers tested nine different gas mixtures, consistent with predictions for super-Earth and mini-Neptune type exoplanet atmospheres; such exoplanets are the most abundant type of planet in our Milky Way galaxy. Each mixture had a specific composition of gases such as carbon dioxide, water, ammonia, and methane, and each was heated at temperatures ranging from about 80 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
He and the team allowed each gas mixture to flow into the PHAZER setup and then exposed the mixture to one of two types of energy, meant to mimic energy that triggers chemical reactions in planetary atmospheres: plasma from an alternating current glow discharge or light from an ultraviolet lamp. Plasma, an energy source stronger than UV light, can simulate electrical activities like lightning and/or energetic particles, and UV light is the main driver of chemical reactions in planetary atmospheres such as those on Earth, Saturn and Pluto.
After running the experiments continuously for three days, corresponding to the amount of time gas would be exposed to energy sources in space, the researchers measured and identified resulting gasses with a mass spectrometer, an instrument that sorts chemical substances by their mass to charge ratio.
The research team found multiple scenarios that produced both oxygen and organic molecules that could build sugars and amino acids—raw materials for which life could begin—such as formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
“People used to suggest that oxygen and organics being present together indicates life, but we produced them abiotically in multiple simulations,” He says. “This suggests that even the co-presence of commonly accepted biosignatures could be a false positive for life.”
Journal Reference:
Chao He, Sarah M. Hörst, Nikole K. Lewis, Julianne I. Moses, Eliza M.-R. Kempton, Mark S. Marley, Caroline V. Morley, Jeff A. Valenti, Véronique Vuitton. Gas Phase Chemistry of Cool Exoplanet Atmospheres: Insight from Laboratory Simulations. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 2018
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.8b00133
https://releases.jhu.edu/2018/12/17/alien-imposters-planets-with-oxygen-dont-necessarily-have-life/
Every time I’m tempted to complain about working with undocumented software I remember the ENIAC Six, six women who had to invent computer programming. Some scientists and engineers had built the first electronic computer, and hired these women (who were human “computers” along the lines of Hidden Figures) to run it. They had to basically teach themselves electrical engineering, take things apart that they weren’t supposed to touch, and talk to people they’d been told not to talk to in order to figure out how it worked.
Then they could start on the job they were hired for. (See the book Broad Band for more.)
This is another woman in the same mould.
Originally shared by Self-Rescuing Princess Society
“In an age when computers were in their infancy and few women were involved in their development, Berezin (pronounced BEAR-a-zen) not only designed the first true word processor; in 1969, she was also a founder and the president of the Redactron Corp., a tech startup on Long Island that was the first company exclusively engaged in manufacturing and selling the revolutionary machines.”
“Berezin joined the Electronic Computer Corp. in 1951 as the only woman in a shop of engineers in Brooklyn. ‘They said to me, “Design a computer,”‘ she was quoted as saying in the 1972 Times profile. ‘I had never seen one before. Hardly anyone else had. So I just had to figure out how to do it. It was a lot of fun — when I wasn’t terrified.'”
Peter Diamandis, so apply a 90% hype discount as usual, but some interesting ideas that would make for good fiction in the next wave of cyberpunk.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How the Spatial Web Will Transform Every Element of Our Careers https://suhub.co/2ErIvWa