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Category: physics – Page 119

The Google employee who claimed last June his company’s A.I. model could already be sentient, and was later fired by the company, is still worried about the dangers of new A.I.-powered chatbots, even if he hasn’t tested them himself yet.

Blake Lemoine was let go from Google last summer for violating the company’s confidentiality policy after he published transcripts of several conversations he had with LaMDA, the company’s large language model he helped create that forms the artificial intelligence backbone of Google’s upcoming search engine assistant, the chatbot Bard.

Lemoine told the Washington Post at the time that LaMDA resembled “a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics” and said he believed the technology was sentient, while urging Google to take care of it as it would a “sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us.”

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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.

Support the scientific revolution by joining our Patreon: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB
Support us both when you pick up one of Rupert’s books: https://amzn.to/3xdrRmo.

Let us know what you think in the comments or on our Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub.

00:00:00 Go!
00:02:43 New Science.
00:07:59 Physics as supreme authority.
00:13:08 Experimentation.
00:22:51 Psychology.
00:25:37 Morphic Resonance.
00:37:32 Fragility.
00:41:52 Debate.
00:48:19 Science, State, and Truth.
00:52:50 Instrumentalization.
00:59:00 Analog Systems.
01:16:53 Avoiding Bitterness.
01:21:22 Engaging Critics.
01:28:16 God.

#consciousness #evolution #psychology.

Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience.

Continue reading “Memory Across Time & Space — Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist” | >

The Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE) project team, jointly led by NASA and Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, envisions a way to make huge circular self-healing mirrors in-orbit to further the field of astronomy. Larger telescopes collect more light, and they allow astronomers to peer farther into space and see distant objects in greater detail.

These next-generation large space observatories would study the highest priority astrophysics targets, including first generation stars—the first to shine and flame out after the Big Bang—early galaxies, and Earth-like exoplanets. These observatories could help address one of humanity’s most important science questions: “Are we alone in the universe?”

Like a carry-on suitcase, payloads launching to space need to stay within allowable size and weight limits to fly. Already pushing size limits, the state-of-the-art 21 foot (6.5 meter) aperture James Webb Space Telescope needed to be folded up origami-style—including the mirror itself—to fit inside the rocket for its ride to space. The aperture of an optical space observatory refers to the size of the telescope’s , the surface that collects and focuses incoming light.

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A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that focuses on the rapid publication of short, significant letters and papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. It is one of the journals published by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and is considered one of the most prestigious journals in the field.

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Scientists have created two-dimensional photonic time crystals that amplify light, with potential applications in improving wireless communications and laser technology.

Researchers have developed a way to create photonic time crystals and shown that these bizarre, artificial materials amplify the light that shines on them. These findings, described in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

<em>Science Advances</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was launched in 2015 and covers a wide range of topics in the natural sciences, including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, materials science, and physics.

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The kardeshev scale of possible future technological advance.

In 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev figured that civilizations can be categorized by the total amount of energy available to them. He called it the Kardashev Scale. He initially came up with 3 civilization types; type 1, type 2, and type 3. However, other astronomers have recently extended the scale from type 0 all the way to type 7 as new theories in modern physics have emerged. Check out the complete playlist as we unveil each level of the Kardashev Scale! Enjoy the videos, and do let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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Chinese researchers have successfully fabricated mechanical metamaterials with ultra-high energy absorption capacity using ion track technology. The results were published in Nature Communications as an Editor’s Highlight.

The study was conducted by the researchers from the Materials Research Center of the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators from Chongqing University.

Mechanical metamaterials refer to a class of composite materials with artificially designed structures, which exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties that traditional materials do not have. Among them, energy absorption can absorb more efficiently, which requires the material itself to equip both and high strain capacity, which, however, hardly co-exist in general.

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The field of plate tectonics is relatively new, and researchers are still uncovering the intricacies of geologic faults that cause earthquakes. One such fault, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, is a potentially catastrophic offshore fault located in the Pacific Northwest that has yet to reveal all its secrets. Despite its eerie calmness, it is capable of producing a massive magnitude-9 quake.

A study led by the University of Washington discovered seeps of warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport, Oregon. Their research, published in the journal Science Advances.

<em>Science Advances</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was launched in 2015 and covers a wide range of topics in the natural sciences, including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, materials science, and physics.

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