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Pluto May Have Its Planet Status Reinstated

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Pluto May Have Its Planet Status Reinstated

The very long history of one of the smallest and furthest away object in our solar system, Pluto may have its planet status reinstated after it was revoked back in 2006. The reason behind that was a nearly unanimous vote that due to Pluto’s size and position in the solar system, along with the discovery of several other small planets displaying similar features in what was later called the Kuiper Belt. Instead, it became a dwarf planet in accordance to the 424 astronomers who attended the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague in 2006.

Ever since New Horizons probe’s flyby of Pluto that was done in the summer of 2015, new data is being extracted from the wide variety of images that were captured from various altitudes and positions. Along with its floating glaciers in the Sputnik Planum and wildly diverse geological formation, a more recent observation that scientists made when studying the images of Pluto may just be the first step towards reinstating it as a planet.

A particular image displaying the surface of the dark Pluto from an angle shows the very thin layer that is its atmosphere. However, the detail that brought a considerable amount of debate regarding the image in question is the presence of several wispy areas on the very edge of the atmosphere; almost as if there were clouds present on Pluto. Scientists have called them ‘extremely bright low altitude limb haze’ instead, as it is not yet certain what the exact nature of those masses is.

Researchers on the New Horizons project believe that they are composed of nitrogen, methane as well as other gases otherwise existent in Pluto’s atmosphere.

This does not, however, bring direct evidence that Pluto should once again be considered a full-fledged planet as it does not pertain to any of the requirements that scientists have decided are necessary in order for a space object to be considered one.

Pluto is a very unusual object in our solar system, displaying an elliptical orbit that takes it 248 Earth years to complete. It is a lot more elongated than the orbits of the other eight planets in our solar system, as well as displaying an inclination of 17 degrees in relation to the other orbits present. While Pluto fulfills the basic requirements, it acts as if is being pulled away by a different object, straying from the normal orbit around the Sun.

If the discovery of ‘clouds’ turns out to be true, scientists may consider rephrasing the requirements that an object must present in order to be considered a planet, and as a result, Pluto being reinstated as the 9th planet of our solar system.

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The Game That Completionist Gamers Will Grow Old Playing

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Video Game Dubbed No Man's Sky

An upcoming adventure survival video game dubbed No Man’s Sky is one of the most ambitious projects that gamers have ever had their eyes graced with. In essence, an indie game, No Man’s Sky is a production coming from Hello Games Studio, comprised of an incredibly tiny team of 15 people that have been working on it.

Take that fact into account first, and then consider the nature of this video game. No Man’s Sky is a game where players are free to explore an entire procedurally generated open universe that has been estimated to contain 18 quintillion planets, each with their own variety of species of plants, animals and geography. It may not be an impressively complex game regarding gameplay, but the mere idea that every single planet you visit may display a certain degree of diversity to the ones you have witnessed prior to that is mind-blowing.

In fact, come to think of it, there may be more diversity in planet nature in No Man’s Sky than in reality in our very own Milky Way.

In terms of gameplay, things are awfully complicated. You explore the universe using a starship. You walk on the surface of the planet in search for resources, gear, ways of funding your future missions and you may happen to come across a faction of aliens of some sort. You may be friendly with them, or you may not. If you seal an alliance with them, you may get extra benefits such as blueprints or new types of starships, while waging war on said factions will not come without repercussions.

So when are we to expect to feast on the beautiful and limitless world of No Man’s Sky? Starting 21st of June 2016, servers will be open for anyone who has purchased the game and wishes to enjoy the multiplayer aspect of it. But just like it would be in a real-life scenario where mankind has evolved enough so that everyone has their own little starship to travel around the universe as they please, chances are you won’t bump into other players very often, given the enormity of the world.

The game is scheduled to be released for PC and PlayStation 4 only so far. Preorders are already up on both Steam and PlayStation Store for those who wish to secure a copy beforehand. The final price tag that has been placed on the game is $59.99.

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Hound Is a Voice Assistant That Can Actually Help You

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Hound Voice Assistant

An application coming from a company called SoundHound that aims to do better than its counterparts is here: the Hound voice assistant can understand and help you better. SoundHound is a name that tried its luck first in music recognition services (think Shazam) but couldn’t keep up with the already rather monopolized market.

So what better way to use the technology you already own than to put it to work in a market segment that really needs some help? While on paper and in ads, smart voice assistants are simply the best tech buddies you can have, in reality, things are hardly that way. Even as a native English speaker, more than just a few individuals have complained that the likes of Siri, Google Now, Cortana or Alexa misunderstand them or start refusing to cooperate from one point of the query and onwards.

The issue that most voice assistants face is the lack of ability to continue elaborating on the same topic. Asking Siri one question such as the movie times is fine, for example, but if you also want to ask something else about the topic afterwards, you need to watch your phrasing and make sure she knows you’re talking about the same thing.

SoundHound’s Hound app tries to work on these areas where other developers have not and provide the public with an assistant that will find it easier to understand you and provide the type of information you need with the least amount of hassle. With the attention that the developers of the app paid to speech recognition and natural language processing, the assistant has a different algorithm that it uses in order to process the information that you give it.

In that sense, Hound is an assistant that you don’t have to think really hard how to ask questions to before doing so. Instead, its capabilities will allow you to ask questions the way you normally do without problems. Not only that but follow-up questions don’t seem to be as big of an issue as they are in the case of other voice assistants either, this being a feature that will actually allow you to refine your search.

Another nifty addition that the developing company has busied itself with in regards to the assistant is partnering up with Yelp and Uber, and the integration of said services into Hound afterwards. That gives you open access to the two applications, directly from Hound, without having to type a thing.

The app is available on both Android and iOS, but currently limited to the United States.

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The Implications of Facebook’s New Reactions

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The Implications of Facebook’s New Reactions

They have only been out for a couple of days at best and yet the implications of Facebook’s new Reactions system are already being thoroughly studied and discussed by both official staff as well as multiple blogs or individuals who feel like they have something to share. The Reaction system is something that downright threatens to change the very essence that has been captured and known as Facebook for the past several years.

But then again, everything must change at one point and Facebook made the step. According to the company, the current reaction system which sums up to Like, Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry were the result of an entire year of research and development in order to come up with. And that is one year after the 2 years of testing the territory and thinking of methods to apply the intention.

And the team that worked on the project was comprised of more than just Facebook employees. An entire team coming from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, led by Dacher Keltner – the founder, director and psychology professor – was on the job of developing the new Reaction system.

The series of conclusions that led to the creation of just the 6 new reactions that you can find on Facebook as of right now came from a selection of many more. And making the final selection of emotions that would be depicted in the reaction system took a lot longer to decide. Keltner mentioned in his research that he learned that scientists study more than 20 emotions present in human beings.

But Facebook had to find a series of reactions that would be recognizable to people all around the globe and not something limited to one particular space instead. From a selection of 50 emotions that were sent to the Facebook Reactions team by Pixar illustrator Matt Jones, the team had to choose just several that could best describe the selection of emotions that Facebook users would want to express without any further comment.

However, now that the Reactions system is complete and the issue of covering a wide enough selection of emotions that people may want to display to posts on Facebook, some individuals are not slow to express their concern over the effect of these additions. Multiple people are reporting the fact that the new system may overrun the classic version of actually typing out replies to people’s posts.

Even one of the people working on the team that developed the Reactions system expressed her concern that the new emojis may end up being misused and even abused in various circumstances. This is the internet after all.

How do you feel about the new Reactions system that Facebook has come up with?

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New Progress in the Search for Planet Nine

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New Progress in the Search for Planet Nine

Researchers have come with news of new progress in the search for Planet Nine. Knowledge of our own solar system is the first step of understanding and merely considering beginning our trek through outer space. And over the length of time things changed considerably. What was initially believed to be the ninth planet of our solar system ended up getting demoted to the status of a dwarf planet part of the Kuiper belt. Certainly that was the story of Pluto starting with the year 2006.

Pluto’s class of dwarf planets was joined by 2 more officially deemed planets bodies all the way in the outer reaches of our solar system – Haumea and Makemake – and for a long time that was considered to be the end of the planetary system. However, scientists have suspected the presence of a ninth planet for nearly a month now.

It all started when scientists noticed some strange effects happening on the outer skirts of our solar system when mathematical models and simulations would result in signs of gravitational effects of one more body, not visible to us however, onto the other objects in the Kuiper Belt. This intrigued scientists to study the phenomenon even further and theorize what kind of planet this is.

So far, Planet Nine remains a mere guess as it has never been spotted. But calculations suggest that it is a planet 10 times the mass of Earth, close in size to the exoplanets from our solar system. It was believed to be 600 times further away from the Sun than Earth is. This would result in an orbit that takes about 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete.

The evidence that supports this idea is the peculiar manner in which Kuiper Belt objects orbit around the sun. Unlike most planets that display a nearly circular orbit around the star of our solar system, the Kuiper Belt objects have wildly elongated orbits that suggest another object, and most likely one that is much larger in size, pulling on them.

Even since the discovery, scientists have been at work with trying to find a method to spot the elusive Planet Nine. Given its extremely long orbit time, narrowing down where to look for it would take ridiculous amounts of time. However, a group of scientists from France have concluded that a way of lowering the amount of sky searching they need to do to spot it is to study the data sent by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

The spacecraft is currently orbiting Saturn, and by ensuring that the mysterious Planet Nine is not within its visual reach, they could exclude two zones form the very beginning. Thanks to a number of mathematical models that can narrow down the planet’s currently position, scientists say that they have reduced the search area by 50%.

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The HTC Vive Was a Little Late for a Good Reason

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The HTC Vive Was a Little Late for a Good Reason

While the past weeks have been all about the VR hype with the Oculus Rift preorders coming online, the HTC Vive was nearly forgotten in the absence of news; however, the HTC Vive was a little late for a good reason, it would seem, because it just came out into the daylight with a huge series of good and surprising news.

While in essence, the HTC Vive is pretty much the same thing as the Oculus Rift, and more specifically a virtual reality headset that promises to host the upcoming advancement of VR technology applications, there seem to be some differences. At least in what the bundle purchase and included items are concerned.

Firstly, the HTC Viva was announced to come with two handheld controllers over the Oculus Rift’s included Xbox controller. The two, separate controllers have inbuilt motion sensors that will allow the user’s movements to be tracked across a room and mimic them in the virtual reality experience. This will be the kind of feature that allows for a much higher level of immersion in future games coming out for the virtual reality platform, for example.

And while we’re on the topic of immersion, it seems that HTC has put a few extra ounces of effort in raising its bar as high as possible. The HTC Vive adopts a design that is slightly different from what we had originally seen in the pictures and on displays. Apparently, the upgraded model also includes a brighter display that was made to provide its users an even deeper sense of immersion.

The HTC Vive demonstrates the ability to combine both realities without losing touch of either.

But HTC seems to be tame and thoughtful when it comes to the long-term effects of being completely immersed in a virtual reality game or experience. The headset includes a front-facing camera that will allow you to see the outside world on the account of a switch if you want to take a break from using the gear. The company itself stated that this addition “demonstrates the ability to combine both realities without losing touch of either”.

This could also hold some valuable implications in what augmented reality is concerned too as it will open up some gates for smaller scale of virtual reality applications – with some utility found in things such as engineering, construction and so on.

However, the HTC Vive has also just announced its price and it would seem that the extra additions will have their fans whipping out their wallets for the sum of $799, $200 more than its direct competitor, the Oculus Rift, will cost. Not to mention that in order to be able to run the HTC Vive, you’ll have to make sure that your computer is performant enough to run VR applications to begin with.

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The Xperia Gadgets That Lure Us Away from Our Phones

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The Xperia Gadgets That Lure Us Away from Our Phones

Sony came up with something particularly good for its public after making a point of how the Xperia Gadgets that lure us away from our phones was the main focus when they developed the series of the fearsome four. Xperia Ear, Xperia Eye, XXperia Projector and Xperia Agent are the gadgets that Sony tells us will help steer our attention away from our nervous reflex of checking our phones. Approximately 150 times a day, according to specialists.

Truth be told, with the advancement of technology in the sense that one can use their phones for nearly everything you once had to use a computer for, together with the vibrant and ever-growing in attractiveness displays, we tend to find it harder and harder to strip ourselves free of our phones. But the four gadgets coming from Sony under the Xperia badge hope to help in that perspective by giving us other wonders to look at, to listen to, to record video with and even to gesticulate at.

All of these were showcased recently, close in timing to the other companies’ announcements, as being in accordance with what the brand wishes to go towards next. Apparently, instead of focusing on simply making your phone a better thing to stare at, Sony wishes to work on the technology that we pair our smartphones to. What good is an-all powerful smartphone without some other gadgets to put it to work with?

Therefore, Sony’s first attempt in this direction starts with the Xperia gadgets that aim to bring at least some extra quality of life. The Xperia Ear, for example, is more than just a simple headphone, incorporating as much as it can in order to keep you away from your phone. By making use of voice support that allows you to issue voice commands instead of operating your phone directly, you can do a huge amounts of things without even needing to look at your screen.

The Xperia Eye, the second of the list, is not something you will find as useful as the former, but still pretty neat. The Xperia Eye is a camera that has wide-angle lens, featuring a ’360-degree natural field of view’ that you can carry on with you and record as much as you wish, without ever missing a precious moment ever again.

The list ends with the Xperia Projector and the Xperia Agent. While the former does not exceed expectations in capability with anything other than touch and voice capabilities, the latter is a particularly clever device that incorporates a broad capability to read and respond to gestures while also acting as a bridge between all other connected devices.

All of the above are, at least for the moment, concept devices or prototypes, but will be put up for purchase later this year – probably Q3 of 2016.

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The Conclusion of the iPhone 6 Error 53

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The Conclusion of the iPhone 6 Error 53

An issue that has been plaguing a portion of the iPhone users for nearly 2 weeks now has finally come to an end, it would seem, as this is the conclusion of the iPhone 6 error 53. It would appear that after major consumer complaints and even threats of lawsuits that could have ended costing Apple hundreds of millions, the company came up with a fix that was pushed through a bug fix patch just today.

The infamous Error 53 is the reason thousands of users were left without a phone over the last two weeks after they attempted updating their systems to the latest iOS 9.3 patch. The reason? The firmware update that came with it would detect if any third-party service center repairs had been done to the phone, and brick it if the response was positive.

This left a great number of individuals without a functional phone, with no fix to it and the only prospect being purchasing a new device altogether, with no method of accessing the data of your previous phone unless you had a recent backup of it saved on your computer. Now, two weeks into the problem, user uproar and threats of lawsuits, Apple has come forward with a way to fix the devices that ended up being bricked by error 53.

The fix comes packed in the update known as iOS 9.2.1 and it will stop phones from being affected. This came along with an official apology from Apple and urged the ones affected to get in touch with Apple Support. It also came along a clear explanation of what made error 53 appear all of a sudden and affect so many units.

Apparently, along with the firmware update came a new method of amplifying the levels of security found in the phone. Considering that the Touch ID sensor is the way one can access some of the most private and sensitive features of your iPhone, whenever the system detected that it had been tampered with (and to be more exact, whenever someone went into a third party service center to get a home button or their screen fixed) and instantly shut down to prevent personal data breach.

Now, the ones affected can revive their bricked phones by plugging them in their computers and updating the system via iTunes. However, the patch also prevents the fingerprint reader from working for the time being, seeing that Apple says the error 53 incident was a factory test that accidentally was let slip past the confines of the company.

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Manmade Artificial Brains That Could Revolutionize Neuroscience

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Manmade Artificial Brains That Could Revolutionize Neuroscience

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed manmade artificial brains that could revolutionize neuroscience. However, they are not exact replicas of the human brain, but instead tiny models made of human neurons and cells that have the overall size of 350 micrometers and are made up of adult human stem cells.

The method that the scientists applied to create these tiny organs is by managing to make human skin cells act like stem cells, which then were made to morph to grow into brain cells.

Even if small in size, these tiny brains can actually be mass produced and could easily replace animal testing of drugs and study regarding numerous mental health disorders such as Alzheimer’s or autism. Because they exhibit characteristics very similar to the human brain, they can be easily used in laboratory experiments and probably end up earning better results than experimenting on lab rats for example.

These artificial brains are also called organoids and elicit much better results and responses to treatments whenever the scientists attempt to test a drug on them, simply due to the resemblance to how real, full-fledged human brains work.

However, these miniscule brains do take roughly 10 weeks spent in special incubators to finally develop into an organ that could be experimented and tested on. Researchers said that while testing drugs and studying their effect on rodent brains has earned some results too, humans function differently than the lab rats do and because of that, results will differ on way too many occasions – roughly 95%.

One could argue that the tiny brains could not be a fair representation of a full-fledged, real scale brain, but as long as they are made from human cells and are bound to react in the same way as the real thing, they are a lot more likely to return more accurate results.

The best part about the ability to create these small-scale brains is the fact that researchers can downright take cells from a patient with a particular genetic disorder to create a tiny replica of his brain and be able to easily target the particular mechanisms of it in order to triangulate the phenomenon better.

This is what the scientists reported after only the first phase of the experiment with the stem-cell based tiny brains. In time, the technology could mature to a level where the replicas would be a lot more accurate and be able to mimic the way the human brain works even better. This could lead to numerous breakthroughs in neuroscience and its implications in a great number of mental illnesses.

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