Lidar helps uncover an ancient, kilometer-long Mayan...
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13 TECHNOLOGY CONTACT US AT: 8351-9329, [email protected] Monday June 8, 2020 CHINA will soon make a signifi- cant contribution to the search for extraterrestrial life. Science and Technology Daily says the country’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, will begin looking for alien signals in September. Located in Pingtang County in Guizhou Province, FAST was officially unveiled in September 2016. As the world’s largest instrument of its type, it can detect radio waves from billions of light years away. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is one of the five main scientific goals of FAST. In 2018, FAST installed back-end equipment specifically to find extraterrestrials. “At present, the back-end equipment is being upgraded, and it is expected that new observations can be made after September, when the extra- terrestrial civilization search will be launched,” said profes- sor Zhang Tongjie of Beijing Normal University’s astronomy department. Typically, distinctive radio signals come from pulsars or random fast radio bursts. Still, if there are aliens broadcasting radio signals (and they’re close enough for us to receive them), FAST’s work will increase the chances that we receive them. (China Daily) HONOR, one of the two signature smartphone brands of Huawei Technologies Co., unveiled its latest 5G smartphone that can take users’ temperatures via infrared ray. This can help consumers better keep track of their health amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The smartphone includes an IR temperature sensor in its rear camera block that’s able to “measure the surface tem- perature of people and objects.” “Just aim the phone at someone’s forehead, tap through the app, and the phone will give you a temperature reading,” Huawei’s website says of the functionality. The temperature check does not substitute for a coronavirus test, but it can test for a fever, which can present as a symptom for the virus. The Honor Play 4 Pro has a 6.57-inch screen. Honor, created in 2013 to complement the Huawei brand, focuses primarily on its target audience of millennials and people pursuing young fashion- able lifestyles. (SD-Agencies) LIDAR is fast becoming one of the most influential tools in archaeology, revealing things in a few hours what might have taken months of machete wielding and manual measure- ments otherwise. The latest such discovery is an enormous Mayan structure, more than a kilometer long, 3,000 years old, and seemingly used for astronomical observations. Takeshi Inomata of the Uni- versity of Arizona is the lead author of the paper describing the monumental artificial pla- teau, published in the journal Nature. This unprecedented structure — by far the largest and oldest of its type — may remind you of another such discovery, the “Mayan mega- lopolis” found in Guatemala two years ago. Such huge structures, groups of foundations, and other evi- dence of human activity may strike you as obvious. But when you’re on the ground they’re not nearly as obvious as you’d think — usually because they’re cov- ered by both a canopy of trees and thick undergrowth. “I have spent thousands of hours of fieldwork walk- ing behind a local machete- wielding man who would cut straight lines through the forest,” wrote anthropologist Patricia McAnany, who was not involved in the research, for an commentary that also appeared in Nature. “This time-consum- ing process has required years, often decades, of fieldwork to map a large ancient Maya city such as Tikal in Guatemala and Caracol in Belize.” Lidar detects the distance to objects and surfaces by bouncing lasers off them. Empowered by powerful computational techniques, it can see through the canopy and find the level of the ground beneath, producing a detailed height map of the surface. In this case the research- ers picked a large area of the Tabasco region of Mexico, on the Guatemalan border, known to have been occupied by early Mayan civilization. A large- scale, low-resolution lidar scan of the area produced some leads, and smaller areas were then scanned at higher resolu- tion, producing the images you see here. What emerged was an enor- mous ceremonial center now called Aguada Fénix, the largest feature of which is an artificial plateau more than 10 meters tall and 1.4 kilometers in length. It is theorized that these huge pla- teaus, of which Aguada Fénix is the oldest and largest, were used to track the movement of the sun through the seasons and perform various rites. The high-resolution lidar map also helped accelerate other findings, such as that, owing to the lack of statues or sculptures in honor of contem- porary leaders, the community that built Aguada Fénix “prob- ably did not have marked social inequality” comparable to others in the 1,000-800 B.C. timeframe (calculated from carbon dating). That such an enormous project could have been accomplished without the backing and orders of a rich central authority — and at a time when Mayan communi- ties were supposed to be small and not yet stationary — could upend existing doctrine regard- ing the development of Mayan culture. All because of advances in laser scanning technology that most think of as a way for self- driving cars to avoid pedestri- ans. (SD-Agencies) Lidar helps uncover an ancient, kilometer-long Mayan structure Honor phone can take your temperature Giant Chinese telescope to look for aliens CHINA plans to launch a Long March 5 carrier rocket in July to send a spacecraft toward Mars that will land a rover on the red planet, according to the program’s major contractor. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, a State-owned space conglomerate, said in a statement last week that the Tianwen 1, or Quest for Heavenly Truth 1, mission will fulfill three scientific objectives — orbiting the red planet for comprehensive observation, landing on the Mar- tian surface and sending a rover to roam the landing site. It will conduct scientific investigations on Martian soil, geological struc- ture, environment, atmosphere and water. If Tianwen 1 succeeds, the mission will become the world’s first Mars expedition accom- plishing all three goals with one probe, the company said. Tianwen is a long poem by famous ancient poet Qu Yuan of the Kingdom of Chu during the Warring States Period (475- 221 B.C.). He is known for his patriotism and contributions to classical poetry and verses, especially through the poems of the Chu Ci anthology, also known as Songs of Chu. In the mission’s first step, a Long March 5, the nation’s big- gest and most powerful rocket, will blast off at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province to transport the robotic probe to the Earth-Mars transfer trajectory before the spacecraft begins its self-propelled flight toward Mars’ gravity field. The farthest distance between the Earth and Mars is about 400 million kilometers while the nearest is 55 million km, depending on their position in orbit. A probe will travel about seven months before reaching Mars’ atmosphere. The space contractor said the probe consists of three parts — an orbiter, lander and rover — and they will separate in Mars’ orbit. The orbiter will remain in orbit and the lander- rover combination will make an autonomous descent and landing. The rover, set to be the world’s seventh of its kind and the first from Asia, has six wheels and four solar panels and will carry six scientific instruments. It will weigh over 200 kilograms and work about three months on the planet, according to Sun Zezhou, the probe’s chief designer at the China Academy of Space Technology. Bao Weimin, director of sci- ence and technology at China Aerospace Science and Tech- nology Corp and an academi- cian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the biggest challenge will be the descent and landing. To understand and prepare for those difficulties, engineers carried out a key experiment in November to verify the design and capability of the lander- rover combination. A test model tied to a 140-meter metal tower conducted hovering, descent and obstacle-evading opera- tions in a simulated Martian gravitational environment at Asia’s largest test site for extra- terrestrial landings. (China Daily) Mission in July to place rover on Mars’ surface ▲ Archaeologist and co-author Melina Garcia excavates part of the Aguada Fénix site. ► Built over the course of 200 years, Aguada Fénix was abandoned just 50 years after its completion. Photos by Takeshi Inomata FAST
Transcript of Lidar helps uncover an ancient, kilometer-long Mayan...
13 TECHNOLOGYCONTACT US AT: 8351-9329, [email protected] Monday June 8, 2020
CHINA will soon make a signifi-cant contribution to the search for extraterrestrial life. Science and Technology Daily says the country’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, will begin looking for alien signals in September.
Located in Pingtang County in Guizhou Province, FAST was officially unveiled in September 2016. As the world’s largest instrument of its type, it can detect radio waves from billions of light years away.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is one of the five main scientific goals of FAST. In 2018, FAST installed back-end equipment specifically to find extraterrestrials.
“At present, the back-end equipment is being upgraded, and it is expected that new observations can be made after September, when the extra-terrestrial civilization search will be launched,” said profes-sor Zhang Tongjie of Beijing Normal University’s astronomy department.
Typically, distinctive radio signals come from pulsars or random fast radio bursts. Still, if there are aliens broadcasting radio signals (and they’re close enough for us to receive them), FAST’s work will increase the chances that we receive them. (China Daily)
HONOR, one of the two signature smartphone brands of Huawei Technologies Co., unveiled its latest 5G smartphone that can take users’ temperatures via infrared ray. This can help consumers better keep track of their health amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
The smartphone includes an IR temperature sensor in its rear camera block that’s able to “measure the surface tem-perature of people and objects.” “Just aim the phone at someone’s forehead, tap through the app, and the phone will give you a temperature reading,” Huawei’s website says of the functionality. The temperature check does not substitute for a coronavirus test, but it can test for a fever, which can present as a symptom for the virus. The Honor Play 4 Pro has a 6.57-inch screen.
Honor, created in 2013 to complement the Huawei brand, focuses primarily on its target audience of millennials and people pursuing young fashion-able lifestyles. (SD-Agencies)
LIDAR is fast becoming one of the most influential tools in archaeology, revealing things in a few hours what might have taken months of machete wielding and manual measure-ments otherwise. The latest such discovery is an enormous Mayan structure, more than a kilometer long, 3,000 years old, and seemingly used for astronomical observations.
Takeshi Inomata of the Uni-versity of Arizona is the lead author of the paper describing the monumental artificial pla-teau, published in the journal Nature. This unprecedented structure — by far the largest and oldest of its type — may remind you of another such discovery, the “Mayan mega-lopolis” found in Guatemala two years ago.
Such huge structures, groups of foundations, and other evi-dence of human activity may strike you as obvious. But when you’re on the ground they’re not nearly as obvious as you’d think — usually because they’re cov-ered by both a canopy of trees and thick undergrowth.
“I have spent thousands of hours of fieldwork walk-ing behind a local machete-wielding man who would cut straight lines through the forest,” wrote anthropologist Patricia McAnany, who was not involved in the research, for an commentary that also appeared in Nature. “This time-consum-ing process has required years, often decades, of fieldwork to map a large ancient Maya city such as Tikal in Guatemala and Caracol in Belize.”
Lidar detects the distance to objects and surfaces by bouncing lasers off them. Empowered by powerful computational techniques, it can see through the canopy and find the level of the ground beneath, producing a detailed
height map of the surface.In this case the research-
ers picked a large area of the Tabasco region of Mexico, on the Guatemalan border, known to have been occupied by early Mayan civilization. A large-scale, low-resolution lidar scan of the area produced some leads, and smaller areas were then scanned at higher resolu-tion, producing the images you see here.
What emerged was an enor-mous ceremonial center now called Aguada Fénix, the largest feature of which is an artificial plateau more than 10 meters tall and 1.4 kilometers in length. It is theorized that these huge pla-teaus, of which Aguada Fénix is the oldest and largest, were used to track the movement of the sun through the seasons and perform various rites.
The high-resolution lidar
map also helped accelerate other findings, such as that, owing to the lack of statues or sculptures in honor of contem-porary leaders, the community that built Aguada Fénix “prob-ably did not have marked social inequality” comparable to others in the 1,000-800 B.C. timeframe (calculated from carbon dating). That such an enormous project could have been accomplished without
the backing and orders of a rich central authority — and at a time when Mayan communi-ties were supposed to be small and not yet stationary — could upend existing doctrine regard-ing the development of Mayan culture.
All because of advances in laser scanning technology that most think of as a way for self-driving cars to avoid pedestri-ans. (SD-Agencies)
Lidar helps uncover an ancient, kilometer-long Mayan structure
Honor phone can take your temperature
Giant Chinese telescope to look for aliens
CHINA plans to launch a Long March 5 carrier rocket in July to send a spacecraft toward Mars that will land a rover on the red planet, according to the program’s major contractor.
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, a State-owned space conglomerate, said in a statement last week that the Tianwen 1, or Quest for Heavenly Truth 1, mission will fulfill three scientific objectives — orbiting the red planet for comprehensive observation, landing on the Mar-tian surface and sending a rover to roam the landing site. It will conduct scientific investigations on Martian soil, geological struc-ture, environment, atmosphere and water.
If Tianwen 1 succeeds, the mission will become the world’s first Mars expedition accom-
plishing all three goals with one probe, the company said.
Tianwen is a long poem by famous ancient poet Qu Yuan of the Kingdom of Chu during the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). He is known for his patriotism and contributions to classical poetry and verses, especially through the poems of the Chu Ci anthology, also known as Songs of Chu.
In the mission’s first step, a Long March 5, the nation’s big-gest and most powerful rocket, will blast off at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province to transport the robotic probe to the Earth-Mars transfer trajectory before the spacecraft begins its self-propelled flight toward Mars’ gravity field.
The farthest distance between the Earth and Mars is about
400 million kilometers while the nearest is 55 million km, depending on their position in orbit. A probe will travel about seven months before reaching Mars’ atmosphere.
The space contractor said the probe consists of three parts — an orbiter, lander and rover — and they will separate in Mars’ orbit. The orbiter will remain in orbit and the lander-rover combination will make an autonomous descent and landing.
The rover, set to be the world’s seventh of its kind and the first from Asia, has six wheels and four solar panels and will carry six scientific instruments. It will weigh over 200 kilograms and work about three months on the planet, according to Sun Zezhou, the probe’s chief
designer at the China Academy of Space Technology.
Bao Weimin, director of sci-ence and technology at China Aerospace Science and Tech-nology Corp and an academi-cian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the biggest challenge will be the descent and landing.
To understand and prepare for those difficulties, engineers carried out a key experiment in November to verify the design and capability of the lander-rover combination. A test model tied to a 140-meter metal tower conducted hovering, descent and obstacle-evading opera-tions in a simulated Martian gravitational environment at Asia’s largest test site for extra-terrestrial landings.
(China Daily)
Mission in July to place rover on Mars’ surface
▲ Archaeologist and co-author Melina Garcia excavates part of the Aguada Fénix site. ► Built over the course of 200 years, Aguada Fénix was abandoned just 50 years after its completion.
Photos by Takeshi Inomata
FAST
