Slashdot Mirror
Intelligent Satellite Notices Volcanic Activity
Dik Zak points us to this NASA page about a new generation of intelligent Earth observation satellites. From the article: "The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know that, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one had told it to. EO-1 (short for "Earth Observing 1") noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang on its own. Indeed, by the time many volcanologists were reading their emails from the UN, 'EO-1 already had data,' says Steve Chien, leader of JPL's Artificial Intelligence Group."
It was December the 3rd, the day skynet became self aware....
...)!
What an absolutely awesome piece of self identifying hotzone locating piece of hardware, the guys at Cyberdyne must have had a field day making it.
And now the intelligence is growing. "We're teaching EO-1 to use sensors on other satellites." Examples: Terra and Aqua, two NASA satellites which fly over every part of Earth twice a day. Each has a sensor onboard named MODIS. It's an infrared spectrometer able to sense heat from forest fires and volcanoes--just the sort of thing EO-1 likes to study. "We make MODIS data available to EO-1," says Chien, "so when Terra or Aqua see something interesting, EO-1 can respond."
This thing sounds like it can detect a fart from orbit!
What I want to know is if all this processing actually occurs onboard the sat, or if its a land based super computer brain?
Are these machines by chance running Linux? or are they using another VX-Works OS?
For the first time every I really think it could be possible for us to build a beowolf cluster of linux running space fem-bots, all we need to do is sabotage the main dev tree (if(GPS.Height>'200miles')
Year of the desktop? PAH! This year - the world!
liqbase
Did the satellite tell anyone it noticed anything? That's important too.
--<Mike>--
"Is this real intelligence? "Absolutely," he says. EO-1 passes the basic test: "If you put the system in a box and look at it from the outside, without knowing how the decisions are made, would you say the system is intelligent?" Chien thinks so."
Does anyone else find this disturbing. Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek season 2 Episode 12, 16 minutes in, 45 seconds where.......errr never mind.
The US has had satellites that detect missile launches for decades. Calling this thing AI is a stretch; a sensor picks up something and it starts collecting. Maybe some pattern matching, not much else.
This sort of thing is being funded under the next-generation space reconnaissance satellite programs for the follow-on programs for the KH-11/12 and Lacrosse birds as well as the sats used to detect IR plumes of rockets and nuclear detonations.
I saw it in Janes a while back, no time to find sources right now, working on papers for Grad School.
OK, I'll bite. I'm a scientist who does utterly useless, blue-sky type stuff that will never make anyone money, or save anyone's life. So why should anyone pay me to do things that don't have a clear payoff?
The answer I've come up with is that these things- pure research, art, music, philosophy, museums- may not make us live any longer, and they may not make us richer, but they make our lives richer. Sure, if we diverted all government funding from the arts, public TV, the Smithsonian, the National Parks Service and soforth, and used it to fund stuff that would directly benefit people, people might live longer, more comfortable lives. But a world with less art, music, museums, and pure research is a deader, duller, less interesting world. Who'd want to live in that world? I'm not saying that justifies any level of funding, you've got to figure out how many dollars you're willing to pay for each "Angels in America" (an incredible work funded by the NEA, incidentally), but it's worth something and I'm more than happy to have my tax dollars promote that kind of thing. It's a hell of a lot more productive than having my tax dollars kill my countrymen and foreigners in the Middle East. And a hundred million a year works out to what, 30 cents per American on the arts?
The other answer is that there is a payoff, but it's a long-term, indirect one. Look at a city like New York. It's a vibrant, changing, economic powerhouse. Part of that, I think, is that the city is so filled with the arts- writers, photographers, musicians, scholars and soforth- that it's just a damn interesting place to live. Many of the best and the brightest from across the nation are drawn to the city because they want to experience a place that's alive intellectually and artistically, and in the long term that helps the city to reap huge economic benefits. I think a vibrant culture will help foster a vibrant economy. If nothing else, millions of people visit cities like New York and San Francisco to take in that culture, spending a lot of money in the process. So I think that long term, a few dollars wisely invested in the arts and academia are a good move.
I replaced this for the 'beep' in Windows once. Was funny for a few days.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo