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8
SPEAKING
PART 3
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?
It’s 60 years since a radio telescope was first used to search for alien life. Will a new
generation of technology help us make contact with extra-terrestrials?
Life in the Universe
is a concept that has been long debated. The technological progress of the last century has
given us the tools to enable us to look for intelligent signals from space, but the search may
take a long time. As Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI Institute, has said, “The
search for intelligence has barely begun, and the search could take generations”.
Despite the low chance of finding life elsewhere in our Galaxy of 100
billion stars,
the scientists involved in such tasks are optimistic. Missions that have identified extrasolar
planets only give more motivation to the search, while public
awareness of SETI remains
high, keeping the search at the forefront of human imagination. Nevertheless, there are
problems; critics have pointed out that much money is being
poured into SETI research
when the case for the existence of extra-terrestrials is not even established.
BERRY SMART
The world's first raspberry picking robot earns its keep at a West Sussex farm. The
autonomous machine is a variable stiffness robot arm that's able to replicate the movements of a
human arm. The tech was developed by Fieldwork Robotics, a
team from the University of
Plymouth headed by Dr Martin Stoelen. "Currently, manual harvesting represents a large portion
of producers' total costs," says Stoelen. While human workers can pick around 15,000
raspberries
in one eight-hour shift, Fieldwork's robot can collect more than 25,000 in a day.
Stoelen is certain that there will always be jobs for people associated with agriculture. "But it
might be that in a decade's time, instead of spending hours in the cab of a tractor,
your role is
managing robots such as those we are developing." Now can you imagine the future of picking
fruits with the help of robots?
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