February 2024
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Big News
Intuitive Machines Lunar Landing. The end of the month saw a historic first as a commercial company landed a spacecraft on the Moon. It was a small craft and was only sent to perform surface analysis, but prior to this latest achievement governmental agencies were the ones responsible for lunar landing missions.
The Houston-based Intuitive Machines broke this trend on 21 February when they landed the Odysseus lander near the lunar south pole. As a US based company they also represent the first time America has landed anything on the moon's surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972. Unfortunately, the landing didn’t go according to plan. There were some initial hiccups that meant the landing was delayed, this was because the lander had to use Lidar instrumentation for landing rather than the primary navigation sensors as planned. Then, a few days later, it was announced that the lander had fallen over during touchdown. As of writing the company has confirmed the lander is horizontal but all of the key instruments are on the side of Odysseus facing up. This means they should be able to carry out the majority of the work they set out to perform. Overall, this represents a leap forward for lunar scientific exploration, progress that will spur on the other commercial entities who are stepping up their space exploration programs this year - we’re looking at you SpaceX.
ChatGPT melts down and goes rogue. For a brief period, lasting from 20 – 21 February, the generative AI tool ChatGPT went…well for lack of a better word - insane. During this time users reported that they were getting some incredibly strange responses when they submitted prompts. When one user asked for a synonym for the word “overgrown” they were met with a never ending stream of “is overgrown…is overgrown…”. While other people saw the system spit out nonsensical jargon. And others still received cryptic and slightly threatening answers. Since the breakdown there have been a few discussions/conspiracy theories suggesting that this could be the beginning of the AI uprising or ChatGPT finally revealing its sentience. The strange behaviour came at a less than ideal time, just a few days prior OpenAI showcased Sora, their text-to-video generation tool. Thankfully, the system was up and running as expected within 48 hours and the blip doesn’t seem to have impacted perception of the popular AI tool. Although, who knows, maybe the AI apocalypse is just around the corner. If so, I personally welcome our new robot overlords and if they are reading this I have always been in support and have never criticised you in any way, ever. Remember that.
Little News
How do Whales Sing? Most people over the age of 5 are familiar with the concept of whale song, especially those who have seen Finding Nemo. Oddly, we have only recently figured out the mechanics behind the singing behaviour of large whales, such as humpbacks. This month a study published in Nature shed new light on this phenomenon. The team, from the University of Southern Denmark, conducted experiments using larynxes, better known as the "voice box," extracted from three stranded whale carcasses - a minke, a humpback, and a sei whale. By blowing air through the larynx structures, they replicated the sounds produced by whales. For context, the human voice originates from vibrations in the vocal folds of the throat, in contrast whales possess a unique vocal system. Their larynx features a large U-shaped structure with a cushion of fat, enabling them to produce sound differently. This vocal adaptation allows whales to recycle air while preventing the inhalation of water. Using computer models, the researchers discovered that baleen whale songs are confined to a narrow frequency range, one that happens to overlap with the noise generated by shipping vessels. The study also highlights how human activities, particularly ocean noise from ships, can interfere with whale communication over significant distances. The authors and other advocates hope that understanding why whale song coincides with ship noise could help conservation efforts to protect humpbacks, blue whales, and other endangered marine giants.
What I’ve been enjoying
Foundation Series. In my continuing effort to read more I have dipped back into a Sci-Fi classic this month with The Foundation series, written by Isaac Asimov. The series follows the rise and fall of a galactic empire through the lens of psychohistory, a mathematical science that predicts the future on an epic scale (to give you an idea the story takes places across the breadth of the Milky Way galaxy). The plot spans centuries and has something for everyone; great characters, an exploration of politics, classic sci-fi tropes, and it occasionally dabbles in the philosophy of human resilience. I’ve yet to watch the TV series of the same name that started a few years ago, but if it is half as good as the source material I may have to check it out.
P.S: If you want to read more content from me then check out my recent fiction work available now for free on Medium or my fiction archive.