MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Head of NASA Calls for Pluto to Be Made a Planet Again Wajib Baca

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Head of NASA Calls for Pluto to Be Made a Planet Again Ed

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman is necroposting about an age-old debate in astronomy that was considered officially settled two decades ago: whether Pluto should be counted as a planet.

“I am very much in the camp of, ‘Make Pluto A Planet Again,’” Isaacman said during a Tuesday Senate hearing, as quoted by Space.com.

While “MPAPA” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as his president’s political slogan, it’s a position that Isaacman is apparently serious enough about to mobilize the minds at NASA over.

During the hearing, he teased that the space agency is “doing some papers right now” on a “position that we would love to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this discussion and ensure that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and rightfully deserves to receive again.”

Isaacman is referring to the American astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, classifying it as a planet. But that was nearly ninety years ago, and the definition of planet subsequently shifted. 

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union formally defined what a planet was using three primary criteria: a planet must orbit the Sun, be massive enough to be spherical, and it must “clear the neighborhood,” meaning that it has no objects of similar size along its orbit, pushing or deflecting contenders out of the way, other than its own natural satellites — moons, in other words — that it has gravitational dominance over. (It’s worth noting that before the IAU agreed on one, there was no consensus definition on what a planet actually was.)

Pluto fell short of that third criteria and was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” following the ratified definition, one of the five official such objects in the solar system; its diameter of around 1,500 miles is only about half the width of the US, so the diminutive modifier is not unwarranted. 

This was controversial to the public, though, with many feeling that Pluto had been demoted in a dishonorable sense, unjustly kicked out of the club of astronomical objects that people actually care about. The perception was that some faceless bureaucracy had butted in to needlessly upend how we understood our little corner of the universe, relegating a formerly beloved planet to a footnote.

Of course, many astronomers are on board with the decision for scientific reasons, and aren’t pleased that the head of an influential institution like NASA is relitigating the debate with political sloganeering.

“While NASA administrators are free to wax nostalgic for the days when Pluto was a planet, the actual scientists working in the field will continue to try to explain and classify objects in the solar system in the way that actually helps us understand the world in which we live,” Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, told The Independent.

Bill McKinnon, Director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, called the debate “a waste of time.”

“Of course Pluto’s a planet, but it is a dwarf planet, a subspecies of planet,” he stressed to the newspaper. “The argument seems to swirl about those who wish to say whether dwarf planets are or are not planets.”

The fact of the matter is that yes, what constitutes a planet is a question that not all astronomers agree on. But that’s for the astronomers to work out. As we learn more about our solar systems, and perhaps other planetary systems, the definition will evolve and be fine-tuned. You can admire Isaacman’s enthusiasm for the topic — but it’s arguably beyond his remit, and you can understand why it might nettle experts to hear him blithely declare they’re wrong.

More on space: Scientists Scan Gigantic Structure Hiding Behind Our Galaxy

The post Head of NASA Calls for Pluto to Be Made a Planet Again appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Powering the AI boom without breaking the grid Edisi Jam

In our latest episode of Lexicon, we sat down with Diane Watkins, Vice President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES), to explore a side of artificial intelligence that often gets overlooked. 

Throughout our talk, Watkins makes clear that AI is only as powerful as the infrastructure that supports it. She explains how this surge in demand is pushing energy systems to their limits, and why the next phase of AI innovation may depend as much on power infrastructure as it does on code.

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AI’s growth is colliding with grid reality

For decades, electricity demand in many developed countries remained relatively flat. Utilities gradually expanded generation and transmission, responding to steady population growth and incremental industrial development. AI has shattered that pattern.

“It may have taken a utility 100 years to reach a peak load of 1,000 megawatts,” Watkins explained. “And one data center can increase that by 50 percent — or even double it — almost overnight,” she added.

Utilities aren’t seeing one request at a time, she added, “they’re seeing many.”

“We’re seeing utilities receive requests from six to ten data centers at once. That’s a monumental increase in a very short period,” she noted. But the problem is not simply scale; it is also a matter of timing. Infrastructure takes years to plan, permit, and build.

“On average, it takes just over four years to build a thermal generation plant,” Watkins said. “And it can take ten years or more to build a major high-voltage transmission line.”

By contrast, AI’s rise from niche research tool to global economic force has happened in less than a decade. “If you think about where AI was ten years ago versus where it is today, it’s clear those timelines don’t work anymore,” she told IE. 

“We can’t afford to wait ten years to build the infrastructure needed to support AI,” she added.

Why utilities can’t just “move faster”

From the outside, it can look as though utilities are slow to respond. Watkins pushes back on that perception.

“Utilities aren’t dragging their feet because they want to be slow,” she said. “They operate in a highly regulated environment. They can’t just build expensive facilities without demonstrating need and getting approval to pass those costs on to customers,” she added.

That process involves regulatory filings, environmental reviews, interconnection studies, supply-chain constraints, and public scrutiny, all of which add time.

“Every major expansion has to be justified, approved, permitted, and then constructed,” Watkins told us. “That takes years, even when everyone agrees the project is necessary,” she added.

Data centers are uniquely challenging loads

What makes AI data centers different from traditional industrial customers is not just their size, but their concentration. “Nearly every data center that gets built requires new electric infrastructure to support it,” Watkins said.

Historically, growth in electricity demand was dispersed with new homes, new businesses, and gradual increases spread across regions. Data centers flip that model.

“A single data center concentrates enormous demand in one location,” she added. “And even areas of the grid with some excess capacity don’t have nearly enough to support even a modest-sized data center,” she told us.

“A 350-megawatt data center going offline is the equivalent of about 50,000 homes shutting down at once,” Watkins told us. “That kind of sudden change can trigger grid failures and wider outages,” she added.

Reliability isn’t optional

The consequences of grid stress extend far beyond inconvenience. “Electric power isn’t a convenience — it’s required for modern life,” Watkins explained. “Blackouts aren’t just inconvenient. They affect human lives,” she added.

She points to recent large-scale outages as a reminder of what’s at stake.

“When the power goes out, trains don’t run, people can’t access money, emergency services are delayed,” she said. “It has a wide-ranging impact on society.”

Data centers themselves demand extremely high reliability, often far more than homes or small businesses. “They usually meet that requirement by building redundant electric facilities,” Watkins noted. “But that further increases the amount of investment needed from the grid.”

The $700 billion question

IEEE PES estimates that $500–700 billion in grid investment will be needed through 2030. Watkins is clear that this money isn’t just about new power plants.

“It’s all of the above — generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and smarter software,” she said. “We need an unprecedented expansion of our current capabilities.”

Climate pressures compound the challenge.

“Extreme weather is driving massive spending just to repair and harden existing infrastructure,” Watkins explained. “That means fewer dollars available for expansion unless overall investment increases.”

“We need every tool in the toolbox — including tools that haven’t been developed yet,” she added.

The hidden crisis: people

Perhaps the most overlooked constraint on the energy transition is talent. “The world may need between 450,000 and 1.5 million more power engineers by 2030,” Watkins said. “That’s nearly double today’s workforce.”

“There are about four and a half times as many computer programmers as power engineers,” she noted.

“The power sector has an image problem,” Watkins says. “It’s often viewed as old or stodgy, while tech is seen as glamorous — even though power engineering is critical, innovative, and impactful,” Watkins told us.

She also argued that reframing the field around climate impact, AI integration, and grid modernization is essential to attracting the next generation.

Misaligned incentives slow everything down

At the heart of the issue is a mismatch between the incentives facing utilities and tech companies. “If a utility moves too fast and causes an outage, they face penalties, hearings, and reputational damage,” Watkins explained. 

“Tech companies don’t face the same downside risk,” she added. “For them, not moving fast enough means falling behind.. That imbalance makes coordination difficult,” she said.

What failure looks like

If action stalls, Watkins sees three outcomes. “Higher prices, more blackouts, and stalled AI growth — potentially all three,” she warned.

Grid investments must be paid for, and consumers often bear the cost. At the same time, many large tech firms can insulate themselves …

Konten dipersingkat otomatis.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com