He Jiankui did more than make the twins immune to HIV.

It’s a really important first step towards artificial general intelligence, algorithms that can do more than a single narrowly-defined task.

Why does time seem to move forward? It’s a riddle that’s puzzled physicists for well over a century, and they’ve come up with numerous theories to explain time’s arrow. The latest, though, suggests that while time moves forward in our universe, it may run backwards in another, mirror universe that was created on the “other side” of the Big Bang.

Two leading theories propose to explain the direction of time by way of the relatively uniform conditions of the Big Bang. At the very start, what is now the universe was homogeneously hot, so much so that matter didn’t really exist. It was all just a superheated soup. But as the universe expanded and cooled, stars, galaxies, planets, and other celestial bodies formed, birthing the universe’s irregular structure and raising its entropy.

One theory, proposed in 2004 by Sean Carroll, now a professor at Caltech, and Jennifer Chen, then his graduate student, says that time moves forward because of the contrast in entropy between then and now, with an emphasis on the fact that the future universe will so much more disordered than the past. That movement toward high entropy gives time its direction.

The researchers suspect that it will someday work on human amputees too.

One small step for man. One giant leap for…

Russian media is reporting that the American toilet on the International Space Station (ISS) burst late last week, spilling gallons of fluid that astronauts had to catch with towels.

Sure, it sounds like a story about an exceptionally bad roommate — but it might also be the latest escalation in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the U.S. in space, lending grim gravitas to the plumbing snafu.

Pee Tape

A source told Sputnik News, which is closely affiliated with the Russian government, that the toilet in the U.S. section of the ISS malfunctioned on Friday, spilling water into the microgravity environment. Water is a precious resource on the ISS, where filtration systems recycle shower water, sweat, and urine.

Is it ethical?

A Chinese scientist who created what he said were the world’s first “gene-edited” babies evaded oversight and broke ethical boundaries in a quest for fame and fortune, state media said on Monday, as his former university said he had been fired.

He Jiankui said in November that he used a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls born that month, sparking an international outcry about the ethics and safety of such research.

Hundreds of Chinese and international scientists condemned He and said any application of gene editing on human embryos for reproductive purposes was unethical.

A robot just taught another robot how to read…

Last week, Elon Musk confirmed reports regarding the launch of his new venture, Neuralink. Today, more details have come to light regarding the company’s ultimate goal to develop a brain-computer interface.

In case you missed it, Elon Musk is rather concerned about the fate of humanity, given the extreme advancements being made in artificial intelligence (AI). Ultimately, he fears that our AI will, one day, overtake us. When this happens, he claims that humans will likely become second class citizens (or slaves, or something even worse).

Now, reports have surfaced which assert that he is backing a brain-computer interface venture that was founded to allow humans to keep up with the advancements made in machines. The interface is intended to work by augmenting that which makes us human: our brains.

The find comes from The Wall Street Journal. According to them, the company – which is called Neuralink – is still in the earliest stages of development. To that end, it has no public presence at all.