astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

some thought for the day extras.  these are notes from conversations elsewhere,

"
Without the feedback loop to the real world that comes from being embodied there will be no AI. Ungrounded symbol-shuffling attempts at AI such as Cyc have always failed. Simulations are and will always be crude due to scaling laws. Only the real world has the complexity, coherence and detail needed. Certainly a lot of overhead can be eliminated in the autonomic nervous system, but there is a good deal needed to operate a body in the real world.
These researchers are operating with an oversimplified and wrong idea of how neurons operate, which is even further simplified in the hardware design to the point of being a useless caricature of real brains. They haven't even begun to model the sonic and mechanical-resonance aspects of neural transmission and plasticity. They still use the disproven Hodgkin-Huxley model (rather than Heimburg's soliton model) as their base, and virtually ignore the necessity of low-speed impulses to neural function, substituting high-speed communications that do not fulfill timing and phase coordination functions. Cytoskeletal dynamics and their effects on morphology and connectivity are entirely ignored, the synapse connections being put in by hand and with crude rules-of-thumb.
Maybe some way can be found to make it work to some extent, but they don't even seem to know what they're sweeping under the rug. They have an infinitesimal chance of success at producing a real AI no matter how many billions of these poor approximations to neurons they manage to pile up." - MUltan( that's what he calls himself) 

for which I replied,

"I've always agreed that life is a stable non-equilibrium structure as Ilya Prigogine argues.
I'm surprised the A.I. guys don't get into Ilya Prigogine's stable structures ideas; seems to me the idea that life is connected to the environment through numerous feedback loops fits in with Marvin Minsky's 'Society of Mind' idea. The society of mind . . . ideas mixing and matching(some would say competing) would come from these numerous feedback loops;" - Flashgordon!

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

"This, therefore, is mathematics: she reminds you of the invisible form of the soul; she gives life to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she obolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth."  Proclus

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

"- . . . someone who had begun to learn geometry from Euclid, when he had learned the first theorem, asked Euclid "What shall I get out of what he learns?" Euclid called his slave and said "Give him threepence since he must make gain out of what he learns." Strabasus, about Euclid

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Quote for the day,

"Usually called unnecessary things is not understood. It is a case of revenge, and as usually mathematics and physics are not included, they are declared unnecessary." Fontenelle (1699)

Here's the latest enticing video of Pluto with Charon orbiting Pluto.  Charon was discovered in 1978. Astronomers have discovered four more moons around Pluto(not as big as Charon).

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

image credit: ESA/NASA Rosetta spacecraft

Well, this is a comet.  If I recall correctly, the Japanese flew a spacecraft by a comet recently as well; that comet wasn't much more picturesque.  Maybe, as we get close up of its features, we'll see interesting things.

Quote for the day,

"Where there is a will there is a way." - Shona Proverb

Science/Technology extra,

Tiny chip mimics brain, delivers supercomputer speed

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Jimmy Walker

Quote for the day,

"Mother is God number two." ~Chewa Proverb

Justin Martyr study reveals late date to Gospels

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Credit: University of Kent

Quote for the day,

"There is no god like the throat: it takes sacrifices daily." ~Nigerian Proverb

The Pluto mission will indeed be exciting; but, even before New Horizons spacecraft gets to Pluto, the Dawn spacecraft, having already revealed the Vesta asteroid as wonderous, will have explored Ceres and will be exploring Ceres.  Ceres is the biggest asteroid of the asteroid belt in between Jupiter and Mars.  Vesta is the second largest.  And, this October, a comet will streak right past Mars!  This next year is exciting indeed! 

The LHC collider will also be up and running again at higher energies to search of dark matter and hidden dimensions.

- Messenger spacecraft flyover Mercury

- Science/Technology extra,

A working space drive? Space exploration enthusiasts have longed for a space drive for a long time. This one has people excited; it's passed a third party test. What it is microwaves generated from the solar sails; the microwaves are put in a cavity where they interact with the vacuum energy.  Vacuum energy is probably the greatest finding of quantum physics.  It's a Paul Dirac generalization of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations.  Getting to the point, with little explanation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, if particles disappear within the limits of the uncertainty principle, then particles can pop into existence out of nowhere.