“The alien landscapes of Pluto and its moons dazzled scientists and nonscientists alike this year. More than eight decades after its discovery, Pluto became much more than a nondescript point of light. It’s a dynamic, complex world unlike any other orbiting the sun.”
Before each Computerphile interview we asked guests and regular contributors about their first computer.
Professor Uwe Aickelin: Missing Data: https://youtu.be/oCQbC818KKU
Professor Ross Anderson: Chip & PIN Fraud: https://youtu.be/Ks0SOn8hjG8
Spencer Lamb: Inside a Data Centre: https://youtu.be/fd3kSdu4W7c
Tom Scott: Animated GIFs and Space vs Time: http://youtu.be/blSzwPcL5Dw
Horia Maior: Brain Scanner: COMING SOON!
This weekend’s Geminids are going to be the biggest meteor shower of this year, and you absolutely should not miss it. Here’s when, where, and how to watch the Geminid meteor shower—and what you should be looking for when you do.
The Geminids are a mid-December (this year peaking on Sunday, December 13th) meteor shower formed by the debris of comet 3200 Phaeton burning up in our atmosphere. Phaeton is unusual in that it was only recently recognized as a comet at all. For many years, astronomers believed that Phaethon was really a large asteroid, due to its total lack of ice. Eventually, researchers figured out that Phaethon’s lack of ice was simply due to how close its path was to the sun, and they reclassified it as an extinct comet or a “rock comet.” That extinct comet is responsible for the Geminids you’ll see this weekend.
Posted in space
An experiment at Fermilab to determine if everything in the universe is just a hologram reassures us it probably isn’t.
Coal miners mine coal; diamond miners mine diamonds; gold miners mine gold; space miners (will) mine space—and anything in it that has precious metals or compounds that can be whisked into rocket fuel. But, just like the first three kinds of “resource extraction,” the celestial kind will face more than a few philosophical, financial, and regulatory complications.
Google appears to be more confident about the technical capabilities of its D-Wave 2X quantum computer, which it operates alongside NASA at the U.S. space agency’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
D-Wave’s machines are the closest thing we have today to quantum computing, which work with quantum bits, or qubits — each of which can be zero or one or both — instead of more conventional bits. The superposition of these qubits can allow great numbers of computations to be performed simultaneously, making a quantum computer highly desirable for certain types of processes.
In two tests, the Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab today announced that it has found the D-Wave machine to be considerably faster than simulated annealing — a simulation of quantum computation on a classical computer chip.
In an recent interview, It expert Gary McKinnon has candidly revealed detail on his NASA data breach and finding documents on ‘extraterrestrial life’.
Spike is finally getting into the scripted series game and is beginning with a full season order for an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars.
“The Internet of Everything – the moment cyberspace spills over into physical space.” Watch Jason Silva define our connected future. #WhyWait
