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Space Mirrors: Dreams Of Turning The Night Into Day Around The Clock

April 3, 2024 by 28 Comments

Recently, a company by former SpaceX employee Ben Nowack – called Reflect Orbital – announced that it is now ready to put gigantic mirrors in space to reflect sunshine at ground-based solar farms. This is an idea that’s been around for a hundred years already, both for purposes of defeating the night through reflecting sunshine onto the surface, as well as to reject the same sunshine and reduce the surface temperature. The central question here is perhaps what the effect would be of adding or subtracting (or both) of solar irradiation on such a large scale as suggested?

We know the effect of light pollution from e.g. cities and street lighting already, which suggests that light pollution is a strongly negative factor for the survival of many species. Meanwhile a reduction in sunshine is already a part of the seasons of Autumn and Winter. Undeniable is that the Sun’s rays are essential to life on Earth, while the day-night cycle (as well as the seasons) created by the Earth’s rotation form an integral part of everything from sleep- and hibernation cycles, to the reproduction of countless species of plants, insects, mammals and everyone’s favorite feathered theropods.

With these effects and the gigantic financial investments required in mind, is there any point to space-based mirrors?

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The Hunt For Alien Radio Signals Began Sooner Than You Think

March 20, 2024 by 20 Comments

Every 26 months, Earth and Mars come tantalizingly close by virtue of their relative orbits. The closest they’ve been in recent memory was a mere 55.7 million kilometers, a proximity not seen in 60,000 years when it happened in 2003.

However, we’ve been playing close attention to Mars for longer than that. All the way back in 1924, astronomers and scientists were contemplating another close fly by from the red planet. With radio then being the hot new technology on the block, the question was raised—should we be listening for transmissions from fellows over on Mars?

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Stacking Solar Cells Is A Neat Trick To Maximise Efficiency

March 7, 2024 by 51 Comments

Solar power is already cheap and effective, and it’s taking on a larger role in supplying energy needs all over the world. The thing about humanity, though, is that we always want more! Too much, you say? It’s never enough!

The problem is that the sun only outputs so much energy per unit of area on Earth, and solar cells can only be so efficient thanks to some fundamental physical limits. However, there’s a way to get around that—with the magic of tandem solar cells!

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Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, A Thing

March 6, 2024 by 94 Comments

In an era dominated by broadband and wireless cellular networks, it might come as a surprise to many that dial-up internet services still exist in the United States. This persistence is not a mere relic of nostalgia — but a testament to the diverse and uneven nature of internet infrastructure across the country.

Yes, dial-up internet, with those screechy, crackly tones, remains a useful tool in areas where modern, high-speed internet services are either unaffordable or unavailable. Subscriber numbers are tiny, but some plough on and access the Internet by the old ways, not the new.

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Avi Loeb And The Interstellar Lottery

March 4, 2024 by 94 Comments

Except for rare occasions, I don’t play the lottery. Like many of you, I consider state-run lotteries to be a tax paid only by people who can’t do math. That’s kind of arrogant coming from a guy who chose to go into biology rather than engineering specifically because he’s bad at math, but I know enough to know that the odds are never in your favor, and that I’d rather spend my money on just about anything else.

But I’m beginning to get the feeling that, unlike myself and many others, Harvard professor Avi Loeb just might be a fan of playing the lottery. That’s not meant as a dig. Far from it. In fact, I readily concede that a physicist with an endowed chair at Harvard working in astrophysics knows a lot more about math than I do. But given his recent news splashes where he waxes on about the possibility that Earth has been treated to both near misses and direct hits from interstellar visitors, I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m looking at the lottery backward.

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NASA Found Another Super Earth With Tantalizing Possibilities

February 29, 2024 by 57 Comments

Earth is a rather special place, quite unlike the other planets in the solar system. It’s nestled at the perfect distance from the sun to allow our water to remain liquid and for life to flourish in turn. It’s a rare thing; most planets are either too close and scorching hot, or too far and freezing cold.

NASA is always on the hunt for planets like our own, and recently found a new super-Earth by the name of TOI-715b. The planet is larger than our own, but it’s position and makeup mean that it’s a prime candidate for further study. Let’s take a look at how NASA discovered this planet, and why it’s special.

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Air Canada’s Chatbot: Why RAG Is Better Than An LLM For Facts

February 28, 2024 by 32 Comments

Recently Air Canada was in the news regarding the outcome of Moffatt v. Air Canada, in which Air Canada was forced to pay restitution to Mr. Moffatt after the latter had been disadvantaged by advice given by a chatbot on the Air Canada website regarding the latter’s bereavement fare policy. When Mr. Moffatt inquired whether he could apply for the bereavement fare after returning from the flight, the chatbot said that this was the case, even though the link which it provided to the official bereavement policy page said otherwise.

This latter aspect of the case is by far the most interesting aspect of this case, as it raises many questions about the technical details of this chatbot which Air Canada had deployed on its website. Since the basic idea behind such a chatbot is that it uses a curated source of (company) documentation and policies, the assumption made by many is that this particular chatbot instead used an LLM with more generic information in it, possibly sourced from many other public-facing policy pages.

Whatever the case may be, chatbots are increasingly used by companies, but instead of pure LLMs they use what is called RAG: retrieval augmented generation. This bypasses the language model and instead fetches factual information from a vetted source of documentation.

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