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Black (Hole) Friday!

It’s Black Friday, but for us, it’s the annual Black Hole Friday! Today, we’ll post awesome images and information about black holes.

A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space…sort of like all of those shoppers trying to fit into the department stores today.

Because no light can get out, you can’t see black holes with the naked eye. Space telescopes with special tools  help find black holes (sort of how those websites help you find shopping deals).

How big are black holes? Black holes can be large or small…just like the lines in all of the stores today. Scientists think the smallest black holes are as small as just one atom. These black holes are very tiny but have the mass of a large mountain! 

So how do black holes form? Scientists think the smallest black holes formed when the universe began. Stellar black holes are made when the center of a very big star collapses. When this happens, it causes a supernova. 

A supernova is an exploding star that blasts part of its mass into space. 

Supermassive black holes are an altogether different story. Scientists think they were made at the same time as the galaxy they in they reside. Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the stellar material gets stretched and compressed – or “spaghettified” – as the black hole swallows it. A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call “stellar tidal disruption,” releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. In recent years, a few dozen such flares have been discovered.

Then there are ultramassive black holes, which are found in galaxies at the centers of massive galaxy clusters containing huge amounts of hot gas.

Get more fun facts and information about black holes.

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New paint colors invented by neural network

So if you’ve ever picked out paint, you know that every infinitesimally different shade of blue, beige, and gray has its own descriptive, attractive name. Tuscan sunrise, blushing pear, Tradewind, etc… There are in fact people who invent these names for a living. But given that the human eye can see millions of distinct colors, sooner or later we’re going to run out of good names. Can AI help?

For this experiment, I gave the neural network a list of about 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors along with their RGB values. (RGB = red, green, and blue color values) Could the neural network learn to invent new paint colors and give them attractive names?

One way I have of checking on the neural network’s progress during training is to ask it to produce some output using the lowest-creativity setting. Then the neural network plays it safe, and we can get an idea of what it has learned for sure.

By the first checkpoint, the neural network has learned to produce valid RGB values - these are colors, all right, and you could technically paint your walls with them. It’s a little farther behind the curve on the names, although it does seem to be attempting a combination of the colors brown, blue, and gray.

By the second checkpoint, the neural network can properly spell green and gray. It doesn’t seem to actually know what color they are, however.

Let’s check in with what the more-creative setting is producing.

…oh, okay.

Later in the training process, the neural network is about as well-trained as it’s going to be (perhaps with different parameters, it could have done a bit better - a lot of neural network training involves choosing the right training parameters). By this point, it’s able to figure out some of the basic colors, like white, red, and grey:

Although not reliably.

In fact, looking at the neural network’s output as a whole, it is evident that:

The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey.

The neural network has really really bad ideas for paint names.

No matter how bad you fuck shit up, consider that you’ve never fucked shit up as bad as Gaius Baltar

IVE SEEN HIM YELL AT TRAFFIC A LOT BUT THIS IS THE BEST ONE