The Sound of Stars
Astronomers are translating their data into sounds to make their field more accessible to blind and visually impaired people, writes Timmy Broderick for Scientific American. "Seeing" the data in new ways could potentially lead to new discoveries too. In 2017, astronomers applied their musical knowledge to the TRAPPIST-1 system and found that the orbital periods of its exoplanets formed a major ninth chord. For Quanta, Joshua Sokol wrote about the "music of the spheres" that the scientists composed based on this data.
Nice Signature
A new kind of "Bayesian machine" can learn to recognize a person's signature with less training than a standard neural network, reports Nature Magazine. The microprocessor uses Bayesian reasoning to draw conclusions from incomplete information. Computer scientist Judea Pearl, who conceived of Bayesian networks in the 1980s, is now teaching computers about cause and effect. In 2018 for Quanta, Kevin Hartnett interviewed Pearl about this key step to building a truly intelligent machine. | |
