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Fast burst of infrared light opens a way for 3D processing inside semiconductor chips

Researchers from LP3 Laboratory in France developed a light-based technique for local material processing anywhere in the three-dimensional space of semiconductor chips. The direct laser writing of new functionalities opens the possibility to exploit the sub-surface space for higher integration densities and extra functions.

Semiconductors remain the backbone material of the electronics integrated with modern devices such as cellphones, cars, robots and many other intelligent devices. Driven by the continuous need for miniaturized and powerful chips, the current semiconductor manufacturing technologies are facing increasing pressure.

The dominating manufacturing technology, lithography, has strong limitations when addressing these challenges, given its surface processing nature. For this reason, a solution to fabricating structures under the wafer surfaces would be highly desirable so that the full space inside the materials could be exploited.

AI Researchers from the Netherlands Propose a Machine Learning-based Method to Design New Complex Metamaterials with Useful Properties

Combinatorial problems often arise in puzzles, origami, and metamaterial design. Such problems have rare collections of solutions that generate intricate and distinct boundaries in configuration space. Using standard statistical and numerical techniques, capturing these boundaries is often quite challenging. Is it possible to flatten a 3D origami piece without causing damage? This question is one such combinatorial issue. As each fold needs to be consistent with flattening, such results are difficult to predict simply by glancing at the design. To answer such questions, the UvA Institute of Physics and the research center AMOLF have shown that researchers may more effectively and precisely respond to such queries by using machine learning techniques.

Despite employing severely undersampled training sets, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can learn to distinguish these boundaries for metamaterials in minute detail. This raises the possibility of complex material design by indicating that the network infers the underlying combinatorial rules from the sparse training set. The research team thinks this will facilitate the development of sophisticated, functional metamaterials with artificial intelligence. The team’s recent study examined the accuracy of forecasting the characteristics of these combinatorial mechanical metamaterials using artificial intelligence. Their work has also been published in the Physical Review Letters publication.

The attributes of artificial materials, which are engineered materials, are governed by their geometrical structure rather than their chemical makeup. Origami is one such metamaterial. The capacity of an origami piece to flatten is governed by how it is folded, i.e., its structure, and not by the sort of paper it is made of. More generally, the clever design enables us to accurately regulate a metamaterial’s bending, buckling, or bulging. This can be used for many different things, from satellite solar panels that unfurl to shock absorbers.

Scientists Reproduce Fascinating, Powerful Material Found in Meteorite

In an unprecedented experiment, two teams of scientists on either sides of the Atlantic have replicated a material that was previously not produced anywhere on Earth.

As NPR reports, the replication of this powerful compound could have huge implications not just for the manufacturing of high-end machinery, but also for international relations to boot.

Called tetrataenite, the primarily iron-and-nickel compound is normally able to cool for millions of years as it tumbles around in asteroids. As a press release out of the University of Cambridge notes, the researchers who worked in tandem with Boston’s Northeastern University found that if they add phosphorous to the mix, they were able to make synthetic tetrataenite.

The Global Mind, Collective Intelligence, Agency, and Morphogenesis — Michael Levin Λ Joscha Bach

This theolocution has been released early in an ad-free audio version for TOE members at http://theoriesofeverything.org.

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- Michael Levin (Solo TOE podcast): https://youtu.be/Z0TNfysTazc.
- Michael Levin Theolocution With Chris Fields & Karl Friston: https://youtu.be/J6eJ44Jq_pw.
- Joscha Bach Theolocution With John Vervaeke: https://youtu.be/rK7ux_JhHM4
- Joscha Bach Theolocution With Donald Hoffman: https://youtu.be/bhSlYfVtgww.
- Joscha Bach (Solo TOE podcast): https://youtu.be/3MNBxfrmfmI

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction.
00:01:55 Bach and Levin speak about each other’s work.
00:03:34 The cell functions as a neuron.
00:07:15 Software as a control pattern.
00:10:55 Disciplinary boundaries in academia.
00:14:38 The perceptron is a “toy model” of the brain.
00:18:44 How do you identify yourself as a researcher?
00:20:10 The benefits of podcasts vs. academia.
00:30:04 Beliefs of Bach’s and Levin’s that have drastically changed.
00:38:54 Memory moves outside the brain structure.
00:45:06 Engrams and memory storage.
00:47:30 The implications of transferring memory between species.
00:55:25 Weissman’s barrier.
00:59:25 The notion of “competence” (Bach’s and Levin’s largest insight)
01:12:10 Virtualization for unreliable hardware.
01:16:02 Defining “competence“
01:22:35 Bach’s issues with goals (for and against teleology)
01:27:34 Planarian goals and explicitly encoded instructions.
01:34:55 Navigation in “Morphic Space“
01:36:11 One species’ birth defect can be another’s benefit.
01:37:42 The “Intelligence Trap” and bias.
01:39:05 Application of each others’ work to their own.
01:52:25 Necessities of general intelligence in cells.

NASA leaves its Artemis I rocket exposed to winds above design limits

Early on Thursday morning, Hurricane Nicole made landfall near Vero Beach on Florida’s eastern coast. Because Nicole had a very large eye, nearly 60 miles in diameter, its strongest winds were located well to the north of this landfalling position.

As a result of this, Kennedy Space Center took some of the most intense wind gusts from Nicole late on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. While such winds from a Category 1 hurricane are unlikely to damage facilities, they are of concern because the space agency left its Artemis I mission—consisting of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft—exposed on a pad at Launch Complex-39B. The pad is a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.

How intense were the winds? The National Weather Service hosts data from NASA sensors attached to this launch pad’s three lighting towers on a public website. It can be a little difficult to interpret the readings because there are sensors at altitudes varying from 132 feet to 457 feet. Most of the publicly available data appears to come from an altitude of about 230 feet, however, which would represent the area of the Space Launch System rocket where the core stage is attached to the upper stage. The entire stack reaches a height of about 370 feet above the ground.

Colonizing Giant Stars

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Giant Stars are often considered too hot and short lived to colonize, but it may be that they shall be the most powerful and pivotal systems in a future galaxy.

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Credits:
Colonizing Giant Stars.
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur.
Episode 279, February 25, 2021
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur.

Editors:
Darius Said.
Jason Burbank.
Keith Blockus.

Cover Art:

Our Universe Trailer: Morgan Freeman Narrates The History Of Everything

When you need someone to narrate the history of the universe — and Mel Brooks is busy — you might as well go with Morgan Freeman. Not only has Freeman played God in “Bruce Almighty” and “Evan Almighty,” but he’s also told “The Story of God” and “The Story of Us” for National Geographic.

In “Our Universe,” Freeman is lending his voice to a new six-part nature documentary series for Netflix. As the title implies, this series is even bigger in scope than “The Story of Us.” It’s looking back at the whole history of the universe and how 13.8 billion years have led us to this moment.

Freeman also narrated the Oscar-winning documentary “March of the Penguins,” and while I’m not a wildlife expert, I think you might spot some brown penguins in the “Our Universe” trailer. For anyone who enjoyed seeing cosmic events recreated with special effects in Terrence Malick’s “Voyage of Time,” but wished the movie had been narrated by Detective Somerset instead of Detective Mills (as in, Freeman and Brad Pitt’s “Seven” characters), this Netflix series might be right up your alley. Check out the trailer for “Our Universe” below.

Scientists Tested Einstein’s Relativity on a Cosmic Scale, And Found Something Odd

Everything in the Universe has gravity – and feels it too. Yet this most common of all fundamental forces is also the one that presents the biggest challenges to physicists.

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been remarkably successful in describing the gravity of stars and planets, but it doesn’t seem to apply perfectly on all scales.

General relativity has passed many years of observational tests, from Eddington’s measurement of the deflection of starlight by the Sun in 1919 to the recent detection of gravitational waves.

Matter–antimatter gigaelectron volt gamma ray laser rocket propulsion

face_with_colon_three circa 2012.


It is shown that the idea of a photon rocket through the complete annihilation of matter with antimatter, first proposed by Sänger, is not a utopian scheme as it is widely believed. Its feasibility appears to be possible by the radiative collapse of a relativistic high current pinch discharge in a hydrogen–antihydrogen ambiplasma down to a radius determined by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Through this collapse to ultrahigh densities the proton–antiproton pairs in the center of the pinch can become the upper gigaelectron volt laser level for the transition into a coherent gamma ray beam by proton–antiproton annihilation, with the magnetic field of the collapsed pinch discharge absorbing the recoil momentum of the beam and transmitting it by the Moessbauer effect to the spacecraft. The gamma ray laser beam is launched as a photon avalanche from one end of the pinch discharge channel. Because of the enormous technical problems to produce and store large amounts of anti-matter, such a propulsion concept may find its first realization in small unmanned space probes to explore nearby solar systems. The laboratory demonstration of a gigaelectron volt gamma ray laser by comparison requiring small amounts of anti-matter may be much closer.

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