Dr. Rupert Sheldrake believes that memory is inherent to nature, and has spent the last forty years of his career investigating slippery, esoteric phenomena at the very edges of empiricism. Some of the results are intriguing — dogs that know when their owners have started the long journey home, crosswords that become easier to solve a few days after they’ve been published in the papers, IQ scores increase generation after generation. His work is ongoing, the territory marginal, and the implications immense.
Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, administered by Trinity College, Cambridge. Sheldrake has published a number of books — A New Science of Life (1981), The Presence of the Past (1988), The Rebirth of Nature (1991), Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1994), Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999), The Sense of Being Stared At (2003), The Science Delusion (Science Set Free) (2012), Science and Spiritual Practices (2017), Ways of Going Beyond and Why They Work (2019).
A new study published in Ecology and Evolution by Henrik Svensmark of DTU Space has shown that the explosion of stars, also known as supernovae, has greatly impacted the diversity of marine life over the past 500 million years.
The fossil record has been extensively studied, revealing significant variations in the diversity of life forms throughout geological history. A fundamental question in evolutionary biology is identifying the processes responsible for these fluctuations.
The new research uncovers a surprising finding: the fluctuation in the number of nearby supernovae closely corresponds to changes in biodiversity of marine genera over the last 500 million years. This correlation becomes apparent when the marine diversity curve is adjusted to account for changes in shallow coastal marine regions, which are significant as they provide habitat for most marine life and offer new opportunities for evolution as they expand or shrink. Thus, alterations in available shallow marine regions play a role in shaping biodiversity.
And it could fly to orbit, in only one launch, by the early 2030s.
European aerospace giant Airbus has just revealed a new concept space habitat called LOOP. The 26-foot-wide (8 meters) multi-purpose orbital module will feature three customizable decks, all of which will be connected by a tunnel overlooking a space greenhouse.
In a press statement, Airbus said its new space station design could accommodate up to eight crew members, and it could be deployed to orbit, in only one launch, by the early 2030s.
The world’s wealthiest billionaires are drawing battle lines when it comes to who will control AI, according to Elon Musk in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, which aired this week.
Musk explained that he cofounded ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in reaction to Google cofounder Larry Page’s lack of concern over the danger of AI outsmarting humans.
He said the two were once close friends and that he would often stay at Page’s house in Palo Alto where they would talk late into the night about the technology. Page was such a fan of Musk’s that in Jan. 2015, Google invested $1 billion in SpaceX for a 10% stake with Fidelity Investments. “He wants to go to Mars. That’s a worthy goal,” Page said in a March 2014 TED Talk.
See why history may hang in the balance on this critical launch attempt.
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Four small rooms, a gym and a lot of red sand—NASA unveiled on Tuesday its new Mars-simulation habitat, in which volunteers will live for a year at a time to test what life will be like on future missions to Earth’s neighbor.
The facility, created for three planned experiments called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), is located at the US space agency’s massive research base in Houston, Texas.
Four volunteers will begin the first trial this summer, during which NASA plans to monitor their physical and mental health to better understand humans’ fortitude for such a long isolation.