Saturn

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Saturn

Saturn in natural color, photographed by Cassini, 2004
Designations
Pronunciation	i/ˈsætərn/[1]
Adjectives	Saturnian, Cronian
Orbital characteristics[5][a]
Epoch J2000.0
Aphelion	1513325783 km (10.11595804 AU)
Perihelion	1353572956 km (9.04807635 AU)
Semi-major axis	1433449370 km (9.5820172 AU)
Eccentricity	0.055723219
Orbital period	10759.22 d 29.4571 yr 24491.07 Saturn solar days[2]
Synodic period	378.09 days[3]
Average orbital speed	9.69 km/s[3]
Mean anomaly	320.346750°
Inclination	2.485240° to Ecliptic 5.51° to Sun's equator 0.93° to invariable plane[4]
Longitude of ascending node	113.642811°
Argument of perihelion	336.013862°
Known satellites	62 with formal designations; innumerable additional moonlets.[3]
Physical characteristics
Mean radius	58232±6 km[6][b]
Equatorial radius	60268±4 km[6][b] 9.4492 Earths
Polar radius	54364±10 km[6][b] 8.5521 Earths
Flattening	0.09796±0.00018
Surface area	4.27×1010 km2[b][7] 83.703 Earths
Volume	8.2713×1014 km3[3][b] 763.59 Earths
Mass	5.6846×1026 kg[3] 95.152 Earths
Mean density	0.687 g/cm3[3][b] (less than water)
Surface gravity	10.44 m/s²[3][b] 1.065 g
Escape velocity	35.5 km/s[3][b]
Sidereal rotation period	10.57 hours[8] (10 hr 34 min)
Equatorial rotation velocity	9.87 km/s[b] 35500 km/h
Axial tilt	26.73°[3]
North pole right ascension	2h 42m 21s 40.589°[6]
North pole declination	83.537°[6]
Albedo	0.342 (Bond) 0.47 (geometric)[3]
Surface temp. min mean max 1 bar level 134 K (-139°C)[3] 0.1 bar 84 K[3]
Apparent magnitude	+1.47 to −0.24[9]
Angular diameter	14.5″ to 20.1″[3] (excludes rings)
Atmosphere[3]
Scale height	59.5 km
Composition	≈ 96% hydrogen (H2) ≈ 3% helium (He) ≈ 0.4% methane (CH4) ≈ 0.01% ammonia (NH3) ≈ 0.01% hydrogen deuteride (HD) 0.0007% ethane (C2H6) Ices: ammonia (NH3) water (H2O) ammonium hydrosulfide (NH4SH)

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Named after the Roman god of agriculture, its astronomical symbol (♄) represents the god's sickle. Saturn is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth.^[10][11] While only one-eighth the average density of Earth, with its larger volume Saturn is just over 95 times more massive.^[12][13][14]
Saturn's interior is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel and rock (silicon and oxygen compounds), surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and an outer gaseous layer.^[15] The planet exhibits a pale yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. Electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's magnetic field but has a magnetic moment 580 times that of the Earth due to Saturn's larger body radius. Saturn's magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth the strength of Jupiter's.^[16] The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h (500 m/s), faster than on Jupiter, but not as fast as those on Neptune.^[17]

Saturn has a prominent ring system that consists of nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs, composed mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two^[18] known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This does not include the hundreds of "moonlets" comprising the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon, is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to retain a substantial atmosphere.^[19]

Physical characteristics

Composite image roughly comparing the sizes of Saturn and Earth

Saturn is classified as a gas giant because the exterior is predominantly composed of gas and it lacks a definite surface, although it may have a solid core.^[20] The rotation of the planet causes it to take the shape of an oblate spheroid; that is, it is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. Its equatorial and polar radii differ by almost 10%: 60,268 km versus 54,364 km, respectively.^[3] Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, the other gas giants in the Solar System, are also oblate but to a lesser extent. Saturn is the only planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water—about 30% less.^[21] Although Saturn's core is considerably denser than water, the average specific density of the planet is 0.69 g/cm³ due to the gaseous atmosphere. Jupiter has 318 times the Earth's mass,^[22] while Saturn is 95 times the mass of the Earth,^[3] Together, Jupiter and Saturn hold 92% of the total planetary mass in the Solar System.^[23]

Internal structure

Saturn is termed a gas giant, but it is not entirely gaseous. The planet primarily consists of hydrogen, which becomes a non-ideal liquid when the density is above 0.01 g/cm³. This density is reached at a radius containing 99.9% of Saturn's mass. The temperature, pressure and density inside the planet all rise steadily toward the core, which, in the deeper layers of the planet, cause hydrogen to transition into a metal.^[23]

Standard planetary models suggest that the interior of Saturn is similar to that of Jupiter, having a small rocky core surrounded by hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of various volatiles.^[24] This core is similar in composition to the Earth, but more dense. Examination of the gravitational moment of the planet, in combination with physical models of the interior, allowed French astronomers Didier Saumon and Tristan Guillot to place constraints on the mass of the planet's core. In 2004, they estimated that the core must be 9–22 times the mass of the Earth,^[25][26] which corresponds to a diameter of about 25,000 km.^[27] This is surrounded by a thicker liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen that gradually transitions into gas with increasing altitude. The outermost layer spans 1,000 km and consists of a gaseous atmosphere.^[28][29][30]

Saturn has a very hot interior, reaching 11,700 °C at the core, and the planet radiates 2.5 times more energy into space than it receives from the Sun. Most of this extra energy is generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism of slow gravitational compression, but this alone may not be sufficient to explain Saturn's heat production. An additional mechanism may be at play whereby Saturn generates some of its heat through the "raining out" of droplets of helium deep in its interior. As the droplets descend through the lower-density hydrogen, the process releases heat by friction and leaves the outer layers of the planet depleted of helium.^[31][32] These descending droplets may have accumulated into a helium shell surrounding the core.^[24]

Diagram of Saturn

Atmosphere

Auroral lights at Saturn’s north pole.^[33]

The outer atmosphere of Saturn contains 96.3% molecular hydrogen and 3.25% helium.^[34] The proportion of helium is significantly deficient compared to the abundance of this element in the Sun.^[24] The quantity of elements heavier than helium are not known precisely, but the proportions are assumed to match the primordial abundances from the formation of the Solar System. The total mass of these heavier elements is estimated to be 19–31 times the mass of the Earth, with a significant fraction located in Saturn's core region.^[35]

Trace amounts of ammonia, acetylene, ethane, propane, phosphine and methane have been detected in Saturn's atmosphere.^[36][37][38] The upper clouds are composed of ammonia crystals, while the lower level clouds appear to consist of either ammonium hydrosulfide (NH₄SH) or water.^[39] Ultraviolet radiation from the Sun causes methane photolysis in the upper atmosphere, leading to a series of hydrocarbon chemical reactions with the resulting products being carried downward by eddies and diffusion. This photochemical cycle is modulated by Saturn's annual seasonal cycle.^[38]

Cloud layers

A global storm girdles the planet in 2011. The head of the storm (bright area) passes the tail circling around the left limb.

Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s. Since then, Earth-based telescopy has improved to the point where regular observations can be made.^[40]

The composition of the clouds varies with depth and increasing pressure. In the upper cloud layers, with the temperature in the range 100–160 K and pressures extending between 0.5–2 bar, the clouds consist of ammonia ice. Water ice clouds begin at a level where the pressure is about 2.5 bar and extend down to 9.5 bar, where temperatures range from 185–270 K. Intermixed in this layer is a band of ammonium hydrosulfide ice, lying in the pressure range 3–6 bar with temperatures of 290–235 K. Finally, the lower layers, where pressures are between 10–20 bar and temperatures are 270–330 K, contains a region of water droplets with ammonia in aqueous solution.^[41]

Saturn's usually bland atmosphere occasionally exhibits long-lived ovals and other features common on Jupiter. In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged an enormous white cloud near Saturn's equator that was not present during the Voyager encounters and in 1994, another, smaller storm was observed. The 1990 storm was an example of a Great White Spot, a unique but short-lived phenomenon that occurs once every Saturnian year, roughly every 30 Earth years, around the time of the northern hemisphere's summer solstice.^[42] Previous Great White Spots were observed in 1876, 1903, 1933 and 1960, with the 1933 storm being the most famous. If the periodicity is maintained, another storm will occur in about 2020.^[43]

The winds on Saturn are the second fastest among the Solar System's planets, after Neptune's. Voyager data indicate peak easterly winds of 500 m/s (1800 km/h).^[44] In images from the Cassini spacecraft during 2007, Saturn's northern hemisphere displayed a bright blue hue, similar to Uranus. The color was most likely caused by Rayleigh scattering.^[45] Infrared imaging has shown that Saturn's south pole has a warm polar vortex, the only known example of such a phenomenon in the Solar System.^[46] Whereas temperatures on Saturn are normally −185 °C, temperatures on the vortex often reach as high as −122 °C, believed to be the warmest spot on Saturn.^[46]

North pole hexagonal cloud pattern

Saturn - North polar hexagon and vortex as well as rings (April 2, 2014).

A persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere at about 78°N was first noted in the Voyager images.^[47][48][49]

The sides of the hexagon are each about 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long, which is longer than the diameter of the Earth.^[50] The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s (the same period as that of the planet's radio emissions) which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn's interior.^[51] The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere.^[52]

The pattern's origin is a matter of much speculation. Most astronomers believe it was caused by some standing-wave pattern in the atmosphere. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in the laboratory through differential rotation of fluids.^[53][54]

South pole vortex

Saturn's south pole storm

HST imaging of the south polar region indicates the presence of a jet stream, but no strong polar vortex nor any hexagonal standing wave.^[55] NASA reported in November 2006 that Cassini had observed a "hurricane-like" storm locked to the south pole that had a clearly defined eyewall.^[56][57] This observation is particularly notable because eyewall clouds had not previously been seen on any planet other than Earth. For example, images from the Galileo spacecraft did not show an eyewall in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter.^[58]

The south pole storm may have been present for billions of years.^[59] This vortex is comparable to the size of Earth, and it has winds of 550 km/h.^[59]

Other features

Cassini has observed a series of cloud features nicknamed "String of Pearls" found in northern latitudes. These features are cloud clearings that reside in deeper cloud layers.^[60]

Magnetosphere

HST UV image of Saturn taken near equinox showing both polar aurorae

Saturn has an intrinsic magnetic field that has a simple, symmetric shape – a magnetic dipole. Its strength at the equator – 0.2 gauss (20 µT) – is approximately one twentieth of that of the field around Jupiter and slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field.^[16] As a result Saturn's magnetosphere is much smaller than Jupiter's.^[61] When Voyager 2 entered the magnetosphere, the solar wind pressure was high and the magnetosphere extended only 19 Saturn radii, or 1.1 million km (712,000 mi),^[62] although it enlarged within several hours, and remained so for about three days.^[63] Most probably, the magnetic field is generated similarly to that of Jupiter – by currents in the liquid metallic-hydrogen layer called a metallic-hydrogen dynamo.^[61] This magnetosphere is efficient at deflecting the solar wind particles from the Sun. The moon Titan orbits within the outer part of Saturn's magnetosphere and contributes plasma from the ionized particles in Titan's outer atmosphere.^[16] Saturn's magnetosphere, like Earth's, produces aurorae.^[64]

Orbit and rotation

The average distance between Saturn and the Sun is over 1.4×10⁹ km (9 AU). It takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days (or about 29 ¹⁄₂ Earth years), to finish one revolution around the Sun.

The average distance between Saturn and the Sun is over 1.4 billion kilometres (9 AU). With an average orbital speed of 9.69 km/s,^[3] it takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days (or about 29½ years),^[65] to finish one revolution around the Sun.^[3] The elliptical orbit of Saturn is inclined 2.48° relative to the orbital plane of the Earth.^[3] The perihelion and aphelion distances are, respectively, 9.022 and 10.053 au, on average. ^[66] The visible features on Saturn rotate at different rates depending on latitude and multiple rotation periods have been assigned to various regions (as in Jupiter's case).

System I has a period of 10 h 14 min 00 s (844.3°/d) and encompasses the Equatorial Zone, the South Equatorial Belt and the North Equatorial Belt.

All other Saturnian latitudes, excluding the north and south polar regions, are indicated as System II and have been assigned a rotation period of 10 h 38 min 25.4 s (810.76°/d).

The polar regions are considered to have rotation rates similar to System I.

System III refers to Saturn's internal rotation rate. Based on radio emissions from the planet in the period of the Voyager flybys, it has been assigned a rotation period of 10 h 39 min 22.4 s (810.8°/d). Because it is very close to System II, it has largely superseded it.^[67] A precise value for the rotation period of the interior remains elusive, however. While approaching Saturn in 2004, Cassini found that the radio rotation period of Saturn had increased appreciably, to approximately 10 h 45 m 45 s (± 36 s).^[68][69] In March 2007, it was found that the variation of radio emissions from the planet did not match Saturn's rotation rate. This variance may be caused by geyser activity on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The water vapor emitted into Saturn's orbit by this activity becomes charged and creates a drag upon Saturn's magnetic field, slowing its rotation slightly relative to the rotation of the planet.^[70][71][71]

The latest estimate of Saturn's rotation (as an indicated rotation rate for Saturn as a whole) based on a compilation of various measurements from the Cassini, Voyager and Pioneer probes was reported in September 2007 is 10 hours, 32 minutes, 35 seconds.^[72]

Planetary rings

The rings of Saturn (imaged here by Cassini in 2007) are the most massive and conspicuous in the Solar System.^[29]

False-color UV image of Saturn's outer B and A rings; dirtier ringlets in the Cassini Division and Enke Gap show up red.

Saturn is probably best known for the system of planetary rings that makes it visually unique.^[29] The rings extend from 6,630 km to 120,700 km above Saturn's equator, average approximately 20 meters in thickness and are composed of 93% water ice with traces of tholin impurities and 7% amorphous carbon.^[73] The particles that make up the rings range in size from specks of dust up to 10 m.^[74] While the other gas giants also have ring systems, Saturn's is the largest and most visible. There are two main hypotheses regarding the origin of the rings. One hypothesis is that the rings are remnants of a destroyed moon of Saturn. The second hypothesis is that the rings are left over from the original nebular material from which Saturn formed. Some ice in the central rings comes from the moon Enceladus's ice volcanoes.^[75] In the past, astronomers believed the rings formed alongside the planet when it formed billions of years ago.^[76] Instead, the age of these planetary rings is probably some hundreds of millions of years.^[77]

Beyond the main rings at a distance of 12 million km from the planet is the sparse Phoebe ring, which is tilted at an angle of 27° to the other rings and, like Phoebe, orbits in retrograde fashion.^[78] Some of the moons of Saturn, including Pandora and Prometheus, act as shepherd moons to confine the rings and prevent them from spreading out.^[79] Pan and Atlas cause weak, linear density waves in Saturn's rings that have yielded more reliable calculations of their masses.^[80]

Natural satellites

A montage of Saturn and its principal moons (Dione, Tethys, Mimas, Enceladus, Rhea and Titan; Iapetus not shown). This famous image was created from photographs taken in November 1980 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Saturn has at least 150 moons and moonlets, 53 of which have formal names.^[81][82] Titan, the largest, comprises more than 90% of the mass in orbit around Saturn, including the rings.^[83] Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, may have a tenuous ring system of its own,^[84] along with a tenuous atmosphere.^{[85][86][87][88]}

Possible beginning of a new moon of Saturn (April 15, 2013).

Many of the other moons are very small: 34 are less than 10 km in diameter and another 14 less than 50 km but larger than 10 km.^[89] Traditionally, most of Saturn's moons have been named after Titans of Greek mythology. Titan is the only satellite in the Solar System with a major atmosphere^[90][91] in which a complex organic chemistry occurs. It is the only satellite with hydrocarbon lakes.^[92][93]

On June 6, 2013, scientists at the IAA-CSIC reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere of Titan, a possible precursor for life.^[94] On June 23, 2014, NASA claimed to have strong evidence that nitrogen in the atmosphere of Titan came from materials in the Oort cloud, associated with comets, and not from the materials that formed Saturn in earlier times.^[95]

Saturn's moon Enceladus has often been regarded as a potential base for microbial life.^{[96][97][98][99]} Evidence of this life includes the satellite's salt-rich particles having an "ocean-like" composition that indicates most of Enceladus's expelled ice comes from the evaporation of liquid salt water.^{[100][101][102]}

In April 2014, NASA scientists reported the possible beginning of a new moon, within the A Ring, of the planet Saturn.^[103]

History of exploration

There have been three main phases in the observation and exploration of Saturn. The first era was ancient observations (such as with the naked eye), before the invention of the modern telescopes. Starting in the 17th century progressively more advanced telescopic observations from earth have been made. The other type is visitation by spacecraft, either by orbiting or flyby. In the 21st century observations continue from the earth (or earth-orbiting observatories) and from the Cassini orbiter at Saturn.

Ancient observations

Saturn has been known since prehistoric times.^[104] In ancient times, it was the most distant of the five known planets in the solar system (excluding Earth) and thus a major character in various mythologies. Babylonian astronomers systematically observed and recorded the movements of Saturn.^[105] In ancient Roman mythology, the god Saturnus, from which the planet takes its name, was the god of agriculture.^[106] The Romans considered Saturnus the equivalent of the Greek god Cronus.^[106] The Greeks had made the outermost planet sacred to Cronus,^[107] and the Romans followed suit. (In modern Greek, the planet retains its ancient name Cronus—Κρόνος: Kronos.)^[108]
The Greek scientist Ptolemy based his calculations of Saturn's orbit on observations he made while the planet was in opposition.^[109] In Hindu astrology, there are nine astrological objects, known as Navagrahas. Saturn, one of them, is known as "Shani", judges everyone based on the good and bad deeds performed in life.^[109][106] Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture designated the planet Saturn as the "earth star" (土星). This was based on Five Elements which were traditionally used to classify natural elements.^[110]

In ancient Hebrew, Saturn is called 'Shabbathai'.^[111] Its angel is Cassiel. Its intelligence or beneficial spirit is Agiel (layga) and its spirit (darker aspect) is Zazel (lzaz). In Ottoman Turkish, Urdu and Malay, its name is 'Zuhal', derived from Arabic زحل.

European observations (17th–19th centuries)

Robert Hooke noted the shadows (a and b) cast by both the globe and the rings on each other in this drawing of Saturn in 1666.

Saturn's rings require at least a 15-mm-diameter telescope^[112] to resolve and thus were not known to exist until Galileo first saw them in 1610.^[113][114] He thought of them as two moons on Saturn's sides.^[115][116] It was not until Christiaan Huygens used greater telescopic magnification that this notion was refuted. Huygens discovered Saturn's moon Titan; Giovanni Domenico Cassini later discovered four other moons: Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione. In 1675, Cassini discovered the gap now known as the Cassini Division.^[117]

No further discoveries of significance were made until 1789 when William Herschel discovered two further moons, Mimas and Enceladus. The irregularly shaped satellite Hyperion, which has a resonance with Titan, was discovered in 1848 by a British team.^[118]

In 1899 William Henry Pickering discovered Phoebe, a highly irregular satellite that does not rotate synchronously with Saturn as the larger moons do.^[118] Phoebe was the first such satellite found and it takes more than a year to orbit Saturn in a retrograde orbit. During the early 20th century, research on Titan led to the confirmation in 1944 that it had a thick atmosphere – a feature unique among the solar system's moons.^[119]

Modern NASA and ESA probes

Pioneer 11 flyby

Pioneer 11 (a.k.a Pioneer-Saturn)

Pioneer 11 carried out the first flyby of Saturn in September 1979, when it passed within 20,000 km of the planet's cloud tops. Images were taken of the planet and a few of its moons, although their resolution was too low to discern surface detail. The spacecraft also studied Saturn's rings, revealing the thin F-ring and the fact that dark gaps in the rings are bright when viewed at high phase angle (towards the sun), meaning that they contain fine light-scattering material. In addition, Pioneer 11 measured the temperature of Titan.^[120]

Voyager flybys

In November 1980, the Voyager 1 probe visited the Saturn system. It sent back the first high-resolution images of the planet, its rings and satellites. Surface features of various moons were seen for the first time. Voyager 1 performed a close flyby of Titan, increasing knowledge of the atmosphere of the moon. It proved that Titan's atmosphere is impenetrable in visible wavelengths, therefore no surface details were seen. The flyby changed the spacecraft's trajectory out from the plane of the solar system.^[121]

Almost a year later, in August 1981, Voyager 2 continued the study of the Saturn system. More close-up images of Saturn's moons were acquired, as well as evidence of changes in the atmosphere and the rings. Unfortunately, during the flyby, the probe's turnable camera platform stuck for a couple of days and some planned imaging was lost. Saturn's gravity was used to direct the spacecraft's trajectory towards Uranus.^[121]

The probes discovered and confirmed several new satellites orbiting near or within the planet's rings, as well as the small Maxwell Gap (a gap within the C Ring) and Keeler gap (a 42 km wide gap in the A Ring).

Cassini–Huygens spacecraft

On July 1, 2004, the Cassini–Huygens space probe performed the SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) maneuver and entered into orbit around Saturn. Before the SOI, Cassini had already studied the system extensively. In June 2004, it had conducted a close flyby of Phoebe, sending back high-resolution images and data.

Cassini - Titan flyby radio signal studies (artist concept; June 17, 2014)

Cassini's flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has captured radar images of large lakes and their coastlines with numerous islands and mountains. The orbiter completed two Titan flybys before releasing the Huygens probe on December 25, 2004. Huygens descended onto the surface of Titan on January 14, 2005, sending a flood of data during the atmospheric descent and after the landing.^[122] Cassini has since conducted multiple flybys of Titan and other icy satellites.

NASA-ESA's Cassini spacecraft photographs the Earth and Moon (visible bottom-right) from Saturn (July 19, 2013).

Saturn's North polar vortex (animation) (infrared)

Since early 2005, scientists have been tracking lightning on Saturn. The power of the lightning is approximately 1,000 times that of lightning on Earth.^[123]

In 2006, NASA reported that Cassini had found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Images had shown jets of icy particles being emitted into orbit around Saturn from vents in the moon's south polar region. According to Andrew Ingersoll, California Institute of Technology, "Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust. What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."^[124] Over 100 geysers have been identified on Enceladus.^[125] In May 2011, NASA scientists at an Enceladus Focus Group Conference reported that Enceladus "is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it".^[126][127]

Cassini photographs have led to other significant discoveries. They have revealed a previously undiscovered planetary ring, outside the brighter main rings of Saturn and inside the G and E rings. The source of this ring is believed to be the crashing of a meteoroid off two of the moons of Saturn.^[128] In July 2006, Cassini images provided evidence of hydrocarbon lakes near Titan's north pole, the presence of which were confirmed in January 2007. In March 2007, additional images near Titan's north pole revealed hydrocarbon "seas", the largest of which is almost the size of the Caspian Sea.^[129] In October 2006, the probe detected an 8,000 km diameter cyclone-like storm with an eyewall at Saturn's south pole.^[130]

Enceladus - South Pole - Geysers spray water from many locations along the "tiger stripes".^[125]

From 2004 to November 2, 2009, the probe discovered and confirmed 8 new satellites. Its primary mission ended in 2008 when the spacecraft had completed 74 orbits around the planet. The probe's mission was extended to September 2010 and then extended again to 2017, to study a full period of Saturn's seasons.^[131]

In April 2013 Cassini sent back images of a hurricane at the planet's north pole 20 times larger than those found on Earth, with winds faster than 530 km/h.^[132]

On July 19, 2013, Cassini was pointed towards Earth to capture an image of the Earth and the Moon (and, as well, Venus and Mars) as part of a natural light, multi-image portrait of the entire Saturn system. The event was unique as it was the first time NASA informed the people of Earth that a long-distance photo was being taken in advance.^[133]

Observation

Amateur telescopic view

Saturn is the most distant of the five planets easily visible to the naked eye, the other four being Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. (Uranus and occasionally 4 Vesta are visible to the naked eye in very dark skies.) Saturn appears to the naked eye in the night sky as a bright, yellowish point of light with an apparent magnitude of usually between +1 and 0. It takes approximately 29.5 years for the planet to complete an entire circuit of the ecliptic against the background constellations of the zodiac. Most people will require an optical aid (very large binoculars or a small telescope) that magnifies at least 30 times to achieve an image of Saturn's rings, in which clear resolution is present.^[29][112] Twice every Saturnian year (roughly every 15 Earth years), the rings briefly disappear from view, due to the way in which they are angled and because they are so thin.^[134] Such a "disappearance" will next occur in 2025, but Saturn will be too close to the sun for any ring-crossing observation to be possible.^[135]

Saturn and its rings are best seen when the planet is at, or near, opposition, the configuration of a planet when it is at an elongation of 180°, and thus appears opposite the Sun in the sky. A Saturnian opposition occurs every year—approximately every 378 days—and results in the planet appearing at its brightest. However, both the Earth and Saturn orbit the sun on eccentric orbits, which means their distances from the sun vary over time, and therefore so do their distances from each other, hence varying the brightness of Saturn from one opposition to the other. Also, Saturn appears brighter when the rings are angled such that they are more visible. For example, during the opposition of December 17, 2002, Saturn appeared at its brightest due to a favorable orientation of its rings relative to the Earth,^[136] even though Saturn was closer to the Earth and Sun in late 2003.^[136]

Saturn eclipses the Sun, as seen from Cassini.

Also, from time to time Saturn is occulted by the moon (that is, the Moon covers up Saturn in the sky). As with all of the planets in our solar system, occultations of Saturn occur in “seasons”. Saturnian occultations will take place 12 or more times over a 12-month period, followed by about a five-year period in which no such activity is registered.^[137] Australian astronomy experts Hill and Horner explain the seasonal nature of Saturnian occultations:

This is the result of the fact that the moon’s orbit around the Earth is tilted to the orbit of the Earth around the sun – and so most of the time, the moon will pass above or below Saturn in the sky, and no occultation will occur. It is only when Saturn lies near the point that the moon’s orbit crosses the “plane of the ecliptic” that occultations can happen – and then they occur every time the moon swings by, until Saturn moves away from the crossing point.^[137]

In culture

Saturn, from a 1550 edition of Guido Bonatti's Liber astronomiae

Saturn in astrology () is the ruling planet of Capricorn and, traditionally, Aquarius.

• Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age is a movement in Gustav Holst's The Planets.
• The Saturn family of rockets were developed by a team of mostly German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond.^[138] Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo program.
• The day Saturday is named after the planet Saturn, which is derived from the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn (linked to the Greek god Cronus).^[139][140]
• In Saturn's Rings is an upcoming movie from director Stephen van Vuuren about Saturn. It features more than a million photographs of the planet assembled with various techniques. The film is expected to be released in early 2014.

Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets – SLS could face Exploration Class rival

August 29, 2014 by Chris Bergin

Original link:  http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/08/battle-heavyweight-rockets-sls-exploration-rival/

 

With the recent announcement the Space Launch System (SLS) has become challenged by her schedule, the NASA rocket may soon find herself in a battle with a commercial “alternative”.
SpaceX’s super powerful Exploration Class rocket is targeting crewed missions to Mars up to 10 years ahead of SLS – although both vehicles continue to avoid being classed as competitors.
Monster Rockets:

The requirement of a Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (or HLV) for lofting large payloads into deep space has been a central element of mission architectures since the Apollo program.

During the Space Race, both the Soviet Union (with the N1 rocket) and the United States (with the Saturn V) were challenged with sending humans to the surface of the Moon, assisted by the power of a HLV.

While the N1 suffered from four launch failures, the Saturn V was a success, allowing the United States to achieve the historic goal of Man on the Moon.

Since NASA returned to the realm of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) via the Space Shuttle Program (SSP), plans for a new HLV have been numerous, such as the National Launch System (NLS) evaluations in the early 1990s.

Although some experts claim a HLV is a luxury budget item – and instead promote the use of a train of Medium Lift Launchers to loft numerous elements of payloads for assembly in orbit – the “need” for an Exploration Class HLV has usually been at the forefront of NASA’s exploration mindset.

The since-defunct Constellation Program (CxP) concurred with this requirement, working via the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) recommendations that created a “1.5 architecture” of the Ares I crew vehicle and the Ares V HLV.

Both before and after CxP’s cancellation, alternatives were already being discussed, once again with a HLV at the center of the evaluations.

Alternatives ranged from Agency to independent proposals, such as the DIRECT movement that was created via members of the NASASpaceFlight.com forum, before earning a review by the Augustine Commission’s Review of the USA’s Human Space Flight plans in 2009.

That review also discussed the Flexible Path approach, which recommended a monster 200 metric ton human rated “Exploration Class” launch vehicle as a future proof rocket.

“Exploration-Class Rocket: A human-rated system with LEO throw-mass on the order of 200 mT, designed purposely for extremely high reliability and minimum operations cost, rather than being sized directly by an architecture that may change later,” noted the impressive presentation (available in L2).

“200 mT, sized by ‘knee in the curve’ of launch vehicle economics. Not driven by the architecture de jour.”

In what was a precursor to the eventual selection of the SLS, Shuttle-Derived HLVs were also promoted at the Augustine Commission, with the goal of a smoother transition between the Shuttle Program and the opening exploration missions.

In some cases, this involved a Shuttle extension using two orbiters, flying for several years after their planned retirement date.

In tandem, a SD HLV was to be brought into action, beginning with a side-mounted HLV that would eventually become an in-line HLV, both of which heavily utilized Shuttle hardware.

This plan was created under the leadership of former SSP manager John Shannon, resulting in the creation of an extensive 726 page presentation (available in L2).

However, this proposal fell by the wayside, as political direction called for a much deeper evaluation of NASA’s next big rocket.

Numerous vehicles and concepts were evaluated by three main bodies of engineers and experts at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), known as the Requirements Analysis Cycle (RAC) teams.
RAC-1 studied in-line, LH2 core vehicles with Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). RAC-2 studied a Saturn V-type vehicles, utilizing an RP-1 first stage and LH2 second stages. RAC-3 studied vehicle designs based around several options, such as EELVs, with a large amount of latitude to study different tank sizes.

While the winning RAC-1 vehicle was selected as the rocket to pursue, memos showed RAC-2 team members thought they had won the study, while RAC-3 observers claimed the EELV companies weren’t even consulted on the evaluations based around their vehicles.

On To SLS:

In the end, the RAC-1 SD HLV was confirmed as the winner, not least due to the political language in the 2010 Authorization Act that insisted on utilizing Shuttle and former CxP hardware as key ingredients for the rocket.

That rocket would be named the Space Launch System (SLS) and was formerly announced in 2011.

The rocket was to be evolved over time, opening with the 70mT Block 1, that was set to debut in 2016, prior to a cost review pushing the opening launch to 2017.

This was to be followed by an intermediate Block 1A/B, capable of 105 mT and set to be the workhorse of the 2020s, prior to the Mars-class Block 2 in the 2030s, with a lift capacity of 130 mT.

The SLS rocket has enjoyed a far less dramatic childhood when compared to the Ares woes of the Constellation Program.

Refinement of the vehicle’s specifications have all proceeded to plan, with thousands and thousands of technical drawings created ahead of being fed into the machinery at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) where the rocket will be built.

For all her technological charms, SLS still lacks a viable number of missions.

While the overall plan is to utilize the rocket in the “proving grounds” of visiting asteroids, the ultimate aim remains focused on Mars – as much as no detailed plans exist and remain a distance dream of being realized in the mid-2030s.

Only two missions are currently on the books, the first of which now “slipped” to November, 2018.
While Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) was classed as likely to slip for some time – specific to schedule issues with the development of the much-much-maligned Orion spacecraft – internal documentation was showing a slip to around the summer of 2018.

In presenting the new date as not an actual slip this week, NASA managers noted they will try and improve on the November, 2018 date. However, despite the billions of dollars already spent, the new date is only at a 70 percent confidence level, per the milestone of the KDP-C (Key Decision Point -C).

SLS will also have to negotiate the minefield of a change of President in 2016, an event that always risks a dramatic redirection in space policy.

Not The Only American HLV:

SpaceX has made no secret of its intentions to send humans to the Mars, not least when the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, told the BBC’s Jonathan Amos that he wants to be able to go to the Red Planet himself, before he gets “too old”.

That level of personal motivation is likely to hold several advantages when compared to NASA and its constraints of being at the mercy of lawmakers.

Mr. Musk’s aspiration of tasking SpaceX with the goal of driving humanity to become a multi-planetary species is claimed to be an accelerated path, when compared to NASA’s notional roadmap.

While NASA is aiming for humans on Mars in the mid 2030s, SpaceX’s ambition is to achieve that milestone by the mid 2020s.

At the heart of that plan is another HLV, a key driver of the Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT) system.

SpaceX is expected to build a family of Super Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (SHLVs) driven by nine Raptor “full flow methane-liquid oxygen” rocket engines.

While the plans are still being refined, to the point that only sketchy details have been provided, the Raptor engine is already preparing to test components at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

“Raptor is a very large LOX/methane engine which we are working on as a follow-on to Falcon Heavy, a Super Heavy if you will, but I don’t think we’re calling it that,” noted Dragon V2 Program Lead Dr. Garrett Reisman to the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) Working Group this week.

“It’s currently undergoing component testing at Stennis. Starting injector testing and other component testing. We’re deep into the design process and component testing.”

Sources note that component design has progressed to the 3D printing stage, ahead of a test regime at the E-2 test stand at Stennis, which has been upgraded to allow for the use of methane.

The SpaceX Super Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (SHLV) – which does not yet have an official name, but is widely known in the space community as the BFR (Big ‘Frakking’ Rocket) – would be very big and very powerful indeed.

In a rare insight into the vehicle, SpaceX Vice President (VP) of Propulsion Development Tom Mueller – speaking at the “Exploring the Next Frontier: The Commercialization of Space is Lifting Off” event earlier this year in Santa Barbara, California – revealed the Raptor engine had already mutated to a 1Mlbf (4,500kN) gas-gas (full flow) liquid methane and oxygen engine.

Mr. Mueller then later updated his numbers at a follow-on conference to portray 6,900 kN of sea-level thrust, and 8,200 kN of vacuum thrust.

Further refinements to the numbers are expected, as the development cycle – which is still in its infancy – continues through to full engine testing.

However, it is clear SpaceX envisions a rocket far more powerful than even the fully evolved Block 2 SLS – a NASA rocket that isn’t set to be launched until the 2030s.

SpaceX’s monster rocket will utilize nine Raptor engines on a 10 meter diameter core, with the potential to advance the vehicle to a triple core. Other options are understood to include 12.5m and 15m cores, although those focus on the single core HLV.

The eventual goal would be to allow for a rocket capable of lofting the MCT spacecraft, transporting 100 colonists at a time to Mars. The launch system would also be fully reusable.

Such a colonization effort would be be deep into the future. However, the initial launch of the first Raptor-driven BFR could occur before the end of the decade.

While that is a highly ambitious time scale, it would result in the BFR debuting close to the time NASA’s SLS will be conducting test flights.

It is notable, yet understandable, that SpaceX has never openly portrayed its BFR plans in competition with NASA’s SLS.

The Agency is SpaceX’s biggest customer and Mr. Musk has noted on more than one occasion that his company owes a debt of gratitude for NASA’s support and contracts during this early phase of its existence.

Also, when asked about SLS during a recent interview on “The Space Show”, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell diplomatically avoided being drawn on commenting about NASA’s HLV.

However, should SpaceX make solid progress on the development of its BFR over the coming years, it is almost unavoidable that America’s two HLVs will attract comparisons and a healthy debate, potentially at the political level.

After Ferguson, Race Deserves More Attention, Not Less

AUG. 30, 2014

Original link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-after-ferguson-race-deserves-more-attention-not-less.html?_r=0 

Nicholas Kristof

MANY white Americans say they are fed up with the coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. A plurality of whites in a recent Pew survey said that the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.

Bill O’Reilly of Fox News reflected that weariness, saying: “All you hear is grievance, grievance, grievance, money, money, money.”

Indeed, a 2011 study by scholars at Harvard and Tufts found that whites, on average, believed that anti-white racism was a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

Yes, you read that right!

So let me push back at what I see as smug white delusion. Here are a few reasons race relations deserve more attention, not less:

• The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data. The gap has worsened in the last decade, and the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid. (Whites in America on average own almost 18 times as much as blacks; in South Africa in 1970, the ratio was about 15 times.)

• The black-white income gap is roughly 40 percent greater today than it was in 1967.

• A black boy born today in the United States has a life expectancy five years shorter than that of a white boy.

• Black students are significantly less likely to attend schools offering advanced math and science courses than white students. They are three times as likely to be suspended and expelled, setting them up for educational failure.

• Because of the catastrophic experiment in mass incarceration, black men in their 20s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated today than employed, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Nearly 70 percent of middle-aged black men who never graduated from high school have been imprisoned.

All these constitute not a black problem or a white problem, but an American problem. When so much talent is underemployed and overincarcerated, the entire country suffers.

Some straight people have gradually changed their attitudes toward gays after realizing that their friends — or children — were gay. Researchers have found that male judges are more sympathetic to women’s rights when they have daughters. Yet because of the de facto segregation of America, whites are unlikely to have many black friends: A study from the Public Religion Research Institute suggests that in a network of 100 friends, a white person, on average, has one black friend.

That’s unfortunate, because friends open our eyes. I was shaken after a well-known black woman told me about looking out her front window and seeing that police officers had her teenage son down on the ground after he had stepped out of their upscale house because they thought he was a prowler. “Thank God he didn’t run,” she said.

One black friend tells me that he freaked out when his white fiancée purchased an item in a store and promptly threw the receipt away. “What are you doing?” he protested to her. He is a highly successful and well-educated professional but would never dream of tossing a receipt for fear of being accused of shoplifting.

Some readers will protest that the stereotype is rooted in reality: Young black men are disproportionately likely to be criminals.

That’s true — and complicated. “There’s nothing more painful to me,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery — then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

All this should be part of the national conversation on race, as well, and prompt a drive to help young black men end up in jobs and stable families rather than in crime or jail. We have policies with a robust record of creating opportunity: home visitation programs like Nurse-Family Partnership; early education initiatives like Educare and Head Start; programs for troubled adolescents like Youth Villages; anti-gang and anti-crime initiatives like Becoming a Man; efforts to prevent teen pregnancies like the Carrera curriculum; job training like Career Academies; and job incentives like the earned-income tax credit.

The best escalator to opportunity may be education, but that escalator is broken for black boys growing up in neighborhoods with broken schools. We fail those boys before they fail us.

So a starting point is for those of us in white America to wipe away any self-satisfaction about racial progress. Yes, the progress is real, but so are the challenges. The gaps demand a wrenching, soul-searching excavation of our national soul, and the first step is to acknowledge that the central race challenge in America today is not the suffering of whites.

When Machines Know: The Evolution of Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence

Posted by: Gideon Rosenblatt September 1, 2014

Original link:  http://www.the-vital-edge.com/knowledge-and-artificial-intelligence/ 

The promise of the Information Age is based on a unique partnership between humans and machines. Machines did the heavy lifting of transforming data into information, which allowed humans to then transform information into knowledge. Some humans still do routine data entry and management, but most of those jobs are now done by machines. As that happened, knowledge worker jobs emerged to handle the resulting explosion of information.

Joseph Schumpeter described shifts like this as a kind of “creative destruction” unleashed by innovation - cycles of economic destruction and creation, catalyzed by waves of new technology. We are now about to enter a new phase of creative destruction as machines begin taking over the work of transforming information into knowledge.

A Knowledge Hierarchy

If you’re ever bored and looking for some fun, try telling a knowledge management expert that you’ve figured out the exact meaning of this diagram to the right.

It’s a “knowledge hierarchy” or “DIKW Pyramid” (DIKW = Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom) and lots of people have lots of opinions about what it means.

So, here’s my take on the D, I, K and W:

• Data: Internal or environmental signals
• Information: Data, filtered by implicit or explicit intention
• Knowledge: Information, transformed into meaning
• Wisdom: Knowledge that has been experienced

The story I hope to paint here is our race with machines, a kind of competitive partnership as we scale this pyramid together. The real question is what emerges at the end.

Embedded Knowledge

Through most of our history, we’ve embedded our knowledge in our minds and bodies through various types of human memory. The invention of symbols and writing eventually gave us a way to embed that knowledge into something else. In a way, our history is a history of that ‘something else.’

Knowledge management experts like to divide knowledge into two categories: tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is experience-based knowledge – things we know, but don’t really know how we know – like riding a bike, speaking a language or playing the guitar. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that is articulated. We embed explicit knowledge in written rules, procedures – and increasingly, in software. We embed tacit knowledge in memory and explicit knowledge in information systems.

Though the relationship between these two forms of knowledge is complex, the story of human civilization is an accelerating conversion of implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
And we’re just getting started.

Artificial Intelligence Information Filtering

When it comes to developing knowledge, the first step is determining which signals have value and which are just noise. If we can offload that pattern-recognizing work to machines, we take a big step towards automating knowledge creation.

Until recently, our information systems for doing that kind of filtering have been “deterministic,” which is to say, you take an input, apply pre-determined rules coded by a software developer, and it spits out a pre-determined output. The system never knows more than the coders who coded it.

That’s now changing. “Deep Learning” is a branch of artificial intelligence that tackles complex pattern recognition problems by breaking them into layers of simpler pattern recognition problems. What’s striking about recent Deep Learning breakthroughs is that they’re able to learn on their own. Google recently used Deep Learning algorithms to achieve an 82% accuracy in detecting faces among a set of some 37,000 images. That may not sound impressive until you realize that these techniques required no training of the algorithm in advance. By simply exposing the Deep Learning software to enough data, an efficient face-recognizing ‘neuron’ emerged without humans having to code it. Google ran similar tests for recognizing human bodies and even cats on YouTube.

With Deep Learning, software developers don’t have to know the answers before they code. The software trains itself. It learns. And what it’s learning is how to automatically turn data into information with minimal human intervention.

I like digging beneath the surface of technology, and from that place, you could say that the digital neurons of today’s Deep Learning software are roughly analogous to the sensory neurons that emerged in biology hundreds of millions of years ago. I think there’s no coincidence that today’s sensor technologies are creating an explosion of precisely the kind of data that Deep Learning is so well-suited to process, or that the first real practical applications of Deep Learning are in image processing and speech recognition – digital extensions of biology’s eyes and ears.
We are now embedding our knowledge into a new digital container, and these automated information processing techniques are a vital step in that direction.

Automating Meaning Extraction

The algorithm didn’t know the word “cat” — Ng had to supply that — but over time, it learned to identify the furry creatures we know as cats, all on its own. This approach is inspired by how scientists believe that humans learn. As babies, we watch our environments and start to understand the structure of objects we encounter, but until a parent tells us what it is, we can’t put a name to it. – Wired

Google’s algorithm could find cats, but couldn’t connect the ‘cat pattern’ to the word “cat.”
Knowledge is only part pattern recognition. We can learn to correctly spot a smoke signal in the distance, but knowing what it means is what makes that pattern useful.

When it comes to transforming information into knowledge, meaning-making is a critical function – and it just so happens that humans are really good at it.

One way of thinking about meaning-making is connecting ideas to one another. I think of a camera and it kicks off a cascade of related ideas from shutter speed, to Android phones, and the Kodak Corporation. The technology for making these associative connections has been around for a while. In 2001, web inventor, Tim Berners-Lee painted a compelling vision for a new web connected through meaning, which he called the “semantic web.”

One of the legitimate criticisms of the semantic web is that implementing it requires too much expertise and work on the part of website publishers. Better, the thinking goes, to push this work off to machines.

There are many approaches to automating meaning extraction on the web. The most intriguing to me, because of its audacious scale and the fact that Google is behind it, is the Knowledge Graph. Google originally seeded its Knowledge Graph with data from a number of sources, including Freebase, which it acquired in 2010, and which used an interesting combination of automation and crowd-sourced human editing to build a huge, and highly structured, database of knowledge. As of this writing, Freebase includes some 45 million topics.


Over time, Google has expanded the automation techniques used by Freebase in some interesting ways. It’s been exceptionally smart in using people’s interactions with Search and other services to augment the Knowledge Graph. For example, when I search for “Thomas Paine” just after searching for “Thomas Jefferson,” and lots of others do the same, Google can infer a relationship between the two men, which is then added to the Knowledge Graph. They also surface that useful information to users as “other people searched for” listings on the right-hand side of the search results.

Now Google is taking this automation to a new level by automating the extraction of meaning, much the way their search bots crawl and extract data from websites today by combining that information with prior knowledge stored in the Knowledge Graph. One of Google’s internal projects for doing this is loosely termed the “Knowledge Vault” (detailed PDF research paper), and I believe it, or something like it, has the potential to be quite important.

Google is now using these techniques to embed human meaning into a growing web of words and the meaning behind those words. It’s important to bear in mind that the seeds of all of this knowledge (the entries in Freebase and the websites that Google crawls) were all human in origin. Google is just using some really smart techniques for extracting and processing this information in order to synthesize meaning out of it.

From the bigger perspective, you could say that Google is using these techniques to extract tacit knowledge from us and embed it as explicit knowledge into machines. Yes, machines can find pictures of cats without our help, but when it comes to knowing that these cat patterns are actually “cats” and knowing what cats mean, well, they still need some help from humans.

At least for now.

Creating a New Container: The Fusion of Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence

We are making good progress in automating filters to transform data into information and in automating the way we attach meaning to that information. These are important steps to automating the transformation of humanity’s tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge stored in machines. Soon we will be doing it on a staggering scale.

There are many questions with regard to where this is all headed. There’s little question that these new tools will bring economic ‘destruction’ for many lower-end knowledge workers. Still, where there is destruction, there is also creation. Just look at what IBM is doing with Watson Discovery Advisor, a service designed to help humans use the power of machine learning to uncover creative insights in science, healthcare, law and even gourmet cooking:

I believe we are on a learning curve that is of our own creation but that is not exactly ours. What we are seeing today is the earth’s most intelligent species extracting knowledge from the biology in which it is currently embedded and moving it into something else.

That something else will eventually become the newest, most intelligent entities on the planet. We have no idea what these entities will eventually be. We do not know how much humanity they will contain or whether they will eventually form a type of consciousness, let alone, what the experience of that consciousness might actually be.

If my take on the knowledge pyramid is correct, and knowledge does have to be experienced in order to become wisdom, then let us hope that whatever arises next will be more than just data, information or knowledge. Let us hope that it will be capable of a conscious experience that leads to true wisdom.