China is building a supercomputer in space, sends first satellites that will be part of it
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Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Qualifications that techies Mark Zuckerberg has hired personally at $100 million-plus pay packages have: Degree in ...
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is aggressively recruiting top AI talent for his new superintelligence lab, using a curated document known as 'The List' to target the industry's brightest minds. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The recruits on 'The List' typically have PhDs from elite schools like Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon. As a report in WSJ said, "The recruits on 'The List' typically have Ph.D.s from elite schools like Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon. They have experience at places like OpenAI in San Francisco and Google DeepMind in London. They are usually in their 20s and 30s—and they all know each other. They spend their days staring at screens to solve the kinds of inscrutable problems that require spectacular amounts of computing power." Zuckerberg has personally spearheaded the recruitment, diving into technical papers and strategizing with two Meta executives in a group chat dubbed 'Recruiting Party' to discuss hundreds of candidates and outreach methods, such as email, text, or WhatsApp. The List prioritizes candidates with PhDs in AI-related fields, experience at leading labs, and significant contributions to AI breakthroughs. Meta's recent hire, an algorithm design enthusiast, exemplifies the profile. The people who get notes from Zuckerberg reportedly have a few things in common: They need to know calculus, linear algebra and probability theory, like one of Meta's recent hires, who says he's fascinated by algorithm design. The AI community is tight-knit, with researchers forming Slack and Discord groups to share and discuss job offers, often leveraging competing offers to boost their value. Two sources familiar with these groups confirmed this practice. Meta has targeted dozens of OpenAI researchers, intensifying the Silicon Valley talent race. Leading Zuckerberg's superintelligence team is 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, a New Mexico native and son of Chinese immigrant physicists. Meta recently invested $14 billion in Wang's company, Scale AI, making him one of the most expensive hires in history. Meta has also reportedly made offers to dozens of researchers at OpenAI. This is said to have forced OPenAI to change its compensation structure. Not just this, the company's CTO also sent an open letter to employees asking them not to fall for Zuckerberg's offer. The company also shut down for almost a week. OpenAI's ex-CTO Mira Murati too has said that Mark Zuckerberg has also offered engineers in her company multi-million-dollar packages, but not even a single employee has so far accepted the offer. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
The first human-made object recovered from space
Tech talk The Discoverer 13 was an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to test a number of aspects. Bear in mind that this was in 1960, the early years of the Space Age. Among other things, the Discoverer 13 was designed to test engineering techniques and to attempt deceleration and reentry through the atmosphere. If the deceleration and reentry went as per plan, there was also the task of recovering the instrument package from the sea. Out of everything that this satellite was designed to carry to the orbit, the most important was the 120 lb (54.4 kg) recovery capsule. This capsule, which was bowl-shaped in configuration, contained an American flag. While the bowl part of it was 22 inches in diameter and 27 inches deep, the conical afterbody increased the total length to nearly 40 inches. Out of the 120 lb, a monitoring system accounted for 40 lb, or one-third of the total. The launch, which took place on August 10, 1960, was on a Thor-Agena from Vandenberg complex. The first stage separated at an altitude of about 130 km and the Agena placed the satellite in a near-polar orbit – 250 x 705 km, 82.9 degree orbit. The reentry capsule The satellite system, which included a telemetry system, a tape recorder, a horizon scanner, and receivers for command signals from the ground in addition to the reentry capsule, completed 17 orbits before the command for the recovery sequence was given. This command was sent on August 11 from a ground station on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The command triggered the Agena to pitch down 60 degrees before the recovery vehicle was ejected using small springs. The vehicle spun up for stability, achieved using a cold gas system. Once the Thiokol retrorocket mounted at the end of the afterbody fired, the velocity was reduced by 400 m/s and then the spin system despun (a mechanism or system that counteracts the inherent spinning motion of a spacecraft, allowing a specific part to remain stable and pointed in a desired direction) the spacecraft. Before it started heating up owing the the reentry, the orbit ejection subsystem dropped off, leaving the heat shield and the capsule. A small parachute was deployed at at altitude of 15,000m, before the radio beacon and strobe lights were activated. The heat shield was then released and after further stabilisation, the larger parachute was deployed. Throughout this time, the monitoring system sitting inside the capsule kept reporting on select events like the firing of the retrorocket and jettisoning off the heat shield. Around 11:30 p.m. UT (1:30 p.m. local time) on August 11, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 610 km north-north-west of Honolulu, Hawaii. The responsibility of retrieving the capsule fell upon the U.S. Navy and their ship, the Haiti Victory, sent out a helicopter for the same. Frogmen jumped into the water from the helicopter in the vicinity of where the capsule had splashed down, before attaching a collar to the capsule to aid its retrieval by the helicopter. By 3:30-4:15 p.m. local time, the capsule was taken and brought back to the Haiti Victory, before it made its way to the Pearl Harbor. The first human-made object ever recovered from orbit was thus retrieved successfully. The public celebration that followed included presenting the flag that was inside the capsule to President Dwight Eisenhower on August 15. As for the Agena stage, it reentered the atmosphere months later. On November 14, it burned up in the atmosphere during reentry. Secret revealed This remained the story of Discoverer 13 for years – three-and-a-half decades, to be particular. It was only in 1995 that documents pertaining to this programme were declassified, thereby making it public knowledge. According to these documents, the Discoverer programme, of which Discoverer 13 was a part, was a classified operation. It was managed by the Advanced Projects Research Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force. The primary objective of this classified operation was, in fact, to develop a film-return photographic surveillance satellite. This was planned in order to assess how fast Soviet Union – their Cold War foes – was producing long-range bombers and ballistic missiles. In addition to this, the U.S. were also eager to find out where they were being deployed. Further, they were looking to take photos over the Sino-Soviet bloc to replace the U2 spyplanes. The Discoverer programme was actually part of the secret Corona programme. The photoreconnaissance satellite programme was employed to make maps and charts for the Department of Defense, as well as other U.S. government mapping programmes. For decades, however, the whole programme was presented as something else, with only a select few knowing the ulterior motive. The story that was woven was about a programme to orbit large satellites to test satellite subsystems; investigating the communication and environmental aspects of sending humans to space; and included carrying biological packages for return to Earth from orbit. While it wasn't entirely false, it wasn't entirely true either, as revealed by the documents in 1995. Even though Discoverer 13 carried only diagnostic instruments and didn't have any cameras or film, its success paved the way for future missions that did just that. It started off immediately as the Discoverer 14 with cameras and films was launched a week later (August 18). By February 1962, 38 Discoverer satellites had been launched. The satellite reconnaissance programme continued until 1972 as the Corona project. By May 1972, more than 120 Corona satellites had flown successfully and managed to photograph the Soviet Union, China, and other nations. More than two decades passed after this before a formal acknowledgement of reconnaissance programmes, past and present, was made. Images, used for educational purposes, have been transferred from the United States Air Force for Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Economic Times
2 hours ago
- Economic Times
Meet Chrysalis: The starship that could take 2,400 humans to Alpha Centauri, nearest star system in 400 years
Chrysalis spacecraft: A new spaceship design has won a prize. The spaceship is named Chrysalis. It is designed for a long journey to Alpha Centauri. The journey will take 400 years. The ship will carry 2,400 people. Generations will live and die on the ship. The ship will have homes, schools, and farms. It will be a self-sustaining society. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads What Is Chrysalis and How Far Will It Travel? Training for Life in Space: Preparing the First Generation Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads What's Inside Chrysalis? FAQs Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads A spaceship capable of transporting 2,400 humans on a multigenerational, one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own, got the first prize in the Project Hyperion Design Competition, as per a report. The theoretical vessel, named 'Chrysalis', would take approximately 400 years to cover its 25-trillion-mile journey, according to the engineers who designed it, as reported by no one living today would ever step foot on its terminus, the design conceives of a future in which generations would live and die upon a spaceship, a moving civilization in transit, as it would take 400 years to reach Alpha Centauri, according to the designers envisioned it not only as a vessel, but as a sustaining society, according to the report. The travelers would be pioneers of another sort, children born in space who had never known Earth, and will house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b, an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable, as reported by READ: Skipping iPhone 17 Pro? Here's every juicy rumor about the iPhone 18 Pro so far To train the people boarding the ship, the first generation would spend 70 to 80 years in seclusion in Antarctica as the environment would ensure psychological wellbeing, according to the vessel will potentially be 36 miles (58 kilometers) long, and Chrysalis will be designed as a gigantic Russian nesting doll, with encasing habitats that envelop a core, as per the Livescience report. These encasings would house all of the necessities of human existence: homes, schools, parks, farms, and even forests, where every segment would be powered by theoretical nuclear fusion generators, according to the the center of the ship are shuttles and all the communication equipment, the heart of this mobile world, as per the report. The layer closest to the core is expected to be used to produce food, everything from crops and fungi to animals and insects, keeping a delicately balanced ecosystem, as per the Livescience second level would accommodate communal living, with libraries, hospitals, and space for study and play, according to the report. The residential level follows, planned with ventilation and climate control for each home, as per the Livescience report. Beyond that are the areas for industry, recycling, and production, as per the report. The outer shell would contain the gear, raw materials, and machinery, probably maintained by robots, according the READ: Who is Patrick Joseph White, Georgia gunman who killed 2, and what was his motive? Chrysalis would only be sustainable for a population of about 1,500 individuals, and births would be planned accordingly, as per the project engineers said that, those responsible for the ship's governance would collaborate with artificial intelligence, "allowing for resilience of the whole social system, better knowledge transfer between the different generations of inhabitants and a deeper vision of the overall dynamics of the Chrysalis spaceship complex," as quoted in the Livescience the entire plan is purely hypothetical, as some of the required technology, like commercial nuclear fusion reactors, doesn't yet exist, but projects like this one can still add to the existing knowledge base and help engineers improve upcoming designs, as reported by prepare mentally for the isolation and challenges of space controlled environments with plants, fungi, insects, and livestock.
