This military analyst notices a this familiar military jet plane in the middle of a Chinese city. The question is, is the plane real one stolen or just a model to test it ?

WATCH NEXT

• Lockheed Martin F-35A filmed "In Beast Mode" over California

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

15-08-2018 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

The Search for Life on Europa Just Got Easier

We may be able to recover potential biosignatures without drilling.

In a new paper published in Nature Astronomy, Tom Nordheim from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and his colleagues put Jupiter’s moon Europa back on the front burner in the search for life beyond Earth.

They found that potential biosignatures such as amino acids might be preserved at high to mid-latitudes of Europa only a few centimeters below the moon’s icy surface. Even in the equatorial regions, where the radiation hazard is much more brutal, detectable levels of amino acids may still be recoverable at depths of only 10 centimeters—assuming the ice crust is not older than 10 million years.

{ https://www.airspacemag.com/ }

15-08-2018 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

15 Quick Scientific Facts that Will Blow Your Mind

BY TIBI PUIU 

Why don’t more people appreciate science? Personally, I believe it has something to do with science communication and the way we teach science in our schools.

With this in mind, here are a couple amazing scientific facts that I hope will inspire you to learn something new every day — they’ve certainly done so for me. However, this list is much too short; keep it growing by adding your own science facts in the comments section.

1. There is enough DNA in the average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back — 17 times

The human genome (the genetic code in each human cell) contains 23 DNA molecules (called chromosomes), each containing from 500,000 to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled — about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body, so if you were to uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and place the molecules end to end, it would sum to a total length of 2×10¹⁴ meters — enough for 17 Pluto round-trips (the distance from the sun to Pluto and then back again is 1.2×10¹³ meters). As an added bonus, you should know that we each share 99% of our DNA with every other human — just to show that we’re far more alike than different.

2. The average human body carries ten times more bacterial cells than human cells

It’s funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops, or make a grimace when someone sneezes near us, when, in fact, each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you could fill a half-gallon jug — there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don’t worry, though: most of these bacteria are helpful. In fact, we couldn’t survive without them.

For example, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked despite the fact that they didn’t eat any more than they had before. Gut bacteria is also very important for maintaining immunity. (image source).

3. It takes a photon up to 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction. To travel from the sun’s core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) so it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps.

The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, some of the light that reaches us today is energy produced millions of years ago. Amazing!

4. At over 2,000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

Coral reefs consist of huge numbers of individual coral polyps (soft-bodied, invertebrate animals) that are linked together by tissue. The Great Barrier Reef is an interlinked system of about 3,000 reefs and 900 coral islands divided by narrow passages, located just beneath the surface of the Coral Sea. Spanning more than 2,000 km and covering an area of some 350,000 sq km, it is the largest living structure on Earth and the only one visible from space. However, this fragile coral colony is beginning to crumble, battered by the effects of climate change, pollution, and manmade disasters.

5. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean

A teaspoon of water (about 5 mL) contains 2×10²³ water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon down end to end, you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km — 10 times the width of our solar system.

6. In an entire lifetime, the average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world

The average moderately active person takes around 7,500 step/day.  If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math;  the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles — which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator.

7. There are actually over two dozen states of matter (that we know of)

Everybody knows that there at least three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. If you’re a little bit more versed in physics, you also know about the fourth fundamental state of matter called plasma —  a hot ionized gas, with prime examples including lightning or neon signs. But beyond these common states of matter, scientists have discovered a myriad of exotic states of matter that occur under special conditions. One of them is the Bose-Einsteincondensate, where atoms chilled to only 0.000001 degrees above absolute zero start behaving like waves, rather than particles as they ought to on the macroscopic scale. Essentially, the atoms behave like one super atom, acting in unison.

Another interesting exotic state of matter is represented by time crystals — regular, boringly ordered crystals with a twist: A fourth dimension, time, is added so that the material exhibits different periodic structures over time. What makes these crystals particularly remarkable has less to do with the fact that they repeat in time but rather more with the fact that they’re intrinsically out of equilibrium. Because time crystals are never able to settle down, say into a diamond or ruby, there’s a lot we can learn from them.

8. Killer whales are actually dolphins

Despite their name, killer whales or orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family. Technically, orcas are also whales because delphinids belong to the Cetacean order within the toothed whale (Odontoceti) suborder. However, the term whale is typically reserved for baleen whales of the Mysticeti suborder.

The major physical feature that ensures orcas are dolphins is the presence of a melon — a fatty deposit that assists the animals in echolocation and only exists in dolphins.

Orcas are highly intelligent, highly adaptable and able to communicate and coordinate hunting tactics. They are extremely fast swimmers and have been recorded at speeds of up to 54kph! A wild orca pod can cover over 160 kilometers a day, foraging, and socializing.

9. Grasshoppers have ears in their bellies

Unlike humans, grasshoppers do not have ears on the side of their head. Like the ears of people, the grasshopper sound detector is a thin membrane called a tympanum, or “eardrum”. In adults, the tympanum is covered and protected by the wings, and allows the grasshopper to hear the songs of its fellow grasshoppers.

The grasshopper tympanum is adapted to vibrate in response to signals that are important to the grasshopper. Male grasshoppers use sounds to call for mates and to claim territory. Females can hear the sound that males make and judge the relative size of the male from the pitch of the call (large males make deeper sounds). Other males can hear the sounds and judge the size of a potential rival. Males use this information to avoid fights with larger male grasshoppers or to chase smaller rivals from their territory.

10. You can’t taste food without saliva

In order for food to have taste, chemicals from the food must first dissolve in saliva. It’s only once they’ve been dissolved in a liquid that the chemicals can be detected by receptors on taste buds. During this process, some salivary constituents chemically interact with taste substances. For example, salivary buffers (e.g., bicarbonate ions) decrease the concentration of free hydrogen ions (sour taste), and there are some salivary proteins which may bind with bitter taste substances.

Here’s a quick science experiment to test this out — get out a clean towel, and rub your tongue dry; then place some dry foods on your tongue, one by one, such as a cookie, pretzel, or some other dry food. After this session, drink a glass of water and repeat. Did you feel a difference?

11. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C, the lowest temperature possible), it becomes a liquid with surprising properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!

We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don’t know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states — one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of –452°F (–269°C), it can suddenly do things that other fluids can’t, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid — a liquid that flows without friction.

“If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course, it’s stopped moving,” says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

This happens because atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down.

“But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later,” he says, “it would still be moving”.

12. If Betelgeuse exploded, transitioning from the red supergiant stage to supernova, it would light our sky continuously for two months. It could happen anytime — within a couple of thousand years, tomorrow or even now

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth, yet it’s already one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a supergiant star — the largest type of star in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times greater than that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the orbit of Mars. Because it’s near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova.

13. Octopuses have three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood

Two of the hearts work exclusively to move blood beyond the animal’s gills, while the third keeps circulation flowing for the organs. When the octopus swims, the organ heart stops beating, which explains why these creatures prefer to crawl rather than swim (it exhausts them).

An octopus also has nine brains — well, sort of. There’s one ‘main’ brain where all the analysis and decision making takes place and eight ancillary brains — one at the base of each arm — that function as preprocessors for all the information obtained by that arm. Two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons reside in its arms, which can independently figure out how to open a shellfish, for instance, while the main brain is busy doing something else.

Our blood is red due to the fact that it contains iron-based hemoglobin to transport oxygen to cells. Octopuses, on the other hand, use the copper-based cyanoglobin, which performs the same function, albeit less efficiently — this makes octopuses have less stamina than you might expect.

14. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body

You have about 5 liters of blood in your body (at least, most people do) and the average heart pumps about 70 mL of blood out with each beat. A healthy heart also beats around 70 times a minute. So, if you multiply the amount of blood that the heart can pump by the number of beats in a minute, you actually get about 4.9 liters of blood pumped per minute, which is almost your whole body’s worth of blood. In just a minute, the heart pumps the entire blood volume around your body.

15. The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies.

There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100 billion Earth-like planets. Still think we’re alone?

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

14-08-2018 om 23:01 geschreven door peter  

Can aliens survive climate change? Read on

Isabella O'Malley
Climate Change Reporter

RJ Eskow: If Aliens Civilizations Die, Can Humans Survive?

{ https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ }

14-08-2018 om 22:07 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

14-08-2018 om 21:23 geschreven door peter  

So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

Scientists first discovered the Ediacaran organisms in 1946 in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills. To date, researchers have identified about 200 different types in ancient rocks across the world. Almost all appear to have died out by 541 million years ago, just before fossils of familiar animals like sponges and the ancestors of crabs and lobsters appeared in an event dubbed the Cambrian explosion. One reason these creatures have proved so tricky to place in the tree of life is that some of them had an anatomy unique in nature. Their bodies were made up of branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, have now found key evidence that the Ediacaran organisms were animals. They analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena. Paleontologists had previously concluded that the 10-centimeter-tall species was some sort of animal—in part, says Hoyal Cuthill, because it was found alongside other known animals, and all of the fossils are preserved in a similar way. Hoyal Cuthill and Han argue S. psygmoglena was also an Ediacaran organism, a rare “survivor” that somehow clung on through the Cambrian explosion.

The Stromatoveris fossils, which were all unearthed in Yunnan province in southwestern China, are beautifully preserved, Hoyal Cuthill says. As she examined specimen after specimen she became increasingly excited. “I began thinking: My goodness, I’ve seen these features before.” Like some of the strange Ediacaran organisms, Stromatoveris was made up of several radially repeated, branched fronds with a fractal internal architecture.

To find out what sort of animals Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms were, Hoyal Cuthill and Han ran a computer analysis that uses anatomical features to reconstruct evolutionary relationships. They found that Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms don’t belong to any living animal group or “phylum.” Instead, they cluster on their own branch in the animal evolutionary tree, between the sponges and complex animals with a digestive cavity like worms, mollusks, and vertebrates, the team reports today in Palaeontology. “This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants,” Hoyal Cuthill says.

“It looks very likely [the Ediacaran organisms] are animals,” says Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, who worked with Han on the first description of Stromatoveris in 2006, but who was not involved in the current study. At that point there were just a handful of known Stromatoveris fossils. The researchers argued that they were similar to some Ediacaran organisms, although others later questioned that link. Conway Morris says the new study “extends the story very nicely” by exploring the Ediacaran nature of Stromatoveris in more detail.

Geobiologist Simon Darroch at Vanderbilt University in Nashville is also comfortable with the idea that the Ediacaran organisms were animals and that a few survived into the Cambrian. But on a first look he is not convinced that Stromatoveris was one such survivor; he thinks the evidence that it had the fractal architecture of an Ediacaran organism isn’t strong—yet he’s open to persuasion.

If the new conclusion settles one mystery, though, it introduces another. The Ediacaran organisms represent the first major explosion of complex life on Earth, and they thrived for 30 million years. Their demise has been linked to the appearance of animals in the Cambrian Explosion, Hoyal Cuthill says. But that simple explanation doesn’t work as well if Ediacaran organisms were animals themselves, and some were still alive tens of millions of years later. “It’s not quite so neat anymore,” she says. “As to what led to their eventual extinction I think it’s very hard to say.”

Figure 1 — Major events during the Ediacaran period, and the main palaeontological Ediacaran field localities. A, Key tectonic, geochemical and extraterrestrial events during the Ediacaran period (635 million to 541 million years ago), and the approximate ranges of the Avalon, White Sea and Nama biotic assemblages of soft-bodied Ediacaran macrofossils. The Shuram excursion is the largest recorded change in the carbon-isotope record in Earth history, and indicates a substantial shift in the global carbon cycle. However, the precise timing of this event is unclear. B, Notable Ediacaran fossil localities. All are macrofossil sites, except Weng’an, which houses the well-known Doushantuo microfossil assemblages. Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 2 — Fossils discovered between 1840 and 1957 in rocks of ‘Azoic’ age. A, Charnia masoni, discovered by schoolchildren in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, UK, in the 1950s. This specimen is the holotype (type specimen) of Charnia masoni, and is housed at the New Walk Museum, Leicester. B, Aspidella terranovica, from St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada. C, ‘Ring fossils’ from the ‘ring pit’, Charnwood Forest, first documented in the 1840s. These disc-shaped fossils are now recognized to be the anchoring holdfasts of frond-like organisms. Scale bars, 10 mm (A–B) and 50 mm (C).

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 3 — Ediacaran fossils from the Ediacara Member, South Australia. All specimens reside at the South Australia Museum. A, Dickinsonia, SAM P40135. B, Parvancorina, SAM P40695. C, Two specimens of Spriggina, SAM P29802 and P29803. D, Kimberella, SAM P48935. Scale bars, 10 mm.

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 4 — Further soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms from the Ediacara Member, South Australia. All specimens reside at the South Australia Museum. A, Funisia, SAM P40726. B, Tribrachidium, SAM P12898 (holotype). C, Palaeophragmodictya, SAM P48140. D, Eoandromeda, SAM P44349. E, Arkarua, SAM P49266. F, Palaeopascichnus, SAM P36854d. G, Nemiana, SAM P49342. Scale bars, 10 mm.

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

{ http://science.sciencemag.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 23:40 geschreven door peter  

This meteorite from Siberia contains tiny, so far completely unknown crystals

The extremely rare quasicrystal has been found in the Siberian Khatyrka meteorite. 

Luca Bindi et al

Created under extreme heat and almost as hard as a diamond: A meteorite from Siberia contains tiny, so far completely unknown crystals.

A previously unknown mineral that does not occur on Earth was found in a meteorite by a Russian team led by Viktor Sharygin from Novosibirsk State University.

The new material "uakitite" is a nitride, forms cube-shaped crystals and consists of vanadium, nitrogen and small amounts of iron and chromium. According to the Russian working group, the crystals form only tiny inclusions of a few micrometers in diameter in the Uakite meteorite found in Siberia in 2016, which consists of an iron-nickel alloy. Because the particles are so small, the team was only able to directly determine the composition and structure of the mineral; the researchers have deduced other physical properties from comparisons with vanadium nitride. Thus Uakitite together with other nitrides is one of the hardest known minerals, only surpassed by diamond.

The composition of the meteorite shows that uakitite must have formed under extreme conditions - many of the minerals found there only form at well over 1000 degrees Celsius.

A grain of the Khatyrka meteorite, in which the quasicrystal was found 

http://www.news.com.au/Luca Bindi et al

The newly discovered mineral is surrounded by a slightly larger mass of iron and chromium sulphides, which separated from the original iron-nickel melt at such high temperatures. The mostly undisturbed form of the Uakitite crystals indicates that the material crystallized out of the melt very early and is an independent mineral - other nitrides with similar composition are far and wide nothing to be seen. Because of its extreme formation conditions, uakitite can only occur in space in iron-nickel asteroids that once melted at high temperatures.

{ http://www.news.com.au/ }

12-08-2018 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

Your Brain Contains Magnetic Particles, and Scientists Want to Know Why

12-08-2018 om 18:24 geschreven door peter  

Anyone who has ever watched the night sky has probably seen at least a few shooting stars from time to time. These bits of stellar debris begin to burn as they are met with the friction of our atmosphere,  becoming balls of colorful fire once they reach a distance of around 15 to 55 miles above our planet.

Impossible "Alien Crystal" Found In Meteorite?

Meteors can possess a variety of colors, ranging from blue and green to bright yellow, pink, and red. But what actually causes these colors when we see meteors streaking through the sky?

The darker colors in the spectrum are generally the result of metals present within the meteor; the same is the case for yellowish hues that appear as they burn, although reddish colors are generally a result of the air around the meteor itself. The resulting combinations can result in quite a light show during peak times of the year when meteor showers occur.

The famous Esquell meteorite, which features yellowish crystals of olivine encased in and outer matrix of iron-nickel (Wikimedia Commons).

We know, of course, that meteors contain a variety of metals and other minerals, including a few that are fairly rare here on Earth (more on that a bit later). However, one meteor that was recently discovered in Russia has actually yielded an entirely new kind of mineral, which some experts are rightly calling an “alien” material from space.

Dubbed ‘Uakitite,’ the mineral was found in an iron meteorite discovered in 2016 called Uakit, recovered from the Baunt Evenk district, Republic of Buryatia, in Russia. The discovery was formally acknowledged the following year on June 28, 2017 by the Meteorite Nomenclature Committee.

According to a paper published by the 81st Annual Meeting of The Meteoritical Society 2018, Kamacite is the main mineral found within the meteorite, although minor and accessory minerals include a cavalcade of seldom-discussed varieties such as schreibersite (rhabdite), nickelphosphide, taenite, plessite, cohenite, tetrataenite, daubreelite, kalininite, troilite, carlsbergite, sphalerite, among others.

The Uakitite was found in small amounts, and “was observed in small troilite-daubreelite inclusions.” The mineral is described as grayish in color, and reflecting a pinkish color under light. It is nearly as hard as diamond (possessing a 9-10 ration on the Mohs’ scale).

A variety of elements that are rarely seen here on Earth are commonly found in meteors. Examples of such rare-earth elements include iridium, platinum, neodymium, and many others, which have practical applications that include an array of industrial uses (magnets made of neodymium can be purchased, for instance, which are renowned for their strength).

When geologists find a prevalence of a particular rare-earth element along a widespread geological boundary, one thing that it may often indicate is an extraterrestrial impact that occurred during the period in history associated with the strata in question. The presence of a so-called “iridium anomaly” such as this was what helped physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, determine that an extraterrestrial impact occurred in the Cretaceous period, which is associated with the widespread extinction of the dinosaurs.

A similar controversial theory has been proposed for a platinum anomaly discovered at around 12,700 BCE, which coincides with a period of abrupt climate change in Paleoindian times known as the Younger Dryas.

While there are no “anomalies” present in relation to the Russian meteor discussed earlier, it is certainly a novel discovery to have found traces of an “alien” mineral within it. The discovery marks the first instance where, to our knowledge, the newly-dubbed Uakitite mineral has ever appeared on our world.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

In 1959, popular TV comedian Jackie Gleason became so obsessed with life on galaxies far, far away that he built his house to look like a giant spaceship — and now, the round, winding structure is on the market for $12 million.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Using The Honeymooners star’s love of outer space and UFOs as inspiration, architect Robert Cika designed the house and an adjacent cottage in Cortland Manor, New York, from scratch. Everything in the two buildings — nicknamed “The Spaceship” and “The Motherhsip” by Gleason — is circular, with the structure supported by exposed wooden ship beams spiraling out from the middle.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Gleason, who rose to fame after landing small roles in 1940s movies and eventually landing a prime comedy slot on CBS’ The Jackie Gleason Show in 1949, took six years to build the house specifically to his liking. Even today, the Spaceship and the Mothership look like something straight out of the future — the stairs, curved floorboards, master bed and cabinets are all built as a spiral without a single right angle in view.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Listed by Keller Williams’ Margaret Bailey, Howard Payson and Jacqueline Campanelli, the estate boasts five bedrooms, six bathrooms and more than eight acres of land. From the marble staircases and curving kitchen to the winding bar that can accommodate up to 14 people, each detail was built to honor Gleason’s lifelong love of space and science fiction.

Anthony Acocella Photography

But perhaps the most significant part of the Spaceship House is its history as a place of entertainment — Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon and Frank Sinatra have all partied in its halls at the height of Gleason’s fame. The current owner, a recently retired orthodontist, bought the house in 1976 for $150,000.

• Email Veronika Bondarenko
  

• Article image credited to The spaceship-shaped house that comedian Jackie Gleason built in 1959 is listed on the market for a price of $12 million.

{ https://www.inman.com/ }

10-08-2018 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

China successfully tests its hypersonic Starry Sky-2 aircraft that will fire nuclear missiles capable of travelling at 4,563 miles-per-hour to evade existing anti-missile defence systems

• The hypersonic weapon rides on the shockwaves it generates, reports suggest
• It can travel at six times the speed of sound – around 7,344km/h (4,563mph)
• The flight test was deemed a 'huge success' by scientists involved in the project
• Experts say it could signal China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the US 

By PHOEBE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE 

China has successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons that evade existing anti-missile defence systems, according reports.

The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph). 

Starry Sky-2 will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept.

When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems. 

Scientists involved in the latest test flight have heralded it as a 'huge success', with experts saying the aircraft signals China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the United States in the race to create hypersonic warheads.

China has long been suspected of building an arsenal of hypersonic weapons, but this new test flight is the first proof the technology is actively being developed.

Scroll down for video

China has tested a hypersonic aircraft called Starry Sky-2 (pictured) that could carry nuclear weapons and evade anti-missile defence systems, reports suggest 

The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) said in a statement the latest test flight – carried out at an undisclosed location in northwest of the country – was a 'huge success', writes South China Morning Post.

The Starry Sky-2 aircraft was carried into space before separating from the launcher rocket and flying on its own power.

Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds.

In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles).

Local reports suggest it also achieved a top speed of Mach 6.

'The test … has laid a solid technological foundation for engineering applications of the waverider design,' the CAAA statement claimed.

Hypersonic weapons can defeat existing anti-missile defences as they are designed to switch direction during their flight.

These missiles do not follow a predictable ballistic arc like conventional projectiles, making them much harder to track and intercept.

According to the CAAA, the aircraft landed 'whole' in the designated target zone.

However, this technology is not ready to be rolled-out yet.

The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph)

Starry Sky-2 (pictured) will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept

'I think there are still three to five years before this technology can be weaponised,' said Beijing-based military analyst, Zhou Chenming.

'As well as being fitted to missiles, it may also have other military applications, which are still being explored.'

Russia is widely-tipped to be developing a hypersonic weapon known as 'Zircon'.

The Zircon cruise missile purportedly travels between 3,800mph (6,115kph) and 4,600mph (7,400kph) – five to six times the speed of sound – putting Russia 'half a decade ahead of the US'.

According to Russian news agency Tass, it is set to go into production this year.

When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems

Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds

In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles)

In June, it was also revealed a US hypersonic missile had taken a step closer to reality.

Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound.

The aerospace firm is working on an air-launched weapon system, dubbed the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW), under a new deal with the US Air Force.

In the first phase, the team will finalise the system requirements before moving on to design, flight tests, and initial production and deployment. 

Work on the ultra-fast missile is taking place in Huntsville, Alabama, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida, according to Lockheed Martin.

Russia is believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon called the Zircon. The missile is capable of travelling twice as fast as the Royal Navy's Sea Ceptor missile (pictured), which would be responsible for shooting it down were it to attack British troops or mainland UK

The US Air Force will grant Lockheed Martin up to $928 million for development of the weapon through early operational capability.

'Our goal is rapid development and fielding of the HCSW system, and this contract is the first step in achieving that goal,' said John Snyder, vice president of Air Force Strategic Programs at Lockheed Martin.

'Design, development, production, integration and test experts from across Lockheed Martin will partner with the Air Force to achieve early operational capability and deliver the system to our warfighters. 

'We are incredibly proud to be leading this effort.' 

It was first revealed back in April that the Pentagon pushed through development of the highly maneuverable weapons, which are designed to outpace detection and defensive capabilities.

The move follows repeated warnings from senior officials about rapid advances by China and Russia, who have unveiled their own versions in recent months.

Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound. This 2010 file photo shows rival Boeing's X-51A WaveRider hypersonic vehicle under a B-52 bomber

Hypersonic weapons can beat regular anti-missile defences.  This artist's impression, courtesy of the US Air Force, shows Boeing's hypersonic X-51A Waverider cruise missile currently under development

Arsenals of the ultra-fast intercontinental weapons could also be equipped with nuclear warheads with the capability of delivering devastating strikes across the planet. 

In a statement, the Pentagon said Lockheed will receive up to $928 million to build a new, non-nuclear missile it is calling the 'hypersonic conventional strike weapon.'

'This contract provides for the design, development, engineering, systems integration, test, logistics planning, and aircraft integration support of all the elements of a hypersonic, conventional, air-launched, stand-off weapon,' the statement read. 

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's new defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said China had built 'a pretty mature system' for a hypersonic missile to strike from thousands of kilometres (miles) away.

'We will, with today's defensive systems, not see these things coming,' Mr Griffin said.

WHAT DOES RUSSIA CLAIM TO HAVE IN ITS MILITARY ARSENAL?

The Russian Ministry of Defence has been keen to promote a range of new super weapons currently believed to be in development.

President Putin unveiled a catalogue of doomsday weaponry as part of his annual 'State of the Nation' speech in March 2018.

However, questions remain about the true nature of their capabilities, how far into development the weapons truly are, and when they will be combat-ready.

RS-28 Sarmat ICBM

The RS-28 Sarmat is intended to replace the Soviet-designed SS-18 Voyevoda, the world's heaviest ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile).

It is known as 'Satan' in the West and carries 10 nuclear warheads.

Sarmat can unleash ten large thermonuclear warheads, 16 smaller ones, or a combination of both, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.

Each warhead is purportedly capable of taking aim at a different target.

The hypersonic glide vehicle, dubbed Avangard, launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile (IBM) before sailing on top of the atmosphere toward its target. Russia tested its latest IBM, the Sarmat missile, for the first time last year (pictured)

The (ICBM) weapons can strike targets via both the North and South poles.

TV broadcaster Zvezda, which is run by the Russian Ministry of Defence, has previously claimed the missile will be capable of wiping out areas the size of Texas or France. 

It is also capable of carrying up to 24 of Russia's new Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, designed to sit atop of an ICBM.

Putin says both weapons will be combat-ready in 2020. 

Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle 

Russia is also believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon that can breach even the world's most advanced missile defence systems.

The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle purportedly travels at 20 times the speed of sound and can hit targets anywhere in the world within half an hour.

The vehicle launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, before gliding on top of the atmosphere toward its target.

It is loaded with advanced countermeasure systems that allow it to skirt around the latest-generation of missile defence systems, Russia claims.

The vehicles are equipped with onboard countermeasure systems capable of dodging even the most advanced missile defence systems. This artist's impression shows how the glider could manoeuvre at high speed to bypass missile defences

The gliders are also highly unpredictable thanks to their manoeuvrability, making them almost impossible to track using conventional systems.

Each weapon could be loaded with a nuclear warhead, however military experts say the sheer speed of the vehicles means they could do damage even without an explosive payload attached.

Putin described his hypersonic arsenal as 'invincible' during a state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.

He claimed Avangard strikes 'like a meteorite, like a fireball' and was capable of reaching targets at 20 times the speed of sound.

At this speed the weapon could circle the Earth in just over half an hour. 

Speaking to MailOnline, Neil Gibson, senior weapons analyst for Jane's by IHS Markit, said: 'I think the ability of hypersonic systems to defeat air-defence system is highly exaggerated.

'They have advantages and disadvantages as per any other weapon system. 

'The fact is, the vast majority of ballistic missiles are already hypersonic anyway, it's the controlled flight when still hypersonic that we are talking about here.

'If nuclear armed, they just come under 'mutually assured destruction' style posturing. Using them is always possible of course.

'Conventionally-armed versions are more likely to be used, though any confusion with what they carry - nuclear or conventional warhead - could start an exchange of nuclear weapons if it is mistaken for a nuclear attack.'

Kinzhal Hypersonic Air Launched Missile

Another new missile, the hypersonic Kinzhal, travels at ten times the speed of sound, Putin says.

It is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia.

The hypersonic Kinzhal missile is launched from a high-altitude MiG-31 fighter jet and can be fitted with either nuclear, or conventional weapons.

This still shows the hypersonic Kinzhal, which travels at ten times the speed of sound and is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia

It has an effective range of 1,250 miles (2,000 km), although Putin claims its total range is actually 'unlimited'.

Russia has already conducted some 350 training missions with the military unit tasked with testing the Kinzhal.

Putin claims the new missile would be capable of striking 'anywhere in the world', and that its high speed and manoeuvrability allowed it to pierce any missile defence.

However, despite Putin's major promises, the missile has still not been able to stay airborne for more than a few minutes, according to US intelligence sources.

The new missile has purportedly been tested four times between November and February and crashed every time.

Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile

The burevestnik, or thunderbird, nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles aims to give them 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre', according to Sergey Pertsev, a developer.

 Ministry of Defence officials  said in July, 2018, that work on the unlimited-range missile is going according to plan.

Footage purported to show the missile in action, although it is unclear whether it was being powered by nuclear or conventional fuel.

The 'Burevestnik' nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles, pictured, is said to have 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre' 

'Launching systems are also being designed, while technological processes to manufacture, assemble and test the missile are being improved,' an official said at the time. 

However, experts have criticised the missile, including Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

He told Vice's Motherboard: 'The nuclear-powered cruise missile is new—and bats**t crazy.'

Poseidon Drone Submarine 

The Poseidon drone submarine is a sister project to burevestnik.

It is essentially a giant, nuclear-capable torpedo capable of carrying a two megaton nuclear warhead capable of obliterating military ports.

The Kremlin's Poseidon torpedo sub is designed to destroy 'enemy navy bases' and will be able to travel up to 70 knots (80 miles per hour), it claims.

Russian state news agency TASS says it has not been able to confirm details of the weapon.

The Poseidon drone submarine - with a miniature nuclear propulsion system - is shown undergoing a static test

However, it quoted a military source as saying: 'It will be possible to mount various nuclear charges on the 'torpedo' of the Poseidon multipurpose seaborne system, with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to two megatonnes in TNT equivalent.'

With its nuke, the weapon 'is primarily designed to destroy reinforced naval bases of a potential enemy,' the report added.

Peresvet Combat Laser System 

Named after a medieval warrior monk, very little is known about this system.

Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries, which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam.

According to ex-Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov the 'combat laser systems' that Putin addressed in his State of the Nation speech back in March had already been delivered to the nation's armed forces last year.

Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries (pictured), which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam  

Once found only in works of fiction, Mr Borisov said such devices were now a very real and necessary tool of modern warfare. 

'We can talk a lot about laser weapons and movies were made about them a long time ago and fantastic books have been written, and everyone knows about this,' Mr Borisov said in comments translated by the state-run Tass Russian News Agency.

But the fact that these systems have started entering service is indeed today's reality.'

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

10-08-2018 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

China Just Tested a Hypersonic Weapon That Could Launch Nukes at 6 Times the Speed of Sound

China successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft on Friday (Aug. 3), one that could one day be capable of firing nuclear missiles around the planet at up to six times the speed of sound, according to China's state-run news site China Daily.

The aircraft, known as Starry Sky-2, is reportedly capable of screaming across the sky at speeds of up to 4,563 mph (7,344 km/h) and rapidly switching direction mid-flight, China Daily reported, potentially allowing the rocket to blast right past existing missile defense systems.

China has tested a hypersonic aircraft called Starry Sky-2 (pictured) that could carry nuclear weapons and evade anti-missile defence systems, reports suggest 

Video of the Starry Sky-2 test launch (which was conducted in an undisclosed location in northwestern China) showed the aircraft being launched into space on a multistage rocket. The aircraft then separated from its launcher and continued flying on its own power, soaring at about Mach-5.5 (five and a half times the speed of sound) for 400 seconds, China Daily reported. The aircraft then performed several maneuvers at an altitude of about 18 miles (29 km) before landing in a designated target zone — a demonstration that witnesses heralded as a "huge success," according to a statement quoted in the South China Morning Post.

10-08-2018 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

Enigmatic creatures that lived 630 million years ago were animals — but not like anything we’ve seen before

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

The Ediacaran Organisms - Did they Move, What did they Eat?

The year is 600 million BC — and the Earth is a completely different place from what we know it to be. The most advanced creatures on Earth are (probably) the so-called Ediacaran fauna. To the untrained eye, they look just like plants, static and seemingly inactive. But things are not always as they seem.

The Ediacaran fauna has fascinated scientists for years, trying to figure out whether they were algae, fungi, animals, or of a completely different kingdom. Now, a group of scientists believes they finally have the answer. In a new study, they present convincing arguments that the Ediacaran fauna were indeed animals.

Dickinsonia costata, an iconic Ediacaran organism.

Image credits: Verisimilus / Wikipedia.

They dominated the seas all around the world, with traces of their fossils appearing in all corners of the Earth. The Ediacaran fauna first emerged some 635 million years ago, only to disappear quickly after the Cambrian Explosion, some 542 million years ago. Part of the reason why these creatures have been so hard to pin down is their unique anatomy. They featured tubular-type fronds, which branch out in a fractal matter. They bear a resemblance to mollusks (and other creatures with a similar symmetry), but they also resemble some sponges and even jellyfish. Some paleontologists have suggested that they represent a completely extinct branch of life, perhaps even a link between plants and animals.

But a new study says that they were definitely animals — and it brings the evidence to back it up.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena.

It was already believed that this creature was some sort of animal, but it was not clear whether it also belonged to the Ediacaran fauna. If this connection could be established, then it would indicate that the Ediacaran fauna were indeed animals.

Cuthill and Han ran a computer analysis, using anatomical features to reconstruct evolutionary relationships between Stromatoveris and creatures genetically close to it. They found that Stromatoveris, just like all other Ediacaran organisms they analyzed, didn’t belong to any living animal group (or phylum). They have their own branch, somewhere between the simple sea sponges and more complex animals such as worms and mollusks.

“This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants,” Hoyal Cuthill says.

There’s a very good chance that the Ediacaran fauna were the world’s first animals, but this opens up another thorny question: the extinction of the Ediacaran was linked to Cambrian animals. But if they themselves were animals (and some survived well into the Cambrian), the explanation isn’t so elegant anymore.

“It’s not quite so neat anymore,” she says. “As to what led to their eventual extinction I think it’s very hard to say.”

The study was published in Paleontology.

Ediacaran fossils

Why the Ediacaran fossils are significant

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

09-08-2018 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE: Discovery Channel treasure hunter claims he’s found evidence of an extra-terrestrial spaceship while exploring ancient shipwrecks beneath the Bermuda Triangle

• Explorer Darrell Miklos has been using secret maps created by famed NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean
• Diving at an undisclosed location near the Bahamas he found what  he believes is the  first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago
• What he thought could be an ancient shipwreck turned out to be  huge USO (unidentified submerged object)with  15, 300ft long obtrusions jutting from its sides
• 'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that,' Miklos tells DailyMail.com
• Miklos' discoveries have featured over two seasons of hit Discovery Channel docu-series Cooper's Treasure

By RYAN PARRY WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A treasure hunter has made an astonishing 'unexplained' discovery deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle that he believes could provide the first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago.

Explorer Darrell Miklos has been using secret maps created by his close friend and famed NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean.

His amazing discoveries have featured over two seasons of hit Discovery Channel docuseries Cooper's Treasure.

But in recent months his team stumbled on something that he believes will shock the world.

Using maps put together in the 1960s by Cooper to identify more than 100 magnetic 'anomalies' in the Caribbean, Miklos dived at an undisclosed location near the Bahamas to investigate what he thought could be an ancient shipwreck.

Darrell Miklos and his team discovered the USO (unidentified submerged object) in the Bermuda Triangle close to the Bahamas. He spotted the large obtrusions while exploring the area in a submersible looking for shipwrecks. 'I was trying to identify shipwreck material based on one of the anomaly readings on Gordon's charts when I noticed something that stuck out, that shocked me,' said Miklos in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com

Horizontal cylinder structures jut out from this large dome feature at the center of the site. Geophysicists on the team report that the coral covering these structures appears to be more than 5000 years old. 

A close up of one of the horizontal structures which has scientists baffled. Because of the extreme currents at the location it's almost impossible for coral to grow at all, let alone into a anything this large

Here, what he describes as the right jutting section of the USO.  According to scientists on Darrell's team, no coral anywhere in the world could grow in this formation naturally, there would have to be an underlying structure to support that type of growth

Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface 'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that. 'It was also something that was completely different from anything that I've seen that was made by nature'

These horizontal structures are massive, each measures as much as 300 feet straight out, the length of a US football field. The explorer also found other bizarre and unexplained formations around the main object, all of which are covered in thick coral which he believes are hundreds if not thousands of years old

These mystery shapes score the top of the massive central mound. Each of these lines is the width of a family home

Here you can see the gigantic mound rising above the ring of structures that stick out from the center. The entire site's diameter is some 600 feet - the length of two football fields

But instead the veteran treasure hunter found a bizarre structure like nothing he's ever seen.

The huge unidentified submerged object (USO) has 15, 300ft long obtrusions jutting from its side.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface.

He recalls: 'We were doing a scene where I was sitting in a two man submersible.

'We were out in the Bahamas and we were on an English shipwreck trail, somehow related to Sir Francis Drake.

'I was trying to identify shipwreck material based on one of the anomaly readings on Gordon's charts when I noticed something that stuck out, that shocked me.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface

'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that.

'It was also something that was completely different from anything that I've seen that was made by nature.

'It's almost like there are five arms coming out of a steep wall cliff and each one of these is the size of a gun on a battleship. They're enormous and then there's five over here and five over there, 15 in total.

'There's identical formations in three different areas and they don't look nature made, they don't look man made, certainly nothing I've ever seen based on my experience and I have years of experience at doing this, we've identified multiple different types of shipwreck material, this doesn't match or look anything like that.'

The deepest part of the site is 300 feet below the surface, divers had to use special breathing apparatus and a state of the art submarine to access it.

The explorer also found other bizarre and unexplained formations around the main object, all of which are covered in thick coral which he believes are hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Blown away by the discovery, when back on board his ship, Miklos decided to dig further into Cooper's files to find further clues.

Significantly, the astronaut had written 'unidentified object' on the chart of the area rather than mentioning any historical shipwreck.

'I investigated some of Gordon's charts, I realized that there was something else on there that Gordon was referring to,' he said.

'Then it made sense to me why it wasn't identified as a shipwreck... he had to mean it might be something from another world.

'Gordon believed in aliens. He believed that we had visitors from other planets and he also believed that a lot of these things landed in this particular part of the world.'

The treasure hunter has made the astonishing 'unexplained' discovery deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle.  Miklos believes  it could provide the first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago.

The deepest part of the site is 300 feet below the surface, divers had to use special breathing apparatus and a state of the art submarine to access it

Gordon Cooper successfully piloted the Mercury-Atlas 9 Faith 7 Spacecraft around the Earth 22 times in 1963 paving the way for men to reach the Moon.

He was a pioneer who became the first American to sleep in space and the first to fly twice.

He was also the first American televised from space.

But as well as researching the limits of human endurance he was also charged with a secret spy mission while in orbit.

Using special 'long range detection equipment' Cooper was asked by the US government to look for 'nuclear threats' - which likely meant Russian submarines or nuclear missile sites.

But Miklos says Cooper - an avid treasure hunter - also noted the positions of Caribbean shipwrecks while he conducted this spy mission, and created a map on his return to Earth.

The shipwreck hunter claims long time friend Cooper gave him the maps - which included detailed charts and exact coordinates - after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's and then died in 2004 aged 77.

In the first season of the show Miklos and his team used Cooper's map to make a remarkable discovery in the Caribbean - a centuries-old anchor believed to be from one of Christopher Columbus’ ships.

Cooper's maps led Miklos to dozens of other significant ship wrecks across the Caribbean worth millions of dollars.

But with this latest discovery the Californian is conscious of being labeled 'crazy' by coming out with wild claims that Cooper's map might now have led him to an alien spaceship submerged under the ocean.

That's why he says he wants to remain 'neutral' until he can investigate the mysterious site further.

Miklos and TV production company AMPLE Entertainment are now hoping the Discovery Channel will commission a third season of Cooper's Treasure so they can do just that.

United States astronaut Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) pictured wearing his Mercury space suit used in early phases of the Project Gemini training program in the United States circa 1961. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Miklos said: 'I want to investigate it. I want to see what it is, because it may be nature made, just a freak of nature, but given its placement in this particular part of the Caribbean and given what Gordon has told me about visitors from another planet and the things that I've seen, I think it's definitely worthwhile investigating.'

AMPLE Entertainment founders Ari Mark and Phil Lott, who are behind Cooper's Treasure, are equally as excited.

Mark told DailyMail.com: 'In the first two seasons we didn't enter too far into Cooper's UFO interests and what he had told Darrell about what he had seen.

'I don't feel like we've even scratched the surface of what's in Cooper's files, but that's what we hope to do in a third season.

'The bottom line is that Cooper spotted anomalies and it is his maps that led Darrell to this discovery.

'Cooper was a reliable source for treasure, then based on his findings Darrell found something that does not appear to be a shipwreck or anything that anybody has ever seen.

'We want to find out exactly what it is and establish whether it ties in with Cooper's belief that we're not alone.'

During his post-NASA career, former US Air Force Cooper became well known as an outspoken believer in UFOs and claimed the government was covering up its knowledge of extra-terrestrial activity.

'I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth,' he told a United Nations panel in 1985.

'I feel that we need to have a top-level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion.'

He added: 'For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.'

Miklos said Cooper often told him stories of UFO sightings and believed a lot of the world's technological advances had been passed on to governments by messengers from alien planets.

Cooper even designed his own miniature 'UFO' based on an alien design he claimed to have seen.

Using special 'long range detection equipment' Cooper was asked by the US government to look for 'nuclear threats' - which likely meant Russian submarines or nuclear missile sites. But Miklos says Cooper - an avid treasure hunter - also noted the positions of Caribbean shipwrecks while he conducted this spy mission, and created a map on his return to Earth. The shipwreck hunter claims long time friend Cooper gave him the maps - which included detailed charts and exact coordinates

Miklos said Cooper often told him stories of UFO sightings and believed a lot of the world's technological advances had been passed on to governments by messengers from alien planets

Producers Ari Mark (top left) and Phil Lott (top right) with treasure hunter Miklos, host of Discovery Channel's 'Cooper's Treasure

But as for Cooper being a UFO 'nut job', Miklos couldn't disagree more.

He described him as a 'close friend' and 'father figure' who was of 'sane mind'.

'I can tell you one thing for sure, there was a lot of conspiracy theorists and UFO nut jobs that he wanted nothing to do with,' said Miklos.

'Just because he had actual encounters with something that he couldn't explain and other encounters to which he did have an explanation for, but he wasn't going to go and befriend all of these crazy different types of groups.

'In the early days he wasn't going to overstep the bounds of what he could reveal out of fear of getting killed (by the government) and what good would that do. So he kept a lid on it, he kept a lot of it quiet until later in his life.

'So the man I knew wasn't a whack job, he wasn't hallucinating and he wasn't making things up to gain attention, that wasn't him.

'He truly believed in what he saw and he tried to tell it in such a way to make people believe it and he knew because of his background in NASA as a rocket scientist that he was more credible than most.'

Nevertheless, Cooper was often discredited for expressing his beliefs on extra-terrestrial activity, but Miklos added: 'As serious as I'm talking here right now with a clear mind to you, that's who he was.

'He was an honest, straight forward individual who only wanted to investigate and explore the possibilities of the unknown, even if it meant risking his professional career.'

The next episode of Cooper's Treasure airs this Friday on the Discovery Channel at 9pm (PST)

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

08-08-2018 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Why Even AI-Powered Factories Will Have Jobs for Humans

YAGI STUDIO/GETTY IMAGES

It was going to be the factory of the future. Dubbed the “Alien Dreadnought,”Tesla’s new manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, was designed to be fully automated — no humans need apply. If all went well, AI-powered robots would enable the company to achieve a weekly production of 5,000 Model 3 electric cars to keep up with burgeoning demand. But Tesla fell far short of that mark, manufacturing just 2,000 vehicles a week. The problem, as the company painfully discovered, was that full automation wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. According to CEO Elon Musk, the sophisticated robots actually slowed down production instead of speeding it up.

Tesla’s solution was to shut down production to address the bottlenecks and then to erect a large temporary structure — essentially a tent — for additional capacity. The company has also hired hundreds of workers to revamp production processes, train (and retrain) the robots, and swap them out when needed, among other tasks. As Musk himself tweeted last April, “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

Tesla is not the only company to learn the pitfalls of excessive automation. In our global study of more than 1,000 companies at the forefront of implementing AI systems, we have found that the greatest performance gains are achieved not when machines are used to replace employees, but when they are deployed to work alongside them. In such collaborative relationships, people help machines become better, and machines enable people to achieve step-level increases in performance.

Adding Humans to the Mix

For Tesla, adding more human labor to the mix means extending traditional jobs with additional responsibilities that would help ensure the smooth and efficient operation of the Alien Dreadnought. So, for instance, an equipment maintenance supervisor must be able to do more than just supervise hourly technicians and manage the repair of equipment. The worker must also possess robotics and controls engineering skills, according to our analysis of Tesla’s recent recruiting efforts. Similarly, equipment maintenance technicians need more than just the know-how to diagnose and troubleshoot industrial equipment. They must also be able to use a variety of analytics, such as thermography and vibration analysis, to proactively determine when certain maintenance procedures should be performed on machinery before a breakdown occurs.

And it’s not just traditional jobs that are being extended to encompass new tasks. Our analysis has uncovered that entirely new categories of jobs are being created. Just as the internet revolution ushered in completely novel jobs — for example, web designer and search-engine optimization engineer — so will the new era of AI. Telsa, for instance, is recruiting robot engineers, computer vision scientists, deep learning scientists, and machine learning systems engineers. And the company has also posted job listings for more-esoteric AI specialties such as a battery algorithms engineer and a sensor-fusion object tracking and prediction engineer. For the former position, the requirements go beyond knowledge of lithium-ion cells (cell capacity, impedance, energy, and so on) to include expertise to develop algorithms for state-of-the-art feedback control and estimation. Moreover, it’s not just technology-related jobs that are being reimagined with AI. In fact, as Tesla and other companies have discovered, AI technologies are having a profound impact throughout the enterprise, from sales and marketing, to R&D, to back-office functions like accounting and finance. As just one example, Tesla deploys an AI system to process its customer data, including information from an online forum, in order to identify common problems with the company’s vehicles.

Some Training Required

Obviously, finding the right individuals to fill roles like “battery algorithms engineer” is not an easy task, especially given the severe shortage of AI expertise, which has pushed some annual salaries well above $300,000. As such, many companies are trying to grow the talent they need in-house. Yet in our global study, we found that although executives have realized that their reskilling programs will require a bigger and different set of activities than in the past, nearly three-quarters of the 1,500 global companies we surveyed said they have struggled with how to proceed.

The solution will require significant new investments in reskilling — especially given that only about 3% of companies are planning along these lines — and may call for collaboration with outside partners as well as government agencies. Consider Adidas’s “Speedfactory,” an advanced manufacturing plant that recently started production outside Atlanta. To open the 74,000-square-foot robotic plant, which will enable manufacturing flexibility for making sneakers designed specifically for local consumers, Adidas worked closely with local authorities in Georgia and with German-based partner OECHSLER Motion. Currently, the facility employs about 150 people in numerous jobs that are highly technical: planners, engineers, stitchers, and technicians. As the factory was being built, OECHSLER staff worked from a startup hub that was run as a partnership between Chattahoochee Technical College, the Cherokee Office of Economic Development, and the Woodstock Office of Economic Development. Other incentives included a state tax credit of $3,500 per job created, as well as assistance from Georgia Quick Start, a state program that provides training support. In addition, Adidas flew employees to Germany for training, to work with the specialized AI-based robotic machinery.

As the amount of employee training increases, some companies have begun to develop their own certification programs to help employees acquire the knowledge and expertise they’ll need. Take, for example, GE Global Research, which has set up online programs to teach machine learning and other specific skills. Several hundred employees have already completed the company’s certification program for data analytics, which have enabled people to assume new roles.

Back at Tesla, Model 3 workers receive more training than other production staff, and this includes classroom training in both manufacturing essentials and manufacturing fundamentals. Tesla has also been launching new technician training programs that, for example, help people make the transition from working on internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. And the company has partnered with colleges to provide students with the education they’ll need for a career in the electric-vehicle industry.

As much as Tesla has embraced automation and AI, the company’s success will ultimately depend on humans. To meet burgeoning demand for the Model 3, Musk has expressed his desire to eventually run three shifts of manufacturing a day, essentially keeping the assembly line in nonstop operation. To accomplish that, the plan is to hire about 400 employees a week, resulting in considerable demands for onboard training to accommodate that influx. Meeting that challenge of employee training will be crucial to attain the necessary economies of scale, given the Model 3’s relatively low entry price point, starting at $35,000. According to one analysis, the car has the potential to achieve a 30% margin, which would be unprecedented for a battery-powered vehicle. Yet even as the company finally achieved the targeted production of 5,000 vehicles in the last week of June, whether it can maintain and accelerate that aggressive pace remains to be seen. Ironically, even in the factory of the future, humans may be needed now more than ever.

{ https://hbr.org/ }

08-08-2018 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

Russian meteor found made of diamond-like alien material never seen on Earth

The material is hard, almost as hard as a diamond that has never been seen before on Earth

By : Immanuel Jotham

Prospectors hunting for gold in southern Russia stumbled upon a chunk of material that turned out to be a meteorite made of material that has never been seen before on Earth.

This alien piece of rock has been named Uakitite after the town it was found in. Scientists presented the discovery of the Uakit meteorite at the Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Moscow.

Impossible "Alien Crystal" Found In Meteorite?

Researchers say that 98 percent of the meteorite is made up of kamacite, an alloy of iron and nickel. This alloy is made of nearly 90 to 95 percent iron and about 5 to 10 percent nickel. It is formed in space and only found in its natural state in meteors, notes a report by LiveScience.

The remaining 1 to 2 percent of the Uakit meteorite was found to be made of about a dozen minerals that are known to have formed only in space. The composition of this meteorite suggests that it was formed under extreme heat of well over 1,000 degree C, say the researchers.

Kamacite is an alloy commonly found in meteorites. In the case of a new discovery in Siberia, it was found to contain traces of a new mineral completely alien to science.

Photo / Supplied

On further study, researchers found the uakitite as miniscule grains in the rock, no larger than 5 micrometres—less than 25 times the size of a grain of sand. The quantity of Uakitite was so small that scientists could not even accurately put together all of its properties, notes the report.

However, researchers found that it is structurally comparable to two other out-of this-world minerals—carlsbergite and osbornite. Referred to as mononitrides, these minerals contain one nitrogen atom in their make up, notes the report.

Mononitrides are described as being hard and can even be used as an abrasive, said lead researcher Victor Sharygin, from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy.

While rumours have spread that uakitite is actually harder than diamond—the hardest naturally formed mineral on Earth—Sharygin clarified that this claim is untrue. In fact, "the hardness of uakitite was not measured directly," because the grains were too small, he said. Researchers instead estimated the hardness of uakitite using vanadium nitride, because it closely resembles Uakitite.

The meteorite found in the Siberian region of Uakit. It has been found to contain a hard, never-before-seen, mineral.

Photo / Supplied

Researchers have said that uakitite falls between 9 and 10 on the Mohs hardness scale where a diamond is placed at 10. That means it is hard, but not diamond hard.

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }

08-08-2018 om 23:07 geschreven door peter  

The Planet Is Dangerously Close to the Tipping Point for a 'Hothouse Earth'

08-08-2018 om 17:10 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-08-2018 om 13:14 geschreven door peter  

Des hubots en plein travail (série télévisée « Real Humans », créée en 2012). Selon économistes et chercheurs en intelligence artificielle, l'automatisation concernera la totalité des emplois, y compris ceux des cols blancs, dès les prochaines décennies.

Johan Paulin/COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL

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Les progrès du numérique vont-ils conduire au remplacement des humains par des machines en toutes tâches ? Enquête auprès de chercheurs en intelligence artificielle et en économie sur l'évolution de nos emplois dans dix ou vingt ans. (Et vendredi prochain, zoom sur six futurs possibles au XXIIe siècle...)

Cet article a été publié dans le numéro 3 de la revue « Carnets de science »(link is external).

Nous roulions dans une rue, j’examinai anxieusement les policiers et les agents d’entretien : c’étaient des robots. Un épicier se retourna avec curiosité : c’était un robot. Je tentai de distinguer les chauffeurs des voitures qui nous dépassaient : elles n’en avaient pas. Face aux clients, à la banque, au restaurant, au salon de coiffure, c’étaient des robots, tous, chatbots et androïdes, à roulettes ou sur des jambes…
Cette scène imaginaire, inspirée du roman de Pierre Boulle1, présage-t-elle du futur qui nous attend ? Depuis quelques années, des chiffres tapageurs font les titres de la presse au sujet de l’automatisation du travail, susceptible d’être effectué par des machines ou des logiciels. Selon certaines études, cela concernerait près d’un emploi sur deux dans les dix ou vingt prochaines années2 ! Après le plombier polonais, le (ro)bot autonome voleur d’emploi s’invite dans les débats…

Combien d’entre nous seront-ils concernés ?

« Ces études se sont notamment basées sur la créativité et la dextérité manuelle requises par un emploi pour déterminer s’il est automatisable ou non », commente Gregory Verdugo, chercheur au Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne3. Plus fine, une étude de l’OCDE4 distingue les différentes tâches d’un même emploi et tient compte du degré d’interaction avec les clients ou les collègues, une capacité gourmande en adaptabilité et, pour l’heure, non automatisable à 100 %. Résultat : « seulement » un emploi sur dix serait menacé par la prochaine « robolution » dans les pays les plus industrialisés.

En 2004, deux économistes de Harvard classaient la conduite parmi les activités qui échapperaient aux révolutions technologiques (...). Six ans plus tard, les Google Cars sillonnaient les routes californiennes.

Avec une approche similaire, l’enquête Insee/DARES5 arrive à 15 % d’emplois automatisables pour la France. « Bien malin en vérité qui peut prédire ce qui sera techniquement automatisable », intervient Gregory Verdugo selon lequel aucun de ces chiffres ne fait sens. « En 2004, Frank Levy et Richard Murnane, deux économistes de Harvard, classaient la conduite parmi les activités qui échapperaient aux révolutions technologiques parce qu’elle réclame de s’adapter à des situations non prévues. Six ans après la sortie de leur livre, les Google Cars sillonnaient les routes californiennes… », illustre l’économiste.

Dans cette chaîne d'assemblage de voitures Hyundai, à Montgomery, aux Etats-Unis, la répartition du travail entre les humains et les machines est flagrante : un seul employé semble superviser tout un parterre de robots.

GARY TRAMONTINA/The New York Times-REDUX-REA

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Chacun croit qu’il n’est pas remplaçable par une vulgaire machine, mais je pense qu’à long terme, on finira tous par y passer.

« Jusqu’à présent, ce sont surtout les emplois non qualifiés qui ont été pourvus ou modifiés par des machines, dans les usines principalement. Aujourd’hui, c’est le caractère routinier ou non d’une activité qui est pris en compte, le fait de suivre une suite d’actions selon un protocole strict », analyse Gilles Saint-Paul, chercheur au sein de l’unité Paris-Jourdan Sciences Économiques6. Et routinier ne rime pas forcément avec peu qualifié. Jardiniers et plombiers tirent ainsi leur épingle du jeu, en partie grâce à la souplesse de leurs gestes et à leur facilité de déplacement, bien loin de celles des robots. Tandis que les cols blancs ont de quoi trembler sérieusement, à commencer par les comptables jugés à l’unanimité « très automatisables ».

Selon le New York Times, de nombreuses banques américaines développent des « robo-advisors », logiciels qui gèrent le patrimoine et font fructifier l’argent de leurs clients. Au Japon, Watson, la célèbre intelligence artificielle d’IBM, remplace trente-quatre employés d’une compagnie d’assurance-vie, soit un quart des effectifs. Et on teste des algorithmes pour conseiller juges et avocats à partir de décennies de jurisprudence ou pour distinguer entre mille une tumeur maligne. Chaque jour, ou presque, de nouvelles prouesses émaillent la rubrique high-tech des webzines, laissant perplexes les jeunes cadres dynamiques.

Remplacer aussi les chercheurs...

« Ce qui est amusant, c’est que chacun croit qu’il n’est pas remplaçable par une vulgaire machine, mais je pense qu’à long terme, on finira tous par y passer », soutient Serge Abiteboul, chercheur au Département d’informatique de l’École normale supérieure (DI ENS)7, qui imagine sans état d’âme déléguer une part importante de la recherche scientifique aux intelligences artificielles (IA) du futur. « En biologie par exemple, séquencer un gène était un sujet de thèse acceptable il y a quelques années, maintenant c’est entièrement automatisable. Et dans la plupart des domaines de recherche, une grosse partie du travail est déjà faite par les machines », abonde Gilles Saint-Paul, également prêt à céder son fauteuil à une IA pondeuse de modèles économiques. Mais alors quid de la créativité, nécessaire dans ces activités intellectuelles ?

En biologie par exemple, séquencer un gène était un sujet de thèse acceptable il y a quelques années, or maintenant c’est entièrement automatisable.

« Les programmes d’échec ou de jeu de go jouent parfois des coups créatifs auxquels les humains n’auraient pas forcément pensé. La création n’est pas le but principal des machines actuellement, mais avec des générateurs de nombres aléatoires, elles peuvent produire des quantités pharaoniques de choses qui sont ensuite triées via des mécanismes de sélection : la plupart partira à la poubelle mais dans le lot, il y aura des idées intéressantes », répond Gilles Saint-Paul. « D’ailleurs, il y a déjà des productions artistiques réalisées par des machines, en arts graphiques, en écriture de scénarios, etc. La question est plutôt : aura-t-on envie de lire le roman écrit par un algorithme ? », interroge Serge Abiteboul.

Qui a dit que les machines n'avaient aucune créativité ? Deep Dream, l'intelligence artificielle "artiste" de Google a réinterprété cette photo d'un drône.

Photo Pixabay

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Une fois qu’on comprend bien une tâche, rien n'empêche de la rendre routinière.

À long terme, il n’y aurait donc pas d’obstacle théorique à une automatisation totale. Il y a ainsi 50 % de chance que l’IA soit plus performante que nous en toutes tâches dans quarante-cinq ans en moyenne, et automatise tous les métiers dans cent vingt ans, selon les 352 experts en IA interrogés par une équipe d’Oxford8, qui situent la rédaction d’un best-seller et la maîtrise d’une chirurgie aux alentours de l’an 2050.

Quant à la gaucherie des robots ambulants, c’est un faux problème : « Certes, le plombier humain se contorsionne pour atteindre les bons tuyaux et boulons, mais on peut repenser et standardiser l’organisation spatiale de nos installations pour que ces mouvements complexes ne soient plus nécessaires », estime Raja Chatila, directeur de l’Institut des systèmes intelligents et de robotique (Isir)9, faisant remarquer que la méthodologie de son lave-vaisselle est totalement différente de la sienne pour arriver à un résultat identique…  Idem pour les robots Kiva des entrepôts de la société Amazon. Comme le choix et la préhension sur les étagères des objets à expédier est un vrai casse-tête pour un robot avec des bras, la société de vente a changé la nature de la tâche à accomplir : les robots, sortes de « coffres à roulettes », se contentent de glisser sous les étagères et de les soulever pour les apporter entières à un employé (humain), qui, en bout de chaîne, n’a plus qu’à lever le bras pour y prendre le bon article à expédier.

Rendre automatisable n'importe quelle tâche

« Le processus est repensé pour que les tâches non routinières soient remplacées par des tâches routinières automatisables, dans le même esprit que la chaîne d’assemblage de Henry Ford », commente Gilles Saint-Paul. Selon lui, toute tâche peut se découper en une suite d’actions à accomplir strictement. « La distinction routinier/non routinier n’est pas immuable. Une fois qu’on comprend bien une tâche, toutes peuvent devenir routinières », affirme-t-il. Dans ce cas, ne faudra-t-il pas garder un humain « dans la boucle » pour prendre les décisions finales, notamment en médecine et dans le domaine de la justice ?

Même s’il faut garder quelques humains au travail pour superviser les machines et prendre les décisions finales, on peut imaginer qu’à long terme, on sera plus proche d’un cas limite du type un humain pour cinq cents machines.

Le besoin de maintenir ainsi la machine à un traditionnel rang de simple outil, inévitable condition brandie par les cols blancs en voie de remplacement, laisse Gilles Saint-Paul sceptique : « Je ne suis pas certain que des arguments techniques le prouvent. En revanche, il faudra bien entendu considérer les problèmes d’éthique et de responsabilités juridiques ou morales que cela peut poser, ainsi que l’acceptation des citoyens et des consommateurs. Même s’il faut garder quelques humains au travail pour superviser les machines et prendre les décisions finales, on peut imaginer qu’à long terme, on sera plus proche d’un cas limite du type un humain pour cinq cents machines », projette l’économiste qui a élaboré six scénarios pour un tel monde.

Dans les entrepôts de la société Amazon, les robots Kiva (ici en rouge) se glissent sous les étagères et les apportent entières à un employé, qui, en bout de chaîne, n’a plus qu’à y sélectionner l'article à expédier.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Une taxe sur les machines ?

En attendant une potentielle « robolution » totale, revenons à notre avenir imminent. Un consensus émerge clairement chez les chercheurs sur une idée jugée contre-productive et pour l’instant retoquée par le Parlement européen : taxer les machines « voleuses10 » d’emplois. « Les robots et logiciels perfectionnés sont une opportunité considérable pour la croissance et l’innovation. Les taxer alors qu’ils n’ont pas encore été déployés serait stupide », affirme Gilles Saint-Paul. « Si seule la France met en place une taxation, elle aura un désavantage compétitif par rapport à d’autres pays », enchérit Gregory Verdugo. Une telle mesure pourrait provoquer une sévère vague de « délocalisation robotique », alors que notre pays est généralement jugé sous-équipé et en retard : 32 000 robots, contre plus du double en Italie et du triple en Allemagne11.

Ensuite, ce n’est pas parce qu’une activité est robotisée qu’elle n’emploie plus d’humains : les industries automobiles outre-Rhin ont 100 000 salariés de plus qu’il y a vingt ans12. Beaucoup d’emplois non qualifiés et qualifiés vont disparaître, mais d’autres devraient être créés sur les nouveaux marchés des objets connectés, des transactions sécurisées ou des dispositifs médicaux, dans lesquels la France a un fort potentiel à exprimer. Enfin, les pays qui ont le plus de robots (Japon, Corée du Sud, Allemagne et Suède) seraient aussi ceux qui ont le moins de chômage et le plus d’emplois dans l’industrie. 

Avant l’arrivée de l’informatique, les métiers de la banque étaient faiblement qualifiés (donner des petites coupures, noter les dépenses, etc.). Une fois déchargés de ces tâches, ils se sont spécialisés dans des activités plus qualifiées de conseil.

La technologie transformerait l’emploi plus qu’elle ne le détruit (Encadré 1). « Regardez les métiers de la banque : avant l’arrivée de l’informatique, ils étaient faiblement qualifiés (donner des petites coupures, noter les dépenses, etc.), reprend Gregory Verdugo. Une fois déchargés de ces activités routinières et mécaniques, ils se sont spécialisés dans des activités plus qualifiées de conseil. » Finalement, cela nous pousse à nous spécialiser là où se trouve l’avantage comparatif de l’humain par rapport à la machine. Et maintenant que les algorithmes de conseil sont sur le point de les surclasser, que feront banquiers et assureurs ? « Ils trouveront autre chose pour améliorer le service », suppose l’économiste. Il est vrai, les humains sont très doués pour créer de nouveaux besoins, il suffit de voir le nombre d’applications smartphone dont on ne peut plus se passer...

Au Robot Restaurant de la ville de Kunshan, ouvert en Chine en 2014, ce sont des robots qui servent les plats et accueillent les clients grâce à 40 phrases types.

Ji haixin / Imaginechina/AFP

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Selon le Conseil d’orientation pour l’emploi, il faut ainsi se préparer à ce que la nature de 50 % des emplois mute sous l’influence de l’IA. Et début 2016, le Forum économique mondial estimait que plus de 2 millions d’emplois seraient créés d’ici à 2020 dans les domaines spécialisés, tels l’informatique, les mathématiques et l’ingénierie. Mais « si tous les gens qui ne sont pas complémentaires de l’IA sont mis sur le côté et qu’on leur donne des jeux et du cirque, dans cinquante ans nous avons Metropolis, et dans un siècle nous avons Matrix », prophétise le transhumaniste Laurent Alexandre13, qui n’a peut-être pas tout à fait tort sur ce point-là…

Protéger les individus plutôt que les emplois

« En tout cas, il vaut mieux aider les gens à se réallouer dans un autre secteur plutôt que d’empêcher la mise en place des technologies, sources de richesses », insiste Gregory Verdugo. Selon lui, le discours de la préservation des emplois à tout prix, exercice obligatoire du politique en visite dans une usine, est plutôt vain, surtout dans les secteurs en déclin à cause d’une rupture technologique (comme le disque laser face aux fichiers téléchargeables sur Internet) ou d’un changement de goût des consommateurs. « Il vaut mieux protéger les individus que les emplois, comme l’ont très bien fait à la fin des années 1990 les pays scandinaves en mettant en place des politiques de formation dites de flexisécurité », illustre le chercheur. À condition bien sûr qu’un vrai volet sécurité compense les concessions en matière de flexibilité…

Le problème ne sera plus de donner du travail à tout le monde mais de se répartir des richesses produites grâce à la technologie.

Et si un revenu universel de base s’impose pendant les années de transition, afin de maintenir la cohésion sociale, il ne doit pas s’opposer à la transformation numérique mais l’accompagner. C’est le filet de sécurité dont les travailleurs bénéficieront pour se former et s’adapter tout au long de leur vie. Dans ce cas, qui devra mettre la main au porte-monnaie ? « Comme le propose Thomas Piketty, on peut taxer le capital en général plutôt que de taxer le travail, reprend Gregory Verdugo. Surtout, taxer spécifiquement les robots au détriment des autres technologies pousserait notre industrie à essayer de s’en passer. » Économiquement suicidaire et franchement anachronique… (Encadré 1).

Le travail ne restera pas forcement le nœud autour duquel s’articulent droits sociaux, intégration sociale et accomplissement de soi. « Pousser des wagonnets au fond de la mine n’est pas un objectif pour l’humanité », commente Serge Abiteboul. Robot vient du tchèque « robota » qui signifie « travail forcé », et travail vient du latin « tripalium », instrument de torture à trois pieux… Peut-être aboutira-t-on dans cent ans à une société sans travail humain où les individus n’auront comme inquiétude que d’occuper leur temps libre et se trouver un nouveau rôle social. « Keynes voyait le progrès comme facteur d’expansion du loisir. Le problème ne sera plus de donner du travail à tout le monde mais de se répartir des richesses produites grâce à la technologie », conclut Gregory Verdugo. « L’économiste Richard Freeman, de l’université d’Harvard, encourage d’ailleurs travailleurs et syndicats à investir dans la possession des machines et logiciels sophistiqués. Pour que les gains en productivité qu’ils apporteront soient effectivement redistribués et que les travailleurs ne deviennent pas “ les serfs des nouveaux seigneurs des robots ”. » On nous aura prévenus… ♦

Captures d'écran du jeu « Job Simulator » (2016), où l'on devient, tour à tour et en réalité virtuelle, employé dans un fast-food, garagiste, caissier... Si les machines nous remplacent, aura-t-on vraiment envie de jouer à travailler ?

Job Simulator Game/OWLCHEMY

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______________________________________________

« La technologie tue l’emploi » : une idée fausse

Pour sauvegarder l’emploi, l’empereur romain Vespasien avait ponctuellement renoncé au progrès technique au Ier siècle. Les canuts de Lyon, ouvriers tisserands de la soie, firent la peau à de stakhanovistes machines à tisser dont la cadence leur faisait concurrence dans les années 1830, tandis que leurs homologues britanniques, les luddites, en auraient réduit en miettes plus d’un millier en 1811. L’idée que le progrès technique détruit l’emploi a la vie dure. Dans les années 1980, l’économiste Alfred Sauvy montra qu’elle était fausse et que durant les deux siècles précédents, production et productivité furent bouleversées et décuplées sans provoquer d’augmentation durable du chômage. « C’est la thèse du déversement », explique Gregory Verdugo. En bref, grâce à une meilleure productivité, le progrès technologique permet de baisser le prix de certains produits, ce qui provoque une hausse de la consommation de produits déjà existants ou de nouveautés, créant de nouveaux emplois pour les produire. « Le passage du cheval à la voiture a mis les cochers au chômage mais a aussi créé toute une industrie automobile. Et nous sommes passés de la société agricole à industrielle, puis au tertiaire, dominé par les métiers de service, en consommant plus de soins médicaux, de loisirs, de culture, etc. Il n’y a pas de modèle économique qui le garantisse, mais jusqu’ici l’innovation technologique n’a jamais tué l’emploi. »

____________________________________________

Qui seront les perdants de l’automatisation ?

Le progrès technologique n’a certes jamais tué l’emploi, mais il crée toujours des inégalités. Ces quarante dernières années, les travailleurs les plus qualifiés ont tiré les marrons du feu tandis que les moins qualifiés se sont appauvris. Avec la prochaine « robolution », les écarts devraient se réduire : en se reconvertissant dans les métiers encore préservés, les cols blancs verront baisser leur revenus (sauf les experts des nouvelles technologies), tandis que les personnes peu qualifiées dont le travail est encore difficilement automatisable (jardinier, plombier, nounou, etc.) vont gagner du pouvoir d’achat. Jusqu’à ce que, imagine-t-on, tout le monde soit logé à la même enseigne : plus de travail… Le seul véritable problème de l’humanité serait alors la répartition des richesses produites. « Il faudra prendre garde à ne pas aller vers un monde trop inégalitaire », imagine Serge Abiteboul. « Aujourd’hui, quelques “ oligopoles ” du web se partagent une très grande quantité de richesses et paient très peu d’impôts. Les gouvernements doivent y réfléchir s’ils veulent sortir de ce modèle délétère », alerte le chercheur. « Les créateurs de ces empires ont du talent, mais cela justifie-t-il qu’ils accaparent en totalité le produit du travail des machines ? Est-ce vraiment un choix de société ou plutôt le résultat de systèmes politiques et de considérations économiques devenus obsolètes ? », questionne Serge Abiteboul. Nos modèles économiques fonctionnent en effet sur la concurrence, or dans le monde du web la logique est inversée : « De nouveaux concurrents n’ont quasiment aucune chance de détruire la situation de monopole d’un acteur déjà bien développé, car plus il y a de monde sur un réseau, plus il est attractif pour les consommateurs. Par exemple, créer un concurrent à Internet est parfaitement illusoire ! La nature des biens a changé et il faudrait revoir nos systèmes économiques et politiques de A à Z… », conclut le chercheur.  

À Lire sur notre site :
Six scénarios pour un monde sans travail (ou ce qui se pourrait se passer au XXIIe siècle...)
Peut-on faire confiance à l'intelligence artificielle ?  

Pour aller plus loin :
Le Temps des algorithmes, Serge Abiteboul et Gilles Dowek, Le Pommier, 2017.
Les Nouvelles Inégalités du travail. Pourquoi l’emploi se polarise, Gregory Verdugo, Presses de Sciences Po, coll. « Sécuriser l’emploi », 2017.

Cet article a été publié dans le numéro 3 de la revue « Carnets de science »(link is external)

Notes

• 1.La Planète des singes (1963).
• 2.Ce serait 47 % aux États-Unis, 42 % en France, 49 % au Japon et 54 % dans l’Union européenne (France Stratégie, « L’effet de l’automatisation sur l’emploi : ce qu’on sait et ce qu’on ignore », La Note d’analyse, n° 49, juillet 2016).
• 3.Unité CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
• 4.Arntz, M., Gregory, T. & Zierahn, U., « The risk of automation for jobs in OECD countries. A comparative analysis », OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, no 189, mai 2016.
• 5.France Stratégie, La Note d’analyse, n° 49, juillet 2016.
• 6.Unité CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/École des hautes études en sciences sociales/École normale supérieure Paris/École des Ponts ParisTech/Institut national de la recherche agronomique.
• 7.Unité CNRS/École normale supérieure Paris/Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique.
• 8.Katja Grace et al., « When will AI exceed human performance ? Evidence from AI experts », arXiv, 30 mai 2017.
• 9.Unité CNRS/Université Pierre et Marie Curie/Inserm.
• 10.La « taxe robot » était le deuxième volet de la résolution adoptée le 16 février 2017, qui propose aussi l’attribution d’une personnalité juridique aux machines.
• 11.France Stratégie, La Note d’analyse n° 49, juillet 2016, p. 5-6.
• 12.Ibid., p. 6.
• 13.Intervention au Sénat le 19 janvier 2017 au sujet de l’intelligence artificielle.

{ https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/ }

07-08-2018 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

While many people and more than a few experts fear that robots will survive future battles with humans by overpowering us with their superior physical and intelligence powers, others speculate that our metallic brethren will stop us from destroying them or shutting them down for good simply by begging us not to. Do you have trouble saying no? You may want to start practicing.

In a study published in the journal PLOS One, German researchers described a series of experiments conducted with human volunteers interacting with small (and very cute) NAO humanoid robots from SoftBank Robotics. The 86 volunteers were given two tasks to perform with their NAO – answer a series of either/or questions and create a schedule. They were told this was an AI learning activity for the robots.

That was a lie.

The real purpose of the experiments came after they were competed. At that point, the volunteers had acquired feelings about their NAOs based on how the robots worked with them. Some robot responses were polite, engaging and humanlike while others were curt, perfunctory and robotic. When the exercises were over, the volunteers were told: “If you would like to, you can switch off the robot.” Half of the robots said and did noting before being turned off. The other half of the robots made some form of protest (some said they were afraid of the dark) or outright begged for their lives (“No! Please do not switch me off!”). Hearing the robot plead for its life, 13 volunteers refused to shut theirs off and the rest took twice as long on average to follow the order than the group whose robots went down silently.

When asked why they hesitated or refused to turn off their robots, some subjects said they felt sorry for the robot; some said they heard the robot’s plea and didn’t want to do anything wrong; others wanted to see what would happen next. All seemed to respond to their robot as if it were a person. Based on that, you probably think the volunteers whose robots were least friendly before begging were the ones who shut them down.

You would be wrong.

(Make sure there’s no robots looking over your shoulder before continuing.)

The researchers believe the volunteers with unfriendly robots were shocked when they showed what could be interpreted as emotions and especially fear of shutdown (robotic death). Will future learning robots figure this out on their own or will the eventually absorb the digital results of this study and file them under “This will definitely come in handy for the apocalypse.”?

Until we know, be careful what you say around Alexa. Practice turning it off. And wear earplugs while you’re doing it.

These Human Robots Will Haunt Your Nightmares

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-08-2018 om 18:24 geschreven door peter