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Comment Re:France Loves Nuclear Power So Much... (Score 1) 94

by orsayman (#65034279) Attached to: France Adds First New Nuclear Reactor to Its Grid Since 1999
Are you aware that the source you use (which is in line with what I know) states the exact opposite of what you said about the Chernobyl cloud namely that no official ever said the cloud stopped at the frontier and won all cases against people who said that ? Instead it was an over-simplification of the official statement by some (state-owned) TV weather bulletin and environmentalists/people opposed to nuclear repeated over and over that the authority lied to the point that some people swear they heard the official said that the cloud stopped (I used to believe that). Nevertheless, it seems that the fist estimates were a bit low though nobody says it was dangerous.

Submission + - Final results of the MICROSCOPE mission confirms Einstein's equivalence principe

Submitted by orsayman
orsayman writes: Remember the MICROSCOPE satellite ? In 2017, based on its first results, scientists were able to confirm Einstein's equivalence principle (a key assumption in General Relativity) to unprecedented precision.

Recently, they were able to improve precision by almost another order of magnitude by using all the data. Fortunately (or not) no violation of the principle was detected which could help physicists to improve their theories of quantum gravity.

Apparently the team expects to send a new mission “in the second half of the 2030s” aiming for another huge improvement in precision.

Comment Re:Why fight innovation? (Score 1) 117

You beat me on that ! Although to be picky, "Minitel" was the name of the terminal (the network was called "Teletel" - I have just learned that). Minitel was a nice technological project (it used the best technology at its time). I would be less categorical than you on the socio-economic consequences. Citing the article you linked "The extent to which Minitel enhanced or hindered the development of the Internet in France is widely debated.".

Comment A bit more on Tara (Score 1) 35

TFA says little about the Tara Foundation which sponsors the ship. They made several expeditions all around the world each one with its specific focus. I think the the current one tries to measure microplastics in European rivers. Each expedition led to deep and interesting discoveries and I think the whole story is a nice scientific adventure like in the 18th century (HMS Beagle).

Disclaimer: I work at one of the lab involved in sequencing and analysing DNA samples from Tara :).

Comment Re:AI buzzword (Score 1) 156

by orsayman (#59431930) Attached to: Secretive Energy Startup Backed By Bill Gates Achieves Solar Breakthrough
Agreed. Older solar furnaces (and sunflowers) did that without a problem or training as the problem is rather deterministic.
TFA is quite poor on that. The only relevant paragraph is:
Heliogen uses computer vision software, automatic edge detection and other sophisticated technology to train a field of mirrors to reflect solar beams to one single spot.
I guess they only slightly improved tracking or make the system easier to install or maintain with computer vision (which I won't call AI).

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