More Interesting News 7 March 2020 Sometimes things which are the greatest convenience are also the greatest liabilities. Who among us doesn’t value their cell phone? It has become an intricate part of our life. When the computer revolution hit, everybody wanted a computer, but this has changed, many people now use a cell phone in place of a computer. This has led to some problems. One problem is our cell phones can be more easily hacked and anything on them can be subject to scrutiny by a criminal. While this is a big problem there is also another big problem. Recently it has been found many different people and companies are tracking our cell phones. Some do it so they know what advertisements to show us based on the stores we go into. Others may just want to know where we are at any given time. This is very helpful to people like criminals, police, lawyers and others. While we think our cell phones are the greatest things ever invented, they could be the things that cause the most trouble. The military is always looking for new ways to power the ever increasing electronic devices soldiers will be carrying. They thought about putting a movement generator in a backpack, but found it would have to be loosely fitted so it moved a lot, which made it much harder for a soldier to carry. Many other methods for generating electricity by an individual soldier have been looked into and now the military wants to put small generators inside a soldier’s boots. One of the problems of course is if a soldier is not moving, he is not charging his equipment. I guess that is when they will have to switch to a small solar panel. MIT engineers have just come up with an incredible invention which could benefit everyone of us. They have developed a device which creates laser ultrasounds and can look through our skin without us feeling it. No physical contact of any kind is required which is the opposite of today when devices have to be pressed against the skin. It is said there will be many uses for this device such as eliminating exploratory surgery in some cases, non-exposure to x-rays and not having to lay silently inside of a device and be motionless. I know the last one will be a welcomed change to many people who feel claustrophobic during their scans. The laser which will be used in a device uses a wavelength which is safe for human skin. We have had a few astronauts walk on the moon and they didn’t seem to be any worse for wear when they came back to earth. Scientists are now saying it may not be safe for astronauts to walk on the moon. It is not for the reason most people might think, which is being hit by an asteroid or particles of meteors or anything like that. The reason is scientists have found out the moon surface can have an electrical charge. The scientists are concerned this charge might arc which would be very risky for astronauts walking in that area when that happened. One of the problems which is claimed is since the moon has no atmosphere, you just have to get near a charged area to get zapped, you don’t have to touch anything as you would on earth. Somebody asked the scientists why astronauts haven’t been subject to shocking already, and the reply was because they only walked in areas lit by sunshine which helps balance out the negative charge. I’m sure NASA will find an answer to this problem perhaps in the suits and boots worn by astronauts. Whoever would have believe this? Scientists built a circuit which was tangled using tiny wires made of silver. The wires were nanoscopic and gave off a pattern of shifting electrical currents. You may think to yourself who cares, but the scientists think these wires are acting like connections in the human brain. They believe finding this out is a milestone in creating a digital brain. Could things really just be that simple, is our brain not as complicated as we believe? I just can’t buy that one. So far, the prediction made by an engineer named Gordon Moore who said the number of transistors integrating into a silicon chip doubles every two years has been just about on the money. Scientists and engineers are saying artificial intelligence however has outpaced Moore’s law and has gotten ahead in progress. The reason this is surprising is scientists claim AI which is artificial intelligence has generally kept pace with Moore’s law but now it seems to be surpassing it. They give the example of image recognition run by artificial intelligence and claimed in 2017 it took three hours for image recognition but today only takes eighty-eight seconds. A former NASA astronaut is developing a plasma engine to power a spaceship to Mars. Several groups are working on a Mars rocket. There is a chance a company called Ad Astra could win the race if it is successful in developing its plasma engine technology because a plasma engine would allow flight time to be cut into one third of the time it would take otherwise. There is also another advantage being claimed, which is it will allow for a bigger crew to be sent. The head of the company was a shuttle astronaut and he has called chemical rocket engines primitive, and he has a point. This type of engine uses an electric field to heat plasma to millions of degrees and then expels it. There are also other advantages such as less time being exposed to space radiation. The next bit of news is a little on the creepy side and definitely weird. The head of a Vancouver cryptocurrency exchange died in 2018 at the age of thirty years old. We are talking about a company which handled bitcoins. When he died, he took the passwords to $137,000,000 worth of bitcoins to his grave. Conspiracy theories became rampant and some believe he faked his death to abscond with his fortune. They also believe there is only one way to find out if this is true and that would be to open the grave and the coffin and see if his body is in it. They have a good reason to believe this since a court found he had funneled his client’s money into fake accounts, accounts belonging to his wife and other accounts. I guess if I had been invested with this guy, I would agree with these people and want him dug up.
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