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Circa 2019 face_with_colon_three


By Tyler Benster.

Neuroscientists have a dizzying array of methods to listen in on hundreds or even thousands of neurons in the brain and have even developed tools to manipulate the activity of individual cells. Will this unprecedented access to the brain allow us to finally crack the mystery of how it works? In 2017, Jonas and Kording published a controversial research article, “Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?” that argues maybe not. To make their point, the authors turn to their “model organism” of choice: a MOS 6502 processor as popularized by the Apple I, Commodore 64, and Atari Video Game System. Jonas and Kording argue that for an electrical engineer, a satisfying description of the processor would break it into modules, like an adder or subtractor, and submodules, like the transistor, to form a hierarchy of information processing. They suggest that, while popular methods from neuroscience might reveal interesting structure in the activity of the brain, researchers often use techniques that would fail to reveal a hierarchy of information processing if applied to the (presumably much simpler) computer processor.

For example, neuroscientists have long used lesions, or turning off or destroying a part of the brain, to try to find links between that brain region and particular behaviors. In one particularly striking experiment, the authors mimicked this classic technique by simulating the processor as it performed one of four “behaviors”: Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Pitfall, and Asteroids. They then systematically removed one transistor, and reported which (if any) of the behaviors could still be performed (i.e. did the game boot?) The elimination of 1,565 transistors have no impact, while 1,560 inhibit all behaviors, and indeed a subset of transistors make only one game impossible. Perhaps these are the Donkey Kong transistors, the authors coyly suggest, before concluding that the “causal relationship” is highly superficial.

The findings could revolutionize how we study potential collisions.

Asteroids pass by our planet all the time and even sometimes land here, causing much devastation. Understanding how often these kinds of impacts happened in the past and how they influenced the environment both then and today is crucial to protecting Earth.

Now, new research published by the Estonian Research Council on Friday has shown that analyzing bodies of organisms killed by an impact of asteroids can teach us how much damage occurs at the spot of such a cosmic collision.

Researchers dugout trenches in rims of four craters (Kaali Main and Kaali 2/8 in Estonia, Morasko in Poland, and Whitecourt in Canada) located on two different continents that formed thousands of years apart to analyze their content and draw conclusions about the effects of the collisions on our planet.

Shockwaves caused by asteroids colliding with Earth create materials with a range of complex carbon structures, which could be used for advancing future engineering applications, according to an international study led by UCL and Hungarian scientists.

Published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team of researchers has found that formed during a high-energy shock wave from an around 50,000 years ago have unique and exceptional properties, caused by the short-term high temperatures and extreme pressure.

The researchers say that these structures can be targeted for advanced mechanical and electronic applications, giving us the ability to design materials that are not only ultra-hard but also malleable with tunable electronic properties.

The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future.

German animation and design studio, Kurzgesagt, explores the far future of humanity and how our population may change over the aeons.

Given the numerous global threats we face during this century and beyond – from climate change to nuclear war, asteroid impacts and killer viruses – many of us are concerned that humans could go extinct. But there are reasons to be optimistic, according to this latest video from Kurzgesagt. Rather than approaching the end of human history, we may actually be living at the dawn of our species; the mere prelude for a vast and exciting future that lies ahead.

While it may seem a bit silly to think about an asteroid hitting the planet in 2052, the 2021 QM1 hitting Earth would be devastating. The asteroid is said to be 50 meters or 150 feet in diameter. Should it impact, it would have a force of six tons of TNT. To put that in perspective, it would be 400 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima. That would certainly be enough to destroy a large city and much more. There had been a 12-megaton asteroid that hit Earth over a remote part of the Siberia region. The impact flattened over 830 miles of forest, and three people were said to have died because of the impact. However, if that impact happened anywhere that was populated, that entire city, town, or state would essentially have been wiped off the map.

The 2021 QM1 had initially been discovered in August of 2021 at the Mount Lemmon observatory. It was discovered along with a dozen other asteroids. However, during Asteroid Day 2022 which took place in June of 2022, the ESA (European Space Agency) deemed that the 2021 QM1 asteroid would be completely safe and not strike the earth. Another asteroid by the name 2022, AE1, was also said to be on a collision course with the planet before it was recently deemed safe as well. The 70-meter asteroid is said to strike the moon before it would hit our planet. That might not seem like good news, considering the moon being destroyed might cause significant other damage to the planet, but it’s still good news.

Thankfully, there are scientists and astronomers that revolve their lives around studying the trajectory of rogue asteroids. They are meant to alert the planet should we be in any imminent danger. However, would the public go a bit crazy if they knew a giant asteroid was catapulting straight to Earth? Hopefully, they would not. Mass hysteria is always something to think about when there is a credible threat that cannot be vanquished by our modern technology.