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Aug 31, 2023

NASA Shares First Images from US Pollution-Monitoring Instrument

Posted by in categories: mapping, space

On Thursday, NASA released the first data maps from its new instrument launched to space earlier this year, which now is successfully transmitting information about major air pollutants over North America.

Aug 31, 2023

What Are Dreams For?

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Amanda Gefter writes about how our body twitches during REM sleep affect our dreams, and the scientific theories about why we dream.

Aug 31, 2023

Earth has been hit by an ‘impossible’ blast of light. Scientists now know how

Posted by in category: cosmology

Scientists believe they have found an explanation for an “impossible” blast of energy that hit Earth.

Last year, scientists reported that they had seen evidence that gamma-ray bursts could come out of mergers between neutron stars and another compact object, in the form of a neutron star or black hole. That was previously thought not to be possible.

Scientists had initially thought that the 50-second blast came when a massive star collapsed, but further work looking at the afterglow of the emission showed that it was in fact a “kilonova”, which happens when neutron stars merge with other compact objects. Previously, it was thought that only a supernova could make a long gamma-ray burst of that kind.

Aug 31, 2023

According to a Physicist, the entire Universe may be a Neural Network

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

We don’t come across papers that attempt to redefine reality very often.

Vitaly Vanchurin, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, makes the particularly startling claim that we are living inside a vast neural network that controls everything around us in a paper that was recently uploaded to arXiv.

Aug 31, 2023

Agency, Attractors, & Observer-Dependent Computation in Biology & Beyond

Posted by in categories: alien life, computing, engineering, ethics, genetics, quantum physics

Michael Levin discusses his 2022 paper “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds” and his 2023 paper with Joshua Bongard, “There’s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.” Links to papers flagged 🚩below.

Michael Levin is a scientist at Tufts University; his lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems. He works at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science.

Continue reading “Agency, Attractors, & Observer-Dependent Computation in Biology & Beyond” »

Aug 31, 2023

Gödel Machine — Jürgen Schmidhuber / Serious Science

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, science

AI specialist Jürgen Schmidhuber on Kurt Gödel, meta learning and fundamental limitations of computability.

Read the full text on our website: http://serious-science.org/godel-machine-10426

Continue reading “Gödel Machine — Jürgen Schmidhuber / Serious Science” »

Aug 31, 2023

Challenging Einstein — New Study Suggests That Dark Matter Interacts With Gravity in a Non-Local Way

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

Isaac Newton described his theory of gravity as a force that acts instantaneously across space: a planet immediately senses the effects of another astronomical object, regardless of the separation between them. This aspect inspired Einstein to create the renowned theory of general relativity, where gravity becomes a local deformation of spacetime.

The principle of locality states that an object is directly influenced only by its surrounding environment: distant objects cannot communicate instantaneously, only what is here right now matters. However, in the past century, with the birth and development of quantum mechanics, physicists discovered that non-local phenomena not only exist but are fundamental to understanding the nature of reality.

Now, a new study from SISSA – Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Aug 31, 2023

Where Is the Past Located?

Posted by in category: futurism

Do we all look forward to what lies ahead?

Aug 31, 2023

Demon Hunting: Strange 67-Year-Old Particle Physics Prediction Finally Confirmed

Posted by in categories: materials, particle physics

67 years after its theoretical prediction by David Pines, the elusive “demon” particle, a massless and neutral entity in solids, has been detected in strontium ruthenate, underscoring the value of innovative research approaches.

In 1956, theoretical physicist David Pines predicted that electrons in a solid can do something strange. Although electrons typically have a mass and an electric charge, Pines asserted that they could combine to create a composite particle that is massless, neutral, and doesn’t interact with light. He named this theoretical particle a “demon.” Since then, it has been theorized to play an important role in the behaviors of a wide variety of metals. Unfortunately, the same properties that make it interesting have allowed it to elude detection since its prediction.

Fast forward 67 years, and a research team led by Peter Abbamonte, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), has finally found Pines’ elusive demon. As the researchers report in the journal Nature, they used a nonstandard experimental technique that directly excites a material’s electronic modes, allowing them to see the demon’s signature in the metal strontium ruthenate.

Aug 31, 2023

A doctor who claims to have reversed his ‘biological age’ by 20 years shares his favorite Costco items

Posted by in categories: biological, life extension

Dr. Mark Hyman recommended Costco items including nuts, canned seafood, and fermented goods.