Latest news with #LucyintheSkywithDiamonds
CBS News
22-04-2025
- Science
- CBS News
NASA's Lucy spacecraft captures images of peanut-shaped asteroid during 30,000 mph flyby
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has beamed back pictures from its latest asteroid flyby, revealing a long, lumpy space rock that resembles an odd-shaped peanut. The space agency released the images Monday, a day after the close approach at a speed of more than 30,000 mph . It was considered a dress rehearsal for the more critical asteroid encounters ahead closer to Jupiter. This asteroid is bigger than scientists anticipated, about 5 miles long and 2 miles wide at its widest point — resembling a deformed peanut. It's so long that the spacecraft couldn't capture it in its entirety in the initial downloaded images. NASA also released a timelapse of images captured about every 2 seconds, showing the asteroid rotating very slowly, apparently due to the spacecraft's motion as it flies by. Data returned over the next week should help clarify the asteroid's shape, according to NASA. Lucy passed within 600 miles of the harmless asteroid known as Donaldjohanson on Sunday in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's named for the paleontologist who discovered the fossil Lucy 50 years ago in Ethiopia. "Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology," Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy at Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement . "As we study the complex structures in detail, they will reveal important information about the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our solar system." The spacecraft was launched in 2021 to study the unexplored so-called Trojan asteroids out near Jupiter. Eight Trojan flybys are planned through 2033. "These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery," Tom Statler, program scientist for the Lucy mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "The potential to really open a new window into the history of our solar system when Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense." The spacecraft is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia, which got its name from the 1967 Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." That prompted NASA to launch the spacecraft into space with band members' lyrics and other luminaries' words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque. The spacecraft also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.
Forbes
17-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Did Bill Gates Become Successful?
Microsoft boss Bill Gates mugshot from December 13, 1977. (Photo courtesy Oklahoma County Sheriff's ...) In his memoir Source Code, Bill Gates explains a great deal about his early years. In doing so, we have a window into his unique characteristics and fortuitous circumstances that would lead to his eventual success. Without a doubt, Gates is an unusual person who had remarkable talent, drive, focus, ambition, and willingness to work that led to his achievements. And yet, he also explains how he had an unusually supportive family with unique skills—such as a father who was a seasoned lawyer, and a mother who structured his social development, which also provided a platform for that success to even be a possibility. Here I've pulled out some quotes that highlight how Gates was clearly a mathematically precocious youth who had a strong interest in coding, the ability to hyperfocus, exhibited extraordinary personal energy, had the willingness to be different and take charge, and possessed the dedication and desire to work crazy hours to be the best. In the introduction of his book, Gates notes: 'The logic, focus, and stamina needed to write long, complicated programs came naturally to me.' Gates also always loved to read. When he was around 9, he read through every volume of the World Book, A through Z. 'A summer reading program at our library was only me and girls.' And he was among the best at math early on: 'It wasn't long before I realized I was finishing each problem faster than everyone else.' At Lakeside school he took a test for the math team. 'I did exceptionally well, scoring higher than nearly everyone on the math team, which put me, an eighth-grader, among the best high school math students in the region.' As Gates argues: '[T]he logic and rational thinking demanded by math were skills that could be used to master any subject. There was a hierarchy of intelligence: however good you were at math, that's how good you could be at other subjects.' His interest in business was present early. He drafted a school report on a fictitious company he called Gatesway 'that made a coronary care system which I invented. My report detailed factors of production, and how I hoped to raise capital from investors in order to build my products.' He had the early ambition to be someone. With his friend Kent, he 'read through a stack of biographies of famous people, leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Douglas MacArthur. We spent hours on the phone dissecting their lives. We analyzed the paths they followed to success with the same teenage intensity that other kids at that time spent deciphering 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.'' He had intense interest in coding. When he and Paul Allen found out that the company that had given them some free computer time in exchange for them troubleshooting the system had brought in some top programmers—they found some 'source code' by looking through the dumpster to get a glimpse of what those programmers were working on. 'What we found was cryptic, just lines of code that we'd need to reverse engineer to figure out what they did. But that crumpled and coffee-stained paper was the most exciting thing we'd ever seen.' After he and some of his older friends like Paul Allen had gotten a job to try to make a program to automate payroll services, at first the older guys thought they didn't need Bill. But then they realized they did. So Bill took charge. 'I would need to be in charge. And if I was in charge, I would decide who got what portion of the free computer time [their compensation] Out on a long hike with his friends, he was cold and miserable, but 'I retreated into my own thoughts. I pictured computer code.' During all that time on his hike, he was able to pare down long messy code into something more succinct. 'On that long day I slimmed it down more, like whittling little pieces off a stick to sharpen the point.' 'Alone in my cave [his room] I'd read or just sit and think. I could lie on the bed endlessly working through some question.' Gates also wrote: 'I'd always possessed the ability to hyperfocus…If I truly concentrated on a subject, taking in the facts and theorems, dates and names and ideas and whatever else, my mind automatically sorted the information within a framework that was structured and logical.' When starting up Microsoft, he explained: 'Like one of those watertight hatches on a submarine, I could shut out the rest of the world,' and this meant 'No girlfriend, no hobbies.' He reasoned: 'It was the one way I knew to stay ahead. And I expected similar dedication from the others. We had this huge opportunity in front of us. Why wouldn't you work eighty hours a week in pursuit of it?' 'My other notable early trait might be described as excess energy.' Later, when he was building Microsoft, a friend told him to meet Steve Ballmer. Gates reflected: 'By then I could instantly recognize other people…who emitted my kind of excess energy. Steve Ballmer had it beyond anyone I had ever known.' At Harvard, Gates reflected on his less than perfect performance in Math 55 [the highly accelerated math class]: 'All of us had 800s on our math SAT,' and 'Up until then, I had experienced only a few situations in which I felt someone was hands-down better than I was in some intellectual endeavor that mattered to me, and in those cases I soaked up what they could teach me.' He noted a realization, 'This time was different, I was recognizing that while I had an excellent math brain, I didn't have the gift of insight that sets apart the best mathematicians. I had talent but not the ability to make fundamental discoveries.' On the complementary work styles between himself and Paul Allen, Gates writes: 'My approach was rapid-fire, in your face. I prided myself on my processing speed—that I could come up with the right answer, the best answer, on the spot. Impatient real-time thinking. And I could work and work and work, for days on end, rarely stopping.' On privilege: 'to be born in the rich United States is a big part of a winning birth lottery ticket, as is being born white and male in a society that advantages white men.' On good timing and building on the work of others: 'I was a rebellious toddler at Acorn Academy when engineers figured out how to integrate tiny circuits on a piece of silicon,' and 'I was shelving books in Mrs. Caffiere's library when another engineer predicted those circuits would grow smaller and smaller at an exponential rate for years into the future. By the time I started programming at age thirteen, chips were storing data inside the large computers to which we had uncommon access, and by the time I got my driver's license, the main functions of an entire computer could be fit onto a single chip.' On support from family: His grandmother Gami 'beyond her card-table acuity, was valedictorian of her high school class, a gifted basketball player, widely read…' His mother provided opportunities to socialize, connect with, and learn from a skilled community: 'When I look back on my childhood, it fit a pattern of pushing my sisters and me into situations that would force us to socialize, particularly with adults.' When starting up the company that would become Microsoft: 'That summer would turn out to be the last time I lived in my parents' house. When I think about it now, I have much greater appreciation for the role my family played during that early period of Micro-Soft. As proudly independent as I imagined myself, in truth my family supported me in ways both practical and emotional. Throughout the year I regularly retreated to Gami's place on Hood Canal for much-needed periods of reflection.' And, 'My father was always at the ready to help me work out some legal issue.' On the teachers who helped challenge him: 'One day Mrs. Carlson led me down to the hall to the library where she told the librarian that I needed a challenge.' The librarian, Mrs. Caffiere gave Gates a shelving task, and 'would draw me out with questions about what I was reading or found interesting. Here too she offered an affirmation, suggesting books that were a level of reading above what I knew, biographies of famous people and ideas that hadn't occurred to me.' 'My Lakeside teachers gave me the gifted of an altered perspective: To question what you know—what you think is true—is how the world advances.' On his supportive friends: When his close friend Kent passed away, Gates noted: 'When we met, I was a thirteen-year-old kid with raw IQ and a competitive streak, but little aim other than to win whatever game I was playing. Kent helped give me direction, setting me on the course of defining who I wanted to become.' On experienced mentors, like John Norton, who were willing to fix his code and challenge him to be better: 'Up to that point I had spent more time thinking about code and syntax than probably any other teenager alive. But Norton opened a completely new level to me. With his firm tutoring, I got a lesson not just in writing better code but about my self-perception. I remember thinking: Why am I so arrogant about this programming stuff? How do I even know that I'm that good? I started to consider what near-perfect computer code would look like.' On having the great good fortune to get computer time when very few in the world could: After gaining access to computer time, instead of sleeping at night he would sneak out of his house and catch a bus over to the place where he could work on his programming. He talks about the 10,000 hour or roughly 10 year rule regarding the development of expertise—coined by Anders Ericsson—and how 'without that lucky break of free computer time—call it my first 500 hours—the next 9,500 hours might not have happened at all.'
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The ‘true face' of Lucy, humanity's most famous ancestor
The true face of the tiny primate 'Lucy', who proved that our early human relatives walked on two legs 3 million years ago, has been revealed. The 3.5ft skeleton, named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, was discovered in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson, an American palaeoanthropologist, in 1975. She belonged to the Australopithecus afarensis species and was the most intact early hominin ever found, which helped prove that our human ancestors walked on two legs before developing large brains. Before her discovery, many people had hypothesised that a larger brain was needed to allow the dexterity needed for upright walking. Now, an international team including Cicero Moraes, a world leader in forensic facial reconstruction software, has reconstructed her face using scans of her skull, coupled with soft tissue data from chimpanzees, who have a similar brain size to the Australopithecus afarensis. 'Seeing Lucy's face is like glimpsing a bridge to the distant past, offering a visual connection to human evolution,' said Mr Moraes. 'The reconstruction, blending science and art, allows us to imagine what she might have looked like 3.2 million years ago, enriching both public and scientific understanding of our ancestors. 'It's a reflection of technological progress that makes an extinct being tangible.' Details like hair and skin colour were determined based on prior studies related to the Pliocene environment in which she lived. The final result is something not quite ape and not yet human, similar to modern great apes but with some unique features, such as a flatter face and a less protruding jaw. 'It has a less pronounced brow ridge than in chimpanzees, though still distinct from modern humans,' added Mr Moraes. 'The artistic version shows dark skin and hair, inspired by palaeoanthropological descriptions suggesting adaptation to the hot Ethiopian environment of 3.2 million years ago.' He added: 'The team believes that, despite the limitations of the cranial fragments, it offers an anatomically coherent representation of a female Australopithecus afarensis.' Lucy's body also shows elements of both ape and human. Her upper torso shows she was adapted to living in trees, but her lower body shows she also walked on two legs. Her brain, however, is very different to modern humans. The inner surface of her skull has a volume of about 391 cubic centimetres – similar to that of chimpanzees and much smaller than the roughly 1,350 cubic centimetres of modern humans. It indicates that her brain organisation was closer to that of other primates. Lucy is thought to have died between 12 and 18 years of age – adulthood for her species – and may have fallen out of a tree. Her fossilised bones will go on display in Europe for the first time this summer at Prague's National Museum in August. The research has been submitted to a journal for peer review. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
09-04-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
The ‘true face' of Lucy, humanity's most famous ancestor
The true face of the tiny primate 'Lucy', who proved that our early human relatives walked on two legs 3 million years ago, has been revealed. The 3.5ft skeleton, named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, was discovered in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson, an American palaeoanthropologist, in 1975. She belonged to the Australopithecus afarensis species and was the most intact early hominin ever found, which helped prove that our human ancestors walked on two legs before developing large brains. Before her discovery, many people had hypothesised that a larger brain was needed to allow the dexterity needed for upright walking. Now, an international team including Cicero Moraes, a world leader in forensic facial reconstruction software, has reconstructed her face using scans of her skull, coupled with soft tissue data from chimpanzees, who have a similar brain size to the Australopithecus afarensis. 'Seeing Lucy's face is like glimpsing at a bridge to the distant past, offering a visual connection to human evolution,' said Mr Moraes. 'The reconstruction, blending science and art, allows us to imagine what she might have looked like 3.2 million years ago, enriching both public and scientific understanding of our ancestors. 'It's a reflection of technological progress that makes an extinct being tangible.' Details like hair and skin colour were determined based on prior studies related to the Pliocene environment in which she lived. The final result is something not quite ape and not yet human, similar to modern great apes but with some unique features, such as a flatter face and a less protruding jaw. 'It has a less pronounced brow ridge than in chimpanzees, though still distinct from modern humans,' added Mr Moraes. 'The artistic version shows dark skin and hair, inspired by palaeoanthropological descriptions suggesting adaptation to the hot Ethiopian environment of 3.2 million years ago.' He added: 'The team believes that, despite the limitations of the cranial fragments, it offers an anatomically coherent representation of a female Australopithecus afarensis.' Lucy's body also shows elements of both ape and human. Her upper torso shows she was adapted to living in trees, but her lower body showed she also walked on two legs. Her brain, however, is very different to modern humans. The inner surface of her skull has a volume of about 391 cubic centimetres – similar to that of chimpanzees and much smaller than the roughly 1,350 cubic centimetres of modern humans. It indicates that her brain organisation was closer to that of other primates. Lucy is thought to have died at between 12 and 18 years of age – adulthood for her species – and may have fallen out of a tree. Her fossilised bones will go on display in Europe for the first time ever this summer at Prague's National Museum in August. The research has been submitted to a journal for peer review.
