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This paper introduces a novel deflection approach based on nuclear explosions: the nuclear cycler. The idea is to combine the effectiveness of nuclear explosions with the controllability and redundancy offered by slow push methods within an incremental deflection strategy. The paper will present an extended model for single nuclear stand-off explosions in the proximity of elongated ellipsoidal asteroids, and a family of natural formation orbits that allows the spacecraft to deploy multiple bombs while being shielded by the asteroid during the detonation.

I know at least of a few people who share this point of view :)

I think it is worth noting that Dyson's is not saying that climate change is an illusion - it is evident that a lot of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere and hence something will change. His point is that we just don't know what will change and by how much and that (much) more experimental data is necessary to make predictive models.

On missing experimental work: just read in the news that condensation in cirrus clouds has been studied recently and that the models where incorrect as to what the significance of organic substances and soot is in cirrus cloud formation. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/05/08/science.1234145

ESA Science & Technology: A leap forward in probing magnetic reconnection in space: Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process in the Universe, playing a major role in various phenomena such as star formation or solar explosions, but also preventing plasma confinement in fusion reactors on Earth. However, a lack of precise measurements at the heart of this physical process prevents a full understanding of this phenomenon.

space-related kickstarters moving from cubesats to space telescopes. This funding campaign was launched today, and will last for 32 days. They are asking for 1M USD.

"Since the formation of Planetary Resources, our primary goal has been to build technology enabling us to prospect and mine asteroids. We've spent the last year making great leaps in the development of these technologies." - Damn we need to get in touch with these people..!

The study gave insight that already weak magnetic fields can deflect energetic particles due to charge separation and the formation of strong electric fields

good luck with this....

In 1996 Sokal hoaxed sociologists with his famous nonsense text on political implications of quantum gravity. Can one play a similar game with "researchers" on Boltzmann brains, multiverses, string landscapes or similar? I doubt, this is just reality satire that can't be topped.

Poor Boltzmann ...

Just in time for the end of the winter ....

The strange formation resembles a tiny spire surrounded by a webby picket fence and is about 2 centimeters wide. Apparently nobody knows what it is, but Tom said that it may actually come from a spider (according to the way the web was spun)!

A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.

old news, but wow .... Nature is becoming more and more like a magazine and less and less a scientific journal. This stuff is highly irrelevant but to the group that did it.

this is not a nature paper but just an article on their website - the papers they provide as references are all old

On the way towards autonomous flying deliveries and building a Megazord formation!

The most astounding fact about Kepler-78b is that it shouldn't even exist, according to our current knowledge of planetary formation. It is extremely close to its star at only 550,000 miles (900,000 kilometers). As a comparison, Mercury only gets within 28.5 million miles (45.9 million kilometers) of the sun in the nearest point of orbit. With that proximity, it isn't clear how the planet could have formed as the star was much larger when the planet formed. With its current distance, that would mean it formed inside the star, which is impossible as far as we know.

I have no idea if an algorithm based on this already exists, but it would certainly be a good one for autonomous AI, I think. I think an algorithm based on this should be able to select his own input parameters and reject them if they are not stimulated any further or integrate them in the algorithm if they are continiously stimulated... this could enable self learning, etc.

By steering the neuron's back to an intermediate activity level the mechanism probably optimizes their efficiency within the network (after all a neuron that fires all the time is just as useless as one that never fires).

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.

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'.

"With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world. (stand December 2009)" Daring statement... I'm not quite sure, but I'd quess microscopic images used in medicine can easily reach terapixels... What a waste of pixels anyway... they weren't able to find a bit more interesing city?

yeah... like Leiden !

tried to find the original science paper but could not .... the only one I found was this one: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1210/2

"Plan 9 from outer space" quote confirmed : atmospheric conditions in outer space stall communications! Wonder how many more facts of the movie will prove right in the end...

very interesting study. Although it is not so much a surprise, they cite many papers on planetary formation that predicted this, and the only paper on degassing they cite is from our rather unpopular french ex-minister of research c. allegre, who refuses the fact that humans have an impact on climate...