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Guido de Croon

Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views

robohub.org/be-smarter-than-humans-by-2029

AI

shared by Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14
     
    Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc.
  • ...9 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    "Kurzweilians"... LOL. Still not sold on embodiment, btw.
  • Ma Ru on 12 Mar 14
     
    The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting...
  • Paul N on 13 Mar 14
     
    The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment.
  • Marcus Maertens on 14 Mar 14
     
    I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment.
  • johannessimon81 on 14 Mar 14
     
    @Paul: How would embodiment be done RIGHT?
  • Guido de Croon on 16 Mar 14
     
    Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
  • Ma Ru on 17 Mar 14
     
    @Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Mar 14
     
    Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
  • Paul N on 17 Mar 14
     
    Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
  • Ma Ru on 18 Mar 14
     
    All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
  • Paul N on 24 Mar 14
     
    These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
Luís F. Simões

Evolution of AI Interplanetary Trajectories Reaches Human-Competitive Levels - Slashdot - 4 views

science.slashdot.org/...aches-human-competitive-levels

AI MAD GTOC PaGMO evolutionary computation trajectory optimization awards

shared by Luís F. Simões on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • "It's not the Turing test just yet, but in one more domain, AI is becoming increasingly competitive with humans. This time around, it's in interplanetary trajectory optimization. From the European Space Agency comes the news that researchers from its Advanced Concepts Team have recently won the Gold 'Humies' award for their use of Evolutionary Algorithms to design a spacecraft's trajectory for exploring the Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). The problem addressed in the awarded article (PDF) was put forward by NASA/JPL in the latest edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition. The team from ESA was able to automatically evolve a solution that outperforms all the entries submitted to the competition by human experts from across the world. Interestingly, as noted in the presentation to the award's jury (PDF), the team conducted their work on top of open-source tools (PaGMO / PyGMO and PyKEP)."
  • Luís F. Simões on 19 Jul 13
     
    We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)
  • Ma Ru on 23 Jul 13
     
    Congratulations, gentlemen!
LeopoldS

Space News - September 9, 2013 - 4 views

bt.e-ditionsbyfry.com/...article.php

cubesat

shared by LeopoldS on 12 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 12 Sep 13
     
    why are we not getting these type of startups in Europe .... btw: Will is british
  • ...1 more comment...
  • dejanpetkow on 12 Sep 13
     
    Nobody in Europe would invest 13Mio $ (or the equivalent in €) venture capital for this idea, it's just a different mentality. In Europe, VCs start to get interested when the investment risk is significantly lower.
  • Juxi Leitner on 13 Sep 13
     
    I agree, the mentality is different, it's hard to find VC funding for hardware stuff, even more so if you wanna shoot your HW into space. but there is movement, e.g. pioneers.io, they are in vienna and are actively trying to get more VC funding (in europe) for HW and other engineering startups
  • LeopoldS on 13 Sep 13
     
    thanks for the link ... just read this blog ... http://pioneers.io/blog/space-race-2-0-putting-satellites-into-the-hands-of-everyone a lot of selling talk but fundamentally I agree that they have a point ... and as ACT we will face the criticism in not so long that we have not managed (nor tried hard enough) to convince ESA about the need to embrace this "new space"
Luís F. Simões

The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind The Secretive Lab's Closed Doors - 4 views

www.fastcompany.com/...the-google-x-factor

google innovation

shared by Luís F. Simões on 16 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Space elevators, teleportation, hoverboards, and driverless cars: The top-secret Google X innovation lab opens up about what it does--and how it thinks.
  • Thijs Versloot on 16 Apr 14
     
    Interesting insight indeed, I see quite some overlap with the ACT mantra, athough they have 250 people and an outdoor playground.. To Teller, this failure-loving lab has simply stepped into the breach. Small companies don't feel they have the resources to take moonshots. Big companies think it'll rattle shareholders. Government leaders believe there's not enough money, or that Congress will characterize a misstep or failure as a scandal. These days, when it comes to Hail Mary innovation, "Everyone thinks it's somebody's else's job," Teller says.
Luís F. Simões

Noordwijk | Space Apps Challenge - 1 views

2014.spaceappschallenge.org/...noordwijk

INF NASA apps

shared by Luís F. Simões on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • On the weekend of the 12 and 13 April 2014 ESA Business Incubation Centre Noordwijk and Verhaert Connect are proud to host the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in the European Space Innovation Centre Noordwijk.
  • Developers, designers, innovators all kinds of creative thinkers from all seven continents will come together for two days of creativity and computer coding to address challenges of global importance. This year we expect to have about 40 challenges that support NASA's mission directorates in five themes: Earth Watch, Technology in Space, Human Spaceflight, Robotics and Asteroids.
  • Ma Ru on 09 Apr 14
     
    "Developers, designers, innovators all kinds of creative thinkers" aka "nerd objective-C programmers with no life"?
  • johannessimon81 on 09 Apr 14
     
    Well, the ACT actually proposed a few of the topics (BEWARE, THERE BE CUCUMBERS!). Some are not necessarily software based, like creating a LEGO model of the ExoMars rover (although they stripped LEGO from the challenge description and now it just says "create an ExoMars rover from hardware" ... ). Also we had no clue that they would host part of the challenge here at ESTEC - so our 5 or 6 challenges will all be hosted in Rome... ...
Beniamino Abis

The Wisdom of (Little) Crowds - 1 views

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/...the-wisdom-of-little-crowds

BIO science math groups

shared by Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
Dario Izzo liked it
  • Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14
     
    What is the best (wisest) size for a group of individuals? Couzin and Kao put together a series of mathematical models that included correlation and several cues. In one model, for example, a group of animals had to choose between two options-think of two places to find food. But the cues for each choice were not equally reliable, nor were they equally correlated. The scientists found that in these models, a group was more likely to choose the superior option than an individual. Common experience will make us expect that the bigger the group got, the wiser it would become. But they found something very different. Small groups did better than individuals. But bigger groups did not do better than small groups. In fact, they did worse. A group of 5 to 20 individuals made better decisions than an infinitely large crowd. The problem with big groups is this: a faction of the group will follow correlated cues-in other words, the cues that look the same to many individuals. If a correlated cue is misleading, it may cause the whole faction to cast the wrong vote. Couzin and Kao found that this faction can drown out the diversity of information coming from the uncorrelated cue. And this problem only gets worse as the group gets bigger.
  • Dario Izzo on 02 May 14
     
    Couzin research was the starting point that co-inspired PaGMO from the very beginning. We invited him (and he came) at a formation flying conference for a plenary here in ESTEC. You can see PaGMO as a collective problem solving simulation. In that respect, we learned already that the size of the group and its internal structure (topology) counts and cannot be too large or too random. One of the project the ACT is running (and currently seeking for new ideas/actors) is briefly described here (http://esa.github.io/pygmo/examples/example2.html) and attempts answering the question :"How is collective decision making influenced by the information flow through the group?" by looking at complex simulations of large 'archipelagos'.
Joris _

10 Business Models That Rocked 2010 - 11 views

techcrunch.com/...siness-models-that-rocked-2010

business web technology

shared by Joris _ on 09 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 09 Jan 11
     
    What did work in 2010. The Quirky model might be of interest to ACT...
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Jan 11
     
    Some great ideas in there. I particularly like the Flattr micropayments system, and find the concept of PayWithaTweet a bit disturbing.
johannessimon81

Norwegian army driving tank using Oculus Rift - 1 views

www.tu.no/...ured-vehicle-using-oculus-rift

VR Oculus_Rift tanks space technology

shared by johannessimon81 on 06 May 14 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 06 May 14
     
    I guess it might also make sense to put a camera on an extension to look around corners without having to advance the vehicle to where it can be shot at... ?: Could the Oculus be used to let humans control humanoid robots? I guess so. Could humans perform experiments using such robots? Probably. Could Oculus be used to control these robots on the ISS? I guess so. --> Finally we eliminated the last need for humans in space!!! :-D (Maybe we could replace humans on Earth with robots that control one another through Oculus Rift...)
  • Paul N on 06 May 14
     
    Even cooler would be to have like a swarm of drones around the tank to act as a sensor array and look around corners for you.
johannessimon81

The Universe Is Programmable. We Need an API for Everything - 3 views

www.wired.com/...the-universe-is-programmable

programming science efficiency

shared by johannessimon81 on 02 May 14 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 02 May 14
     
    Interesting ideas - though some metaphors are a bit far fetched. Personally, I think it could be interesting if every scientific article would also have a how-to or tutorial section that gives a recipe of how to apply the newly gained knowledge. Of course, that might be tough to do... :-)
  • Dario Izzo on 02 May 14
     
    The API of the world is already there (a bit), it is the previous knowledge developed by others. Open Source projects such as the wheel or the brick, allow everyday amazing new APPs to be build such as buildings and cars .... There still is merit, though, in learning from software developments techniques in the everyday world projects. This is indeed the motivation for the ACT to do work in open source (SOCIS, GSoC) and push its members to use stuff like wiki, svn, github, jenkins, and alike. This way we are performing and fostering (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/foster) research into working methods in the hope we will be able to export some of its benefit to the larger ESA.
Thijs Versloot

Dutch company without any managers is inspiring industry (in dutch) - 0 views

www.nrcq.nl/...jf-is-een-voorbeeld-op-harvard

other stuff

shared by Thijs Versloot on 07 May 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 07 May 15
     
    This dutch company, Schuberg, has no managers but instead all the employees (operating in the IT service industry) manage everything themselves. They offer IT support to KLM, Rabobank and Eneco, who are quite very reliant on the uptime of their systems. These companies rate Schuberg consistently with the highest approval. Harvard business school is now teaching this type of organizational structure. Possible new working method?
  • LeopoldS on 07 May 15
     
    just like the ACT :-)
Thijs Versloot

Airbus Group Creators: Airbus Protospace - 1 views

www.airbusgroup.com/...Shooting-for-the-moon.html

shared by Thijs Versloot on 08 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 08 Jun 15
     
    Marc Stephens "ProtoSpace embodies agility," says Vincent Loubière. "We can move from concept to demonstrator quickly." The 'agility' method is modelled on proven successes in the computer industry but the ProtoSpace team also works with automotive and communications blue-chips, as well as start-ups whose creations could have applications in aerospace. Airbus's ACT :)
Thijs Versloot

Graphene coated silicon super-capacitors for energy storage - 1 views

news.vanderbilt.edu/...vice-electricity-silicon-chips

technology supercapacitor

shared by Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13
     
    Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 13
     
    very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.
Alexander Wittig

Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

blogs.nvidia.com/...flickr

AI

shared by Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15
     
    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jul 15
     
    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Jul 15
     
    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
  • Alexander Wittig on 23 Jul 15
     
    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
  • jcunha on 23 Jul 15
     
    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
  • Paul N on 29 Jul 15
     
    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
  • jcunha on 31 Jul 15
     
    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
Nina Nadine Ridder

Surprising similarity in fly and mouse motion vision - 2 views

medicalxpress.com/...arity-mouse-motion-vision.html

BIO science evolution biomimetics vision

shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 30 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 30 Jul 15
     
    Loosely related to an old ACT project on optical flow (if I remember correctly but even if not still an interesting read I think): "At first glance, the eyes of mammals and those of insects do not seem to have much in common. However, a comparison of the neural circuits for detecting motion shows surprising parallels between flies and mice. Scientists have learned a lot about the visual perception of both animals in recent years."
Nina Nadine Ridder

The tiniest Lego: a tale of nanoscale motors, rotors, switches and pumps - 3 views

www.nature.com/...ors-switches-and-pumps-1.18262

technology science molecular_robots

shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 03 Sep 15
     
    Inspired by biology, chemists have created a cornucopia of molecular parts that act as switches, motors and ratchets. Now it is time to do something useful with them.
anonymous

ProtonMail - Secure email based in Switzerland - 4 views

protonmail.ch

security privacy encryption mail secure encrypted

shared by anonymous on 17 Aug 15 - No Cached
jcunha liked it
  • anonymous on 17 Aug 15
     
    Something for the e-mail privacy fighters (Leopold). Protagonist in "Mr. Robot" is using it so it must be good!
  • ...1 more comment...
  • jcunha on 18 Aug 15
     
    Seems to be very good, I am going to make one account for me.
  • LeopoldS on 19 Aug 15
     
    I have an account with them since 30 June 2014 - nice but since I don't like webmail I prefer using mail with PGP installed ... unfortunately very few others are using PGP encryption .... even smart ACT guys ... :-(
  • Paul N on 26 Aug 15
     
    We know not to use email at all for any kind of critical communication
Alexander Wittig

Outernet: Humanity's Public Library - 1 views

www.outernet.is/en

technology space

shared by Alexander Wittig on 11 Jun 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 11 Jun 15
     
    Humanity's Public Library #ImagineIf censorship did not exist information was free for everyone, education was truly universal, every home had a library, disasters could be anticipated. Get your Lantern Portable, solar-powered, multi-frequency Outernet receiver. Maybe we should get/build one of those receivers for the ACT just because it's geeky:)
Ma Ru

Command line tools for the Google Data APIs - 2 views

code.google.com/googlecl

INF command line fun Web 2.0

shared by Ma Ru on 20 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Ma Ru on 20 Jun 10
     
    I'm sure Francesco will love it... perhaps of use for ACT's Google calendar/docs?
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jun 10
     
    is there an easy way (easy for Francesco I mean) to retrieve the citation number of papers in google scholar automatically (e.g. for act papers)?
  • Francesco Biscani on 13 Jul 10
     
    It seems like google scholar is not supported yet.
Nicholas Lan

gravity doesn't exist - 2 views

vixra.org/0907.0018

fun nutter

shared by Nicholas Lan on 09 Jun 10 - No Cached
  • Nicholas Lan on 09 Jun 10
     
    apparently warm things attract each other instead. a symbolic prize of a virtual launch vehicle based on a smeg fridge/freezer for the most amusing/shortest refutation. "A ~1068 gm hollow copper sphere hovers above a 1000 W heat element." "After power was applied to the heat element for 400 s, the means of the first and last ~6 force measures indicate that the sphere's gravitational mass increased by 1.9 % or 20 gm."
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 09 Jun 10
     
    I didn't know the viXra project. It's a great help to the PHYS RF at ACT. Whoever posted something there is crackpot for sure...
  • pacome delva on 09 Jun 10
     
    interesting...
  • LeopoldS on 09 Jun 10
     
    this looks like absolute humbug to me .... reminds me of some rotating superconductors :-)
pacome delva

The Coolest Antiprotons - 2 views

focus.aps.org/st1

phy antiprotons antihydrogen

shared by pacome delva on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Researchers cooled a cloud of about 4,000 antiprotons down to 9 kelvin using a standard approach for cooling atoms that has never been used with charged particles or ions. The technique could provide a new way to create and trap antihydrogen, which could help researchers probe a basic symmetry of nature.
  • hydrogen and antihydrogen should share many basic traits, like mass, magnetic moment, and emission spectrum. If antihydrogen and hydrogen have even slightly different spectra, it indicates some new physics principles beyond the standard model, a very big deal.
  • pacome delva on 05 Jul 10
     
    antihydrogen propulsion...?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jul 10
     
    how to efficiently direct it?
  • Nicholas Lan on 06 Jul 10
     
    didn't roger write an assessment of antimatter propulsion when he was in the ACT?
  • pacome delva on 06 Jul 10
     
    yeah the problem is the amount of antimatter you can get and more specifically how to trap it. I found that you would need around one gram to go to the outer Solar System. So we are far from that, but finding an efficient way to trap it, with an electromagnetic trap rather than solid walls is a first step !
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