Also on today’s menu:
5G May Not Fly
How Old Is Your Mummy?
Dartmouth College Professor Eric Fossum says that winning an Emmy demonstrates how art and science can converge. Fossum was working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, when he invented the CMOS image sensor, a metal oxide semiconductor or “camera on a chip” that now is used in digital cameras and smartphones. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presented him with an Emmy Award in recognition of how his invention has become an integral part of television.
Fossum told Josie Albertson-Gove that NASA asked its engineers in the 1990s to design smaller and lighter cameras for its spacecraft. Those that had been mounted on earlier spacecraft were as large as refrigerators, and his design also was less susceptible to radiation damage.
“After the invention of CMOS, the camera on a chip, we realized it was good for planet Earth too,” Fossum said. After trying to sell the technology to other companies, Fossum and his wife started their own firm, Photobit, to develop the camera technology further, and find ways to sell it. Fossum sold the company, retired early, and moved to New Hampshire. At Dartmouth, he is teaching engineering students to develop their own world-changing technologies.
Fossum said he’s even more proud of the way smartphone cameras have facilitated social justice movements, including the images captured of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. “Social justice was not an application that ever crossed my mind,” Fossum said. “And yet social justice is one of the things I’m most proud to contribute to.”
5G May Not Fly
AT&T and Verizon have agreed to delay the launch of 5G technology on key frequencies amid concern that it might interfere with airplane safety systems, federal officials said Thursday. Aviation groups have been warning regulators for months that the 5G rollout could interfere with radio altimeters, which allow pilots to measure how far a plane is from the ground.
The companies are delaying the launch of commercial services on what’s known as C-band, the frequencies critical for wireless companies to offer faster speeds at broader range. The companies will “further assess any impact on aviation safety technologies,” the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Aviation Administration said in a joint statement. Both companies confirmed they will delay their rollouts for about a month, to Jan. 5.
AT&T spokesman Margaret Boles said, “It is critical that these discussions be informed by the science and the data. That is the only path to enabling experts and engineers to assess whether any legitimate coexistence issues exist.”
How Old Is Your Mummy?
The preserved body of a high-ranking nobleman called Khuwy, discovered in 2019, turns out to be far older than assumed, demonstrating that ancient Egyptians were carrying out sophisticated mummifications 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. The mummy has been dated to the Old Kingdom, proving that mummification techniques were highly advanced some 4,000 years ago.
The materials used included exceptionally fine linen dressing and high-quality resin, as viewers will see on National Geographic’s documentary series, Lost Treasures of Egypt, which starts on November 7. The mummification discovery will be featured in episode four, Rise of the Mummies, on November 28.
The mummy’s discovery in a lavish tomb in the necropolis at Saqqara was filmed in an earlier season of National Geographic’s series. The investigation into its dating and analysis emerges in the new series. Hieroglyphs revealed that it belonged to Khuwy, a relative of the royal family, who lived more than 4,000 years ago.
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