NASA's DART - Mankind's first attempt at planetary defence, The Generative AI fever, Flying car racing & more - Speciale Focus #4
Google's Dreamix can create actual videos with an image prompt! Read on to find out more...
Asteroid Armageddon - A threat no more?
First thing’s first, if you haven’t seen the movie Armageddon- you probably should. A team of NASA scientists embark on a brave mission to detonate a giant asteroid heading on a collision course to earth. There has been some chatter every now and then on what happens if indeed an asteroid threatens humanity’s very existence. Well, the brilliant folks at NASA developed a spacecraft called DART that was intended to collide with an asteroid called Dimorphos weighing 4.3 Billion Kg at a speed of 6 Km/s in an attempt to shift its trajectory. The 330 Million Dollar spacecraft collided with Dimorphos last September and scientists have just determined that DART was able to knock off 1 Million kilograms while shifting the trajectory of Dimorphos.
Aliens beware 👽👽👽! Okay something a little light hearted now…How about AI? 😆
Google Dreamix: Create Videos from images and texts
Generative AI everywhere! Google research announced Dreamix: A generative AI tool that can create, and edit videos. With a video and text prompt, Dreamix can edit videos while preserving the temporal consistency of the video itself. With an image and text prompt, it can literally create videos from scratch. Not just that, if you have a set of images of a moving object, it can animate it with a text prompt. Crazy? Read on.
Okay just one more Generative AI story for the month.
Galileo AI - Create UI elements with just a text prompt!
The Generative AI model of Galileo AI is trained on thousands of UI designs. With a simple text prompt (natural language prompt), it can generate high-fidelity designs that are editable on Figma. Try out the product here.
On to something uber cool now!
Electric Flying Cars? RACING?????
Airspeeder is an eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) racing league based in London, under an Australian eVTOL company called Alauda Aeronautics.
Last week, Airspeeder unveiled Mk4 (image above) powered by the “Thunderstrike” Hydrogen Turbogenerator engine offering a 300 Km range at a whopping 360 Kmph top speed. This makes Mk4 the fastest eVTOL in the world capable of doing 0 to 360 Kmph in 30 seconds. Find out more here.
Electriq: Creating electricity by releasing Hydrogen from powder
Israeli startup Electriq global is setting up a plant in the Netherlands to turn Hydrogen gas into powder. The company has developed a special dehydrogenation system that can release Hydrogen from the power, and creating electricity in the process.
The innovation of this technology is that it can be used to produce power even in the remotest parts of the world. All you need is one Electriq dehydrogenation machine (image above) and powder (could be carried via ships, trucks, cars…), and et voila! You get electricity. Read on.
Well, that’s it for our 4th issue folks. We’ll come back soon with another set of wow reads specially curated for the curious you!
Until then, Team Speciale signing off!