Daily Archives: April 9, 2021

For five years running, Rancho Santa Fes Team Singularity earned the opportunity to compete at the San Diego Regional Championship. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the competition format has gone virtual. Previously a one-day League tournament, the competition stretched over four days with uploading of the team engineering notebook on Day 1, judging taking place via Zoom on Day 2, completing six 2-1/2 minute match runs at home with the team robot on Day 3, and a virtual awards ceremony via Zoom and Twitch on Day 4.

Team Singularitys Game Changer Robot 1

(Courtesy)

The entire FIRST Tech Challenge 2020-21 Game Changer Tournament season has been reformatted to a virtual setting. Sponsored by Qualcomm, FIRST Robotics teamed up with Disney and Lucasfilm and had all teams compete with their robots by video conferencing, in contrast to a traditional four robotics team match with two opposing alliances made up of two teams in each alliance held at a host school site. Part of the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) experience this season was to adapt to the challenges a global pandemic requires. Preparation for the competition required many virtual calls via Zoom, Discord and other forms of social media. Design of the robot had to be done virtually. Building, assembling, testing, troubleshooting and driving the robot had to comply with masks, hand sanitizer and physical distancing measures. Competing was conducted independent of an alliance partner and absent from an opposing competitor in the same room or garage. Scores were submitted online. Even community outreaches had to be creative and conducted either virtually and with social distancing measures in compliance with the CDC recommendations.

Newsletter

Get the RSF Review weekly in your inbox

Latest news from Rancho Santa Fe every Thursday for free

Enter email address

Sign Me Up

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Rancho Santa Fe Review.

Despite these challenges, Team Singularity was up to the task, even during this COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did they earn the privilege of qualifying for the virtual Regional competition on April 25, 2021, Singularity took 1st place in the Collins Aerospace Innovate Award with their 3D printed robot design; 2nd place Deans List Semi-Finalist; 3rd place Think Award for their engineering notebook; 3rd place Connect Award for their virtual outreaches in fundraising and donating face shields to healthcare heroes around the country and designing 3D printed nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing and submitting their research to the American Society of Human Genomics Conference while mentoring a FIRST Lego League team and a fellow FTC team. Singularity also ranked as the 2nd highest scoring team in the Euclid League.

More here:

Robotics Team Singularity qualifies virtually for the San Diego FTC Regional Championship - Rancho Santa Fe Review

One of the primary capabilities separating human intelligence from artificial intelligence is our ability to be creativeto use nothing but the world around us, our experiences, and our brains to create art. At present, AI needs to be extensively trained on human-made works of art in order to produce new work, so weve still got a leg up. That said, neural networks like OpenAIs GPT-3 and Russian designer Nikolay Ironov have been able to create content indistinguishable from human-made work.

Now theres another example of AI artistry thats hard to tell apart from the real thing, and its sure to excite 90s alternative rock fans the world over: a brand-new, never-heard-before Nirvana song. Or, more accurately, a song written by a neural network that was trained on Nirvanas music.

The song is called Drowned in the Sun, and it does have a pretty Nirvana-esque ring to it. The neural network that wrote it is Magenta, which was launched by Google in 2016 with the goal of training machines to create artor as the tools website puts it, exploring the role of machine learning as a tool in the creative process. Magenta was built using TensorFlow, Googles massive open-source software library focused on deep learning applications.

The song was written as part of an album called Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, a project carried out by a Toronto-based organization called Over the Bridge focused on mental health in the music industry.

Heres how a computer was able to write a song in the unique style of a deceased musician. Music, 20 to 30 tracks, was fed into Magentas neural network in the form of MIDI files. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and the format contains the details of a song written in code that represents musical parameters like pitch and tempo. Components of each song, like vocal melody or rhythm guitar, were fed in one at a time.

The neural network found patterns in these different components, and got enough of a handle on them that when given a few notes to start from, it could use those patterns to predict what would come next; in this case, chords and melodies that sound like they couldve been written by Kurt Cobain.

To be clear, Magenta didnt spit out a ready-to-go song complete with lyrics. The AI wrote the music, but a different neural network wrote the lyrics (using essentially the same process as Magenta), and the team then sifted through pages and pages of output to find lyrics that fit the melodies Magenta created.

Eric Hogan, a singer for a Nirvana tribute band who the Over the Bridge team hired to sing Drowned in the Sun, felt that the lyrics were spot-on. The song is saying, Im a weirdo, but I like it, he said. That is total Kurt Cobain right there. The sentiment is exactly what he would have said.

Cobain isnt the only musician the Lost Tapes project tried to emulate; songs in the styles of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Amy Winehouse were also included. What all these artists have in common is that they died by suicide at the age of 27.

The project is meant to raise awareness around mental health, particularly among music industry professionals. Its not hard to think of great artists of all persuasionsmusicians, painters, writers, actorswhose lives are cut short due to severe depression and other mental health issues for which it can be hard to get help. These issues are sometimes romanticized, as suffering does tend to create art thats meaningful, relatable, and timeless. But according to the Lost Tapes website, suicide attempts among music industry workers are more than double that of the general population.

How many more hit songs would these artists have written if they were still alive? Well never know, but hopefully Lost Tapes of the 27 Club and projects like it will raise awareness of mental health issues, both in the music industry and in general, and help people in need find the right resources. Because no matter how good computers eventually get at creating music, writing, or other art, as Lost Tapes website pointedly says, Even AI will never replace the real thing.

Image Credit: Edward Xu on Unsplash

See the original post:

There's a New Nirvana Song Out, and It Was Written by Google's AI - Singularity Hub

Black holes are cosmic bodies that pack an immense amount of mass into a surprisingly small space. Due to their extremely intense gravity, nothing can escape their grasp not even light which defines the universes speed limit.

April 10th, 2019 marked a milestone in science history when the team at the Event Horizon Telescope revealed the first image of a supermassive black hole. As a result, these areas of space created when stars reach the end of their nuclear fuel burning and collapse creating massive gravitational wells, completed their transition from theory to reality.

This transition has been further solidified since with the revelation of a second, much clearer image of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). This second image revealing details such as the orientation of the magnetic fields that surround it and drive its powerful jets that extend for light-years.

The study of black holes could teach us much more than about these spacetime events and the environments that home them, however. Because cosmologists believe that most galaxies have an SMBH sat at their centre, greedily consuming material like a fat spider lurking at the centre of a cosmic web, learning more about these spacetime events can also teach us how galaxies themselves evolve.

The origin of black holes is one that runs in reverse to that of most astronomical objects. We didnt discover some mysterious object in the distant cosmos and then began to theorise about it whilst making further observations.

Rather, black holes entered the scientific lexicon in a way that is more reminiscent of newly theorised particles in particle physics; emerging first from the solutions to complex mathematics. In the case of black holes, the solutions to the field equations employed by Einstein in his most important and revolutionary theory.

Just as a physical black hole forms from the collapse of a star, the theory of black holes emerged from the metaphorical collapse of the field equations that govern the geometrical theory of gravity; better known as general relativity.

One of the most common misconceptions about black holes arises from their intrinsic uniqueness and the fact that there really isnt anything else like them in the Universe.

General relativity introduced the idea that mass has an effect on spacetime, a concept fundamental to the idea that space and time are not passive stages upon which the events of the universe play out. Instead, those events shape that stage. As John Wheeler brilliantly and simply told us; when it comes to general relativity:

Matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move.

The most common analogy is for this warping of space is that of placing objects on a stretched rubber sheet. The larger the object the deeper the dent and the more extreme the curvature it creates. In our analogy, a planet is a marble, a star an apple, and a black hole a cannonball.

Thus, considering this a black hole isnt really an object at all but, is actually better described as a spacetime event. When we say black hole what we really mean is an area of space that is so warped by a huge amount of mass condensed into a finite point that even light itself doesnt have the necessary velocity to escape it.

This point at which light can no longer escape marks the first of two singularities that define black holespoints at which solutions of the equations of general relativity go to infinity.

The event horizon of a black hole is the point at which its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light in vacuum (c). This occurs at a radius called the Schwarzchild radiusnamed for astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, who developed a solution for Einstiens field equations whilst serving on the Eastern Front in the First World War.

His solution to Einsteins field equationswhich would unsurprisingly become known as theSchwarzschild solution described the spacetime geometry of an empty region of space. It had two interesting features two singularities one a coordinate singularity the other, a gravitational singularity. Both take on significance in the study of black holes.

Dealing with the coordinate singularity, or the Schwarzchild radius first.

The Schwarzchild radius(Rs)also takes on special meaning in cases where the radius of a body shrinks within this Schwarzschild radius (ie.Rs >r). When a bodys radius shrinks within this limit, it becomes a black hole.

All bodies have a Schwarzschild radius, but as you can see from the calculation below for a body like Earth, Rs falls well-within its radius.

Thats part of what makes black holes unique; their Schwartzchild radius is outside their physical radius because their mass is compressed into such a tiny space.

Because the outer edge of the event horizon is the last point at which light can escape it also marks the last point at which events can be seen by distant observers. Anything past this point can never be observed.

The reason the Schwarzschild radius is called a coordinate singularity is that it can be removed with a clever choice of coordinate system. The second singularity cant be dealt with in this way. This makes it the true physical singularity of the black hole itself.

This is known as the gravitational singularityand is found at the centre of the black hole (r=0). This is the end-point for every particle that falls into a black hole. Its also the point the Einstein field equations break down maybe even all the laws of physics themselves.

The fact that the escape velocity of the event horizon exceeds the speed of light means that no physical signal could ever carry information from the central singularity to distant observers. We are forever sealed off from this aspect of black holes, which will therefore forever remain in the domain of theory.

Weve already seen that for a body with the mass of Earth to become a black hole, its diameter would have to shrink to less than 2cm. This is obviously something that just isnt possible. In fact, not even our Sun has enough mass to end its life as a black hole. Only stars with around three times the mass of the Sun are massive enough to end their lives in this way.

But why is that the case?

It wont surprise you to learn that for an astronomical body to become a black hole it must meet and exceed a series of limits. These limits are created by outward forces that are resisting against the inward force that leads to gravitational collapse.

For planets and other bodies with relatively small masses, the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms is strong enough to grant them stability against total gravitational collapse. For large stars the situation is different.

During the main life cycle of starsthe period of the fusion of hydrogen atoms to helium atomsthe primary protection against gravitational collapse is the outward thermal and radiation pressures that are generated by these nuclear processes. That means that the first wave of gravitational collapse occurs when a stars hydrogen fuel is exhausted and inward pressure can no longer be resisted.

Should a star have enough mass, this collapse forces together atoms in the nucleus enough to reignite nuclear fusion with helium atoms now fusing to create heavier elements. When this helium is exhausted, the process happens again, with the collapse again stalling if there is enough pressure to trigger the fusion of heavier elements still.

Stars like the Sun will eventually reach the point where their mass is no longer sufficient to kick start the nuclear burning of increasingly heavier elements. But if it isnt nuclear fusion that is generating the outward forces that prevent complete collapse, what is preventing these lower-mass stars from becoming black holes?

Lower-mass stars like the Sun will end their lives as white dwarf stars with a black hole form out of reach. The mechanism protecting these white dwarfs against complete collapse is a quantum mechanical phenomenon called degeneracy.

This degeneracy pressure is a factor of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that certain particles known as fermions, which include electrons, protons, and neutrons are forbidden from occupying the same quantum states. This means that they resist being tightly crammed together.

This theory and the limitation it introduced led Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar to question if there was an upper cap at which this protection against gravitational collapse would fail.

Chandrasekhar awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics for his work concerning stellar evolution proposed in 1931 that above 1.4 solar masses, a white dwarf would no longer be protected from gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressure. Past this limit termed the Chandrasekhar limitgravity overwhelms the Pauli exclusion principle and gravitational collapse can continue.

But there is another limit that prevents stars of even this greater mass from creating black holes.

Thanks to the 1932 discovery of neutronsthe neutral partner of protons in atomic nuclei Russian theoretical physicist Lev Landau began to ponder the possible existence of neutron stars. The outer part of these stars would contain neutron-rich nuclei, whilst the inner sections would be formed from a quantum fluid comprised of mostly neutrons

These neutron stars would also be protected against gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressurethis time provided by this neutron fluid. In addition to this, the greater mass of the neutron in comparison to the electron would allow neutron stars to reach a greater density before undergoing collapse.

By 1939, Robert Oppenheimer had calculated that the mass-limit for neutron stars would be roughly 3 times the mass of the Sun.

To put this into perspective, a white dwarf with the mass of the Sun would be expected to have a millionth of our stars volumegiving it a radius of 5000km, roughly that of the Earth. A neutron star of a similar mass though would have a radius of about 20kmroughly the size of a city.

Above the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, gravitational collapse begins again. This time no limits exist between this collapse and the creation of the densest possible state in which matter can exist. The state found at the central singularity of a black hole.

Weve covered the creation of black holes and the hurdles that stand in the way of the formation of such areas of spacetime, but theory isnt quite ready to hand black holes over to practical observations just yet. The field equations of general relativity can also be useful in the categorisation of black holes.

Categorising black holes is actually fairly straight-forward thanks to the fact that they possess very few independent qualities. John Wheeler had a colourful way of describing this lack of characteristics. The physicist once commented that black holes have no hair, meaning that outside a few characteristics they are essentially indistinguishable. This comment became immortalised as the no-hair theorem of black holes.

Black holes have only three independent measurable propertiesmass, angular momentum and electric charge. All black holes must have mass, so this means there are only four different types of a black hole based on these qualities. Each is defined by the metric or the function used to describe it.

This means that black holes can be quite easily catagorised by the properties they possess as seen below.

This isnt the most common or most suitable method of categorising black holes, however. As mass is the only property that is common to all black holes, the most straight-forward and natural way of listing them is by their mass. These mass categories are imperfectly defined and so far black holes in some of the categoriesmost notably intermediate black holes remain undetected.

Cosmologists believe that the majority of black holes are rotating and non-charged Kerr black holes. And the study of these spacetime events reveals a phenomenon that perfectly exemplifies their power and influence on spacetime.

The mathematics of the Kerr metric used to describe non-charged rotating black holes reveals that as they rotate, the very fabric of spacetime that surrounds them is dragged along in the direction of the rotation.

The powerful phenomenon is known as frame-dragging or the Lense-Thirring effect and leads to the violent churning environments that surround Kerr black holes. Recent research has revealed that this frame-dragging could be responsible for the breaking and reconnecting of magnetic field lines that in-turn, launch powerful astrophysical jets into the cosmos.

The static limit of a Kerr black hole also has an interesting physical significance. This is the point at which lightor any particle for that matter is no-longer free to travel in any direction. Though not a light-trapping surface like the event horizon, the static limit pulls light in the direction of rotation of the black hole. Thus, light can still escape the static limit but only in a specific direction.

British theoretical physicist and 2020 Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose also suggested that the static limit could be responsible for a process that could cause black holes to leak energy into the surrounding Universe. Should a particle decay into a particle and its corresponding anti-particle at the edge of the static limit it would be possible for the latter to fall into the black hole, whilst its counterpart is launched into the surrounding Universe.

This has the net effect of reducing the black holes mass whilst increasing the mass content of the wider Universe.

Weve seen what happens to light at the edge of a black hole and explored the fate of particles that fall within a Kerr black holes static limit, but what would happen to an astronaut that strayed too close to the edge of such a spacetime event?

Of course, any astronaut falling into a black hole would be completely crushed upon reaching its central gravitational singularity, but the journey may spell doom even before this point has been reached. This is thanks to the tidal forces generated by the black holes immense gravitational influence.

As the astronauts centre of mass falls towards the black hole, the objects effect on spacetime around it causes their head and feet to arrive at significantly different times. The difference in the gravitational force at the astronauts head and feet gives rise to such a huge tidal force that means their body would be simultaneously compressed at the sides and stretched out.

Physicists refer to this process as spaghettification. A witty name for a pretty horrible way to die. Fortunately, we havent yet lost any astronauts to this bizarre demise, but astronomers have been able to watch stars meet the same fate.

For a stellar-mass black hole, spaghettification would occur not just before our astronaut reaches the central singularity, but also well before they even hit the event horizon. For a black hole 40 times the mass of our Sunspaghettification would occur at about 1,000 km out from the event horizon, which is, itself, 120 km from the central gravitational singularity.

As well as developing the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, Oppenheimer also used general relativity to describe how a total gravitational collapse should appear to a distant observer. They would consider the collapse to take an infinitely long time, the process appearing to slow and freeze as the stars surface shrinks towards the Schwarzschild radius.

An astronaut falling into a black hole would be immortalized in a similar way to a distant observer, though they themselvescould they have survived spaghettification they would notice nothing. The passing of Rs would just seem a natural part of the fall to them despite it marking the point of no return.

After emerging from the mathematics of general relativity at the earlier stages of the 20th Century, black holes have developed from a theoretical curiosity to the status of scientific reality. In the process, they have indelibly worked their way into our culture and lexicon.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about black holes is that there is so much we dont yet know about them. As a striking example of that, almost all the information listed above resulted just from theory and the interrogation of the maths of Einsteins field equations.

Unlocking the secrets held by black holes could, in turn, reveal how galaxies evolve and how the Universe itself has changed since its early epochs.

Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology, Robert J. Lambourne, Cambridge Press, [2010].

Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology: A basic introduction, Ta-Pei Cheng, Oxford University Press, [2005].

Extreme Environment Astrophysics, Ulrich Kolb, Cambridge Press, [2010].

Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis, Sean G. Ryan, Andrew J. Norton, Cambridge Press, [2010].

Cosmology, Matts Roos, Wiley Publishing, [2003].

Go here to read the rest:

What are Black Holes: The Journey From Theory to Reality - ZME Science

She warned us by holding up the box of Kleenex. Rev. Hannah was in the sanctuary at Minneola Lutheran Church near the town of Goodhue on Thursday evening, April 1, 2021, for their Holy Week worship service. It combined traditional elements depicting both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.She shared a few passages from some of her recent meandering journaling with its insights, outlooks and hints of petulance.She and others have been considering the meaning of the cross. She feels strongly that it mustnt be seen merely as an ornament relegated to an accessory. It instructs us: Put your body where your values are.An entry online that had caught her attention referred to the crucifixion as a singularity creating a portal at the horizon. (That caught my attention because as she was live-streaming my husband and I were watching a two-part episode of a science fiction series with that very phenomenon as part of the story.)After officiating the institution of communion farther back from the camera beyond the rail, Jesus death on the cross was further dramatized up close and personal. Referring to his last breaths with words including battle and rattle and hole in my soul, Rev. Hannah said the atmosphere at that time and place had shifted from taunting to compassionate. Putting herself at the scene that followed as one who had sat at his feet and stood by his side, shed stepped into the cold tomb. Christs hand fell off the edge of the ledge where his body had been placed. She lovingly tucked it back into the folds of the linen.After putting a tissue to good use (while I had another sip of wine), she shifted smoothly into singing another refrain of stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray changing the atmosphere for me from dire to dear.As at many other churches, the altar was ceremoniously stripped bare. Communion ware, candle sticks and colorful cloths were solemnly set aside. Earlier in the day during Minneolas community prayer time, there had been talk of hope and confidence starting to take shape along the periphery. But now, we focus on lack, loss and lifelessness ... for the time being.

Kate Josephson grew up in rural southwestern Minnesota going to a small town church every Sunday worked as a church secretary in Red Wing for seven years. She continues to seek out religious experiences wherever she goes.

View original post here:

Church mouse: Setting things aside in Minneola Lutheran Church - RiverTowns