Category Archives: Singularity

Physicists have confirmed that a naked singularity, an event strong enough to break down the conventional physics law, can, in fact, exist in our three-dimensional universe. Previously, scientists could only put naked singularities in a five-dimensional universe, but by demonstrating they can theoretically exist in ours, physicists are challenging the general theory of relativity as defined by Albert Einstein.

Naked singularities are like black holes flipped inside out suddenly all the weirdness of a black hole would be exposed to the universe. So far a naked singularity has not been detected in a three-dimensional Universe but they are supposed to be formed when massive stars collapse, creating infinite density, which according to the laws of physics is impossible.

A naked singularity, if such a thing exists, would be an abrupt hole in the fabric of reality one that would not just distort space-time, but would also wreak havoc on the laws of physics wherever it goes and lead to a catastrophic loss of predictability, says Avaneesh Pandey from the International Business Times.

Until now, scientists believed black holes and their indecipherable singularities could be reconciled with the general theory of relativity because of the cosmic censorship conjecture. Basically, it means that normally the singularity aspect of a black hole will remain hidden beneath its event horizon and everything outside of it will continue to act normally. If true, cosmic censorship means that outside of black holes, these singularities have no measurable effect on anything, and the predictions of general relativity remain valid, explains Sarah Collins of Phys.org.

However, simulations of naked singularities in five-dimensional universes have made the concept of cosmic censorship null and void, which isnt a problem when we have no evidence of the existence of other universes. Einsteins theory can remain unconflicted. Only now, Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from the University of Cambridge have simulated a three-dimensional universe that can home a naked singularity as well as one with five dimensions.

To be clear, the pair isnt saying theyve simulated a naked singularity in our Universe per se the universe theyve simulated has three spatial dimensions and one-time dimension like ours, but its got a whole different shape. Luckily, this simulated universe, while having three spatial dimensions and one-time dimension, like ours, it has a completely different shape. This simulated universe is shaped like a saddle while ours is usually thought to be flat or disc-shaped.

Because general relativity allows the existence of differently shaped universe Crisford and Santos chose to work a type of curved space called Anti-de Sitter space. A unique part of this type of universe is a point of no return where light is reflected back at itself. Because of this feature, the researchers were able to force the naked singularity to form.

So how does this effect us?

Fortunately, it hasnt yet. Nobody has proven the existent of naked singularities in our own Universe but by showing one could exist in a similar universe, Crisford and Santos have provided an opportunity to explore quantum gravity something that reconciles quantum mechanics and general relativity as a true theory of everything.

The naked singularity we see is likely to disappear if we were to include charged particles in our simulation this is something we are currently investigating, said Santos to Phys.org.

If true, it could imply a connection between the cosmic censorship conjecture and the weak gravity conjecture, which says that any consistent theory of quantum gravity must contain sufficiently charged particles. In Anti-de Sitter space, the cosmic censorship conjecture might be saved by the weak gravity conjecture.

So while the idea of co-existing with a naked singularity is terrifying, the break-through possibilities it can bring to modern physics is welcomed.

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Scientist Now Believe Naked Singularities Could Occur in a Three-D Universe - TrendinTech

Fabius Maximus website (blog)

The fast rise and fall of two industries show the coming singularity. Let's prepare now. Fabius Maximus website (blog) The singularity assumes that the rate of technological progress will accelerate, with industrial revolutions coming every few decades instead of over centuries. Especially watch the potential breakthrough technologies of intelligent machines ...

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The fast rise and fall of two industries show the coming singularity. Let's prepare now. - Fabius Maximus website (blog)

Manufacturing is dirty, dull, and outmoded. Its a slow-moving industry stuck in the past as new technologies out of Silicon Valley threaten to upend it. Stereotypes are fun, and misleading.

Lets not forget manufacturing is the industry that made the modern age.

While many were musing about robots in science fiction, manufacturers were putting them to practical use. As tech news headlines hyped up 3D printing, manufacturers had been prototyping with it for decades. And though information technology is the source of the latest revolution, manufacturing is the source of the source. No chip fab facilities, no chips.

Manufacturing is high tech and low tech. Greasy, hands-on problem solving in some places and spotless clean rooms in others. Aging assembly lines and lines of choreographed robot arms. At Singularity Universitys Exponential Manufacturing Summit, the industry was in focus, with a good look at whats coming next. Manufacturing is changing, but that isnt new.

Whats notable is the quickening pace of change.

The big themes this year: How to sift, identify, and make use of the latest technologies and tools to get nimble, break old habits, and stay ahead of the next big wave. Of course, its impossible to fit so much information into so little space, and what matters most depends on your lens.

Disclaimers aside, heres what caught our eye at this years summit.

Jane Zavalishina, CEO at Yandex Data Factory, said the biggest AI misconception is that its this futuristic thing. Its not. And its not just for tech giants either. The same machine learning software helping you find, watch, and buy what you want online can now be put to use in other contexts, such as analyzing raw factory data to dial in industrial processes and save costs.

Zavalishina said machine learning software like this is available now and, sometimes, even free.

These systems have been really useful for quite a while. And whats changed is, in 2017, the technology is now so available that you dont have to have super-skilled people using it, said Neil Jacobstein, faculty chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Singularity University.

You can [apply] the technologyto a wide variety of problems in industry from design to quality control to manufacturing to customer servicesYoure seeing really good results now.

Further Exponential Manufacturing Summit reading:

Robots are old hat in manufacturing, but theyve always needed tightly controlled environments to work and PhDs to program. Robotics legend Rodney Brooks demoed Rethink Robotics Sawyer robot live onstage to show it can be programmed by anyone.

And thanks to cheap 3D modeling hardware and better software, robots are also getting smart, lightweight, and aware enough to work next to humans without accidentally hurting them. The next step isnt the end of human workers, its a collaboration that combines the best of robots and the best of humans.

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The dream of 3D printing has always been to make anything, anywhere, anytime. But the challenges have been cost, quality, and speed. With emerging solutions from Carbon and others, 3D printing finally appears poised to take on mass manufacturing. In areas where 3D printed final parts are possible, assembly lines will be dematerialized. That is, well go directly from design to part, without the need to retool and rebuild infrastructure for every new product.

A 3D printeris a programmable factory, said futurist, hacker, and inventor Pablos Holman. It doesn't care what it makes. It doesn't care if it ever makes the same thing twice. And that is the powerful thing about these machines. That lights up our imagination.

Further Exponential Manufacturing Summit reading:

Lots of people have heard of or tried virtual reality by now. There are commercial devices on the market and plenty of speculation about when itll achieve mainstream adoption.

Right behind virtual reality is augmented reality. Whereas virtual reality is completely immersive, augmented reality lays the digital world right on top of the real world. Its a more complicated engineering problem, but it also has more applications. In a world of advanced AR, well use a small wearable device to interface with computers like Tony Stark in Iron Man.

In manufacturing, this means designers ditching 2D modeling programs to do their work more quickly and intuitively in 3D spaces hovering over their desk. It means workers on the factory floor getting real-time big data insights about machines and processes laid out in front of their eyes or hands-free, step-by-step instructions guiding them to repair and build things.

So, the whole world will be our displayand we'll be used to being in augmented reality all the time, said Ray Kurzweil, Singularity University co-founder and chancellor. I think that's the future of interacting with technology. It'll be an increasingly seamless part of our world.

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A bit further down the road, biomanufacturing will be a big deal, according to Raymond McCauley, chair of Digital Biology and Singularity University.

Were learning to reprogram simple organisms into sensors and miniature factories for making fibers, fuel, and food, he said. Anything that is not just metal being bent. Most of the materials and how theyre produced and recycled will happen because of biological means.

And weve seen progress. McCauley noted gene-tweaked algae making biofuels and modified bacteria spinning spider silk. But, he said, while the tools to make biomanufacturing a reality are getting cheaper and more powerful every year, scaling up is still a big challenge.

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Technology is clearly moving fast. So how do you keep the pace?

Old companies on the S&P 500 once had 50- or 60-year lifespans. These days that number is more like 20. Small software startups can disrupt giants of industry. Innovation is no longer that thing you do on the side, its a critical and increasingly central survival skill.

Geoff Tuff, leader of digital transformation at Monitor Deloitte, and his team came up with the golden ratio for innovation five years ago. Their advice? Spend 70% of your innovation resources on the core, 20% on areas adjacent to the core, and 10% on the transformational space. This wasnt supposed to be a rule set in stone, but rather a way to start the conversation: How much and where do we innovate? The short answer today: More and outside your comfort zone.

Tuff thinks his ratio is likely already outdated.

"70-20-10 no longer applies, and I have no idea what the right numbers are now," Tuff said. "But I'm pretty sure it's something more like 50-30-20[or even] 50-25-25."

Further Exponential Manufacturing Summit reading:

The tone of the conference was hopeful and excited, but the implications, some of them worrying, were also discussed. The pace of technology-fueled job creation and destruction was foremost of these. Advanced AI and robotics promise widespread automation. Historically, automation has done away with old less satisfactory jobs in favor of, on the whole, better ones.

People say, great, what new jobs? I say, I don't know, we havent invented them yet, Kurzweil said. It's not a great political answer. It remains the answer today. It happens to be true.

But transitioning from one skill set to another isnt simple and can be too easily glossed over. In the past, such transitions have been very bumpy. And thats the problem keeping Singularity University co-founder and chairman, Peter Diamandis, up at night. He worries the time it takes to make the transition wont match the rate of change. Itll all happen too fast.

In 1810, the United States had 84% farmers. Today it's 2%. A huge change in our job markets. But that was over a long period of time, Diamandis said. What if we lose huge swathes of jobs over a 20-year period instead? Well see social and political unrest on a grand scale.

Diamandis said universal basic income may be a way to help ease the transition. And while we cant shrink from the coming challenges, neither can we let them blind us to the hugely positive and beneficial change being wrought alongside.

The son or daughter of a billionaire in New York or the son or daughter of the poorest farmer in Kenya is going to have access to the same level of education delivered by an AI, the same level of healthcare delivered by an AI, or intervention delivered by a robot. So, we're going to start to demonetize all the things we think of as the higher stakes of living, he said.

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7 Big Tech Trends That Are Changing the Way We Make Things - Singularity Hub

The Canadian flag flies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Aug. 2, 2015. (BLAIR GABLE/REUTERS) The Canadian flag flies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Aug. 2, 2015. (BLAIR GABLE/REUTERS) Subscribers Only

Shane Dingman - TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Published Sunday, May 28, 2017 3:56PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, May 28, 2017 4:55PM EDT

The futurist tech evangelizers from Singularity University have run into a problem: Too many people want to drink from the well of its elite educational programs.

Singularity preaches that technologies such as artificial intelligence, gene editing and autonomous vehicles are going to upend existing structures at an exponential pace far quicker than previous technological shifts. The Silicon Valley organization, which is part school, part public-benefit corporation, part conference-marketing business, recently announced that 5,000 people had applied for its intense nine-week Global Solutions summer residency program in Mountain View, Calif. Only 80 slots are available.

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From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It's usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published June 19, 2016.We hope you enjoy it!

How do intelligent minds learn?

Consider a toddler navigating her day, bombarded by a kaleidoscope of experiences. How does her mind discover whats normal happenstance and begin building a model of the world? How does she recognize unusual events and incorporate them into her worldview? How does she understand new concepts, often from just a single example?

These are the same questions machine learning scientists ask as they inch closer to AI that matches or even beats human performance. Much of AIs recent victories IBM Watson against Ken Jennings, Googles AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol are rooted in network architectures inspired by multi-layered processing in the human brain.

In a review paper, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, scientists from Google DeepMind and Stanford University penned a long-overdue update on a prominent theory of how humans and other intelligent animals learn.

In broad strokes, the Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) theory states that the brain relies on two systems that allow it to rapidly soak in new information, while maintaining a structured model of the world thats resilient to noise.

The core principles of CLS have broad relevance in understanding the organization of memory in biological systems, wrote the authors in the paper.

Whats more, the theorys core principles already implemented in recent themes in machine learning will no doubt guide us towards designing agents with artificial intelligence, they wrote.

In 1995, a team of prominent psychologists sought to explain a memory phenomenon: patients with damage to their hippocampus could no longer form new memories but had full access to remote memories and concepts from their past.

Given the discrepancy, the team reasoned that new learning and old knowledge likely relied on two separate learning systems. Empirical evidence soon pointed to the hippocampus as the site of new learning, and the cortex the outermost layer of the brain as the seat of remote memories.

In a landmark paper, they formalized their ideas into the CLS theory.

According to CLS, the cortex is the memory warehouse of the brain. Rather than storing single experiences or fragmented knowledge, it serves as a well-organized scaffold that gradually accumulates general concepts about the world.

This idea, wrote the authors, was inspired by evidence from early AI research.

Experiments with multi-layer neural nets, the precursors to todays powerful deep neural networks, showed that, with training, the artificial learning systems gradually learned to extract structure from the training data by adjusting connection weights the computer equivalent to neural connections in the brain.

Put simply, the layered structure of the networks allows them to gradually distill individual experiences (or examples) into high-level concepts.

Similar to deep neural nets, the cortex is made up of multiple layers of neurons interconnected with each other, with several input and output layers. It readily receives data from other brain regions through input layers and distills them into databases (prior knowledge) to draw upon when needed.

According to the theory, such networks underlie acquired cognitive abilities of all types in domains as diverse as perception, language, semantic knowledge representation and skilled action, wrote the authors.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cortex is often touted as the basis of human intelligence.

Yet this system isnt without fault. For one, its painfully slow. Since a single experience is considered a single sample in statistics, the cortex needs to aggregate over years of experience in order to build an accurate model of the world.

Another issue arises after the network matures. Information stored in the cortex is relatively faithful and stable. Its a blessing and a curse. Consider when you need to dramatically change your perception of something after a single traumatic incident. It pays to be able to update your cortical database without having to go through multiple similar events.

But even the update process itself could radically disrupt the existing network. Jamming new knowledge into a multi-layer network, without regard for existing connections, results in intolerable changes to the network. The consequences are so dire that scientists call the phenomenon is catastrophic interference.

Thankfully, we have a second learning system that complements the cortex.

Unlike the slow-learning cortex, the hippocampus concerns itself with breaking news. Not only does it encode a specific event (for example, drinking your morning coffee), it also jots down the context in which the event occurred (you were in your bed checking email while drinking coffee). This lets you easily distinguish between similar events that happened at different times.

The reason that the hippocampus can encode and delineate detailed memories even when theyre remarkably similar is due to its peculiar connection pattern. When information flows into the structure, it activates a different neural activity pattern for each experience in the downstream pathway. Different network pattern; different memory.

In a way, the hippocampus learning system is the antithesis of its cortical counterpart: its fast, very specific and tailored to each individual experience. Yet the two are inextricably linked: new experiences, temporarily stored in the hippocampus, are gradually integrated into the cortical knowledge scaffold so that new learning becomes part of the databank.

But how do connections from one neural network jump to another?

The original CLS theory didnt yet have an answer. In the new paper, the authors synthesized findings from recent experiments and pointed out one way system transfer could work.

Scientists dont yet have all the answers, but the process seems to happen during rest, including sleep. By recording brain activity of sleeping rats that had been trained on a certain task the day before, scientists repeatedly found that their hippocampi produced a type of electrical activity called sharp-wave ripples (SWR) that propagate to the cortex.

When examined closely, the ripples were actually replays of the same neural pattern that the animal had generated during learning, but sped up to a factor of about 20. Picture fast-forwarding through a recording thats essentially what the hippocampus does during downtime. This speeding up process compresses peaks of neural activity into tighter time windows, which in turn boosts plasticity between the hippocampus and the cortex.

In this way, changes in the hippocampal network can correspondingly tweak neural connections in the cortex.

Unlike catastrophic interference, SWR represent a much gentler way to integrate new information into the cortical database.

Replay also has some other perks. You may remember that the cortex requires a lot of training data to build its concepts. Since a single event is often replayed many times during a sleep episode, SWRs offer a deluge of training data to the cortex.

SWR also offers a way for the brain to hack reality in a way that benefits the person. The hippocampus doesnt faithfully replay all recent activation patterns. Instead, it picks rewarding events and selectively replays them to the cortex.

This means that rare but meaningful events might be given privileged status, allowing them to preferentially reshape cortical learning.

These ideasview memory systems as being optimized to the goals of an organism rather than simply mirroring the structure of the environment, explained the authors in the paper.

This reweighting process is particularly important in enriching the memories of biological agents, something important to consider for artificial intelligence, they wrote.

The two-system set-up is natures solution to efficient learning.

By initially storing information about the new experience in the hippocampus, we make it available for immediate use and we also keep it around so that it can be replayed back to the cortex, interleaving it with ongoing experience and stored information from other relevant experiences, says Stanford psychologist and article author Dr. James McClelland in a press interview.

According to DeepMind neuroscientists Dharshan Kumaran and Demis Hassabis, both authors of the paper, CLS has been instrumental in recent breakthroughs in machine learning.

Convolutional neural networks (CNN), for example, are a type of deep network modeled after the slow-learning neocortical system. Similar to its biological muse, CNNs also gradually learn through repeated, interleaved exposure to a large amount of training data. The system has been particularly successful in achieving state-of-the-art performance in challenging object-recognition tasks, including ImageNet.

Other aspects of CLS theory, such as hippocampal replay, has also been successfully implemented in systems such as DeepMinds Deep Q-Network. Last year, the company reported that the system was capable of learning and playing dozens of Atari 2600 games at a level comparable to professional human gamers.

As in the theory, these neural networks exploit a memory buffer akin to the hippocampus that stores recent episodes of gameplay and replays them in interleaved fashion. This greatly amplifies the use of actual gameplay experience and avoids the tendency for a particular local run of experience to dominate learning in the system, explains Kumaran.

Hassabis agrees.

We believe that the updated CLS theory will likely continue to provide a framework for future research, for both neuroscience and the quest for artificial general intelligence, he says.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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How to Build a Mind? This Theory May Guide Us Toward an Answer - Singularity Hub

Existence of Naked Singularity Threatens Einsteins General Theory of Relativity

For 100 years since it was published, Einsteins General Theory of Relativity has mostly passed every kind of test thrown at it. Mostly is a keyword here. Because it implies that there are a few scenarios where the theory doesnt hold up. And one such case is the existence of singularities.

A singularity is defined as a point where the force of gravity is too overwhelming that the laws of physics break down. General relativity says that an example of such singularity exists at the center of a black hole. It also predicts that a black hole is surrounded by what is referred to as an event horizon a.k.a. the point of no return because anything that passes through it gets devoured by the black hole, and nothing (not even light) can escape from gravitys super-strong pull.

This necessarily implies that it is virtually impossible to observe a black hole and its event horizon from the outside or anywhere near it because whatever is being used will just get sucked in, right? Theres actually a term for this cosmic censorship conjecture. It simply means that a singularity will always be cloaked from view. This also suggests that outside a black hole, the singularity within will not have any effect, and general relativitys predictions will remain intact. In short, a singularity cant possibly form outside a black hole.

Still, theres a name given should they happen to be real to a singularity that exists outside a black hole: naked singularity. Predictions about the existence of such have been done before, but they are typically based on a five-dimensional universe. Which is like saying that its impossible for a naked singularity to exist, at least in the universe we know.

So does that mean general relativity will remain uncontested? Maybe. Maybe not. Because according to research recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, its not just possible for a naked singularity to exist in an extraordinary (or maybe fictional?) universe; it can exist in a real universe like ours too.

Based on simulations done by physicists Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from the University of Cambridge, a four-dimensional universe (three spatial dimensions plus time as the fourth dimension just like ours) can host a naked singularity. If it happens to be saddle-shaped that is.

General relativity does allow for universes of different shapes. And a saddle-shaped one, also called Anti-de Sitter space, is one of those possible shapes.

One of the distinguishing features of a saddle-shaped universe is a point of no return where light doesnt get trapped, but instead gets reflected back. As described by Crisford to Phys.org: Its a bit like having a spacetime in a box. At the boundary, the walls of the box, we have the freedom to specify what the various fields are doing, and we use this freedom to add energy to the system and eventually force the formation of a singularity.

On the other hand, co-author Santos also says that introducing charged particles in their simulation would probably diminish the formation of the naked singularity. If true, it could imply a connection between the cosmic censorship conjecture and the weak gravity conjecture, which says that any consistent theory of quantum gravity must contain sufficiently charged particles. In Anti-de Sitter space, the cosmic censorship conjecture might be saved by the weak gravity conjecture, he explains.

Its not going to be easy to prove the existence of such an extremely curved saddle-shaped universe, though. Nonetheless, just being possible, is already enough to disrupt what we think we know. And that gives scientists so much more to ponder on, which could hopefully lead to more explanations eventually, instead of more questions.

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Existence of 'Naked Singularity' Threatens Einstein's General Theory of Relativity - Wall Street Pit

Classical science fiction tales about Mars have often been about bug-eyed Martians invading Earth for its precious resources. The reality is that within the next two decadeswith the usual caveats about technical and budgetary limitationshumans will be the ones invading the Red Planet.

This year NASA unveiled its latest plan to hopscotch across 140 million miles to the solar systems fourth planet from the sun. The strategy calls for building a lunar station in orbit around the moon to serve as a sort of staging area for deep-space missions to Mars. Dubbed Deep Space Gateway, the manned outpost will be the launching pad for the Deep Space Transport, the agencys version of the USS Enterprise.

By the early 2030s, an astronaut not named Matt Damon may put the first human footprint on a celestial body since 1969. He or she will need some nifty gadgetry to make life possible on a cold, inhospitable world far, far from the nearest Home Depot.

The evidence that there is water on Mars is overwhelming. Surface streaks on the Red Planet that ebb and flow over time have led scientists to conclude that liquid water is indeed present. Last year, NASA announced it had also found a vast reservoir of ice frozen beneath the planets rocky surface.

Still, for the early travelers to Mars, none of these sources of water may be readily available, or they may be energetically too expensive to access. Instead, future astronauts may use a type of water harvester first developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The solar-powered device uses a special metal-organic framework (MOF) to pull water out of the air in conditions as low as 20 percent humidity. The research was published last month in the journal Science.

The prototype was able to harvest about three quarts of water from air in 12 hours using two pounds of MOF. MOFs combine metals like magnesium with organic molecules in a tinker-toy arrangement to create rigid, porous structures to store gases and liquids.

If the relative humidity level on Mars is around 20 percent or more, I do not see why this device cant work there, says Omar Yaghi, a co-author on the paper at UC Berkeley who first invented MOFs about 20 years ago, in reply to an email from Singularity Hub.

While the water harvester would be a boon to parched areas on Earth, such a device would also be useful on bone-dry Mars, where despite desert-like conditions, relative humidity at night can reach 80 to 100 percentmore than enough to suck water out of the alien atmosphere.

Yaghis team is already at work on cheaper and more efficient MOFs for water vapor sorption. It is only a matter of time for this technology to be economically competitive with others.This is a significant step towards future water safety and security, as I call it personalized water.

See Yaghi describe how the water harvester works in the video below.

It seems that we can 3D print just about anything these dayseven working ovaries. The ability to manufacture tools and parts will help Mars colonists, who will likely find themselves restricted to just one piece of carry-on luggage.

A team at Northwestern University recently demonstrated the ability to 3D print structures using Martian and lunar dust. Well, not real off-world dust but NASA-approved copies that simulate their size and shape. The researchers, led by Ramille Shah, used what they call a 3D painting process that employs novel inks that her lab has used previously to print things like graphene and carbon nanotubes.

The research was published earlier this year inNature Scientific Reports.

The 3D-painted material, composed of 90 percent dust by weight, is as flexible and tough as rubber, according to a press release from the university. It can be cut, rolled, folded, and otherwise shaped after being 3D painted. Making interlocking bricks like Legos is even possible.

"For places like other planets and moons, where resources are limited, people would need to use what is available on that planet in order to live," says Shah, an assistant professor at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and of surgery in the Feinberg School of Medicine. Our 3D paints really open up the ability to print different functional or structural objects to make habitats beyond Earth.

NASA is developing its own solution for habitats on the Red Planet. Its an igloo.

Technically, the Mars Ice Home is a large, inflatable inner tube-like structure that would incorporate materials extracted from the planet and encased by a shell of ice.

The idea behind the inflatable part of the structure is that it would be lightweight to transport. Why ice? Water is an excellent shielding material against radiation, one of the biggest hazards facing humans on deep-space missions. Prolonged exposure can cause cancer or even acute radiation sickness.

An alternative would be to bury housing, labs and other buildings below the surface, forcing the explorers to live a troglodyte existence. The Mars Ice Home offers better views.

All of the materials weve selected are translucent, so some outside daylight can pass through and make it feel like youre in a home and not a cave, says Kevin Kempton, principal investigator for the Mars Ice Home project at NASAs Langley Research Center, in a press release.

Its unclear if sci-fi blockbuster The Martian did anything to boost potato sales, but researchers are developing sophisticated self-sustaining grow facilities to supply future astronauts with fresh fruits and vegetables.

One effort is a collaboration between NASA, the University of Arizona (UA) and private enterprise. The Bioregenerative Life Support System, or BLSS, is a hydroponic growth chamber that doesnt need soil (or, thankfully, human feces) to produce food.

The closed-loop system starts with water enriched with nutrients. The nutrient-enriched water supports the root system of the plants. The system is mutually beneficial to people and plants, as the former expel carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by the vegetation. The plants, in turn, produce oxygen as part of the photosynthetic process.

We began our first major project in 2004. We designed and had built a food growth chamber at the South Pole [in Antarctica]. Its still down there working right now, says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at UA and former principal investigator on the BLSS project.

BLSS was featured at Biosphere 2, a closed ecological system owned and operated by UA for biological research.

Of course, theres quite a bit of work ahead before astronauts start growing red delicious apples on the red planet. NASA and its commercial partners are still developing the next-generation rockets that will do all the heavy lifting for those future missions. Other projects are under way to build the deep-space habitat modules that will carry humans to Mars.

There are still serious obstacles to overcome. For example, there is the problem of radiation. Researchers funded by the European Space Agency recently announced that they produced a device that mimics space radiation to study its threats and to develop solutions to mitigate its effects on people and equipment. A review of aerospace medicine is currently under way as part of the effort to help humans stay fit and healthy in deep space.

And theres the human drama of being far from home. Are people mentally tough enough to survive such a years-long journey? One study using people wintering in Antarctica is attempting to find out.

This year will mark the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age, when Russia launched the Sputnik satellite. Reaching Mars in less than a century since that historic moment represents a new future for the human raceone that begins with todays technological innovations.

Image Credit: NASA - Diversity in Mawrth Region, Mars

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A Mars Survival Guide: Finding Food, Water, and Shelter on the Red ... - Singularity Hub

Singularity Sky is a science fiction novel by author Charles Stross, published in 2003. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2004.[1][2] A sequel, Iron Sunrise, was published that same year. Together the two are referred to as the Eschaton novels, after a near-godlike intelligence that exists in both.

The novel follows the ill-fated military campaign by a repressive state, the New Republic, to retaliate for a perceived invasion of one of its colony worlds. In actuality, the planet has been visited by the Festival, a technologically advanced alien or posthuman race that rewards its hosts for "entertaining" them by granting whatever the entertainer wishes, including the Festival's own technology. This causes extensive social, economic and political disruption to the colony, which was generally limited by the New Republic to technology equivalent to that found on Earth during the Industrial Revolution. Aboard the New Republic's flagship, an engineer and intelligence operative from Earth covertly attempt to prevent the use of a forbidden technologyand fall in love along the way.

Themes of the novel include transhumanism, the impact of a sudden technological singularity on a repressive society, and the need for information to be free (the novel's elaboration of the latter theme helped to inspire a proposal to give every Afghan a free mobile phone to combat the Taliban.[3]) Its narrative encompasses space opera and elements of steampunk[4] and science fantasy. Intertwined within are social and political satire, and Stross's trademark dark humour and subtle literary and cultural allusions.

Stross wrote the novel during the late 1990s, his first attempt at the form. It was not his first novel to be published, but it was the first to be originally published in book form. Its original title, Festival of Fools, was changed to avoid confusion with Richard Paul Russo's Ship of Fools.

Singularity Sky takes place roughly in the early 23rd century, around 150 years after an event referred to by the characters as the Singularity. Shortly after the Earth's population topped 10 billion, computing technology began reaching the point where artificial intelligence could exceed that of humans through the use of closed timelike curves to send information to its past. Suddenly, one day, 90% of the population inexplicably disappeared.

Messages left behind, both on computer networks and in monuments placed on the Earth and other planets of the inner solar system carry a short statement from the apparent perpetrator of this event:

I am the Eschaton; I am not your God. I am descended from you, and exist in your future. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

Earth collapses politically and economically in the wake of this population crash; the Internet Engineering Task Force eventually assumes the mantle of the United Nations, or at least its altruistic mission and charitable functions. Anarchism replaces nation-states; in the novel the UN is described as having 900 of the planet's 15,000 polities as members, and its membership is not limited to polities.

A century later, the first interstellar missions, using quantum tunnelling-based jump drives to provide effective faster-than-light travel without violating causality, are launched. One that reaches Barnard's Star finds what happened to those who disappeared from Earth: they were sent to colonise other planets via wormholes that took them back one year in time for every light-year (ly) the star was from Earth. Gradually, it is learned, these colonies were scattered across a 6,000-ly area of the galaxy, all with the same message from the Eschaton etched onto a prominent monument somewhere. There is also evidence that the Eschaton has enforced the "or else" through drastic measures, such as inducing supernovae or impact events on the civilisation that attempted to create causality-violating technology.

Earth and the colonies re-establish relations and trade. Some of the latter had regained the same, or higher, technological levels due in part to the "cornucopia machines", molecular assemblers that can recreate objects in predefined patterns or duplicate others, the Eschaton left them with. Transhumanist technologies that came into being before or during the Singularity, such as cybernetic implants, anti-aging and life extension treatments, are in wide use. Spaceships use antimatter, fusion and electron-sized black holes as propulsion.

Some colonies, however, rejected or restricted use of advanced technology for social, cultural or political reasons, and instead of devolving into anarchism as Earth did, have replicated politically restrictive states from Earth's history. The novel takes place on two planets of one such polity, the New Republic. Its original settlers were predominantly from Eastern Europe, where many recalled the economic dislocation that followed the fall of communism there. The victorious side in an earlier civil war destroyed the sole remaining cornucopia machine, and imposed a socially and politically repressive feudalist regime that limits most technology to a level consistent with Europe at the end of the 19th century to guarantee everyone a place in society, with accompanying Victorian social mores. Despite this, there are still those who rebel and plan uprisings, along similar lines to those that happened in the historical Eastern Europe of that era.

The Festival, a civilisation of uploaded minds, arrives at Rochard's World, an outlying colony of the New Republic. It begins breaking down objects in the system to make technology for its stay. Then it begins making contact with the inhabitants of the planet by dropping cell phones, forbidden to most citizens of the planet, from low orbit.

Those who pick them up hear the Festival, "Entertain us," it asks, "and we will give you what you want." Interlocutors who successfully entertain the Festival by telling it something it has not heard are rewarded with anything they wish for. At first they request food or other modest needs, but then Burya Rubenstein, exiled to the colony for his role in leading an uprising, asks for a cornucopia machine in return for a political tract on the disruptive effect a sudden singularity would have on repressive regimes. Within days the theory becomes reality, as a post-scarcity economy develops and the government is threatened by Rubenstein's uprising and its advanced weaponry. A naval detachment challenges the Festival but is destroyed.

In the New Republic's capital city of New Prague, 40 light-years away, deep-cover UN agent Rachel Mansour keeps a close eye as the New Republic prepares a military response. Not only does the New Republic misunderstand the Festival, it seriously underestimates its military capabilities. Of greater concern to Rachel is that it may be planning to approach Rochard's World via a closed timelike loop, arriving there shortly after the Festival did, but earlier than the Navy left the capital. If the Eschaton responds to this apparent violation of causality as the UN fears it might, many settled worlds could have to be evacuated. She recruits Martin Springfield, an Earth-based engineer who has been hired by the New Republic's Admiralty to upgrade its drive systems, to keep an eye out for any signs of such a plan. Unbeknownst to her, Martin is an agent of the Eschaton and has been assigned to sabotage the Admiralty's plan just slightly enough to make it seem unworkable.

Back on Rochard's World, Rubenstein is disappointed with the revolution. While it is successful militarily, the cadres he leads have become as rigid and inflexible as the hegemony they fight against. Late one night, while signing seemingly endless orders and communiqus, he is visited by Sister Stratagems the Seventh, a creature resembling a giant mole rat. She is one of the Critics who accompany the Festival. Normally they remain in orbit providing high-level commentary, but she has gone down to the surface to find out for herself why the inhabitants of Rochard's World seem uninterested in the Festival's wisdom.

Rachel drops her cover and is assigned to the flagship Lord Vanek as a diplomatic observer. Martin, too, has his contract extended so he can join the fleet on the voyage and finish the job. As the only two Terrans and civilians on board a voyage only they realise will end disastrously, they spend a lot of time together, their relationship deepening into love. The fleet travels a circuitous route, jumping four thousand years into the future, before reaching Rochard's World. Martin's 16-microsecond error in the drive code has worked, slightly delaying the fleet.

Sister Stratagems faults Rubenstein for the shortcomings of the revolutionit was foolish, she explains, for him to rely on revolutionary traditions in the midst of a singularity and its all-encompassing constant radical change. She takes him on a ride, in Baba Yaga's hut, to the northern city of Plotsk, where he might understand. Along the way he sees "miracles, wonders and abominations." The landscape in some places has been seriously altered. Many farms and their cybernetically-enhanced owners now float freely in geodesic spheres and self-replicating robots, some dangerous to humans, roam the countryside.

As the Lord Vanek approaches battle, Vassily Muller, a young secret police agent assigned to the ship arranges to have Martin arrested as a spy. He and the ship's head of security arrange a fake court-martial on the capital charge to trap their real target, Rachel, into revealing herself. It backfires when Rachel incapacitates everyone in the courtroom and rescues Martin. Back in her quarters, the two escape on a lifeboat she had her own cornucopia machine fabricate. Vassily and other crewmembers are sucked out into space when they attempt to break in afterwards; he alone survives, wearing emergency protective gear, and is eventually picked up by Rachel and Martin as they descend to Rochard's World, where they arrange, through the Critics, to meet Rubenstein.

The warships confront two Bouncers sent out by the Festival. The fleet's captain suspects a trap, but it seems at first that the New Republic's ships have the upper hand. However, eventually they realise they have been hit with grey goo and their own ships are being consumed. The senior staff escape. Monitoring the battle from their own lifeboat, Martin and Rachel are unsurprised by the outcome, and explain to an angry Vassily how, despite its lack of intentions, the Festival's visit indeed represented an existential threat to the Republic since information wants to be free.

At Plotsk, where skyscrapers of stratospheric height have been erected, Rubenstein and Sister Stratagems meet some of his former comrades, many of them now cyborgs, and realises that the revolution he started has now grown beyond needing him or any other leader. Many of the citizens of Rochard's World have transcended their humanity, joined the Festival or otherwise permanently modified themselves. Rubenstein himself is implanted with a brain-computer interface. When an anthropomorphised rabbit begs the assembled cadres for help finding his master, the former governor, they join him and Stratagems in looking for him.

They find the governor, who had been granted his wish to once again become a young boy with faithful animal companions, mummified on a hillside where the Festival saved him from zombification at the hand of the Mimes, another associated species, with an X-ray laser blast that left his body exposed to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation. He asks, via the implant connection, that he be allowed to join the Festival instead of remaining on the planet. As Rubenstein is considering this request, Martin and Rachel arrive. She gives Rubenstein a cornucopia machine, her original mission, which both realise is no longer necessary. Vassily appears and attempts to kill Rubenstein, identifying himself as his son, but Rachel stops him with a stun gun although he irreversibly damages the cornucopia machine in the process.

The Festival and its associated species leave for their next destination, and on the planet the survivors of a thousand years of technological progress compressed into one month regroup. Those desiring to return to life under the New Republic settle in Novy Petrograd, where the senior officers from the Lord Vanek have re-established imperial authority. Rubenstein and the others go to Plotsk, where Martin and Rachel run a small shop offering "access to tools and ideas" until they can return to Earth nine months later.

The Festival is an upload civilisation, originally intended to repair galactic information networks, that travels from system to system via starwisps, building the facilities it needs from local materials when it arrives. It usually prefers to interact with other upload civilisations, but any will do in a pinch. It asks for information it is unfamiliar with from those it visits, and will make any kind of payment in exchange.

No individual member of the Festival makes an appearance in the novel. Traveling in the Festival's vast spare mindspace are a number of other upload species that are separate from them but part of every visit.

The novel's most prominent theme is the cyberpunk refrain that "information wants to be free." Once impediments to it such as the New Republic's methods of repression are removed, technological and material progress follows.[3] Rachel says exactly that to the rescued Vassily as she, he and Martin escape the doomed Lord Vanek.

We've been trying to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn't listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won't take no for an answer because it doesn't have an opinion on anything; it just is ... [On Earth, w]e had to admit that we couldn't prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself ... We can live with a low background rate of [the negative consequences] more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everything, all the time.[5]

The Festival's function is described as "repair[ing] holes in the galactic information flow."[5]

Singularity Sky also depicts the far-reaching implications of its title event. The arrival of the cornucopia machines and the cybernetic enhancements made available by the Festival force not only the collapse of the existing social, economic and political orders but prevent their replacement by Rubenstein's revolution.[6] "People suddenly gifted with infinite wealth and knowledge rapidly learned that they didn't need a governmentand this was true as much for members of the underground as for the workers and peasants they strove to mobilize."[7] Martin describes it to Vassily as "what in our business we call a consensus reality excursion; people went a little crazy, that's all. A sudden overdose of change; immortality, bioengineering, weakly superhuman AI arbeiters, nanotechnology, that sort of thing. It isn't an attack."[5]

Singularity Sky was a younger Stross's first attempt at a novel, and his first novel first published in book form.

In the early 1990s, before actively beginning his writing career, Stross had wanted to do space opera, the subgenre of science fiction built around space battles and adventures. As part of his worldbuilding, he needed to have a diverse group of human colonies scattered across a large area of space. He needed to have faster-than-light travel between those worlds, but that also created the problem of avoiding causality violations, one of the many limitations of the singularity for space opera that he credits Vernor Vinge, who wrote an important early essay on the concept, for having highlighted in his novel A Fire Upon the Deep.[8] The Eschaton's dispersal of humanity and subsequent edict were his solution.[9]

"I'd been reading too much David Weber at the time," he recalled in 2013, "and noting the uncritical enthusiasm with which readers seemed to receive his tales of Napoleonic Navies in Spaaaaace." He began to wonder why such space navies always found themselves equally matched in battle. "Surely in a diverse space operatic universe you'll occasionally see a Napoleonic space navy run into a nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine? Or the equivalent of wooden tall ships encountering an unarmed modern icebreaker." Further, he observed, "[l]et's just say that the political systems in most military space opera really suck."[8]

To satirise these failings of the subgenre, he chose "the most barkingly insane naval expedition of recent history" as a model: the Russian Baltic Fleet's 18,000-mile (29,000km) journey around Africa and Asia in an attempt to retake Port Arthur in China during the RussoJapanese War in 1905, with sailors who were largely new recruits and mostly new ships on their shakedown cruise. Most of the Russian fleet of coal-fuelled ships was lost in the resulting Battle of Tsushima, a decisive victory for the Japanese. Their journey to such a crushing defeat, including an early mistaken attack on another polity's civilian vessels similar to the Dogger Bank incident, is closely paralleled by the journey of the New Republic fleet during the novel.[8]

Once he had written that narrative, he realised he had forgotten to give the space navy an enemy. He broached this problem in a conversation at a pub in Edinburgh, where he lives, in August 1997. He recalled his original thoughts about excession, and asked for "a threat they don't understand, one that they can't understand." A friend suggested the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which was the reason they had strayed from their preferred pubs to one in Leith:

Edinburgh in August is a city on the receiving end of an alien invasion spearheaded by unicycling mimes and bagpiping elephants. Add the fleeting twilight nights (we get maybe 4 hours of complete full dark at that time of year) and the pervasive random weirdnessyou can go shopping dressed as a Dalek or a 17th-century French aristocrat and nobody will blink at youand it seemed like the perfect metaphor for what the New Republican Navy was going up against.

With that element in place, Stross cut a large chunk of what he had already written and wrote the novel's opening sequence. Since he had just gotten his own first cellphone, he decided that the Festival would announce its presence to the inhabitants of Rochard's World by raining them from orbit.[8]

He finished the first draft, originally titled Festival of Fools, by 1998, while he was working for DataCash as a software developer and writing the Linux column for Computer Shopper.[10] It ultimately went through three drafts, during which the author says he cut passages equal to about 140% of the finished novel.[11]

After finishing it and the first drafts of a sequel that became Iron Sunrise, Stross was unable to sell it and nearly gave up on writing fiction.[10] He continued trying, especially after leaving his job at DataCash, and finally sold it to Ace Books in 2001.[11] The title was changed to avoid confusion with Richard Paul Russo's Ship of Fools, released around the same time. Stross's editor suggested working "singularity" then a buzzword, into the title.[12]

Publication was originally scheduled for mid-2002, but was later postponed until the beginning of the next year under the Big Engine imprint. In the meantime The Atrocity Archive, two long stories Stross had published in the Scottish magazine Spectrum SF, became his first published longform fiction. Big Engine went into liquidation before it could bring out Singularity Sky. Ace published it in the US later that summer, with the mass-market paperback edition coming out a year later, making Singularity Sky Stross's first novel to be published in book form.[13]

Orbit Books acquired the UK rights and published the hardback in 2004 and the paperback early in 2005. Since Iron Sunrise, the sequel, was published within months, an omnibus volume containing both books, Timelike Diplomacy, was published by the SF Book Club in 2004 as well.[14] It has been translated into several other languages, published in ebook format, and remains in print. In 2012 Stross said that the royalties from it amount to $1,000 a year.

Stross's short stories, particularly those published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazines, later published as Accelerando, had created a great deal of excitement in the science-fiction community. Popular Science ran a feature focusing on him and frequent collaborator Cory Doctorow as newer writers in the genre whose shared background in computer science helped lend credibility to their stories of artificial intelligence and the use of the singularity as a story element.[16] Dealing extensively with both those issues, his first real novel was eagerly anticipated.

It was generally well received. At SF Site Alma Hromic called it "deeply complex in a sort of cerebrally witty way." Reading it was "watching a writer having fun."[17]

At SF Reviews, Thomas Wagner called attention to some of the novel's imperfections. While he praised the scenes showing the effect of the singularity on Rochard's World as "a tour de force of imagination," he felt the characterisation could have been better for the minor characters. Rachel and Martin "get all of Stross's attention ... Other characters are drawn out only as far as the story needs them."[18] "As a newcomer to long fiction," wrote Publishers Weekly, "Stross has some problems with pacing, but the book still generates plenty of excitement."[19]

It was eventually shortlisted for the Hugo Award that year.[1] In 2010 Stross admitted the novel had some faults, calling "quirky but not well-plotted".[9]

Singularity Sky has been the subject of some higher-level literary criticism. Veronica Hollinger of Trent University sees it as an example of what has been called New Baroque Space Opera, along with Iain Banks' Consider Phlebas and Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark. "[They] are contributing to a self-conscious revival, in new directions, of one of SF's oldest (and most denigrated) subgenres, constructing futures thatquite cheerfully, for the most partreflect back to us the incredible complexity of the technoscientific present."[20]

Markus hman, an undergraduate education student at Lule University of Technology in Sweden, has looked at how the novel deals with class and gender issues as they intersect the singularity. Rigid class distinctions, reinforced by a hereditary aristocracy, are a feature of life in the New Republic so marked that both Martin and Rachel express discontent and frustration with them. But outside that order class exists as well. Status among the revolutionaries is measured by one's understanding of, and level of commitment to, revolutionary ideology. And the Critics, in turn, have a hierarchy distinguished by knowledgeSister Stratagems privately hopes that her oblique manner of speaking and commenting will give enough of an impression of knowledge as to allow her to become queen one day[21]and gender as well (the only male Critic we see is apparently relegated to a military role and rudely dismissed when he offers even a slight sentence of comment).[22]

The Critics' class-and-gender hierarchy is mirrored by the New Republic, which oppresses women so thoroughly, hman observes, that only one female of that society has even a brief real speaking role in the book,(and she is an atypical one at thatthe revolutionary confronting Mr. Rabbit). The singularity changes all that, although how is not shown in the text. "Through extrapolation and inference, however, it is made clear that the social upheaval results in changes in the paradigm, ensuing greater freedom for women."[23] So, too, with social class: "... [F]or the duration of the Festival's orbital presence, Rochard's World is a classless anarchistic non-society with small zones of stability filled with modified humans."[24]

hman criticises Stross for one aspect of this liberation. He notes that the fugitive Duke describes, among the effects of the singularity, women in villages made so wise that their wisdom "leaked out into the neighborhood, animating the objects around them"suggestive of witchcraft, which has historically been used to taint women acquiring knowledge as objects to be feared and persecuted. The only significant female character on Rochard's World, Sister Stratagems, is also one of the wisest characters in the story, even if she often speaks too obliquely for her wisdom to have any direct effect. But, hman points out, she too is associated with witchcraft in the form of her chosen vehicle, Baba Yaga's walking hut. "Stross uses the symbol of Baba Yaga to imbue Sister Seventh with authority and power, but at the same time he paints her as a symbol of evil and fear."[25]

By contrast, Rachel, according to hman, transcends gender limitations. She is both self-empowered, through her military implants and experience, and politically empowered by her position with the UN. During the staged court-martial she appears ready to become another example of a self-empowered woman who voluntarily renounces all or some of her power to save the man she loves, but instead she subverts the trope, drawing on her implants to appropriate the role of a male action hero and rescue Martin. "Through transhumanism, she transcends the tropes associated with male and female literary roles."[26]

The novel has a sequel, Iron Sunrise, published in 2004 and shortlisted for that year's Hugo. Stross decided afterwards that he had created unresolvable issues with the Eschaton universe and would not be writing any more works in that series. However, he has shared the plot details of a third novel he had planned, which would have dealt in part with the aftereffects of the events on Rochard's World within the New Republic as a whole.

After finishing Singularity Sky, Stross wrote the first draft of its eventual sequel. Most of it was extensively revised and even more was cut before the version that saw print.[11] It follows Martin and Rachel, now in a long-term relationship, as they try to avert a potentially devastating revenge attack by the remnants of a colony destroyed by an induced supernova, and uncovering a more serious threat in the process. The Eschaton, as Herman, plays a larger direct role in the plot than it does in the first novel. The story is bookended by Rachel having to account to a UN accountant for the expense of her activities in Singularity Sky; otherwise there is no continuation of the narratives of that novel.

In 2010 Stross wrote that mistakes he felt he had made in Iron Sunrise had left the universe of the Eschaton novels "broken" and thus he would not be writing any more novels in the series. However, he did post on his blog the plot setup he had been considering for a third instalment before he decided to abandon the setting, which would have revisited the New Republic.[9]

His working title was Space Pirates of KPMG. It would have taken place a decade after Singularity Sky, when the destabilising effects of the singularity on Rochard's World would have spread to the entirety of the New Republic. As a result of the economic upheavals, the remaining navy crews would be long in arrears on their pay, likely to mutiny and desert for more lucrative opportunities in piracy, using their military skills to violently rob starships of valuable cargo. This would have brought them into conflict with the predominant pirates, who prefer the more discreet technique of auditing the cargo and work with commodities traders to make money through arbitrage on the destination planet.[9]

Singularity Sky has been cited outside the science fiction audience by writers trying to explain to readers the title concept, or at least the effects of the rapid change the novel depicts in a real-world context. In his 2011 book News 2.0: Can Journalism Survive the Internet, Australian journalism professor Martin Hirst sees Rubenstein, whom the novel describes as a journalist, as an analogue to the position of real journalists confronted by the evolution of the Internet and social media in the early 21st century. While he concedes that there are experts who are sceptical that computers will reach or surpass human intelligence by the 2030s, "the point here is that Stross is right enough ... The world appears to be on a path of technological change that is constant and speeding up."[27]

In 2010 David Betz, a senior lecturer in war studies at King's College, London, cited Singularity Sky as a model for a proposal to undermine the Taliban's hold over Afghanistan, and strengthen the country's legitimate government, by giving every resident of the country a free mobile phone. He said it would "create a real communications space and 'let ideas find their own levels'". In Stross's novel, he noted, "the contact of the lesser developed culture with the advanced one is utterly devastating for the status quo of the former. The parallels are pretty obvious."[3]

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Singularity Sky - Wikipedia

In Brief At the point of a black hole's singularity, the laws of physics cease to apply. Researchers running a simulation have created such a singularity outside of the confines of a black hole. Naked Physics

Einsteins general theory of relativity is a cornerstone ofour understanding of how the universe works. A great deal of the science we do has roots in this theory. As Phys.org points out,estimating the age of stars, using GPS for navigation, and a host of other possibilities exist thanks to Einstiens calculations. The theory has stood the test of time, even with over a century of challenges.

The theory does break down as do all standard laws of physics at a singularity. Singularities are points in the universe where a celestial bodys gravitational field becomes infinite. In our universe, general relativity says that this phenomenon existsonly in the center of a black hole. Singularities existing outside of this condition would be known as naked singularities. A concept known as the cosmic censorship conjecture, introduced in 1969,stated all singularities would be cloaked by an event horizon. Naked singularities, however, would be exempt from this principle.

Using computer simulations, researchers have predicted the formation of a naked singularity in three-dimensional space for the first time. That being said, although the simulations may have shown a naked singularity, it wasnt a simulation of our universe. Researchers Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from Cambridges Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics used a universe shaped quite differently from our (relatively) flat one. They used anti-de Sitter space for theirsimulation, which curves in the shape of a saddle. Having a universe with curvature allows for some novel possibilities. Given this shape, researchers were able to force the creation of a naked singularity.

The known universe is not curved, therefore the findings are not directly applicable to our universe. However, that does not make this discovery insignificant: other seemingly unrelated theories of particle physics are connected to gravity in anti-de Sitter space. Equipped with this simulated cosmic censorship violation, theres no telling what the future has in store for the field of theoretical physics.

The rest is here:

New Research Shows That a Naked Singularity Could Exist in Physics - Futurism

Conceived on a napkin in 1993 by Richard Platt and David Tucker at Incite (soon to become Selsius Systems), the world's first IP PBX was a true killer app for the rapidly emerging IP network platform. Connecting people together via real-time voice turned out to be an ideal use of newly ubiquitous fast ethernet infrastructureand unifying voice and data networks helped turn convergence into a buzzword.

High-quality, real-time human-to-human communication requires a high-performance network, naturally, and in 1998 the soothsayers in Ciscos M&A division foresaw IP comms driving IP infrastructure spending, and a match made in Dallas was born. Currently representing well over $1 billion in direct sales of Cisco Unified Communications equipment, and many multiples of that in indirect network infrastructure revenue, its clear that connecting people over the network is a big deal. And while just about everyone else in Silicone Valley is focused in roughly the same head-space, Ciscos proven ability to weaponize its technology with industrial-strength security, reliability, manageability, and scaleand then point it at the lucrative enterprise marketturned it into the largest PBX vendor on the planet (from zero to #1 in under five years).

Figure 1 - Sexy! (and CSI's Ted Danson looks pretty good too...)

Convergence turned out to be more than a buzzword, and Cisco has innovated intensively ever since, integrating call center, voice mail, IM, conference calling, video, and immersive telepresence products into a complete arsenal for enterprise collaboration.

One key to the success of Cisco collaboration running on top of the network has been the success of a teeming ecosystem of solutions, integrations, applications, and scripts running on top of Cisco collaboration. In a word: developers. Rich APIs for call automation, management, compliance, interoperability, etc. mean ISVs and in-house devs can mainline business intelligence directly into the communications infrastructure: connecting people, systems, processes, and (most recently) the Internet of Things into one hyper-converged network of networks.

In its latest bid to assimilate the business world into The Network, Cisco Spark takes the IP collaboration stack out of the server closet and into the cloud, marrying persistent chat, WebEx-style video conferencing/screen-sharing, HD voice/video, and unique hardware endpoints into an elegant, multi-platform user experience that meanwhile keeps the tortured silicon (and sysadmins) to a minimum. In a play to further blur the lines between LAN and WAN (remember borderless networks?), Cisco Sparks unique end-to-end encryption, adaptive bandwidth usage, UC infrastructure interop, and sheer reliability-at-scale extend the tradition of killer comms forged in the sun of a million enterprise support contract SLAs.

Figure 2 - Cisco Spark: rich cloud collaboration on any device

Two recent innovations are particularly exciting both for users and developers: the launch of the Cisco Spark Board room-conferencing system, and the announcement of the Cisco Spark video SDK.

Garnering what amount to raves in the taciturn world of business equipment, the Cisco Spark Board is the Olympic gymnast of phones: it may well be on steroids, but it's elegant, immensely capable, and makes it all look dead easy.

Figure 3 - Compelling, powerful room collaboration: the Cisco Spark Board

The Spark Board connects effortlessly to the Cisco Spark cloud by simply plugging it into your network (your high-quality, Cisco specced network, natch.) It then provides the well-appointed enterprise conference room with a big, beautiful touchscreen video conferencing collaboration unit that connectsseemingly via ESPto your mobile or PC for screen-sharing, whiteboarding, etc. Combining sophisticated capabilities with intuitive use, backed by industry-leading security and availability, the Spark Board is pretty much the apotheosis of the original Selsius IP Phone.

Complementing Cisco Sparks ability to provide omnipresent video-enabled collaboration, the Cisco Spark video SDK gives developers the power to embed Spark-powered collaboration (including video, messaging, sharing, etc.) into their existing applications.

Figure 4 - Cisco Spark SDK video windows and controls embedded in an iPad app

Initially supporting iOS/Swift (with Android to follow) and browser-based apps via JavaScript and WebRTC, the Cisco Spark SDK provides frameworks and self-contained widgets that let coders turn a mobile app or a web page into a secure, high-performance collaboration tool with literally a few lines of code:

Figure 5 - Cisco Spark SDK video widget sample code

Combined with Ciscos existing Spark messaging APIsopening business IM up to the possibilities of chat bots connected to IT systems and automation of all kindsthis superset of pervasive cloud collaboration fully integrated into line-of-business apps, literally burning a hole in your pocket (in the case of a Note 7!) or immersing the boardroom (in the case of a Cisco Spark Board,) is nirvana for the agile enterprise.

Last-minute update: perhaps signaling the beginning of the collaboration singularity, Cisco has announced the acquisition of MindMeld, a San Francisco artificial intelligence luminary. Though details on how this will play out are scarcethe term cognitive collaboration is being bandied aboutits exciting to contemplate how networks, convergence, integration, and now artificial intelligence can potentially transform business communication yet again.

If you would like to learn about Spark APIs, a great place to start is our Spark page on Cisco DevNet.

David Staudt, Cisco DevNet Developer Evangelist / Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems Inc.@dstaudtatcisco

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The Collaboration Singularity Is Drawing Closer - InfoWorld