Borg09

It appears this may have been circulating for some time, but there is an image from the HiRISE camera from NASA that "suggests" the object in the image is alien in nature. To me it could be anything, but is one of the more interesting images I've seen that seem to fool your eyes into seeing (perhaps) something that is not there.

I would rather we develop and streamline:

• Better and more efficient methods of propulsion drive and power (engines etc.) This includes less dependency on petroleum, economical utilization of clean fuels (can you consider hydrogen?) and power storage. The versatility of extremely high-capacity/durable batteries is important for electric vehicles.
   
  
• Vehicle designs optimized for simplified manufacturing and robustness. This decreases price too.
• Regarding safety and automated navigation: sensor comprehension, local-environment awareness, and highly calculated decisive performance. So in other words, I mean cars that can safely and reliably drive themselves. Its obviously not possible to use satellite information for realizing a ditch dug the recent morning, make any common traffic maneuvers, or whatever requires more than a map (almost everything in real-time and local), so GPS would remain as a mechanism only for macro-route suggestion. But that doesn't shadow any doubts on the technology. I believe it has the potential of becoming incredibly more skillful and safe at driving than most humans. As far as I know, its just a short matter of time and money. There's a lot of promising research already. Even some rudimentary features are already beginning to be commercialized (automatic-parking etc.)
   
  Note: As a lover of computer science, I've written about this subject the most. Better (or worse) yet, I just got in an accident yesterday. Thankfully, I'm just bruised with very cut hands (glass!) but the wrangled car told a different story. I'm a new driver, and now all the more paranoid!
   
  I just want to see one of these self-driving cars compete in NASCAR, just like the classic AI vs human chess games (where the AI wins, yes!)

All more practical and useful than the dream of flying cars.

 

 

I've heard of a private vertical-ascension vehicle but the price tag is somewhere between one and four million. I don't remember what it was exactly. Sorry.

yeah, I agree. More focus needs to be on getting away from fossil fuel dependence, refining electric and hydrogen as well. And certainly Google has demonstrated that in the very near future, automobile automation will be taking on a life of its own, somewhat literally.

Movies like the forth coming reboot of Total Recall will entice though, with more cars that resemble those from Back to the Future. Its fun to dream though.

This topic has been on many people's minds for years now. The dream of flying a car off the highway to avoid traffic, then lightly touching down at your destination.

As this thread seems to indicate, that is still a ways off, though the company that makes the Terrafugia Transition seems to hope it is sooner than we expect.

http://slashdot.org/submission/2007837/traffic-jam-ahead-no-problem-take-to-the-skies-in-your-terrafugia

For about $279,000 though and sooner than we may think.

I still think the vehicle of the future would take off vertically and land anywhere, not just on dedicated runways. But the whole concept brings up 200 other questions on safety and transportation issues.

I thought this article was interesting and thought provoking.

Has anyone else heard about this finding that humans from 1 million years ago may have used fire?

http://slashdot.org/submission/2006745/did-our-ancient-ancestors-cook-1-million-years-ago

Here's the latest on the faster-than-lightspeed neutrino possibility. It seems that new measurements seem to contradict the original measurements but they do not seem to be able to exactly explain why there is a difference between the original observations and the present ones.

 

(quote from link)

 

http://www.scienceda...20316204743.htm

Lets hope their new tests can shed some light (pun intended) on this intriguing topic