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orbemnews · 4 years

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NASA Sent a Secret Message to Mars. Meet the People Who Decoded It. As NASA’s Perseverance rover fell through the Martian atmosphere last week, a video camera on the spacecraft captured the breakneck deployment of its parachute, which was decorated with splotches of reddish orange and white. Those splotches were a secret message. During a news conference Monday, Allen Chen, the engineer in charge of the landing system, narrated what could be seen and learned in the slowed-down video. He added, cryptically and nonchalantly, that his team hoped to inspire others. “Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose,” he said. “So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.” Across the Atlantic Ocean, Maxence Abela, a 23-year-old computer science student in Paris, realized what Mr. Chen was saying: The seemingly random pattern on Perseverance’s parachute contained a code. He called his father, Jerome, a software engineer at Google working in London, and the two set to solving it. “We like those kinds of little challenges,” Mr. Abela said. “We didn’t think we would be able to solve it, but we would at least try.” Collaborating via teleconference, they downloaded the video, isolated images showing the fully inflated parachute and started piecing together the bits. So did others around the world, trading insights on Twitter and forums on Reddit. “It’s just exciting that NASA is putting these little puzzles in their missions,” said Adithya Balaji, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who independently tackled the problem. Mr. Balaji compared the parachute puzzle to a couple of science fiction movies: “Contact,” where a scientist played by Jodie Foster unravels an alien message, and “The Martian,” where Matt Damon’s character Mark Watney communicates with people back on Earth using a similar code. “I think that it’s exciting that real life can be sometimes even more exciting than the movies,” Mr. Balaji said. The person who came up with the idea for embedding a message was Ian Clark, who led development of the parachute. NASA’s previous rover, Curiosity, used the same system when it successfully landed on Mars in 2012. But a failure of a prototype parachute intended for future missions spurred engineers to improve the design. While watching video of a high-altitude test of the new parachute for Perseverance, Dr. Clark noticed that the checkerboard pattern on the canopy made it difficult to track how individual portions of the parachute unfurled and inflated. Because Perseverance would be outfitted with video cameras, Dr. Clark wanted a pattern that would be visually distinct. That, in turn, provided an opportunity “to have a little fun with it,” he said. He asked Matt Wallace, a deputy project manager for the mission, for permission. “I told them OK,” Mr. Wallace recalled. “Just make sure it was appropriate and couldn’t be misinterpreted.” The 70-foot-wide parachute consisted of 80 strips of fabric radiating outward from the center to form a hemisphere-shape canopy, and each strip consisted of four pieces. Dr. Clark thus had 320 pieces to work with. Some of his ideas would have required additional colors, but that could have threatened the parachute’s integrity if untested dyes weakened the fabric fibers. “We were unwilling to go to a cloth that was dyed in a color that we had never used before,” Mr. Wallace said. Even a pattern of just orange and white, the two colors of previous parachutes, raised potential issues. “There’s all kinds of second-guessing questions,” Dr. Clark said. “Like could having more white than orange, or vice versa, mean that the parachute was going to warm up differently and maybe that would change its behavior?” After all, mission managers would have been embarrassed if they had to explain how they lost a $2.7 billion mission because a parachute engineer had sneaked in a secret message. But Dr. Clark’s analysis showed no ill effects, and the plan went forward. Until this week, only about half a dozen people knew about it. When computer scientists see something in black and white — or, in this case, orange and white — they think of binary code, the 1s and 0s that are the language of computers. That was the first clue that the puzzle solvers pursued on Monday. For each orange section on the Perseverance parachute, Maxence Abela and his father wrote down a 1, and for each white section, they assigned a 0. That translated into a long string of 1s and 0s. They thought that perhaps the digits could be rearranged into a picture, like the message that scientists broadcast in 1974 from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to tell distant alien civilizations of humans on Earth. “We couldn’t find anything that looked like anything,” Mr. Abela said. They tried breaking up the digits into groups of 8 — a common practice used in computer programming — but that too yielded gibberish. Then the elder Mr. Abela noticed that the digits seemed to fit in groups of 10. “Every 10 bits, there would be three zeros in a row,” Maxence Abela said. That, they decided, was not a coincidence. Still, the resulting numbers did not make sense until they realized they had read the 1s and 0s in the wrong direction, anticlockwise instead of clockwise. When they wrote down the digits in the opposite order, the 10-digit chunks of binary code translated into small numbers, which could then be assigned to letters. The number 1 corresponded to the letter A, the number 2 was B, 3 was C, 4 was D and so on. The message on the inner three rings: “DARE MIGHTY THINGS.” Mr. Abela posted on Twitter his answer at 4:36 p.m. Eastern time, about two hours after Mr. Chen had dropped his cryptic hint during the news conference. This is a credo often cited at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which built and operates Perseverance. It comes from “The Strenuous Life,” a speech by Teddy Roosevelt in 1899: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” There were still some numbers and letters in the fourth ring that neither Abela could make sense of. Those turned out to be the longitude and latitude of the NASA center: 34°11’58” N 118°10’31” W. “If you look in Google Earth, if you type in those coordinates, I think you’re about 10 feet from the door of the JPL visitor center,” Dr. Clark said. In the evening, Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer for Perseverance, posted an annotated diagram explaining the solution. The parachute was not the only fun that the builders of the Perseverance rover had. Eagle-eyed observers spotted a series of drawings that represented the five rovers NASA has sent to Mars, from the small Sojourner in 1997 to Perseverance now. A plaque that will be used to calibrate one of the rover’s main cameras includes patches of colors, but there are also whimsical drawings that include DNA, a rocket and a dinosaur. On the edge of the calibration plaque is an inscription: “Are we alone? We came here to look for signs of life, and to collect samples of Mars for study on Earth. To those who follow, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.” Elsewhere on the rover is a piece of a Martian meteorite that landed on Earth and is now back on its original planet. That is to be used for calibration of SuperCam, an instrument that uses lasers and a camera to identify carbon-based molecules and other compounds in rocks and soil. (Before going back to Mars, the same well-traveled rock made a round-trip visit to the International Space Station.) Also on Perseverance are three small chips with the names of 10.9 million people stenciled on them, part of NASA’s efforts for the public to participate in its robotic missions. A more solemn addition was an aluminum plate that honors hardships of those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The practice of adding fun or solemn pieces to spacecraft is not new. In NASA jargon, it is called “festooning.” The two Voyager spacecraft that are now in interstellar space have discs full of images and sounds of Earth. Two earlier Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, had parts made from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, carries some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered that world. On Perseverance, a few more surprises have yet to be revealed. “There’s some things on the front of the vehicle that we’ll have a chance to see once we deploy the robot arm,” Mr. Wallace said. He declined to say what they were or provide hints. “We’re going to let people enjoy the imagery when it comes,” he said. Source link Orbem News #decoded #Mars #Meet #message #NASA #People #secret

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amessycorner-blog · 7 years

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Zeke: adult brain, childish heart

Thank you, Isayama-sensei, for giving us a chapter chock-full of new meme material! " As expected of Pieck " will be the new " What is it, Eren? "

… jokes aside, I wanted to take advantage of this month's daily dose of Zeke to talk about something I've had in my head for a while, but couldn't express properly ( not being native to this language certainly doesn't help ). Bear with me if I make little sense; I'll try to tackle this topic to the best of my abilities.

Soooo… this post is about Zeke, of course; however, I won't tackle his patented Zeekretz , as tempting as it is, but his personality; bacuse since his very first appearance in the manga, I've always found him the most interesting, intriguing character in the whole story.

That's one way to make an impression, I guess.

In his first appearance, Isayama went out of his way to single Zeke out from the other Titans, or from the other Shifters, even, to make sure that we would notice him and remember him. From his unusual appearance ( I hope it will be eventually explained why his titan looks like an ape; after all, even Pieck's Titan doesn't look nearly as animalistic as Zeke's ), to the fact that he was the first Titan Shifter that could talk, and talk clearly ( ironic, isn't it, that the most animalistic of all the Shifters would also be the only one capable of intelligent speech while in Titan form ), to his affable cruelty and the unusual level of violence and brutality that permeated his persona ( damn you, Zeke; I haven’t forgiven you for Mike ),Isayama wanted to make very sure we wouldn't forget this new character.

So, sixty chapters after his introduction, what do we know about him and his personality? For starters, he is certainly an extremely intelligent and rational individual: in every instance he has appeared, he's always seemed to be several steps ahead of everyone else, whether it was about knowing that Annie couln't possibly be under torture as Armin had implied, to knowing exactly how to manipulate Mads Mikkelsen the Marleyan military leader to get what he wanted, the man his clearly extremely smart and calculating ( sold his parents to the Marleyans and had the sense to keep his royal blood to himself at the age of seven, anyone? ). Having blood as cold as a snake is clearly a trait he doesn't share with Eren. What he does have in common with his half brother, though, is an inquisitive nature and his endless curiosity, as his desire to know more about the Walldians' 3DMG contraption shows well. Also, the man is clearly well read, as his house overflowing with books demonstrates. The man is also clearly capable of interacting with his superiors and treading a dangerous path without a hitch, as his interactions with the Marleyans show:

He knows, and has the cold rationality to take advantage of, the best way to manipulate his superiors into doing exactly what he wants to do.

This remarkable brain, though, is accompanied by a, er, less than stellar human sensibility, let's just say:

Yeah.

But, while Mike's death was certainly the most striking example of this personality trait of Zeke's, we've had plenty of other instances to remind us that our dear (?) monkey trouble is indeed a stone-cold motherfucker if ever there was one: remember when he decided to bet Annie's safety over a brawl with Reiner? ' Cause I do:

So, I came out from my first, superficial read of the manga with a strongly negative impression of him; his cruelty and coldness were too repulsive to me to bother going past this ugly surface and try to see if there was more to his character than a plain sociopath.

However, during successive rereads, I started to notice something else: if Zeke was cold, and cruel, and calculating, he was also, oddly, playful? Childish, almost, and in many instances. I've already mentioned how he quieted his men's desire to save Annie through a mock-fight, which is certainly an, er, odd way to settle such an important matter; but we also see this in many other instances:

In this scene, Zeke refers to Annie as Annie-chan, just like he does with Pieck in the now infamous scenes from chapter 95: using -chan as a term of endearment, a big-brotherly way to refer to them; certainly odd, when talking about fellow Warriors ( and Warriors who had saved his life at that, like Pieck in Shiganshina, or who had fallen in action, like Annie ). It sounds strangely flippant, isn't it? And in the battle of Shiganshina, we have the most striking, chilling example of this behavior to date:

For Zeke, life is made to be enjoyed; a thought remarkably similar to Carla's, in a way, who believed life had meaning in and of itself, whether you became great or not; or even to Eren's who, unlike his father, is not moved by a great past or the belief in the existence of a chosen path for a select few, but finds his motivation in the belief that life is meaningful only when it's free. And yet… immediately after these words, Zeke proceeds to show us his own brand of " enjoyment": crushing people to bits with rocks.

Is this simple sociopathy, then? The figure of the " sociopath " is, in modern literature, a bit like what the " Dark Lord " was to older stories: an incarnation of evil without depth, cruelty born and incarnate; except that modern writers are apparently too cool for the concept of " dark lord ", and prefer to rely on the rationality of psychiatry to give their cardboard villain some flair and an aura of sophistication ( yes, I’m salty ). Is Zeke really this, though?

I propose a different interpretation of his personality, especially in light of the most recent chapters, where it has become more and more obvious that the man has plans of his own, and that the direction in which these plans will swing might end up being crucial to the resolution of the story: Zeke has, in my opinion, a remarkably developed brain and rationality, accompanied at the same time by a stunted emotional growth. Studies made during the course of the last century have shown how crucial the depth of emotion we're shown in the first months of our life is to our maturation: as has been said, a child's early emotional experiences become literally embedded in the architecture of their brains, and this development is closely tied to the social and emotional enviornment in which they live ( Hardvard university, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2004/04/Childrens-Emotional-Development-Is-Built-into-the-Architecture-of-Their-Brains.pdf ); in particular, several studies, including Erik Erikson's on the early developmental stages of a child, show how crucial the first few years of our lives are in the development of our emotional perception of the world: by age 5, the groundwork of our emotiona responses has been laid.

What was Zeke doing during this crucial developmental stage? While he hadn't started his Warrior Programme yet, we do know one thing about him: his parents were already trying to indoctrinate him:

Worse still, from the day he was born, he wasn't just their baby to them, but the Chosen One, the savior of the Eldian Race:

Since childhood, Zeke has never seen from his primary caretakers, his parents, any sign of consideration for his person as an independent individual: to them, he was a symbol first and foremost. And while I do believe Grisha and Dina did love their child, in their own way, how could Zeke have learned to see others as people, and to empathize with them, if since the very first days of his life he wasn't recognized as a person either?

Now, I want to make sure you know that I'm hardly an expert in developmental psychology; and that, obviously, every child is different and reacts to the circumstances of life differently. However, I do find this pattern in Zeke's life, specifically, to be remarkable and telling: the development of his heart didn't follow that of his brain.

Could that have an impact in his future actions in the manga? Of course it could: Zeke's basic lack of emotional empathy versus his logic and observational abilities are already evident in his first interaction with his little brother, Eren, when he automatically assumed that, since they had at least one parent in common, then Eren had to have gone through the same experiences he had: the thought of his father as a human being, as someone who changes and grows, and might not make the same mistakes again, especially in a different environment, doesn't seem to have occurred to him. And in this contest, I think it is irrelevant whether he really did mean to save Eren or not: even the mere evidence that Eren was not, in fact, son of Dina ( something he must have thought, given the accounts on his ability to use the Coordinate, but that was disproved by the evidence that Eren looked nothing like her, or Grisha for that matter ) was enough to shock this normally unflappable man, because he apparently hadn't thought at all of Eren's circumstances being different from his own. In what way will this personality trait of his influence the future plot, remains to be seen; however, I do believe that it will have a crucial role in future chapters, influencing, as it does, his basic perception of reality. As a bottom line, I came out of these successive rereads convinced that Zeke is not, in fact, a cruel, evil man, but an individual incapable of emotional empathy; and yet, as someone still capable of rational empathy, someone who could see the cruelty and unfairness of the Eldians' situation in the context of the bigger picture, and decide, with his cold logic, whether it would be best for him to take advantage of this situation, or rectify the pointless strife and loss of human life they're currently in to create and environment in which life could finally be enjoyable again.

#zeke jaeger #beast titan #snk spoilers #snk meta #snk thoughts #image heavy

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