Daily Archives: March 25, 2021

Turkish architecture firm Hayri Atak Architectural Design Studio (HAADS) has created a conceptual floating hotel for Qatar. The project includes a circular volume that floats on the Persian Gulf and is designed to slowly rotate over the course of a day. The massive hotel concept includes over 150 guest rooms connected to lush green spaces and interior waterfalls. On top of the unique and futuristic form, guests will have access to a wide range of building amenities like a spa, gym, mini-golf, and pools.

The design firm explains that it is now working on technical design elements to best introduce sustainable practices. Our team is working and studying with technical consultants and experts from different fields, explains HAADS. This project adopts the motto of minimum energy loss and zero waste as a principle according to the design approach it has put forward. Due to its characteristic moving feature, it generates electrical energy by rotating around its position according to the water flow and provides users with different perspective experiences.

Some of the current green building elements include the vortex in the center of the roof designed to collect rainwater that will be used for an irrigation system. Energy may be produced through solar panels, wind turbines, and a tidal energy system that works as the hotel rotates in the water. On top of all these goals, the designers also say that the hotel will work to purify and use seawater for their operations and that no waste produced by the hotel should impact the environment.

Though this project is branded as an eco-floating hotel, many designers might point out that a luxury hotel off the coast of Qatar is difficult to believe as a very green project. For more information about sustainable architecture and how a building's environmental impact is measured,read our article on LEED and other third-party certification systems as well as our piece on Declarea group of architects and engineers who have signed an agreement outlining the directives of truly green buildings.

Scroll down to see HAADS' conceptual hotel. For more projects by the studio, see My Modern Mets previous coverage of a twisting tower inspired by muscle fibers for the NYC skyline.

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This Architect Designed a Conceptual Eco-Floating Hotel in Qatar - My Modern Met

"The water table is sinking drastically in [the] UAE and the purpose of this is to try to help with rainfall."Rain Drop

The United Arab Emirates is about to test an unusual, high-tech way of triggering more rainfall: flying drones into clouds and zapping them with electricity to trigger showers.

Scientists from Englands University of Reading helped develop a series of drones that can fly up into existing clouds and alter water droplets electrical charge so they clump together like dry hair to a comb, Reading scientist Maarten Ambaum told the BBC. If it works, it could help replenish the faltering water supply around large cities like Dubai and usher in a new era of human control over weather.

Because the UAE already uses cloud seeding technology to induce condensation and create clouds in the first place, the zapping drones would give the country even greater control over the water cycle.

Equipped with a payload of electric-charge emission instruments and customized sensors, these drones will fly at low altitudes and deliver an electric charge to air molecules, which should encourage precipitation, UAE rain-enhancement science-research program director Alya Al-Mazroui told Arab News.

Weather modification systems arent without their controversy. Cloud seeding has been around for decades, but potential misuse of the technology has experts concerned about geopolitical ramifications, especially in China.

In this case, however, the weather-controlling tech has a clear use case of helping to provide water to large desert cities that risk depleting the water thats naturally available.

The water table is sinking drastically in [the] UAE and the purpose of this is to try to help with rainfall, Ambaum told the BBC.

READ MORE: UAE to test cloud-busting drones to boost rainfall [BBC News]

More on weather manipulation: A Bunch of US States Are Now Using Weather Modification Technology

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The UAE Is Using Drones to Manipulate Weather - Futurism

Facebook is really, really serious about augmented reality. Last year, the company showed off a frankly ambitious framework for the future of AR, and now the social media giant has revealed some of the advanced gadgets its designing to help people interact with the AR world.

The Facebook Reality Labs Research teams biggest challenge is finding ways to interact with augmented reality the way we do with a PC. We have a number of headsets and glasses, but no AR equivalent to a mouse and keyboard.

So instead of trying to make existing devices work in AR, Facebook is looking to create new types of human-computer interfaces (HCIs) that are easy to use, reliable, and still provide some level of privacy. Facebook has said it envisions AI as a critical part of the formula to help provide you with the right tools or commands depending on the situation, which should help reduce friction or possible user confusion.

And while this tech is far from being polished, Facebook already has some ideas about how AR-based HCI devices might work in the future. Instead of relying completely on voice commands, Facebook sees wrist-mounted wearables as a good solution, offering a familiar and comfortable design not completely dissimilar to a standard wristwatch, but with new tech that can support various input methods.

Facebook says that by leveraging electromyography, it can use sensors to convert electrical signals that get sent from your brain to your hands into digital commands. Facebook claims EMG sensors are sensitive enough to detect movements of just one millimeter, with future devices potentially even being able to sense someones intentions without any actual physical movement. In essence, Facebook is looking to provide direct mind control of AR devices, but without the need for physical implants.

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Further, with precise EMG sensors, Facebook can also support new gesture controls, like pinching your thumb and index fingers together to create a click. In this way, people can translate what they do on a regular PC into a new set of AR-based gestures that Facebook someday hopes to expand into all sorts of controls and movements. Facebook even hopes to reimagine typing with the help of AI to making writing essays or emails faster and more accurate.

Facebook said it knows that all these technologies will need to evolve with each other, because simply being able to click on an AR object wont be enough if the rest of the AR interface is constantly getting in the way. And once again, Facebook thinks AI can help, by intelligently knowing when you want to switch virtual workspaces or focus on a specific tool or getting additional input from EMG sensors or even eye-tracking sensors.

Although touchscreens and virtual screens are useful, theres simply no replacement for real physical stimulus. So in addition to touching something with your fingers, Facebook just showed off two different prototypes that deliver haptics in interesting ways.

With its Bellowband prototype, Facebook uses a string of eight pneumatic pumps attached to a wrist-mounted device that blow air and create various pressure and vibrations patterns. When combined with its Tasbi prototype (Tactile and Squeeze Bracelet Interface), Facebook has been able to create a device that squeezes your wrist to better mimic the sensation of moving or touching real objects.

The biggest issue, of course, is that Facebooks track record on privacy is, well...we all know its not great. The company said safeguarding peoples data in AR is critically important, though Facebook Reality Labs science director Sean Keller added that understanding and solving the full extent of ethical issues requires society-level engagement. In short, Facebook needs feedback on how to improve privacy and security in AR (surprise, surprise), and is encouraging its researchers to publish relevant work in peer-reviewed journals.

Admittedly, while all of this does sound pretty far-flung, given the speed at which VR was adopted by certain sectors of business like engineering and design, its not that outlandish to imagine AR seeing similarly explosive growth over the next 10 to 15 years. And, as in other industries, if youre the first company to define and control a market, theres a good chance profits will follow. You can rest assured Facebook is going to do its best to try to stay ahead of competitorsbut it sounds like Microsoft, Apple, and the rest all have the same idea. Let the games begin.

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Facebook Teases Futuristic Wrist-Based Wearable That Will Let You Control AR With Your Mind - Gizmodo

We are living in the era of the mushroom. Recent studies of mycelium the web-like, vegetative structure from which mushrooms flower have confirmed its ability to send and receive communication between fungi, trees and other plants, a decentralized form of thinking without the use of acentral brain. Correspondingly, fungi have become the metaphor of choice for technologists to encapsulate new modes of thinking, collaboration and communication. The pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was allegedly a mycologist, and the decentralized design of the digital currency resembles mycelium in code. Science fiction has also taken note: Star Trek: Discovery (2017ongoing)has imagined a spore drive which enabled the USS Discovery to travel across the universe and other quantum realities through a mycelial network. The ship was led by Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, his name a knowing reference to the eponymous mycologist and author of Mycelium Running(2005).

Seana Gavin, Untitled, Mushroom Chimney, 2020. Courtesy: the artist and Somerset House, London

The biological futurism of contemporary mycology has replaced its metallic predecessor, best captured in technologically dystopian sci-fi novels such as William Gibsons Neuromancer (1984) and films like Blade Runner (1982). In recent years, supernatural sci-fi novels such as Liz Ziemskas The Mushroom Queen (2015) and Caitln R. Kiernans Agents of Dreamland (2017) have centred narratives around parasitic or humanoid fungi. In turn, contemporary artists including Philippe Parreno, Jenna Sutela and Anicka Yi have used bacteria and other organisms in their projects as active collaborators. Last year saw the publication of Merlin Sheldrakes expansive Entangled Life (2020) and the first issue of TheMushroom magazine, both of which explore the many scientific, philosophical, material, physiological and design questions raised by fungi. On social media, fungi intermingle freely with technology: on Instagram, the Mushrooms Everywhere filter byartist Francis Carmody (@ittsfrancis) projects small fruiting bodies onto the surface of your selfies, while on TikTok @mycolyco has amassed 200,000 followers, as of this writing, by hooking up oyster mushrooms and cordyceps to modular synths, which turn electrical impulses into sound.

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, 2020. Courtesy: Penguin Random House

In July 2020, I curated Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi at Somerset House in London, which featured work by established names known for their love of fungi, such as John Cage, Beatrix Potter and Cy Twombly, as well as a central focus on contemporary artists and designers who were inspired by the philosophical possibility of fungi or mycelium as a material for everything from bricks to clothing. For the exhibition, Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell of the design studio Pentagram and Rosie Emery of Counterpoint Studio developed a generative typeface, Hypha, using algorithms based on mycelial growth. Now available as an online interactive tool, these digital letterforms can be viewed as they expandand deflate. Like mushrooms themselves, the font changes unpredictably, illustrating how fungi can be both an aesthetic and a methodology for rethinking how images and objectscan form andgrow.

Mushrooms are not just beyond the gender binary: they have 36,000 sexes. All fungi need to do to reproduce and mix genes is bump into each other and fuse. Adham Faramawy uses fungi as a motif in their work to rethink the boundaries of the human. Their recent film Skin Flick (2020) depicts enoki mushrooms and other organisms growing out of the artists distorted face, while semi-nude men rub shaving foam and shower gel over their bodies. As Faramawy voices their awareness of feeling increasingly ill at ease with [their] body, fungi echo the porous interface of human skin.

Adham Faramawy, My fingers distended as honey dripped from your lips and we danced in a circular motion, 2019, video still. Courtesy: the artist and Collusion, Cambridge UK

An average human body is covered, inside and out, with more than 100 species of fungi. Our digestive system, and thus our emotional and physiological well-being, could not function without this fungal microbiome. It was only in 2001 that genetic research revealed mushrooms to be neither plant nor animal, but rather members of their own natural kingdom, one that shares ancestors with humans. They offer us a view of our past and the possibility of a more symbiotic future, in which human and non-human animals, plants and fungi co-exist in thriving ecosystems. If techno-futurism followed astraight, teleological line of increasing acceleration, fungal-futurism offers a more sprawling and complex vision perhaps even an ecological alternative to capitalism. Yet, despite the utopian human desire for fungi to save us from ourselves, mushrooms are unpredictable and self-serving, as Sheldrake argues in Entangled Life. They did very well before humans appeared on the planet, and will thrive long after weregone.

This article first appeared infriezeissue 218with the headline Future Fungi'.

Main image:Seana Gavin, Mushroomscape, 2020. Courtesy: the artist and Somerset House, London

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The Artists Building a Future out of Mushrooms - frieze.com

If youve watched any of SpaceXs recent test launches, Starship prototypes have engaged in a white-knuckles mid-flight maneuver before descending back to Earth.

Before landing, the Starship prototypes are designed to pull off a belly flop in which they switch off their engines, flip onto their front, and freefall horizontally before righting themselves almost like a dolphin leaping out of the water. Its an incredible display of spacecraft maneuverability, but nailing the flip is crucial for SpaceX. These are just prototypes, but SpaceX expects the finished Starship product to return to Earths atmosphere on its side, using the air around it to slow its fall before righting itself and landing on its feet. Its a cool idea, but it would also make for an interestingride for anyone on board.

The maneuver raises a serious question. The Starship is supposed to carry human passengers into space, so what would it feel like to actually be inside one during a belly flop?

To get to the bottom of it, we tapped Christopher Combs, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas San Antonio. You might recognize Combs as one of the experts who weighed in on a previous Futurism thought experiment whether you could climb inside of a SpaceX Rideshare cargo launch and have any hope of surviving the journey. Thankfully, he says, the bellyflop should be substantially less perilous once SpaceX figures out how to stop Starship from exploding afterwards but we still wanted to figure out what it would be like to be on the inside.

Heres our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity.

Futurism: The Starship prototypes are doing this weird belly flop maneuver during their test hops. Aside from our question of rider experience, can you talk a little bit about what SpaceX is doing with this flipping technique and why its showcasing this maneuverability?

Christopher Combs: You dont have to do a belly flop to make a hop work for a few kilometers. Theyre trying to demonstrate this and showcase it because when they actually get up to orbit or get close to orbital speeds, then this thing has to slow down. You cant just come straight in with this kind of vehicle.

They want to aero brake a little bit and kind of glide or coast into wherever theyre going to land. When things are moving as fast as that or youre dealing with hypersonic aerodynamics, a rounded body is actually preferred in a lot of ways. Theyre kind of taking advantage of that saying, Well, were going to reenter, sort of turn this thing on its side, and fly up and use the flaps to control how were coming in to basically be able to appropriately slow things down so that we dont have to use the rockets the entire time.

Is that approach unusual? The other rockets that SpaceX has reused havent returned sideways.

Combs: I mean, unless you want to count the Space Shuttle. So its almost like they said Well, what if you took the Space Shuttle, but instead of putting wheels on it and landing on a runway, you wanted to land vertically with a rocket?

The Rideshare experiment that we talked about has an unhappy ending no matter how you look at it. But the Starship is actually expected to carry humans into orbit. But it seems like this maneuver would still make for a bad time.

Combs: I mean, I dont know. I guess bad depends on your perspective, right? If youre a person that doesnt like roller coasters, I dont think you would like this. This isnt going to be your Southwest Airlines flight there will probably be some discomfort. Its not going to kill you, obviously. I do wonder if its one of these things where they say, you know, people with certain conditions maybe shouldnt do this. I would assume that thats going to happen.

I mean, for spaceflight, I would kind of figure it would be a little bit stricter than You must be this tall to ride.

Combs: Yeah, right. One interesting thing about the flip, though, in terms of G-force: FlightClub.iohas done modeling of these Starship tests to find the Gs that the vehicle experience. They were seeing two and a half or so, which is pretty manageable, especially for short times. Thats nothing too scary.

And in terms of the flip maneuver, it depends on where they put people. Where is your center of gravity relative to your center of pressure, and where are you sitting in relation to those points thats going to determine how much force you actually see. But if you watch the videos and if you look at some of the things SpaceX has posted, the Starship kind of rotates more or less about the nose cone. So most of the rotation is happening closer to where the rockets are because of how they use the flaps and how they orient their axis of rotation when they do that maneuver. And Im certain that thats intentional.

Is that just a function of the rockets being at the bottom so the top rotates less? Is that something that needs to be deliberately designed?

Combs: It depends on the location of the rockets, the location of the flaps, how the flaps are oriented, and the weight distribution of the rocket. We have a center of gravity, which is a kind of a geometrical and mass-determined thing. And then you have a center of pressure, which determines about what center your aerodynamic loads are acting. Those two things are going to determine how something rotates when a given force is applied. Thats important in aircraft design and all kinds of things. And so theyve set it up in a way, with their design, so that the axis of rotation is very close to where the crew is going to be located or where passengers are going to be.

I am inferring that youre not going to feel a lot of Gs from the flip, I dont think, because of where theyre able to locate that axis, but youre still going to spin a little bit. Youre still experiencing some Gs from the deceleration although not a crazy amount so it will be a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit disorienting, maybe? Because youre going to be spinning. But not life-threatening stuff. Um, I wouldnt eat a hot dog on the flight. It might feel kind of carnival ride-ish.

Do you think it matters where youre sitting?

Combs: I think itll be a little bit different but not substantially. And Im not exactly sure how they are going to orient people. But like, youre all kind of on the same ring. Depending on exactly how the axis lines up there will be some people that hardly feel anything, I think, and some people that get a little bit more. But still, its not like the difference you would experience if you were down at the rocket end.

This has to be deliberately designed for people. And I was curious if you had any thoughts on kind of the considerations that go into that from a technical standpoint. Are there extra steps that go into this that are designed to make the ride and especially flipping around more survivable, or maybe less nauseating?

Combs: These are rockets, so you can manage things like thrust and impulse, and you design all that in. You can take things a little bit slower [than a cargo launch], maybe you pay more attention to how much things are vibrating, and you design more into, you know, making the environment comfortable.

Weve shown you can do this with the human space flight thats already happened, and theres going to be different standards for human space flight, but yeah, you would put different load limits and different types of force limits on your design. And you design how youre going to fire all of these engines up and everything like that. So yeah, you would handle it differently than then you would if its just instrumentation or whatever. Its a consideration that you would make, but its not something that is unthinkable.

Its certainly different for crewed versus cargo launches, but what about flipping over and belly-flopping versus a vertical takeoff and landing?

Combs: Kind of like we talked about, they had to make some considerations about where people were going to be relative to where the vehicle was going to rotate. They have got some limits on how hard they can make that maneuver and how fast they could do it. Those are considerations that would have to be made because youre kind of bridging the gap between what you do on an airplane and what you do with spacecraft.

They would definitely need to kind of keep those things in mind. But at the same time, I do think there is a lot of engineering experience about what people can handle in terms of those types of loads and forces and experiences between all the stuff weve done in space flight, but then with aircraft as well. So theres a lot of legacy knowledge.

Id say [SpaceX has] some design limits, but they have to theyre obviously going to have to continue to engineer things in a way where they can consistently [land successfully].

I want to ask about the explosive aftermaths that weve seen because, you know, obviously those are problems. Those dont necessarily reflect the crews experience, barring a tragedy, but is there a balance that needs to be struck between building a rocket thats comfortable and building a rocket that works well?

Combs: Its just raising the bar in your design. Thats not to take anything away from what SpaceX is doing. These have all been prototypes. This kind of stuff happens when youre doing stuff for the first time.

Right. And they blow up and they learn a lot from it.

Combs: Yeah, and then you learn a lesson and you fix it. The fascinating thing about what SpaceX does is that theyre learning all these lessons very publicly and with full-scale tests. And a lot of places dont do that. Theyre able to learn lessons really fast. Were kind of seeing the design process play out in front of us, which is an incredible thing to watch.

But yeah, they learned their lesson and SpaceX has shown they dont continually make the same mistakes over and over. Theyll fix one thing and then maybe something else pops up, but eventually they get it all figured out, which I anticipate is going to happen here because theyve got good problem solvers there.

And they were close last time. They were so close.

Combs: Yeah, right. Were past the point of Can this work? Theyre just fine-tuning things, getting the details sorted out, getting this valve right or getting this pneumatic to work the way that it should, or making sure this leg doesnt fail in this way. And thats just engineering. Once they get to that point, then things should get really repeatable.

SpaceX declined to comment.

More on SpaceX: Could I Climb Into a SpaceX Cargo Rideshare and Yeet Myself Into Space?

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This Is What It Would Be Like to Ride Starship During Its Epic "Belly Flop" Maneuver - Futurism

This is only the second planet's core we've analyzed.Exclusive Club

Mars just joined a pretty exclusive club, thanks to new NASA research.

Following the Earth, Mars is just the second planet in the universe to have its core measured and analyzed by human scientists, Nature News reports. Thanks to the InSight landers ability to listen to Mars seismic activity, NASA discovered that Mars core is less dense than they thought and just half the size of Earths.

Scientists can infer certain things about the hidden inner layers of planets from a distance, but getting actual measurements requires landing specialized equipment on the surface. Thats why we have a specific figure for the width of Mars core between 3,620 and 3,720 kilometers in diameter but only have estimates for other planets, like Mercury and Venus, nevermind exoplanets in other systems.

In this case, the InSight lander was able to listen in on marsquakes, Nature reports, some of which were strong enough to send seismic waves down to and through the planets innermost layer.

Its a relief that InSight made this discovery when it did, as NASA scientists arent too optimistic about the spacecrafts continued survival. Dust has been piling up on its solar panels, and Mars is also currently at a stage of its orbit that takes it farther away from the Sun.

This is going to cause us to reduce our instrument usage over the next few months, InSight project scientist Mark Panning told Nature.

But until then, NASA still has plenty of data to pore over, like the unexpected finding that Mars core is considerably larger and less dense than scientists had estimated. That leaves the InSight scientists with the new challenge of figuring out which lighter elements are in there spacing things out.

READ MORE: Seismic Ripples Reveal Size of Marss Core [Nature News]

More on Mars: Mars Crust Structure Is Like a Layer Cake, NASA Scientists Say

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Scientists Finally Measure the Size of Mars' Core - Futurism