Good point, never thought about it this way. That sounds right.

Maybe someone (scientist) can calculate the average number of probable actual-life-forming celestial objects per certain chunk of space. Then maybe we can get closer to calculate our probability of finding one.

What was that in that Person of Interest episode about the aliens conspiracy radio show? "Fermi paradox". Claims that the likelihood of aliens existence collides with the fact we found no evidence of them. My thought on that subject is that the universe is still young, give it a few billion more years and you'll see evidence of life all over the place. And in another few billion more years, maybe there won't be galaxies anymore, and stars, and planets. Just life forms and their products.
On the other hand, some scientists claim that the universe will die in a few billion years. That would be a bummer.

The Fermi equation is a good one, as it takes into account if lifeform X is around at the sametime as Y.
However, I always thought the "paradox" aspect was a bit silly, as its just about what life is out there - not if they actually want (and are able) to have contact with you.
That aspect is really about the motivations of alien life - and we couldn't have a clue about that really.

Its also worth remembering our normal radiowaves dont really go out past the 10ly mark before they fade away. Theres only a few stars in range. We haven't done much to be noticed yet.

Unless they picked this up;
http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/p...recibo-message

speaking of;

http://www.space.com/33424-seti-seek...lifeforms.html

So....people heard of Mr Musks utterly insane plans to colonize mars? Not visit. Not even "a colony"...colonize.

Its crazy ambitious, and it wont happen on the timescale or budget he sets....but its still pretty darn awesome theres someone even trying to do this.

Really recomend reading the details here (rather fun article too);
http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacex...ull-story.html

And remember; This SpaceX has successfully launched and landed 6 rocket boasters this year - when no one else had done it at all before. They have a (unmanned) mars rocket set to go in 2018 as well.
So this isn't just talk, they are actively laying the groundwork for this now......even if it is....crazy.

Yeah, I'm amazed by the progress they've already managed to make so far, with the Raptor engine and the fuel tank. The fuel tank gives you a sense of the insane size of the thing.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtYrzd2UEAArZWK.jpg:medium

Compare that to the falcon 9 upper stage fuel tank...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._fuel_tank.jpg

It's interesting how it looks like a sci-fi rocket (particularly the spaceship part) and at the same time you see many aspects of the Falcon 9, and of the Space Shuttle as well as other current or past rockets.

The design looks promising from an engineering standpoint, it looks rather simple, with less overall complexity, thus less points of failure than say something like Saturn V or the Space Shuttle. And it looks like it's well designed for fast and efficient manufacturing. It makes total sense for Elon Musk to work on Tesla (and SolarCity) at the same time, you see the experienced gathered there transfer to SpaceX manufacturing.

I'm pretty confident that they can manage to build something close to this within 10 years. Make it fly safely enough to carry humans? I guess that will take a bit more time.

Yeah, I think thats the unlikely bit. Not that it cant be done, merely that the "jump" from 5 to 100 people on a craft seems a bit sudden. Id want quite a lot of unmanned flights before risking that many people on something that insanely powerful.

Wowza. If you say it's too ambitious I tend to believe you, but still our recent history portrays several gigantic leaps forward that were beyond imagination. You never know. Maybe things will go faster than one would anticipate.

Hopefully true.
But the thing is, even if this isn't done as Mr Musk envisions, it seems almost certain now we will get some people on Mars and we will push forward are space infrastructure significantly. So its pretty awesome either way.
--
Even outside of Musk it looks like NASA is getting the Mars budget it needs;
https://www.good.is/articles/nasa-ma...ssion-congress
Which is significant and normally a president says "we are going to mars" yet NASA doesn't get the budget for it.

I wrote a new article; The next 10 years of augmented reality viewed though the lens of Pokemon Go;

https://darkflame.co.uk/EverythingEv...5-and-10-years

Speaking of hi-tech this youtube channel is (despite the sensationalist titles) quite packed with cool stuff, most I never heard of or suspected to exist:

https://www.youtube.com/user/VineCrave/videos

*bookmarked*
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Not hightech as such, but nice science/medical news;
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38026696
Basically it seems rates of dementia are falling, likely due to increase in people being mentally active.

That fuel tank is amazing. How... how do you even build such a seamless structure so big? What kind of machines can manufacture that? astounding size... :eek:

Its insane indeed.
Less insane, but pretty awesome, is the video clip Musk posted of how they make their rocket tips.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/807354766804168706

What a great sneak peek!! I've looked thru all of this guy's tweets. It is just so huge his endeavors, I don't know who he is but his projects are surely cutting edge.

Nuclear Fussion is always said to be decades way - and has been for decades.
But still , very positive signs;
http://www.space.com/34960-star-in-a...tor-works.html

This is using a stellerator - I posted images earlier of the things. Ridiculously sci-fi looking.

Beautiful. :)

Having worked with Tango, Structure.io and Hololens - the latter one really blows the competition away. The stability of the image, the way it builds maps, utilizes wifi "spaces" to remember where it was, gestures, voice commands and such makes it amazing.

The drawbacks are, of course, that it's really expensive, it's a bit on the heavy side and you can't get it from channels other then Microsoft, and then you can't resell it too... The 3D model it creates has holes, collisions with it are prohibitively expensive on the hardware side with anything else then a simple box collider. Moving elements and people disrupt the map.

The way I see it tho, the future really isn't in geo-tracking, laser scanners, multiple cameras and stuff like that housed in bulky frames. But in markerless tracking schemes, neural networks and such that will make a simpler device able to understand and learn the space, rather then hold an exact 3D representation of it in it's "mind".

I've been very close to buying a Hololens a few times. Honestly its more the software side putting me off then the hardware/cost right now. Still seems a bit limited, even for a developer. All the focus and tools seem on Unity development. No scope for Java/non-C++ or non-DirectX stuff at all - and given 90% of my experience is in either web development or java thats not too useful to me :P

I'll probably wait a few months, as by then there might also be more news on products in the "Windows Holographic" family.

Better AI might certainly reduce the need for sensors. Understand more from little.
One way or another you need to get a mesh of the environment in some form in order to have proper occlusions and shadow casting though.

Form factor though, pretty sure the Hololens (and other things like Meta/Spaceglass) its all the optics making them so big. I suspect MagicLeap will be the same whenever that finally comes. I am not a optics expert, but it seems there's some difficulty getting good fov while also getting the focal point comfortable in a small form factor.
I'm sure it will get better, but probably take a few generations of hardware till its really "slick". Maybe the same sort of trend as mobile phones.

The CES trade show was on recently.
Skimming news not too much interesting. "Smart" toasters! "Smart" hairbrushs! Internet on everything -*yawn*-
A few cool things though, like this sounds nice;
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/05/...be-worthwhile/

Yeah, saw the 8k TV's at CES..... excess of everything. I'm off to the MWC in Barcelona, really looking forward to it!

I remain very unconvinced of the need of more resolution on tvs. Emperor's new clothes imho.
HDR, however, I think will be a noticeable improvement for more people (with realistically sized/distanced tvs).

:lol::lol::lol:

Hear, hear! Let the truth be spoken!

Neither of those was a joke either, both were shown :P
--
Anyway, remember when I did that video comparing smartphones to tricorders? Well, its got even closer;
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreak...ds-on-ces-2017

Those are the sorts of things I want to see, not "this years phone is a little bigger!" or "this years phone is a does that thing that other one did last year, only now its us doing it!". This is far more interesting.

Great video, you guys are awesome :D
It really shouldn't be called a smartphone anymore. How about... "Personal Handheld Hitech I/O Device"? That's catchy.

Also, poor smart hairbrushes. To be an intelligent creature with the sole purpose of being used to brush someone's hair! What's next? Smart toilet paper? Are we as human beings starting to lose it as we're running out of creatures to dominate?

I'm a bit skeptical about the accuracy of that, still, it's pretty awesome that they are doing it, I'm certain in the future it will become better and better. Once it becomes a "must" in every phone, technology for this will definitely improve by popular demand.

lolwut !??? :lol: you guys... :rolleyes: