MAROKO133 Update ai: The Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be Slamming on the Brakes, Sci

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: The Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be Slamming on the B

In case you missed it, there’s a fascinating object from another part of the universe visiting our neck of the woods.

Dubbed 3I-ATLAS — “three” as in the third known interstellar object from outside of our solar system — the bizarre entity has had the astronomical community in a quiet fervor since it was first spotted in early July.

The object is widely believed to be an interstellar comet, although a handful of experts, including Harvard’s ever-controversial astronomy researcher Avi Loeb, have suggested that it might be a visitor from an alien civilization. Many of Loeb’s peers have dismissed that possibility, but that hasn’t quieted the firebrand researcher.

The object is currently hidden behind the Sun, where it’s slated to remain unobservable from Earth for the better part of a month — a blind spot that Loeb had already speculated the object might use to do something unexpected. Now, the latest images from Nordic Optical Telescope, located in the Canary Islands, have provided him with new fodder.

Those images suggest that a “tail” of debris the object sprouted as it neared the Sun has now changed directions, and is instead facing toward the Sun. Astronomers call this an “anti-tail,” a phenomenon which has been observed in a number of other comets going back decades.

Anti-tails have a simple explanation: as the object approaches the sun, our relative position makes the long trail of particulate appear to flip, when in reality it hasn’t changed. Basically, we’re getting a 3D optical illusion, exacerbated by the Sun’s gravity and our relative position in space.

Loeb, though, has another explanation. In his latest blog on the interstellar object, Loeb posits that the anti-tail could show an alien craft applying “braking thrust” — slamming on the brakes, essentially, as it seeks to prolong its sojourn through our star system.

“If the object is an alien spacecraft slowing down, and the anti-tail is braking thrust, then this change from anti-tail to tail would be entirely expected near perihelion,” Loeb wrote, referencing an idea shared by his colleague Adam Hibberd at the Institute for Interstellar Studies.

“In that case,” Loeb continues, the “transition would constitute a technosignature in the form of an unexpected phenomenon indicative of controlled maneuvering, possibly with the intention of achieving a bound heliocentric orbit between Mars’s and Jupiter’s orbits.”

Either way, it’ll be a while before we know for sure. The object isn’t expected to reappear until December 19, at which point it’ll be clear whether its trajectory has been altered by a braking maneuver — or if it’s still simply hurtling through space like the inert snowball that most scientists believe it to be.

More on space: Startup Reveals “Space Armor” to Protect Astronauts From Elon Musk’s Orbital Trash

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🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: An AI Mistook a Doritos Bag for a Gun and Called the Cop

An AI-powered gun detection system hooked up to a Baltimore County high school’s cameras mistook a bag of Doritos chips as a weapon — and called the cops on a 16-year-old student.

As local news station WBAL-TV 11 News reports, Taki Allen was enjoying the snack while sitting outside of Kenwood High School after football practice.

Twenty minutes later, he was visited by a small army of heavily-armed police officers.

“It was like eight cop cars that came pulling up for us,” he told WBAL-TV 11 News. “At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’”

“They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me,” Allen added. “Then, they searched me and they figured out I had nothing.”

“I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” the student said.

The incident highlights glaring shortcomings with current gun detection systems, which are being rolled out at schools across the country. That’s not to mention the problematic privacy concerns of monitoring students with flawed AI tech or the outsized role law enforcement plays in public schools.

Besides false positives, gun identification software has proven unable to prevent deadly shootings, such as the one at Antioch High School in suburban Nashville earlier this year.

Other systems focused on gun detection have previously been accused of furthering racial biases, raising the possibility that Black students, like Allen, could be facing AI-facilitated discrimination while spending time at school.

The Baltimore County Public Schools system rolled out Virginia-based startup Omnilert’s gun detection tech last year. Once hooked up to public cameras, it can scan surveillance footage and alert police to potential weapons in real time.

Omnilert is only one of a whole host of US-based startups aiming to put an end to gun violence at schools, a demonstrably flawed alternative to gun control regulation.

According to the Baltimore Banner, Omnilert’s tech analyzes image frames from 7,000 school cameras for suspicious activity.

“Because the image closely resembled a gun being held, it was verified and forwarded to the Baltimore County Public Schools safety team within seconds for their assessment and decision-making,” Omnilert spokesperson Blake Mitchell told the Baltimore Banner.

“Even as we look at it now, with full awareness that it’s not a gun, it still looks like to most people like one,” he conceded.

According to FOX45 News, Omnilert later called the latest incident a “false positive” but maintained that it “functioned as intended: to prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”

Besides being scared for his life, Allen told FOX45 News that he had never received an apology from the school.

“They just told me it was protocol,” he said. “I was expecting at least somebody to talk to me about it.”

It’s a horrifying incident, highlighting how flawed tech is needlessly instilling fear in the hearts of innocent students.

“I don’t feel like going out there anymore,” Allen told FOX45. “If I eat another bag of chips or drink something, I feel like they’re going to come again.”

Allen’s relatives are understandably calling for more oversight.

“There was no threat for eight guns to be pointed at a 16-year-old,” his grandfather, Lamont Davis, told the Baltimore Banner.

More on gun detection: School’s $1 Million AI Gun Detection System Fails to Detect Weapon Before Fatal School Shooting

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🔗 Sumber: futurism.com