WEBVTT - Marshall Brain's News Roundup 2-18-2011 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:13.040 Welcome to Brainstuff from stuff works dot com, where smart happens. Hi, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.960 Am Marshall Brandon, Welcome back for the third installment of 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.000 our Friday News round up. What's the biggest thing that 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.160 happened this week? From a technology and hype standpoint, it's 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:27.360 probably the whole Jeopardy thing and IBM s Watson supercomputer. 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:33.000 The system has almost three thousand cores and fifteen terabytes 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:37.400 of RAM, not fifteen gigabytes, fifteen trillion bytes of RAM. 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.599 That gives it about two thousand times the power of 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:44.480 today's one thousand dollar desktop machine that you might get 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.520 at best Buy or someplace like that. So how did 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:52.320 Watson answer all these questions on Jeopardy? According to IBM, 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:57.960 they fed Watson one terabyte of plain text information. So 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.680 they fed it the entire English version of Wikipedia, which 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.640 is something like seventeen million articles and fourteen gigabytes of 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:10.360 text information. They also fed it another entire encyclopedia, a 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:15.360 whole dictionary, a fasaurus, the Internet movie database, and lots 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:18.800 and lots of other stuff. They didn't have to structure 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:21.880 that data. It all went in as plain text, so 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.080 it wasn't like human being sat there and made little 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:27.959 knowledge structures out of it or something like that. This 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.400 plane text went in and that's what Watson used when 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.600 he was answering these questions because they used plain text. 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.160 What they're hoping is that this technology can be used 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.600 to create much better question answering systems in the real 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.960 world in the future, say for a call center or 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.280 for doctors to used with medical information or something like that. 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.520 You could imagine Google one day being able to really 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.200 answer any question you ask it in plain English with 0:01:56.280 --> 0:02:01.040 a good solid answer, and that would be a nice thing. Flip. 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.360 Speaking of supercomputers, the Department of Energy is hoping to 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.600 get a hundred and twenty six million dollars to spend 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.720 on the first excess scale supercomputer. This would be a 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.760 major accomplishment since the fastest supercomputers today are in the 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:21.200 one pedal flop range. A pedal flop is a quadrillion 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.800 floating point operations per second, which is a thousand trillion 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:29.600 floating point operations and x a flop would be a 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.839 thousand times faster than a pedal flop or a quintillion 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.760 floating point operations per second. So for comparison, it's thought 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.359 that the human brain the one that's sitting inside your 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.800 head right now is doing about ten pedal flops. Maybe 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.200 they're organized really well. You know, you have a vision 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.320 processor and a language processor, and I don't know a 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.119 Justin Bieber processor if you're a teenager. But we are 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.240 getting there in terms of raw computing power to the 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:02.240 point where you could simulate a brain in theory blip. 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.680 So how long will it be until you have a 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.000 pedal flop in your pocket? We got a little closer 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.519 this week when in Video announced its new call L 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:19.399 four core Tegra processor. Supposedly, we will see four cores 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.440 in tablets and smartphones by the end of this summer, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.720 say August of two thousand eleven. Plus. This chip includes 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.000 a twelve core graphics card on the chip as well, 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.840 and it uses just two watts or so. It's an 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:37.600 amazing accomplishment considering the same thing in a typical laptop 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:42.080 consumes about fifty watts. Right now, it means incredible computing 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:47.280 power and incredible battery life. In Video demonstrated it displaying 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:51.840 movies on a four d P display, not a ten 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:57.040 a DP display, a fourteen DP display, which is two thousand, 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:02.080 five hundred sixty pixels wide, and one was in pixels high. 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.760 That's almost twice as many pixels as HDTV, and it's 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.760 pretty common now to find high end monitors with that 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.400 many pixels. So in theory, you can get a tablet 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:18.440 computer in August, plug it into your giant p monitor, 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:24.400 and watch movies in the highest resolution ever Blip. I 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:26.440 did a podcast a couple of weeks ago where I 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.440 talked about the toy helicopter I bought for the kids. 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.479 It can fly for about seven minutes and it's very 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.240 precise when you're controlling it with the remote control. This week, 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:41.159 darpest showed off its new spy Hummingbird. It flies and 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.719 looks a lot like a hummingbird. Plus it has a 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.240 wireless video camera and microphone on board, so it can 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.839 fly land and then send an audio and video feed 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:53.640 to whoever wants to look at it. You can probably 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:55.760 expect to see one of these perched in a tree 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.240 in your yard in the near future. If you want 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.000 to see a video of this hummingbird flight, type interesting, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:07.440 reading number six eighty nine into Google Blip. Scientists have 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:12.239 discovered a species of multicellular life that can survive in space, 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.200 not in a spaceship, but in actual space, including the 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.479 hard vacuum, the cosmic rays, the extreme temperature changes, and 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.559 all the rest. The species is called a water bear. 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.200 A typical water bear is about a millimeter long. When 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.880 it's an adult, it has eight legs and a hard 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.640 outer shell. They don't mind being completely dried out, and 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:35.320 then they come back to life when you put them 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.400 in water. Several thousand water bears were sent into orbit 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:41.719 for ten days, and when they were put into water, 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.120 some of them were still alive and they were able 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:48.000 to reproduce. None of them became a million times larger 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.240 and started to rampage a nearby city. Though unfortunately, you 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:54.599 might have to send something else into space to get 0:05:54.600 --> 0:06:00.280 the Godzilla effect blip. Supposedly, the NPR show called This 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:03.640 American Life is on the verge of cracking the secret 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:07.760 recipe for Coca cola, and this recipe is now circulating 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.320 on the internet. Everything appears to be known except for 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.760 one super secret ingredient called seven X, which This American 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.960 Life is trying to crack as well. So what's in coke? 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.160 To make five gallons of syrup? You start with two 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:25.360 and a half gallons of water and thirty pounds of sugar. 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:32.320 Then you put in things like caffeine, lime juice, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.800 and orange oil, and even a cup of alcohol. If 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.159 you go to Interesting Reading number six eighty eight, you 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.400 can find the details of the recipe. But here's the thing. 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:44.880 I went to the grocery store this week and a 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:49.480 two lead bottle of coke is only cents. It's probably 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:54.039 easier to just buy it blip. Do you want to 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.760 get rid of a cold? I did a blog post 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.920 this week about one way to do it, using antihistamine 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.720 and mucus thinner on day one. The idea is that 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.240 if you see a cold coming on, like you start 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.919 to get that scratchy throat and the running nose and 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.520 the sneezing or whatever on that very first day, if 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:16.240 you hit it with antihistamines and mucus thinner and blowing 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:19.760 your nose a lot and using warm compresses, you can 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:23.320 get a lot of the crud out and that takes 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.480 a lot of the virus particles with it. Now science 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:28.800 has proven that there's another thing you can do to 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.840 stop colds, and this really works according to research, it's zinc. 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:36.760 They looked across dozens of studies, and they determined that 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.040 if you suck on zinc lozenges on day one, it 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.000 really does help to shorten the duration of the cold. 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.920 It might cut the duration in half, for example, and 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:50.240 it cuts way down on the cough part of the cold. Blip. 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.600 Colds can make you miserable, but science demonstrated another way 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.440 to bring on misery this week. It's Facebook. The more 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.160 Face Book friends you have supposedly the worst this Facebook 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:07.840 effect gets, according to tech Gui dot net quote. A 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:13.480 study from the psychology department of Edinburgh Napier University concludes 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.480 that all in all, the negative effects from being on 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.040 Facebook are outweighed by the benefits of staying in touch 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.880 with friends and family end quote. Plus. A new Jersey 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.000 cop recommended this week that if you're a parent, you 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.400 need to steal your kids Facebook password to keep track 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.440 of what they're doing on Facebook. If that wouldn't make 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:36.880 you miserable, I don't know what would. You can look 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:43.000 up interesting reading number six eight for details. Blip. China 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.839 is gearing up to make nuclear power from thorium. I've 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:49.560 written a fair amount about thorium power on the blog 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:53.559 because it's theoretically going to have a lot of advantages 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.920 over uranium power if you can get the bugs worked out. 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.800 Thorium is plentiful and it doesn't produce much high level 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.000 nuclear waste at all, meaning that no rogue nations are 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.160 going to be producing nuclear bombs out of a thorium 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.640 power plant. Plus the power plants could be a lot 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:13.240 smaller than a typical uranium power plant. But the US 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.520 and Canada have largely ignored thorium completely. They aren't looking 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.520 at it really at all. If China can make it work, 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.040 it would bring in a new era of cheap power 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.640 without the carbon emissions of coal, and that would be 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.960 a big deal in China. Blip. You may have heard 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:36.040 of thermoelectric generators. They turn heat directly into electricity. The 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:40.079 most famous thermoelectric generators in the universe are on the 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:45.839 Voyager spacecraft. Here, they take decaying plutonium to generate heat, 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:50.160 and the thermo electric generator makes electricity from that heat 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.040 for decades. That's why these Voyager spacecraft were able to 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:56.760 go off like I think they launched in the seventies 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.840 and they're still transmitting little bits of data today. Plutonium 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.880 has a half life of eighty seven years. I think, 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:08.560 so you can make a radio active thermoelectric generator that 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.400 has a really, really long lifespan. Well, here on Earth, 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.360 it'd be great to have thermo electric generators as well. 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.520 For example, you might hook one up to your hot 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:22.160 exhaust pipe and be able to generate electricity without having 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:24.880 to have an alternator that's sucking up engine power. That 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.800 would be a really nice way to increase fuel efficiency, 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.600 but we haven't had materials that generate enough electricity from 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:36.800 heat to make that practical. This week, scientists announced that 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.199 they have created a new material for thermo electric generators 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:45.160 that's better at generating electricity. So in theory, if they 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.120 can bring this to market, we could see all kinds 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.560 of interesting ways to generate power from waste heat blip. 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:57.760 NASA announced its design for a manned deep space vehicle 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:00.720 this week. This might be the kind of craft, for example, 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.079 to take people to Mars or maybe even to Jupiter. 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:08.320 It comes complete with a giant inflatable centrifuge to simulate gravity, 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.560 huge storage areas for food and water, living hoarders, robot arms, 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.520 landing craft, and so on. There are pictures of it 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.839 on the brain Stuff blog if you're interested. If you 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:23.360 type brain Stuff m M s e V, that's M 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:27.320 M s EV into Google, you can find the blog post. 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:33.120 Mm s EV stands for multimission space Exploration Vehicle. One 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.760 of the interesting things about it is that it's expandable, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.160 so you could have a short version of it for 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:40.200 a Moon mission, and then make it much longer if 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:44.240 you need to go to Mars or Jupiter blip. Speaking 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.280 of NASA, they announced this week the possibility of a 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.800 gig enormous planet way out beyond Pluto in the ort Cloud. 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.600 They think it might be there because it might explain 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.920 why comments from the ort cloud get deflected towards the Sun. 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.200 It would need to be a out four times bigger 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.320 than Jupiter if it would were to really exist out there. 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:07.199 Other scientists think the idea of such a huge planet 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:11.080 as nuts. If you google Interesting Reading number six eight seven, 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:15.760 you can read about the controversy blip. The Mars five 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:19.120 hundred mission landed on Mars this week. You may recall 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.360 that this is a big experiment that locks six people 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:26.080 in a large wooden spacecraft simulator sitting on the ground 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:28.760 in Russia. They go through all the motions of a 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.760 real Mars flight, including the isolation, the transmission delays, the 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:37.120 interpersonal relationship messes, and so on. Imagine being cooped up 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.680 with six people in an RV for more than a year, 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:41.160 and you kind of get the idea of what it 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.959 would be like on this mission. This week, three members 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.920 of the mission you know in simulation, descended down onto 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.280 Mars and got to walk around on simulated Martian soil 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.760 collecting samples. It's called the Mars five hundred thing because 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.600 the whole simulation is going to take five twenty days 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:01.960 to see, like the trip out and then the landing 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.920 and then the trip back. They launched back on June 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.439 three of two thousand ten. Blip. And finally, you may 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.520 have heard that drug smugglers have used all kinds of 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.800 tricks to bring drugs into the United States. They have 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:18.800 people swallow the drugs, They put them inside the tires 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.920 of trucks, they fly them in private airplanes. They tunnel 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.960 between Mexico and the United States with great, big long 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.000 tunnels with little railroads inside of them. They've tried all 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.440 kinds of stuff. There have also been some small submarines built, 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.880 but this week the most amazing of the Narco submarine surfaced. 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.080 It was captured in Colombia. It's a hundred feet long 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.600 and it could hold eight tons of cocaine. There are 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.560 photos of it. If you're interested, go to Interesting Reading 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:51.040 number six eight seven. So until next time, my Marshall 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:55.760 brain have a great weekend. For more on this and 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.840 thousands of other topics, does that how stuffworks dot com 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:00.800 and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:03.000 on the house stuff works dot com home page. You 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:05.959 can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:10.520 brain stuff h s W. The House Stuff Works iPhone 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.480 app has arrived. 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