Without one social media user’s sharp eye, their unexpected achievement might have gone unnoticed.
Category: space – Page 187
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) — When British naturalist Charles Darwin sketched out his theory of evolution in the 1,859 book “On the Origin of Species” — proposing that biological species change over time through the acquisition of traits that favor survival and reproduction — it provoked a revolution in scientific thought.
Now 164 years later, nine scientists and philosophers on Monday proposed a new law of nature that includes the biological evolution described by Darwin as a vibrant example of a much broader phenomenon, one that appears at the level of atoms, minerals, planetary atmospheres, planets, stars and more.
It holds that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity and complexity.
Otherworldly motoring has come a long way since the original Lunar Roving Vehicle traversed the Moon in the 1970’s.
From the billionaire VC’s hot takes: Slowing AI innovation will kill people, and universal basic income will turn us into zoo animals.
Humanity is a type 0 civilization. Here’s what types 1, 2, and 3 look like, according to physicist Michio Kaku.
Is anybody out there? Renowned physicist Michio Kaku discusses we could identify and categorize advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
According to Kaku, while recognizing intelligence in space is challenging, Quantum computers may be able to help sift through data for signals of intelligence, similarly to how we analyze patterns in dolphin communication.
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NASA has begun it’s mission to 19 Psyche — an asteroid filled with precious (and expensive) metals.
The digital realm, while offering boundless possibilities, is also a fertile ground for myriad cybersecurity threats. One such peril that has recently come to light is the User-After-Free vulnerability in Google Chrome, specifically identified as CVE-2023–5218. This vulnerability not only poses a significant threat to user data and system integrity but also opens a Pandora’s box of potential cyber-attacks and exploitations.
The User-After-Free vulnerability is a type of cybersecurity flaw that surfaces when a program continues to utilize memory space after it has been freed or deleted. This flaw allows attackers to execute arbitrary code or potentially gain unauthorized access to a system. CVE-2023–5218, identified within Google Chrome, was noted to be potentially exploitable to perform such malicious actions, thereby putting users’ data and privacy at substantial risk.
CVE-2023–5218 was unveiled to the public through various cybersecurity platforms and researchers who detected unusual activities and potential exploitation trails leading back to this particular flaw. This vulnerability was identified to be present in a specific Chrome component, prompting Google to release a flurry of updates and patches to mitigate the associated risks.
Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected evidence for quartz nanocrystals in the high-altitude clouds of WASP-17 b, a hot Jupiter exoplanet 1,300 light-years from Earth.
The detection, which was uniquely possible with MIRI (Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument), marks the first time that silica (SiO2) particles have been spotted in an exoplanet atmosphere.
The quartz crystals are only about 10 nanometers across, so small that 10,000 could fit side-by-side across a human hair. Their size and composition of pure silica were reported in “JWST-TST DREAMS: Quartz Clouds in the Atmosphere of WASP-17b,” published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The new book Minding the Brain from Discovery Institute Press is an anthology of 25 renowned philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians who seek to address that question. Materialism shouldn’t be the only option for how we think about ourselves or the universe at large. Contributor Angus Menuge, a philosopher from Concordia University Wisconsin, writes.
Neuroscience in particular has implicitly dualist commitments, because the correlation of brain states with mental states would be a waste of time if we did not have independent evidence that these mental states existed. It would make no sense, for example, to investigate the neural correlates of pain if we did not have independent evidence of the existence of pain from the subjective experience of what it is like to be in pain. This evidence, though, is not scientific evidence: it depends on introspection (the self becomes aware of its own thoughts and experiences), which again assumes the existence of mental subjects. Further, Richard Swinburne has argued that scientific attempts to show that mental states are epiphenomenal are self-refuting, since they require that mental states reliably cause our reports of being in those states. The idea, therefore, that science has somehow shown the irrelevance of the mind to explaining behavior is seriously confused.
The AI optimists can’t get away from the problem of consciousness. Nor can they ignore the unique capacity of human beings to reflect back on themselves and ask questions that are peripheral to their survival needs. Functions like that can’t be defined algorithmically or by a materialistic conception of the human person. To counter the idea that computers can be conscious, we must cultivate an understanding of what it means to be human. Then maybe all the technology humans create will find a more modest, realistic place in our lives.
