13 Dec

Posted at 12:35h in Scoop.it

The first map showing the global geology of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has been completed and fully reveals a dynamic world of dunes, lakes, plains, craters and other terrains. Titan is the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface. But instead of water raining down from clouds and filling lakes and seas as on Earth, on Titan what rains down is methane and ethane – hydrocarbons that we think of as gases but that behave as liquids in Titan’s frigid climate.

 

“Titan has an active methane-based hydrologic cycle that has shaped a complex geologic landscape, making its surface one of most geologically diverse in the solar system,” said Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and lead author of new research used to develop the map.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: solarsystem.nasa.gov

13 Dec

Posted at 11:17h in Scoop.it

Humans are able to see from birth, so we often take it for granted. Trying to teach a machine to see from scratch, however, is a whole other ballpark. But first, what even is “seeing” in the first place?

 

Vision has three parts:

  1. Being able to physically “see” the object in front of you
  2. Understanding and recognizing what it is
  3. Being able to respond to it

 

In humans, this process corresponds to our eyes being able to see what is in front of us, then our brains recognizing what it is.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: medium.com

06 Dec

Posted at 11:23h in Scoop.it

The Neptune-like planet discovered is thought to be more than four times the size of the Earth-sized white dwarf. University of Warwick discovered the ring of gas using the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

 

Evidence of a giant planet orbiting a dead white dwarf star has been found for the first time. Until now there was no example of a planet that had survived a star’s transition to a white dwarf – leaving little hope for our own planet’s future.  

 

Astronomers say the evidence for the distant planet comes in the form of a disc of gas created from its evaporating atmosphere.

The Neptune-like planet discovered is thought to be more than four times the size of the Earth-sized white dwarf. 

 

The giant planet orbits the star about once every 10 days, leaving a trail of gas comprised of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur in its wake. 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.dailymail.co.uk

06 Dec

Posted at 11:21h in Scoop.it

ADEPT, an artificial intelligence model developed by MIT researchers, demonstrates an understanding of some basic “intuitive physics” by registering a surprise signal when objects in a scene violate assumed reality, similarly to how human infants and adults would register surprise.

 

We often think of artificial intelligence as a tool for automating certain tasks. But it turns out that the technology could also help give us a better understanding of ourselves. At least that’s what a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) think they’ll be able to do with their new AI model.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.mit.edu