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Category: existential risks – Page 64

SpaceX Starlink: Why humanity needs to act now before it’s too late

We will soon need to make some difficult choices.

Given current trends, that number will be reached within a year or so. There are ways to mitigate the effect of these streaks. Painting the satellites and adding reflective panels could reduce their brightness, particularly at infrared wavelengths that are important for near-Earth asteroid detection.

But the study points out that the mitigation strategy currently proposed by Starlink won’t be sufficient to avoid an impact on astronomy.

It is clear we will soon need to make some difficult choices about satellite Internet. While it could broaden human connection to even the poorest and most remote regions of the world, it could also destroy our ability to view the heavens and more deeply understand the universe we call home.

Elon Musk Says All Species on Earth Will Die When the Sun Expands

Unless we move to other planets.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said, in a tweet, that the expansion of the Sun could possibly result in the extinction of all species on the planet, making interplanetary living a necessity. While this might turn true, Musk said this in response to a paper warning about mass extinction caused by human activity.

Musk’s tweet came as an unsolicited response to a paper in Biological Reviews titled The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculati… See more.

Scientists say up to 260,000 species may have gone extinct since the year 1500. Elon Musk points towards the Sun expanding in five billion years, which would kill all the species.

Earth Has a Heartbeat, but No One Really Knows Why

Here’s how often it goes off.

Just like you, our planet has a ticker that keeps time: Earth’s geological “heartbeat” goes off on a regular schedule, albeit with millions of years in between, says a new study in Geoscience Frontiers.

When scientists from New York University and the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington D.C. analyzed 260 million years of geological feedback, they found “global geologic events are generally correlated,” and seemingly come in pulses every 27.5 million years.

Those events include everything from “times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations,” the authors write. They considered a total of 89 such major events from the last 260 million years, from which the 27.5 million-year cycle emerged.

Lightyears 101: Are We Watching the Stars In Real Time?

In our solar system, Saturn is the farthest planet from Earth that can be seen with the naked eye. And if it is destroyed by an asteroid while you are watching it (with or without a telescope), the ringed planet would still be visible to you for around 80 minutes, on average, even after it’s in bits and pieces. This happens because the average distance between Saturn and Earth is 0.00015 light-years, which means that the light from Saturn takes approximately 80 minutes to rea… See more.

A lightyear is a unit that denotes the distance of objects from Earth in space. But how did it come to be and how does it help us in space travels?

The Robots Are Not Coming

In 1987, at the beginning of the IT-driven technological revolution, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Robert famously quipped that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

More than 30 years later, another technological revolution seems imminent. In what is called “the Fourth Industrial revolution,” attention is devoted to automation and robots. Many have argued that robots may significantly transform corporations, leading to massive worker displacement and a significant increase in firms’ capital intensity. Yet, despite these omnipresent predictions, it is hard to find robots not only in aggregate productivity statistics but also anywhere else.

While investment in robots has increased significantly in recent years, it remains a small share of total investment. The use of robots is almost zero in industries other than manufacturing, and even within manufacturing, robotization is very low for all but a few poster-child industries, such as automotive. For example, in the manufacturing sector, robots account for around 2.1% of total capital expenditures. For the economy as a whole, robots account for about 0.3% of total investment in equipment. Moreover, recent increases in sales of robotics are driven mostly by China and other developing nations as they play catch up in manufacturing, rather than by increasing robotization in developed countries. These low levels of robotization cast doubt on doomsday projections in which robots will cut demand for human employees.

But is it too early to assess the future of robots? Is it possible that robots are still in their infancy, and the current levels of adoption are not indicative of their future impact on the workplace? After all, Solow’s productivity paradox was ultimately resolved in subsequent decades, as investments in digital technologies paid off, transforming the world in the process.

Maybe, but maybe not. A decade after Solow’s observation, the economic impact of IT was evident. The same cannot be said about robotics.

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Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races

The People’s Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America consider the avoidance of war between Nuclear-Weapon States and the reduction of strategic risks as our foremost responsibilities.

We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.

We reaffirm the importance of addressing nuclear threats and emphasize the importance of preserving and complying with our bilateral and multilateral non-proliferation, disarmament, and arms control agreements and commitments. We remain committed to our Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, including our Article VI obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

A Giant Asteroid Bigger Than The Empire State Building Is About to Zip Past Earth

A large, rocky asteroid is going to fly by Earth next week.

At 1 kilometer (3,280 feet) long, it’s roughly two and a half times the height of the Empire State Building, and it’s been classed a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” due to its size and its regular close visits to our planet.

But don’t worry, this month’s visit is going to have a very safe clearance, with the asteroid zipping by at a distance of 1.93 million kilometers (~1.2 million miles) away from Earth – that’s roughly 5.15 times more distant than the Moon.

China, US, UK, France and Russia pledge to avoid nuclear war

😀

Five of the world’s largest nuclear powers pledged on Monday to work together toward “a world without nuclear weapons” in a rare statement of unity amid rising East-West tensions.

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” said the joint statement, which was issued simultaneously by the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France. “As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons — for as long as they continue to exist — should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

The statement also stressed the importance of preventing conflict between nuclear-weapon states from escalating, describing it as a “foremost responsibility.”