Category Archives: Technology

Science, Society, Technology

Questions of Science: The Large Hadron Collider…

Why does the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have to be so physically large, when it is only designed to detect particles that are extremely tiny?

The LHC is a synchrotron, a circular accelerator that uses carefully synchronised electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles to very high speeds. When this involves charged particles on a curved path they release synchrotron radiation, which wastes energy. This is not desirable because most of the particles that physicists are looking for, such as the recently discovered Higgs boson, have large masses and can only be created in high-energy collisions.

The large radius of the LHC’s track is big enough to limit the radial acceleration given to the particles, thus minimising the loss of energy the particles suffer as synchrotron radiation. The superconducting magnets used to control the flow and direction of the particles can accelerate them up to speeds in excess of 99.99 (but less than 100) per cent of the speed of light.

The magnets lie central in answering the question. The size of the LHC is actually a trade-off between three things: the magnets that are available; the energy (or velocity) it is necessary to give the particles; and, the feasible dimensions of the structure.

The faster the particles are moving, the more likely you are to see something interesting happen in a collision. So, it’s important to accelerate the particles, mainly protons, as much as possible.

The protons need to follow a circular path so they can be continuously accelerated by an electric field, and this is done using magnets positioned around the tunnel. The faster the protons travel, the stronger the magnetic fields need to be to keep them on track.

To increase energy there are two possible choices: make the magnets stronger or the accelerator ring larger, so that the particles’ path does not need to be bent so much. At some point there is either a technological or financial limit on the strength of the magnets, leaving the ring size as the only remaining variable.

However, to keep the costs of the project manageable, the LHC was built in an existing tunnel that housed a previous experiment, called the Large Electron-Positron Collider. So the energy to which protons can be accelerated was actually predetermined by limits of technology and funding.

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Google, Government, Human Rights, Society, Technology

Google’s buyout of drones raises privacy fears…

GOOGLE X

Intro: The addition of drones to Google’s robot army marks the outbreak of aerial combat in its battle for global internet supremacy

The internet giant Google has purchased a company that develops military-style drones in a controversial £36million deal.

Titan Aerospace makes unmanned aircraft that run on solar power and can remain airborne for five years at a time.

Google claims the technology will provide internet access to remote corners of the world. But the move has provoked privacy concerns over the internet company’s ability to snoop on people from great heights. The drones fly at 65,000ft – almost twice as high as passenger planes.

Because the drones are solar powered and always above the clouds they do not need to land to refuel, so the drones are able to cover up to 3million miles before needing to land for maintenance.

However, critics have raised fears over the company’s newly-acquired powers of mass global surveillance. Titan is merely the latest addition to its growing arsenal of robotics firms, and Google is highly secretive about its technological ambitions – all of its projects are run by a closely-guarded division mysteriously known as ‘Google X’.

A spokesperson for Big Brother Watch, a privacy campaign group, said:

… The regulation of drones is something that urgently needs addressing. Given Google’s track record is littered with overstepping the line and infringing people’s privacy, combining their hunger for data with drone technology is a mind boggling proposition.

COMMENT & ANALYSIS

Google’s multi-million dollar bid for a company that makes solar-powered drone aircraft marks the outbreak of aerial combat in its battle with Facebook for global internet supremacy.

The search engine giant has bought Titan Aerospace, a New Mexico start-up that previously caught the eye of Mark Zuckerberg, for an undisclosed price thought to be in the region of £36m ($60m).

Zuckerberg opted instead to snap up Ascenta, a tiny British engineering company based in rural Somerset – which is also working on solar-powered drones – for $20m.

The deals take both companies, which are dabbling in areas such as robots, driverless cars and contact lens cameras, even further into the realms of science fiction.

Despite mounting fears on stock markets over the bursting of a new tech bubble, in similar style to the early 2000s dotcom boom and bust, the Californian colossi remain ready to pay millions of pounds of investors’ money on futuristic technology.

Why, though, some may ask, the sudden interest in aviation? The answer is that Google and Facebook are vying to gain a stranglehold on potentially lucrative new online markets as some of the world’s poorest countries begin to be connected to the internet. Laying cables in the ground, they reckon, will take too long and cost too much, so they are trying to beam out signals from on high instead.

In their eyes, this is an altruistic enterprise, giving poor people cheap access to the internet. The drones, it is claimed, could also provide invaluable data on climate change, environmental damage and natural disasters. Google is excited in welcoming Titan Aerospace to the ‘Google family’.

Behind the gushing, however, critics perceive this new bonding as a highly dysfunctional one. The Titan deal is certain to ignite fresh fears over the internet giants’ power to pry into every aspect of people’s lives once they are equipped with robotic aircraft that can conduct surveillance from a high altitude.

It will also raise further questions among investors who are growing increasingly sceptical of tech stocks. Splashing millions on Titan, even though the company’s drones are still at the prototype stage, will be grist to the mill for the doubters. Eyebrows were previously raised following Google’s takeover of robotics company Boston Dynamics.

Facebook, for its part, has come under fire for its recent acquisition of WhatsApp in a $19bn deal, and its $2bn purchase of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset maker.

Google’s takeover of Titan promises to put at its disposal a swarm of dragonfly-shaped planes that can encircle the globe, staying aloft for up to five years, without ever having to refuel, since they are run on power generated by sunlight.

Titan’s Solara 60 drone has a 60 metre wingspan and is covered in around 3,000 solar panels generating electricity to power its flight. Its cruising speed is around 65mph and it has a range of more than 2.8miles.

The Solara 60 and another model, the smaller Solara 50, is a prototype but commercial versions are expected to be delivered next year.

The lightweight aircraft will be deployed as part of Google’s ‘Project Loon’. The name refers to balloons, rather than lunacy, but the idea stemmed from Google’s launching in 2013 of a number of large, high altitude balloons over the Southern Hemisphere to transmit internet signals.

The company’s growing robotic arsenal includes the sinister-looking Atlas, one of the terrifying looking robots acquired in the takeover of Boston Dynamics, a military manufacturer that produces animal-like and humanoid machines for the battlefield.

Google’s founders, Page and Sergey Brin, claim their mission is ‘to organise the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful’, which sounds innocuous enough.

Yet the very idea of two young billionaires who invented a clever algorithm and went on to command their own robot army and a fleet of drones would, until recently, have sounded like the tale of a Bond villain.

Still, to many, the prospect will be more than a little disquieting.

 

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Arts, Business, Consumer Affairs, Economic, Government, Society, Technology

Internet privacy and the need for firms to profit…

BIG DATA

The next phase of the internet revolution will concern Big Data. Coupled with that will be a ‘Big Debate’ about privacy.

Big Data, a Californian gold rush for the internet age, is all about the potential of the vast quantities of data generated online. It is only now that the brainboxes of Silicon Valley are beginning to harvest, store, transfer and analyse in ways that could prove extremely valuable to companies and governments among others.

Silicon Valley is well known for its liberal sprinkling of fledging firms whose business models are built around Big Data. AdParlour, for instance, set up in 2008 by young entrepreneur Hussain Fazal, is designed to build an advertising network for Facebook.

Whereas traditional advertising is transmitted to those who are not remotely interested as well as to prime potential customers, the new generation and streams of ads can be targeted at people based on personal data gleaned from their online activities.

As Fazal says: ‘Almost everywhere you go on the web, you are being tracked.’

The difficulty for companies such as Facebook, which styles itself as a trendy firm in tune with users, is that increasing numbers of people are uncomfortable with having their every online move observed and used for commercial gain.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a prominent article headlined ‘Give Me Back My Online Privacy’, which highlighted findings by the Pew Research Centre suggesting more than half of Americans are concerned about the amount of personal data online. Potentially there is big money in all that minutiae about our lifestyles and shopping habits.

The anecdotal evidence is important to note. The annual value to Facebook of an American woman who is a light user of the site is just over $12. This doesn’t sound a lot until you multiply this by the millions of users and factor in those online advertising techniques – many of which are still in their infancy – and are likely to become more sophisticated and effective over time.

The public mood among Americans about being watched online is more sensitive than it is in the UK following the revelations about the National Security Agency. Many Britons, though, do feel a sense of unease at the snooping of their personal data, and how the information may be exploited.

From the corporate point of view, probing into customer lifestyles and behaviours is not a novelty. Firms have always, and quite legitimately, wanted to know as much as they can about consumers, so they can target their products and prices to best advantage.

Loyalty cards have been tracking people’s purchases and giving stores information on shopping habits for years. Credit scoring for loans and plastic cards, which monitors behaviour in terms of how, when and whether people repay their debts, has also been a feature of the commercial landscape for some time.

At the moment, the use of Big Data to target ads is relatively crude, which is why those spawned by your previous purchases often miss the mark.

At this point in time, however, it is only scratching the surface. Once the so-called ‘internet of things’, where everyday objects are connected to the internet, takes hold, even your fridge will be tracking your habits, making known all about your clandestine food intake. Privacy is not an absolute, but a concept that changes according to time and place.

The internet is redefining some existing social norms: the generation that grew up with the internet and those that come after may be comfortable sharing information their parents and grandparents would have considered wholly personal.

At the moment, it would seem that many users either do not know or do not care that they might be giving away valuable information about themselves online. The online economy has unarguably brought significant consumer benefits.

Shoppers can easily compare prices and obtain the best deals, and can buy goods from anywhere in the world. Users value their experiences on Facebook and Twitter and may feel the surrender of some personal data is a price worth paying.

Set against that is the reality that the details of our day to day lives, hobbies, friendships, work and interests, is being mined by companies as if it were just another commodity.

Yet, it is an exchange in which the terms of the deal are not clear – we have no way of knowing how valuable our personal information might be to companies, and whether the benefits we receive in return are a fair deal.

The debate about privacy and commercial profit will become more pressing as the online world becomes smarter.

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