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Michio Kaku: The von Neumann Probe (A Nano Ship to the Stars) | Big Think

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One of the inventions that may be realized by advances in nanotechnology is the creation of a Von Neumann probe, which is essentially a virus, a self-replicating probe that can then explore the universe near the speed of light.

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Michio Kaku: Recently there was a conference, the One Hundred Year Starship, and of course many people came in with designs to have gigantic fusion rockets take us to Mars and beyond Jupiter, into the stars. Other people said yes, antimatter rockets, that’s the way to go, and we all had this mental vision of the Enterprise going to the nearby star systems… here is another way to do it. Think of Mother Nature. When Mother Nature wants to propagate life, one possibility is to send out seeds, not just one or two, but millions of seeds. Most of the seeds never make it, but one or two do and as a consequence that’s how trees in forests propagate. So why not create a nano ship using nanotechnology? How big would it be? Some people like Paul Davies say it could be as big as a bread box. Other people say it could be even smaller than that. Why not something the size of a needle? And because they’re so small it wouldn’t take much to accelerate them to near the speed of light.

Sleep Duration Linked to Accelerated Aging

The relationship between sleep and disease suggests that there exists a connection between the brain and the body that extends beyond merely influencing the brain itself.

Among brain-related disorders, short sleep was significantly associated with depressive episodes and anxiety disorders, as seen in other studies of sleep and mental health. Short sleep was also associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and heart arrhythmias.

Short and long sleep were associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and a cluster of digestive disorders, including gastritis and gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Giant squid discovery uncovers a hidden deep-sea world off Australia

Scientists exploring deep underwater canyons off the coast of Western Australia uncovered a hidden world packed with bizarre and elusive marine life — including signs of the legendary giant squid. By analyzing traces of DNA floating in seawater from depths exceeding 4 kilometers, researchers identified 226 species ranging from deep-diving whales to strange fish rarely or never seen in the region before. Some of the creatures may even be unknown to science.

Intuitive Machines to buy ground station company

WASHINGTON — Intuitive Machines has agreed to purchase a company that operates ground stations in the United States and United Kingdom to help build out a lunar communications network.

Intuitive Machines announced May 14 that it entered into an agreement to acquire Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. and its American subsidiary, Comsat. Intuitive Machines will pay 37 million pounds ($49.6 million) for Goonhilly, split equally between cash and stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter pending regulatory approvals in the U.S. and U.K.

Goonhilly operates a ground station in Cornwall, England, that includes 30-and 32-meter antennas that have been used for lunar and deep-space communications. Through Comsat, it operates teleports in Southbury, Connecticut, and Santa Paula, California, that have dozens of antennas.

The DOJ Is Demanding Apple And Google Identify Over 100,000 Users Of This Car App

In the letter, EZ Lynk lawyers wrote that Apple and Google are planning to fight the subpoenas. Walmart declined to comment. None of the other companies subpoenaed responded to a comment request.

“These requests for potentially hundreds of thousands of people’s PII go well beyond the needs of this case and create serious privacy concerns,” wrote EZ Lynk’s lawyers in the letter. “Investigating this claim does not require identifying each person who has used the product.”

The government said in the letter its request for data was fair and appropriate, and it had “consistently sought customer information” because its lawyers want to interview witnesses about their use of EZ Lynk’s technology. It has already presented evidence to the court of people using the company’s tools to remove emissions controls on their cars, including Facebook and EZ Lynk forum posts outlining that use of the product.

Low-cost 3D printers could gain medical-grade precision from ultrathin light-control film

Researchers have developed an ultra-thin optical film that improves the quality of the light used in LCD resin-based 3D printers. The advance helps ensure that tiny details are reproduced with precision, which could make it possible to 3D-print medical-grade or industrial-grade products at a lower cost.

Resin-based 3D printing, or vat photopolymerization, uses short-wavelength light to project patterns onto liquid photosensitive resin. Although this additive manufacturing approach enables highly detailed, smooth parts, some low-cost systems rely on LCD backlights that can reduce printing accuracy.

“LCD-based liquid 3D printing suffers from surface roughness or dimensional inaccuracies due to improper light angular distribution from the backlight systems used,” said research team leader Ding-Zheng Lin from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. “Our goal was to fix these problems without increasing equipment size, thereby elevating print performance to professional grade.”

Umbilical cord blood transplant with pooled stem cell product shows 96% survival and no GVHD in leukemia patients

A new way of using umbilical cord blood for treating blood diseases could make the treatment more accessible to patients who need a stem cell transplant. A Phase II clinical trial of patients undergoing a cord blood transplant plus a stem cell product derived from pooled cord blood units showed that 27 of 28 patients (96%) with leukemias and GVHD survived at least one year and none of the patients experienced severe acute or chronic graft-versus-host disease, which are common complications of stem cell transplantation.

The results have been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“This is the first time transplant patients received cells from what amounts to nine different human beings,” said the study’s principal investigator, Filippo Milano, MD, Ph.D., who is first author of the study and directs the Cord Blood Program at Fred Hutch Cancer Center.

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