hammmatt

Thank you for thanking us. It is easy to love that which loves us. Which makes me question the motives of the lover... ah consciousness is exhausting, huh?

I agree.

However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are in need of more observational evidence?

Interesting style. Maybe there is more room for artistically styled websites.

An interesting article, but full of speculation. Many assumptions where made to produce the conclusions and the data (like an asteroid being worth 20 trillion).

Yes, I agree with many of the predictions of the article. Like how private industry will take over the space exploration. But the opinion of the author and I is about as valuable as a crystal ball.

If we are going to play the speculation game, here is what interests me about the subject.

1) Who would get the mining rights in space? Or would it be a 'gold rush?' If so, would it be like international waters with no laws? Could I achieve my childhood dream of being a space pirate? ;)

2) Most of the asteroids of our solar system take months to reach reach with our fastest ships. If you want a human presence we are talking YEARS. Humans on prolonged space flights are very, very tricky to take care of. That makes a strong case for only sending robots, and that would require some very wicked AI, since the transmission times for controls would be too great.

Think about all the hazards and procedures the robot(s) would have to perform. Guidance, acquisition, positioning, detection of surroundings, plotting return course, AVOIDANCE, ext. And the hardware implications, the fuel, the power, capturing, ext.

It would make a Mars rover look like an RC car. And the two mars rovers cost us approx. 820 million dollars.

The cost of development may be justified by a 20 trillion dollar prize, but the cost to buy in is very high. If a corporation did want to fund it with billions of dollars without knowing if they were going to see a return, and willing to wait years for it. Then you have a winner, I don't see anyone jumping at the bit to take that risk though.

3) While asteroid mining seems like a great idea. Why are aren't we being more creative about the other things we can do in space? Where is the startup mentality?

How about technicians that repair satellites in orbit? Great place to hone the programing for the asteroid gatherers.

Thank you for the more in-depth explanation. The signal pixel camera is an interesting application.

I would imagine one of the most powerful applications would be compression of files. Might make things easy for big websites like facebook. Or allow zip to make files smaller. Or a flash card that hold more information.

I'd had to learn more about the technology. But EE standpoint there are two big questions:

How fast is the process? I'd imagine that it work fast enough for images, voice and but not fast enough for video. I'd imagine the speed will increase as people start playing with it.

And does the photo have to be compressed using the algorithm? The single pixel camera idea and many other signal capture operations really open up if you can just take a swab of the signal at random intervals. Perhaps a cool little program could be written to hunt for the necessary data points and capture them.

This technology will definitely bring improvement to many fields over time.

Interesting website! I loved how the diagram of the hardware had an apple II in it.

I'm curious about what are the consequences of the discovery.

What effects will this have on the storage of photos?

Can this principal be extrapolated to other forms of data?

A few of the conclusions of the article are misleading. Or rather, they have not been put in proper context.

Dolphins brains are large, but they are made mostly of glial cells which insulate the dolphins brain from the cold ocean water.

They shown many signs of intelligence, however, that is not as rare as people think in the animal kingdom. For example, Donkeys can count better than dolphins. Most of us have witnessed a dog or cat solving a problem in the world around it. Vampire bats have a system of social 'accounting' keeping track of which bats donate blood to the group and which don't. The examples continue.

Their has been a 'movement' in human thinking for some time that dolphins are our counterparts of the sea. There were many experiments by a Dr. Lily (creator of the deprivation tank) to show the intelligence of dolphins. His studies showed little evidence, but made bold claims. Ever since then I believe there has been a 'buzz' around the intelligence of dolphins. Which is substantial but over exaggerated.

The overall theme of the article, should humans take animal intelligence more seriously is a valid claim. Intelligence is rampant in the animal kingdom and it deserves an examination. A great book on the subject is, "Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan, although he focuses on human development.

Douglas Adams (loosely paraphrased): Humans believed themselves to be the most intelligent species on Earth because they developed machines of war and New York City. Dolphins knew they were more intelligent because they did build machines of war or New York City. All they did was eat fish and play all day.

It would seem that there is a bit to much hype around the product. Perhaps as more information comes out, the more 'out there' claims will gain credulity.

The real power of this discovery is going to be the ideas and patent behind it.

Since the dawn of the industrial age we have depended on some form of combustion/heat generation to produce steam thus turning turbines and creating electricity. This technology might be the first real step in generating electricity cheaply and efficiently through more elegant processes.

This may be the first iteration of changing the way humans gather electricity.

The industry standard for measuring the efficiency of a power generator does not include transmission losses.

However, I have seen people include it in the past as a way of manipulating the numbers. I doubt this is the case with this number. It should be close to 60%