SpaceCast - 6/10/2017
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Upgrade planned to Svalbard seed vault (related to the last topic we did on the vault)
- In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Global Seed Vault on the island of Svalbard stores seeds for thousands of food and other crops to maintain biodiversity in the event of an environmental disaster
- Recently, extreme warm weather resulted in permafrost melt which flooded the access tunnel (see the cast from a few weeks ago)
- Now, a group is investigating potential solutions to counter warming climates
- One option is to rebuild the access tunnel so it slopes up instead of down - $1.6 million will be spent investigating how to improve the tunnel in 2018
- Other improvements include moving a heat-producing transformer station, digging drainage systems into the mountainside, and constructing a waterproof wall inside the access tunnel
- The vault is intended to be self-sufficient, meaning the tunnel will have to be revamped to prevent buildup of water which would prevent future access to the seed vault
New evidence points to all stars being born in pairs
- New analysis from physicists at UC Berkeley & Harvard indicate that all sunlike stars were born as twins
- Many stars are in binary or trinary groupings (e.g. the Alpha Centauri system), and astronomers have even searched for the sun’s possible twin (dubbed ‘Nemesis’ as it may have produced the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs)
- The new theory is based on radio data from a giant molecular cloud in Perseus (a stellar nursery) and a mathematical model which can explain the radio observations only if all sunlike stars are born as twins
- The model predicts that all stars form in wide binaries (separated by 500+ AU), and the systems then either shrink or break apart within 1 million years (relatively short time)
- Under this model, Nemesis likely escaped to mix with other stars in our region of the galaxy
- Obviously, the model will need to be checked in other star-forming regions and molecular clouds to fully validate it
Scientific Targets of the James Webb Space Telescope
- NASA recently announced a handful of the first targets of the James Webb Space Telescope
- The massive satellite will launch aboard an ESA Ariane 5 rocket to the L2 point between the Earth and the Sun
- The list was announced under NASA’s Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) program
- This program allows scientists involved in the JWST’s development to select some of the initial targets
Machine-learning algorithm could combat identity theft
- Identity theft often involves multiple steps to acquire someone’s personal info - in the 2015 data breach of the IRS, this involved thwarting security questions
- Recent research demonstrated a system that could identify when responses were fake
- Some respondents were asked to answer personal security questions truthfully, but some were given fake identities which they had to memorize and use
- The last question on the quiz was designed to throw the fakers off, leading to uncertainty in responses
- Researchers then took mouse movement data from all respondents and fed it into a machine-learning algorithm
- The AI was able to identify the fake responses 95% of the time, confirming that unexpected questions can be useful to combat identity theft
Apogee Industries Merchandise
Music:
Rage Inc. - Magic
