Science Updates

[Super Nova]

General science thread focused on the latest and greatest plans and achievments of man and women kind.

[Super Nova]

This will be exciting. Exploring an alien underseas world. I recon iof they do find life it will probaly have the same orgin as life on Earth. The chance of life being created independently from scratch I think is low in the same solar system. We are one system.

Space boat could explore lakes on Saturn's moon Titan
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci ... z287rtoohp

[freediver]

Shouldn't that be a space ship?

[boxy]

I'd say that's exactly why they called it a boat...

[Rorschach]

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace Boooooooooooooooat.

Sorry... just popped into my head.

[Super Nova]

Water particles found on surface of the moon, scientists say
The moon's surface is covered with glassy grains of soil containing significant amounts of water that could sustain human life, a new study has found.

Brilliant news.... let set up shop on the moon. Let's get on with it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9607 ... s-say.html

[AnimalMother]

Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.

The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.

[Super Nova]

What a complicated orbit it must have. It wasn't too long ago we had no proof of other planets in the universe adn now we are really discovery so much. I cannot wait for the Earth like planet to be discovered and one that has a spectrum like earth indicating potential life.

Planet Hunters is interesting in that human pattern recognition of data is still superior to computer analysis. This surprises me.

Visitors to the Planet Hunters website have access to randomly selected data from one of Kepler's target stars.

Volunteers are asked to draw boxes to mark the locations of visible transits - when a planet passes in front of its parent star.

Dr Lintott points out: "Computerised attempts to find things [in the data] missed this system entirely. That tells you there are probably more of these that are slipping through our fingers. We've just stuck a load of new data up on Planethunters.org to help people find the next one."

Searching for such systems, he said, was "a complicated test to hand a computer", adding: "We're using human pattern recognition, which can disentangle that reasonably well to see the important stuff."

[AnimalMother]

Planet Hunters is interesting in that human pattern recognition of data is still superior to computer analysis. This surprises me.

Well, humans have some well-developed characteristics that computers are only slowly catching up on. The relevant ones here are conscious intelligence and enormous neural networks.

[Super Nova]

Planet Hunters is interesting in that human pattern recognition of data is still superior to computer analysis. This surprises me.

Well, humans have some well-developed characteristics that computers are only slowly catching up on. The relevant ones here are conscious intelligence and enormous neural networks.

And our brains are designed to see patterns, even when they are not there. They are designed to fill in the gaps when information is missing. Computers programming for this sort of thing would be very difficult.