Month: August 2017

Enlarge / That lovely blue exterior could be hiding a heart of diamond. (credit: NASA)

Carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen are some of the easiest heavier elements to form through fusion. As a result, they're common in our Solar System, typically found combined with hydrogen to make ammonia, water, and methane. In the gas and ice giants of the outer Solar System, however, these chemicals are placed under extreme pressures, where chemistry starts to get a bit weird. Do these chemicals survive the crushing interiors of these planets?

One intriguing idea is that methane doesn't survive. As pressure and temperature increase, methane should start condensing into more complex hydrocarbons. Then, as pressures increase further, calculations indicate the hydrogen and carbon should separate out, leaving pure carbon to sink to the depths of these planets. As a result, it's been hypothesized that, close to their core, planets like Neptune and Uranus have a layer of pure diamond.

While some evidence supporting this theory has surfaced over the years, it's been hard to precisely replicate the temperatures and pressures found inside the planets. Now, new work done at the SLAC X-ray laser facility supports the idea that these planets are full of diamonds. But the work indicates the diamonds only form at greater depths than we'd previously thought.

Enlarge (credit: flickr user: David Wood)

Hallucinations tend to be associated with psychosis, but the reality is more complicated than that. Some people who hear voices don’t suffer from other mental health problems, and the voices they hear aren’t distressing. These “non-clinical voice-hearers” provide an important opportunity to understand hallucinations without the complications of mental illness or medication.

A preliminary study published this week in the journal Brain reports that non-clinical voice-hearers were more likely to detect language in a recording of distorted speech. Voice-hearers also showed some different patterns in brain activation as they listened. The results could help to explain why some people are more likely to hear voices, as well as help to direct future research on the topic.

Hearing meaning in noise

Ben Alderson-Day, the lead author on the paper, is a psychologist at Durham University whose research focuses on auditory hallucinations. To investigate differences of perception in voice-hearers, Alderson-Day and his colleagues used sine-wave speech, which strips out some of the most vital acoustic properties of speech and leaves something that sounds kind of like a series of clicks and whistles. It’s possible to understand it—once you already know what it says, or once you’ve listened to quite a bit of sine-wave speech. (Listen to some examples here.)

Warning: This piece contains mild spoilers for Netflix's What Happened to Monday?

Halfway through its major 2017 original film push, Netflix seems to have more hits than misses. That's not to say the company has had its Stranger Things equivalent; none of Netflix's films has captured popular conversation as sweepingly as traditional offerings like Get Out or Baby Driver. Maybe the Brad Pitt-driven War Machine fizzled, but Okja and The Discovery became favorites around the Ars Slack water cooler, while smaller projects like Joe Swanberg’s Win It All keep hope alive that future Netflix films like the high-profile Bright (Will Smith and elf cops?) and the smaller Death Note (supernatural manga adaptation just released) can still deliver this year.

Critical wins and losses for these projects may be the headline grabber, but Netflix continues to grow as a film company in a less flashy, more traditional manner: as a distributor. "Netflix original" these days seems to encompass both films produced for Netflix with invested streaming money (see War Machine, Bright) and a bevy of films the company picks up after they're previewed on the festival circuit.

Every major film festival these days is followed by a round of announcements where Amazon and Netflix engage in an arms war to snag the best and most unique content. Almost precisely one year ago, the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival proved no different. IndieWire proclaimed Netflix’s spending there “left few acquisition targets for traditional distributors,” as the company snagged things like a biopic about a young President Obama called Barry.

Enlarge / Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. , left, and UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor face off during a news conference at the KA Theatre at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on Wednesday. The two will meet in a super welterweight boxing match at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday. A judge has ordered piracy sites not to stream the mega-event, but whether they'll abide is anybody's guess. (credit: Brandon Magnus/ZuffaLLC via Getty Images)

The Mayweather-McGregor fight is almost here. The boxing battle between Floyd "Money" Mayweather Jr. and UFC star Conor "the Notorious" McGregor is expected to start tonight at 9pm ET at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Millions are expected to tune in for the event on Showtime and elsewhere and pay up to $99 for the live video feed. Mayweather is being paid a $100 million fee and McGregor, $75 million. Overall, promoters are expected to earn up to $1 billion in pay-per-view revenue globally.

With so much money at stake, it's no wonder dozens of piracy sites have thrown their hats into the ring, offering the fight either for free or for a much cheaper fee. In response, Showtime has convinced a federal judge to issue an injunction against the 44 sites it believes will show the fight Saturday night. The court ruling prohibits them from streaming the bout.

Enlarge / As seen in 2006, DC cops are using a new tool in fighting crime: the ShotSpotter, which uses highly sophisticated microphones to detect the sound of gunshots and send a signal to dispatchers. (credit: Michael Robinson-Chavez/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

With the president at Camp David for most of the weekend, the United States Secret Service decided that now would be a good time to fire off a few live rounds on the grounds of the White House—so it can evaluate a gunshot-detection technology known as ShotSpotter.

The mounted microphone and computer system is designed to detect gunshots via their audio signature and send prompt alerts to local authorities.

In a series of tweets on Saturday morning, the CEO of ShotSpotter, Ralph Clark, said that 90 cities and 10 university campuses currently use it, including recent additions in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The system has been in use by the Metropolitan Police Department—which serves the city of Washington, DC—for many years.

Enlarge / From the bureau of Transportation Statistics: “Long-haul freight truck traffic in the United States is concentrated on major routes connecting population centers, ports, border crossings, and other major hubs of activity. Except for Route 99 in California and a few toll roads and border connections, most of the heaviest traveled routes are on the Interstate System.” (credit: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration)

On Thursday, Reuters reported that Tesla is building electric semis with ranges of 200-300 miles. Tesla has said it will make all details about the semis public at an announcement in September.

Ars reached out to the company to confirm the report, and a spokesperson responded with a statement saying: “Tesla’s policy is to always decline to comment on speculation, whether true or untrue, as doing so would be silly.”

So if the report is true, would a truck with a range of 200-300 miles be enough to win entry into the freight trucking market? Possibly. A 2013 report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado notes that “trucks dominate the market today for freight shipments under 500 miles, which account for almost 80 percent of all domestic freight tonnage.” Freight that needs to travel 500 miles or more tends to be transported by rail, waterways, or pipeline, at least if you’re counting by tonnage (the Bureau of Transportation Statistics counts oil and gas pipeline deliveries as freight).

Enlarge / Portland's Erika M. Anderson, better known in experimental-music worlds as EMA, talks to Ars in July 2017. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

PORTLAND, Ore.—After a recent evening of dinner and drinks with artist/musician Erika Anderson, I was taken to a stranger's apartment, then asked to put on a VR headset and lie on a floor. I did as I was told, without any explanation of what was about to happen. I could hear muffled giggling in the room through my headphones as a VR scene opened up above me.

I had landed in an alternate reality of technicolor skies while laying on what appeared to be a massage table. The VR experience invited me to look to my left, where I saw a mirrored reflection of "myself." I had become a brightly colored naked woman. Then, the ponies appeared. Little pink ponies began slowly prancing in my direction, and once they reached my virtual body, I could feel something in real life—like little hooves—"running" over my arm just as they appeared in VR.

A few hours earlier, I had asked Anderson, better known to indie and experimental music fans as the critically acclaimed EMA, to show me around her current hometown of Portland in whatever way she pleased. I did this in part to talk about her brand-new, well-reviewed album, Exile in the Outer Ring, but also about her dabbling with technology in the public sphere and what her future tech-related plans might be. I should have known that her Portland tour would somehow combine computers, art, discomfort, and insanity. I just didn't think it'd lead me to an impromptu VR animal-massage experience on a dirty apartment floor.

Enlarge / No spoilers this high up on the page, but Bilquis and Technical Boy existed within the same show. (credit: Starz)

Warning: This story contains light spoilers for S1 of American Gods

The first season of American Gods surpassed whatever our expectations were for an adaptation of the beloved Neil Gaiman novel. Starz evidently felt the same way, quickly renewing it for season two and telling attendees during last month's Television Critics Association press tour they'd be happy to have the series go beyond that.

"We're on board as long as the show makes sense for Starz," CEO Chris Albrecht said during his network's event. "The vision of Neil Gaiman is the guiding light for all of us, and Bryan Fuller and Michael Green are the guiding lights of that."