UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It’s the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet Union’s most famous (and most hated by its leaders ) novelist — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – who brought the word “gulag” into the vocabulary of the Western world. A century later, a certain Russian space scientist may be glad those forced labor camps no longer exist (or do they?) after going against the leader of Russia’s space program and saying that not only does he believe that the U.S. landed humans on the moon, faking such a landing would be harder than actually accomplishing it. Hear that, lunar-landing-denier Steph Curry?

“Falsifying moon soil is impossible. The Americans brought back to Earth about 300 kilos of it, most of it basalt.”

In a wide-ranging interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Yury Kostitsyn, the head of Russia’s Institute of Analytical Chemistry, went against recent statements of Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, who “joked” that one purpose of Russia’s own future lunar missions will be to prove or disprove the 1969 Apollo 11 landing, give the country an opportunity to check whether Neil Armstrong’s footprints are actually out there.

“The question of whether the Americans landed on the moon in 1961-1972 is not controversial. However, there are still speculations on this topic in the world and mainly come from people who have nothing to do with space. You will not hear from any astronaut that the Americans have not landed on the moon.”

The “astronauts” Kostitsyn is referring to are Russian cosmonauts who know that the U.S. lunar space program was and still is far ahead of theirs. However, as a scientist, he looks for proof in the lunar rocks themselves, which he and other Russians were allowed to examine. He points out that although basalt came into existence on both the Earth and the moon at the same time, there are no old samples on Earth because of weathering. On the other hand, the samples from the moon are over 4 billion years old, far older than any rocks on Earth. In addition, they show a different form of weathering due to solar wind, which does not affect Earth rocks.

Then he goes after Dmitry Rogozin and Steph Curry.

“The Americans were very worried whether the USSR was going to arrange a trick on the moon – after all, at the same time as their mission, the USSR launched its probes on the moon. Of course, we did not have the task to harm them, it was – to get ahead. Staging the landing of American astronauts on the moon would be more difficult and more expensive than its actual implementation. Including because then this deception would have to be kept secret, which is not possible. NASA could classify its materials, but many independent firms participated in the implementation of Apollo.”

Even in the Soviet Union, with the threat of gulags and worse, it would be impossible to have so many different and independent parties keep such a massive hoax a secret for 50 years. Kostitsyn also points out that, while the U.S. seems to be focused on Mars, Russia is talking about establishing a base on the moon – a project that will require a better understanding of how much water is actually there and available.

“To build a base on the moon, you first need to establish life there and solve the problem of protecting people from space radiation. To do this, from the lunar substance to build shelters, and inside them to maintain the atmosphere. It is difficult to carry oxygen from Earth, therefore the water on the Moon is of primary interest – we need to understand how much water is there, how much water is available and how to get oxygen out of it.”

Oxygen and protection from radiation – two challenges Kostitsyn thinks are beyond the ability of Roscosmos and its goal of establishing a base in the 2030s.

“I think that humankind will not be able to fully live on the Moon soon. In the next decade, most likely, missions to the Moon will be resumed – both Russia, the USA and China have plans to launch orbiters there for the time being. Plans for the creation of manned moon descent modules remain at the level of theory.”

It’s discussions like this that remind us we need to listen more to scientists and less to NBA stars.

DeepMind is on the forefront of artificial intelligence (A.I.). The computer system it developed, known as AlphaZero, amazed (and terrified) the world in 2017 when it was able to defeat human chess masters at their own game, despite only learning it four hours previous to the matches. That machine has been tested numerous times by even more chess grandmasters, and now people are seeing it do something not yet seen within machines – it is improvising.

Not only was AlphaZero a master at chess, it has also taught itself games such as shogi, commonly called Japanese chess, and Go. In each attempt, AlphaZero was able to beat the previous world champions of the games, who were all human. On DeepMind’s website, developers say they are “thrilled” to see the program developing improvisation and intuition skills, which are not previously known to be in machines.

In a paper published in Science Magazine, it is stated the machine’s ability to master the complicated game of Go and defeat the world champion showed it had use of “deep convolutional neural networks” because it developed a massive knowledge of the game simply by playing it repeatedly to the point the writers of the paper said it has “superhuman performance” in the game.

Computers have been beating humans at chess since 1997, but the addition of shogi, which is far more complicated than chess, and Go, which relies on practice and intuition, shows AlphaZero is able to not only defeat humans at their own games, but ultimately learn how to do it in better and more efficient ways.

When pitted against another chess computer, Stockfish, AlphaZero won 155 of 1,000 matches, with six losses and the rest being draws. Unlike most chess-playing A.I.’s, however, AlphaZero does not prefer to save its pieces, instead opting to sacrifice them for the greater good.

This ability comes from what developers describe as a “neural network with millions of different tunable parameters, each learning its own rules of what is good in chess.” With all of these variables, the machine, much like a human, can look at a situation and know what the best thing to do is.

AlphaZero began with a blank slate mind, developing strategies and tactics based only on the basic rules of the games it plays. It developed its human-like ability to play games based on its experiences.

While many prominent thinkers such as Elon Musk have warned against A.I., citing the possibility such mechanical minds could ultimately lead to human extinction, DeepMind researchers believe studying the way this machine learns how to play games can lead to real issues, such as why proteins become misfolded in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That protein folding conundrum is ultimately the goal of A.I.’s such as AlphaZero built by DeepMind.