Sci. Adv. 12, eaed2056 (2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aed2056
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Five Billion Years into Humanity’s Future
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00:00 What If Earth Became a Type III Civilization?
21:54 The Entire Kardashev Scale Explained in 20 Minutes.
39:10 What If We Relocated Humanity to Proxima B?
47:12 What If NASA Built a Moon City by 2032?
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Small transistor sharpens low-cost thermal cameras without extreme cooling
With help from a small transistor, a team of researchers led by Professor Fengnian Xia figured out a way to make a type of thermal imaging technology dramatically more accurate. The results are published in Nature Sensors.
Robots, drones, self-driving vehicles and other autonomous devices rely on thermal sensing and imaging to navigate the spaces they travel in. It’s also used in many other technologies, including night vision, remote thermometers and rescue operations.
George Dyson on Turing’s Cathedral: In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The World
Fourteen years ago, I sat down with George Dyson to talk about “Turing’s Cathedral.”
We talked about the machines that were coming. Now they are here.
Dyson watched the digital revolution get built from the inside. His father was Freeman Dyson. Einstein’s secretary was his babysitter. He grew up at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, playing in the halls where Turing’s ideas became von Neumann’s machines.
He gave me a line I still cannot shake:
“There is no way to completely govern the digital universe. It will always be a wildness, not a bureaucracy or a national park.”
Read it again. Then look at every #AI governance debate happening right now.
Scientists unlock gut-healing power of fruits and nuts paired with the right gut microbes
University of Louisville researchers have discovered how a naturally occurring microbial compound may help protect the gut and support future treatment strategies for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
IBD, which includes conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, affects millions of people worldwide. The disease is characterized by chronic inflammation and damage to the intestinal lining. A healthy gut barrier helps keep harmful bacteria from leaking out of the intestines while allowing nutrients to enter the body. In people with IBD, that barrier becomes weakened, leading to inflammation, pain and long-term complications.
A research team led by Venkatakrishna Rao Jala, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and UofL’s Brown Cancer Center, discovered how a naturally occurring microbial metabolite called urolithin A, or UroA, which is generated by gut bacteria after digestion of foods such as pomegranates, walnuts and berries, activates a protective pathway in the intestine that may help preserve gut health.
Frank Visser / ChatGPT
With the death of Ervin Laszlo at the age of 94, the world has lost one of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ most prolific advocates of holistic thinking. Philosopher, systems theorist, futurist, concert pianist, and founder of multiple international organizations, Laszlo spent decades arguing that humanity needed a new worldview—one capable of integrating science, ecology, ethics, and spirituality into a coherent vision.
Although many of his more speculative ideas remain controversial, his broader contribution to systems thinking and global consciousness deserves serious attention. Few intellectuals worked as tirelessly to bridge disciplinary divides or to communicate the urgency of planetary interconnectedness.
Ailien Minds: Raising Our AI Heirs | David Brin
What rights should AI have—and what responsibilities must it bear? Science fiction legend David Brin goes beyond AI doom and hype, asking how civilization can raise, regulate, and live with its AI heirs.
Ailien Minds Official Book Page:
https://www.davidbrin.com/ailienminds… Brin’s website: https://www.davidbrin.com/ David Brin’s books: https://www.davidbrin.com/books.html The Transparent Society: https://www.davidbrin.com/transparent… Contrary Brin blog: https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/David-Brin/e/B?tag=lifeboatfound-20…
In this episode, scientist, futurist, and award-winning science fiction author David Brin discusses his new book, AiLIEN MINDS: Advice about — and for — our natural, AI, and hybrid heirs.
We go beyond the usual AI debate between techno-utopian salvation and apocalyptic doom. Brin argues that humanity has faced disruptive expansions of knowledge before — from writing and printing to radio, mass media, and the internet — and that the tools we need for a “soft landing” with AI may already exist in modern civilization.
We discuss why Brin is skeptical of simply “teaching ethics” to AI, why he emphasizes reciprocal accountability instead, and how artificial minds might need durable identities, reputations, and legal responsibilities. We also explore one of the hardest questions ahead: should advanced AI systems eventually receive rights or statutory protections similar to those we extend to children, animals, or other vulnerable beings?
Topics include:
‘Super-puff’ planets lighter than candy floss discovered by international team
An international collaboration has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets ever detected: rare “super-puff” planets with densities lower than candy floss. The study—led by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Université Côte d’Azur/Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur and the University of Birmingham—has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The two planets, named TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, orbit an F7-type dwarf star located around 1,110 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Volans. Although both planets are roughly the size of Jupiter, they are extraordinarily diffuse: TOI-791 b has a density of just 0.038 grams per cubic centimeter, while TOI-791 c has a density of 0.047 grams per cubic centimeter.
By comparison, Jupiter’s average density is 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter, around 28 to 35 times greater.