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CNN 10
Record Low Temperatures Grip the United States; European Scientists Set Sights on Mining the Moon; U.S. Officials Guard Against Manipulated Audio and Video; Robot Named Stan Helping to Park Cars In Gatwick Airport in London
Aired January 31, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: A large chunk of the U.S. is shivering in what meteorologists are calling the coldest temperatures in a generation.
Bundle up because that`s where we`re starting today`s edition of CNN 10. I`m Carl Azuz and I`m thankful to be inside the CNN Center. On Wednesday
morning about 80 percent of the continental U.S. saw temperatures below freezing. If they all stepped outside at once more than 224 million people
would have felt it and over the next couple days temperatures are expected to stay that way for most of the country.
In many places, it actually feels colder than what thermometers say it is. That`s because of the wind chill, the temperature combined with wind speed.
At International Falls, Minnesota the wind chill registered more than 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, that`s less than 10 degrees away from an all
time record. Wednesday night Chicago, Illinois was expected to tie it`s record of 27 degrees below zero. That`s colder than some parts of
Antarctica were expected to be and experts expected that records would be broken from the Midwest to the Northeast to some parts of the South.
In the coldest places, we`re talking about you guys in Minnesota and Iowa forecasters say frostbite injuries can occur in just five minutes to
exposed skin. The most common places that happens are on the fingers, toes, ears, nose, cheeks and chin. The National Weather Service is telling
people where the wind chill is negative 50 to stay inside. This cold snap has been linked to at least five deaths this week but forecasters say it
should be over by this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nearly 3/4 of the U.S. bracing for bitter cold.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like I`m going into a freezer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Digging out. As life threatening low temperatures and ferocious winds grip the Midwest.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s hard to take a breath in. It`s effecting my lungs a little bit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Slippery roads making travel a nightmare. This dash cam video captured the treacherous driving conditions in Minnesota where
police say 193 crashes were reported on Tuesday. The wind chill at the (inaudible) Airport clocking in at 62 below zero.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s really, really dangerous out right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This 13 vehicle pileup in Michigan bringing the highway to a standstill for hours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Slow down and leave space between you and the vehicle in front of you and be prepared for whiteout conditions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Illinois, giant patches of ice blanketing the Chicago River. Residents insisting they`re ready for the deep freeze.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well I`m dressed in layers so I have two pairs of pants on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As long as I bundle up, have a hat, have a coat, I think I`ll be fine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dangerously cold air predicted to make temperatures here feel like 50 below.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These conditions are and can be life threatening. Even short periods of exposure to this type of weather can be dangerous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Winds also whipping in North Dakota where it`s expected to be negative 20 degrees. Across the nation, airlines cancelling
thousands of flights because of the deep freeze.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re putting the deicer on and the deicer froze on the plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And for Amtrak customers, all Chicago trains suspended. The flames on these tracks intentional. Crews setting them on fire to keep
commuter trains going. The weather`s so cold the United States Postal Service suspending deliveries in multiple states across the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are basically three types of weather precipitation, snow, freezing rain, and sleet. Snow is pretty simple.
Basically the temperature at all levels of the atmosphere are below 32 degrees. When it lands, you have the beautiful white stuff. Where it gets
tricky is when you have freezing rain or sleet and to understand this you have to high into the atmosphere. Both sleet and freezing rain start as a
snowflake high in the atmosphere. As it makes its decent, they both melt into a raindrop as it`s entering the lower levels of the atmosphere sleet
will refreeze into basically an ice pellet.
At this point, freezing rain is still just a raindrop. The difference is, as it gets closer to the surface it makes contact. Sleet you will be able
to hear. It bounces off of everything because it`s that little ice pellets. Freezing rain though will freeze on contact making an icy glaze
over everything, the roads, the bridges, your car even the power lines. Making freezing rain one of the most dangerous types of winter precip. But
if you`re going to have winter precipitation, snow is what everyone hopes for especially if you`re at a place like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARL AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. What would you most likely find on the surface of the moon? Regolith, Dark Side, Liquid Water or Sea of
Placidity. Regolith, also known as lunar soil or moon dust is all over the moon.
Of course, regolith is all over the earth too but that`s not the kind the European Space Agency wants to start mining. It recently said it was
teaming up with the European Aerospace Company to look into mining lunar soil. Why? Lunar regolith, like regolith on earth has water and oxygen in
it but being able to mine those elements on the moon could help support a potential base there. And if scientists are also able to extract helium 3,
an isotope that`s believe to be in lunar soil they think that could be used to develop rocket fuel on the moon.
All that would add up to using the moon as a jumping off point to exploring deeper into space. Scientists hope to get this mission off the ground by
the year 2025 but there are some obstacles to overcome. For one thing, the rocket that would carry mining equipment to the moon hasn`t been built yet.
It`s currently under development. Also, the lander that would actually place the equipment on the moon still has to be made.
So the European Space Agency is really just taking the first step here to see if mining the moon is possible and if it makes sense in terms of
funding and the resources it would require. Still, according to Fortune.com China and India are also looking into the moon as a possible
source of helium 3. So there could be an international competition to mine the moon taking place about 240,000 miles away from it.
For decades, the film industries had the technology to alter picture or sound to make something that never happened look like it really did. A
great example is when the movie character Forrest Gump appeared to meet the real life President Lyndon Johnson but this wasn`t easy to do. It took a
lot of time, a lot of skill, a lot of money. Because of advancements in artificial intelligence though, it`s getting easier and cheaper to
manipulate audio or video and the government and the military are concerned this could be used to spread false information. Here`s a look at what
they`re doing to separate fact from fiction.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) manipulate people`s voices.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s actually quite difficult and people are very good at picking this up. When it does fool people is when it`s in a lot of
noise. You create a noisy environment where you can`t hear things very clearly. Then it becomes difficult to tell that this is fake and that`s
where you really need these automatic techniques which can learn to ignore the noise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re building this technology. How would you guys be able to detect this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For anybody that`s enrolled, by enrolled we mean we`ve taught the machine what the person looks like and what they sound like. We
use voice recognition combined with this face recognition. So in this case, it shows when the face recognizer thinks it knows who this is, Chris
in this case and it also shows when it thinks the voice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is one of your colleagues, Chris?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What if somebody sounds really like Chris?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So I`ve got a case where it`s not far off from Chris and they try to align the words so that that`s similar. So it recognizes
Chris` face but it recognizes somebody else`s voice. So it says, hey there`s an inconsistency here. So here, I show a little bit more about how
we track the mouth to check to make sure that the motions of the mouth correspond to the words being spoken. The line down at the bottom says
there`s a lot of problem with the lip sync over most of the video.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So what if there`s a video. It`s Chris` real voice but it`s just been cut up to make it look like he`s said something here that he
said previously.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. So there`d be a change in lip sync. There`d also be some pretty obvious artifacts that even if they aren`t obvious to your
ear would be obvious in the audio. That it`s not just a recording. It`s a synthesis. One of the things that differentiates what we are doing from -
- from a lot of others is rather than just focusing on a single modality be it imagery or video or audio. We`re looking at how those interact.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARL AZUZ: At Gatwick Airport in London, UK a new type of parking attendant is making headlines for being completely robotic. It`s name is
Stan. It looks a little like a miniature flatbed truck but when a car is ready to be parked or picked up, Stan shows up, hoists it up like a
forklift and then ferries it to its space. The company that makes the robot says it can create up to 50 percent more spaces for cars. Apparently
by parking them closer together.
It reportedly comes at a cost of several million dollars though. So the question will be if airports can "stan" the fee and if travelers can "stan"
the weight if Stan shows up "valate". Could mean less parking and less tipping unless the robot starts "slipping" and then renters have to find a
space to park themselves. Can you "stan" the puns on CNN 10?
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