The Largest Digital Sky Survey Has Been Released By Astronomers

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

This compressed view of the entire sky visible from Hawai’i by the Pan-STARRS1 Observatory is the result of half a million exposures, each about 45 seconds in length, taken over a period of 4 years. The shape comes from making a map of the celestial sphere, like a map of the Earth, but leaving out the southern quarter. The disk of the Milky Way looks like a yellow arc, and the dust lanes show up as reddish brown filaments. The background is made up of billions of faint stars and galaxies. If printed at full resolution, the image would be 1.5 miles long, and you would have to get close and squint to see the detail.

SCiTechDaily: Astronomers Release the Largest Digital Sky Survey

The Pan-STARRS project is publicly releasing the world’s largest digital sky survey from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).

“The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys allow anyone to access millions of images and use the database and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars and galaxies,” said Dr. Ken Chambers, Director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories. “Pan-STARRS has made discoveries from Near Earth Objects and Kuiper Belt Objects in the solar system to lonely planets between the stars; it has mapped the dust in three dimensions in our galaxy and found new streams of stars; and it has found new kinds of exploding stars and distant quasars in the early universe.”

“With this release we anticipate that scientists – as well as students and even casual users – around the world will make many new discoveries about the universe from the wealth of data collected by Pan-STARRS,” Chambers added.

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WNU Editor: Cool.

A Look At Eight Futuristic Foods

Gizmodo: Eight Futuristic Foods You'll Be Eating in 30 Years

We ate some weird shit in 2016. A person born in the year 1000 AD definitely wouldn’t comprehend a Dorito. He certainly wouldn’t understand why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and if you showed him a Twinkie, he’d probably burn you at the stake. But the way things are headed, our food is bound to get a lot weirder.

Scientific research doesn’t just bring us more convenient and cheaper food options, but the hope of overcoming sustainability issues, too. The meat industry plays a huge role in climate change—around 10 percent of America’s total greenhouse gas emissions came from the agriculture sector in 2014, with almost a third of that climate-warming carbon attributed to methane from cattle, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, Earth’s population is growing fast, and many are fretting about how to feed the 9 billion people who will be inhabiting the planet in 2050.

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CSN Editor: Bugs? Algae?

The Best Gadgets Coming in 2017

MIT Technology Review: The Best Gadgets Coming in 2017

Here are the likely standouts among the smartphones, VR headsets, and smart watches hitting the market this year.

Smartphone geeks have a lot to look forward to in 2017. Phones dominate our list of the six most significant gadgets we expect to see this year.

Apple iPhone 8

To mark the iPhone’s 10th anniversary this year, Apple is expected to overhaul the phone’s design. One model could swap its liquid-crystal LCD display for one made of OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) that will wrap around the gadget’s edges. OLED displays are thinner, lighter, and more flexible than LCDs. Samsung’s Galaxy Edge phones sport a similar design and have been called gimmicky; Apple appears to be trying to make the feature more useful by enabling the phone to react when you touch any of its sides instead of just one.

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When Is The Best Time To Drink Coffee?

Metro: Why you shouldn’t drink coffee first thing in the morning

There’s nothing quite like the smell of a freshly ground coffee in the morning.

The waft of hot milk in a cappuccino, the bitter after taste of a double espresso and the sweetness of a caffe mocha. Nothing can beat that, right?

But drinking a coffee in the morning to wake up and give yourself a caffeine boost is all a myth, suggests research gathered by Ph.D candidate Steven Miller at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda.

And ordering that cup of coffee first thing could even lead to an increased tolerance of caffeine, dulling the effects long term.

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CSN Editor: After 9:00 AM is when I have my one cup of coffee.

The Earth Has Experienced Five Mass Extinctions

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Cosmos: The big five mass extinctions

Biologists suspect we’re living through the sixth major mass extinction. Earth has witnessed five, when more than 75% of species disappeared. Palaeontologists spot them when species go missing from the global fossil record, including the iconic specimens shown here. “We don’t always know what caused them but most had something to do with rapid climate change”, says Melbourne Museum palaeontologist Rolf Schmidt.

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WNU Editor: Bottom line .... 5 major extinction events.

It Took Six Months For Dinosaur Eggs To Hatch

A hatchling Protoceratops andrewsi fossil from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Credit M. Ellison/American Museum of Natural History

New York Times: Some Dinosaur Eggs Took Six Months or More to Hatch

For decades now, the drumbeat of dinosaur news has been their similarity to birds. They were warmblooded! They had feathers! And they’re still around, because birds are actually dinosaurs.

All true, but those that were nonavian dinosaurs, as they are now called, were not all beak and tweet. They were closely related to other living reptiles like crocodiles, and new findings about how long their eggs took to hatch bring that point home.

Scientists reported on Monday that by using a new technique on exceedingly rare fossils of unhatched dinosaur embryos, they determined that those embryos took twice as long to hatch as bird eggs of a similar size. The embryo of a large duck-billed dinosaur took at least six months to hatch, and the eggs of larger dinosaurs may have taken even longer.

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More News On How Long Did It Take Dinosaur Eggs To Hatch

No wonder the dinosaurs died out: They were vulnerable for the SIX MONTHS it took them to get out of their eggs when they were born -- Daily Mail
We Finally Know How Long It Took for Dinosaur Eggs to Hatch -- Seeker
Did Dinosaur Eggs Lead To Their Doom? -- Discover Magazine
Dinosaur 'Baby Teeth' Reveal That Dino Eggs Hatched Slowly -- NPR
Dinosaur eggs: Slow hatching eggs made dinosaurs go extinct when asteroid struck -- International Business Times

The United Nations Has Decided To Take On Killer Robots In 2017

YouTube

Seeker: U.N. Vote Puts 'Killer Robots' on the Agenda in 2017

International pressure mounts for a preemptive ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Good news, fellow humans: The United Nations has decided to take on killer robots.

At the international Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, 123 participating nations voted to initiate official discussions on the danger of lethal autonomous weapons systems. That's the emerging designation for so-called "killer robots" — weapons controlled by artificial intelligence that can target and strike without human intervention.

The agreement is the latest development in a growing movement calling for an preemptive ban on weaponized A.I. and deadly autonomous weapons. Last year, a coalition of more than 1,000 scientists and industry leaders, including Elon Musk and representatives of Google and Microsoft, signed an official letter to the United Nations demanding action.

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CSN Editor: Too late .... the genie is already out of the box.

These Sixteen Inventors Were Killed By Their Own Inventions

Max Valier in a rocket car, circa April 1930. Public Domain / Wikipedia

The Independent: Sixteen inventors who were killed by their own inventions

Inventions push mankind forward scientifically and economically.

Unsurprisingly, it is the inventor who is often the early tester of those inventions. And some of those inventions pose deadly risks.

We compiled a short list of brilliant engineers, scientists, and old-fashioned daredevils who fell victim to their own ideas.

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CSN Editor: Ouch.

More Details On CBS Star Trek Discovery Have Been Released

Next Big Future: CBS Star Trek Discovery likely set in Four Year Klingon War in Prime Timeline and Cast is revealed

Star Trek: Discovery is an upcoming American television series created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for CBS All Access. It is the first series developed specifically for that service, and the first Star Trek series since Star Trek: Enterprise concluded in 2005. Set roughly a decade before the events of the original Star Trek series, separate from the timeline of the concurrent feature films, Discovery explores a previously mentioned event from the history of Star Trek while following the crew of the USS Discovery. Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts serve as showrunners on the series, with producing support from Akiva Goldsman.

Star Trek: Discovery is set to premiere on CBS in May 2017, before moving to All Access. The first season will consist of 13 episodes

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CSN Editor: I am definitely looking forward to this.

86 Burglars Were Asked How They Broke Into Homes

KGW: We asked 86 burglars how they broke into homes

What burglars said were the biggest deterrents, what didn't stop them and how you can protect your home.

Do you ever wonder whether your home security system or “Beware of Dog” sign actually keeps burglars away?

We did too. So KGW's investigative team sent letters to 86 inmates currently serving time for burglary in the Oregon Department of Corrections. The inmates were asked to respond anonymously to 17 questions detailing how they broke in, when the crime occurred and what they were looking for.

What we learned could help you keep your home safe from burglaries.

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CSN Editor: The GF has a Rottweiler. The best deterrent that I ever saw.

The World's Top 10 Lightning Hotspots Revealed

The lightning hotspots are shown on this map. In the top ten, the the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took five places with Kabare Territory in the country's east near Lake Tanganyika taking second spot with 205 strikes. South America took a further two places

Daily Mail: Africa and South America are the most electric places on Earth: The world's top 10 lightning hotspots revealed

* Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, has he highest rate of lightning strikes
* A single square kilometre on the lake gets more than 230 times a year
* Africa and South America dominate the list with areas around Central America, the Caribbean and Asia featuring heavily outside of the top 20 places

When a storm comes we all know not to stand by a tree or in the middle of a golf course.

And now you can add to that list being on a boat in the middle of a South American lake which is the most lightning-struck place on Earth.

A single square kilometre of Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, has been found to have the highest rate of lightning strikes in the world getting strikes more than 230 times a year.

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CSN Editor: And I thought North America was the #1 place for lightning strikes.

The Year 2016 In Archaeology

This 11,000-year-old pendant from Star Carr is the earliest example of Mesolithic art in Britain

BBC: The year 2016 in archaeology

2016 had its fair share of exciting discoveries in the world of archaeology. Together, they reveal the human characteristics that unite us all and expose the impacts that past peoples continue to have on life today. Here's a selection of the most inspiring findings of the year.

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WNU Editor: The story on how long cats have been domesticated is what interested me.

Nikolai Tesla's Inventions Continue To Fascinate

Popular Mechanics: This Handmade Tesla Gun Is Shockingly Cool

Just be careful where you point that thing.

Nikolai Tesla has been pretty popular in his afterlife. After dying the defeated foe of Thomas Edison, his name has stuck out to geeks as someone who consistently thought differently about the world, who refused the status quo. But perhaps most importantly, he lives on in inventions like this Tesla gun, built by the folks at Smarter Every Day.

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CSN Editor: The above video is a must see for Tesla fans.

Has Google’s AI Translation Tool Invented Its Own Internal Language?

Tech Crunch: Google’s AI translation tool seems to have invented its own secret internal language

All right, don’t panic, but computers have created their own secret language and are probably talking about us right now. Well, that’s kind of an oversimplification, and the last part is just plain untrue. But there is a fascinating and existentially challenging development that Google’s AI researchers recently happened across.

You may remember that back in September, Google announced that its Neural Machine Translation system had gone live. It uses deep learning to produce better, more natural translations between languages. Cool!

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CSN Editor: It makes you wonder if machines can operate at a far more smarter level than what we have taken for granted.

The Non-Meat Revolution Has Begun

Marginal Revolution: The Revolution Has Begun: Beyond Meat

Animal rights will be the big social revolution of the 21st century. Most people have a vague feeling that factory farms aren’t quite ethical. But few people are willing to give up meat so such feelings are suppressed because acknowledging them would only make one feel guilty not just. Once the costs of giving up meat fall, however, vegetarianism will spread like a prairie wildfire changing eating habits, the use of farm land, and the science and economics of climate change.

Lab grown or cultured meat is improving but so is the science of veggie burgers. Beyond Meat has sold a very successful frozen “chicken” strip since 2013 and their non-frozen burger patties are just now seeing widespread distribution in the meat aisle at Whole Foods. Beyond Meat extracts protein from peas and then combines it with other vegetable elements under heating, cooling and pressure to realign the proteins in a way that simulates the architecture of beef.

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CSN Editor: I have also tried these non-meat products .... and yes .... I have been pleasantly surprised.

Futuristic Predictions That Came True in 2016

The replicant Pris from Blade Runner. Could synthetic humans be right around the corner?

Gizmodo: The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True in 2016

Another year has passed, which means we’re another step closer to the tomorrow of our dreams. Here are the most futuristic developments of 2016.

An artificial intelligence finally defeated a grandmaster at Go

In a tournament that rivaled the historical importance of Deep Blue vs chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1996 and Deep Blue vs the best Jeopardy champs in 2011, Google’s AlphaGo won four of the five games it played against Go world champion Lee Sedol. Going into the tournament, some experts naively presumed that the machine wouldn’t have a chance against a human in a game notorious for its complexity and sophisticated gameplay.

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CSN Editor: The quick development of driver-less cars is what surprised me.

What Happens When Your Smart Phone Is Stolen (Video)

Laughing Squid: Dutch Filmmaker Intentionally Lets His Phone Get Stolen In Order to Follow Its Path Through Spyware

Dutch filmmaker Anthony van der Meer decided to intentionally allow a thief to steal his mobile phone in order to find out what happens afterwards, using spyware that he installed ahead of time. The resulting film, entitled “Find my Phone” shows how just much information a thief can get with someone else’s phone.

In the Netherlands, 300 police reports a week are filed for smartphone-theft. Besides losing your expensive device, a stranger has access to all of your photos, videos, e-mails, messages and contacts. Yet, what kind of person steals a phone? And where do stolen phones eventually end up? The short documentary ‘Find My Phone’ follows a stolen phone’s second life by means of using spyware.

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CSN Editor: I can deal with losing my phone. But losing my photos, videos, and other personal information ... that is where it really hurts.

“I Know What You Download” Is A Website That Claims To Know What You Have Donwloaded

The Independent: 'I Know What You Download': Website claims to let people see everything their friends have torrented

The company appears to be using the intrusive website as a way of marketing its services to police and content owners, but serves a reminder of the kind of information made readily available on the internet

A new website claims to be able to show everything you – and your friends – have torrented.

“I Know What You Download” gathers information frm across the internet to find out the things that people have been downloading. And it even provides an easy way for friends to make that information available, too – meaning that you may already have been tricked into exposing your torrenting habits.

The tool works simply by looking up the IP address of the person using it. While torrents might feel secret, unless they are protected they are attached to those same unique IP addresses – meaning that anyone looking to find a download can be identified by others doing so at the same time.

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CSN Editor: more proof that there are no longer any secrets when it comes to the World Wide Web. The website “I Know What You Download” is here.

These Are The 7 Greatest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2016

RT: The 7 greatest scientific breakthroughs of 2016

From the discovery of an Earth-like planet to the unraveling of one of the great mysteries of physics, 2016 has been a blockbuster year for scientific breakthroughs.
Gravitational waves

Perhaps the biggest scientific feat of 2016 was the detection of gravitational waves in the fabric of space-time, from a pair of colliding black holes. The development added more weight to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The researchers backed up their findings by repeating the feat a few months later. The discovery was named Physics World Breakthrough of the Year and is hotly tipped to earn a Nobel Prize.

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CSN Editor: I found this to be the most interesting discovery .... Disposing of 'cellular litter' could prolong life by up to 35% - study (RT).

Russia Has A ‘Colossal’ Supercomputer

Building of Russian Ministry of Defence at Frunzenskaya Embankment. Moscow, Russia. Wikipedia. Wikipedia

RT: Army’s brain: Russia’s ‘colossal’ supercomputer helps predict wars, defense minister says

A “colossally powerful” supercomputer installed at Russia’s military headquarters helps the country’s armed forces tackle emerging threats by analyzing previous conflicts, such as the Yugoslavian war and the like, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

The supercomputer is a key part of the headquarters’ IT infrastructure and is so powerful that the military uses less than half of its capacity, Shoigu told Rossiya 24 TV channel, which filmed a documentary about Russia’s National Defense Management Center (NDMC).

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CSN Editor: It looks like Russia wants to build its own Skynet computer system .... Powerful Russian supercomputer to ‘speak’ to any robotic system, no matter which manufacturer (RT).