Scientists built a computer model of ‘Dune’ to see whether humans could live there

Scientists built a computer model of ‘Dune’ to see whether humans could live there

You can now see for yourself if the desert planet of the sci-fi film “Dune” is actually liveable by humans.

Scientists with expertise in climate modeling created a visual simulation of Arrakis, the far future desert planet that the movie “Dune” takes place in.

Users can manipulate different settings of the simulation by changing weather conditions and seeing how Arrakis changes in real-time.

The creators of the simulation outlined how they were able to create this unique model on The Conversation. They started with a climate model used mostly to predict weather and climate on Earth. Then, they input certain characteristics of Arrakis, based on Frank Herbet’s novels, like the planet’s topography, orbit and atmosphere. 

After plugging in all of Arrakis’ elements, the scientists found that the imaginary planet is, “basically plausible.” 


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The simulation would get temperatures in the tropics up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months, and would not go below 59 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter time, pretty similar to Earth’s seasonal average temperatures. 

One bigger discrepancy is rain, which Herbert’s books say isn’t possible on Arrakis. However, scientists found in their simulation that there are in fact very small amounts of rainfall possible. 

They also found that the mid-latitudes and polar regions, where most people on Arrakis live, have pretty extreme temperatures. Summer temperatures here can get up to 158 degrees Fahrenheit and winter temperatures would also get incredibly cold, down to -40 degrees in the mid-latitudes and -103 degrees in the polar region. 

But, based on Herbert’s novels, all humanoid life on Arrakis that are outside of habitable zones wear “stillsuits,” which are designed to keep people cool and reclaim body moisture. 

All around, Herbert’s creation of Arrakis is pretty accurate, especially given he wrote the first “Dune” novel in 1965. 


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https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/579167-scientists-built-a-computer-model-of-dune-to-see…

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A.I. Can Now Write Its Own Computer Code. That’s Good News for Humans.

A.I. Can Now Write Its Own Computer Code. That’s Good News for Humans.

As soon as Tom Smith got his hands on Codex — a new artificial intelligence technology that writes its own computer programs — he gave it a job interview.

He asked if it could tackle the “coding challenges” that programmers often face when interviewing for big-money jobs at Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook. Could it write a program that replaces all the spaces in a sentence with dashes? Even better, could it write one that identifies invalid ZIP codes?

It did both instantly, before completing several other tasks. “These are problems that would be tough for a lot of humans to solve, myself included, and it would type out the response in two seconds,” said Mr. Smith, a seasoned programmer who oversees an A.I. start-up called Gado Images. “It was spooky to watch.”

Codex seemed like a technology that would soon replace human workers. As Mr. Smith continued testing the system, he realized that its skills extended well beyond a knack for answering canned interview questions. It could even translate from one programming language to another.

Yet after several weeks working with this new technology, Mr. Smith believes it poses no threat to professional coders. In fact, like many other experts, he sees it as a tool that will end up boosting human productivity. It may even help a whole new generation of people learn the art of computers, by showing them how to write simple pieces of code, almost like a personal tutor.

“This is a tool that can make a coder’s life a lot easier,” Mr. Smith said.

About four years ago, researchers at labs like OpenAI started designing neural networks that analyzed enormous amounts of prose, including thousands of digital books, Wikipedia articles and all sorts of other text posted to the internet.

By pinpointing patterns in all that text, the networks learned to predict the next word in a sequence. When someone typed a few words into these “universal language models,” they could complete the thought with entire paragraphs. In this way, one system — an OpenAI creation called GPT-3 — could write its own Twitter posts, speeches, poetry and news articles.

Much to the surprise of even the researchers who built the system, it could even write its own computer programs, though they were short and simple. Apparently, it had learned from an untold number of programs posted to the internet. So OpenAI went a step further, training a new system — Codex — on an enormous array of both prose and code.

The result is a system that understands both prose and code — to a point. You can ask, in plain English, for snow falling on a black background, and it will give you code that creates a virtual snowstorm. If you ask for a blue bouncing ball, it will give you that, too.

“You can tell it to do something, and it will do it,” said Ania Kubow, another programmer who has used the technology.

Codex can generate programs in

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