Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief:

• A Type IV civilization is a society that has managed to harness the energy of the entire universe.
• To get here, we would need to tap into energy sources unknown to us using strange laws of physics (laws that may or may not exist).

To measure the level of a civilization’s advancement, the Kardashev scale focuses on the amount of energy that a civilization is able to harness. Obviously, the amount of power available to a civilization is linked to how widespread the civilization is (you can’t harness the power of a star if you are confined to your home planet, and you certainly can’t harness the power of a galaxy if you can’t even get out of your solar system).

What would happen if an electric current no longer flowed, but trickled instead? This was the question investigated by researchers working with Christian Ast at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Their investigation involved cooling their scanning tunnelling microscope down to a fifteen thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. At these extremely low temperatures, the electrons reveal their quantum nature. The electric current is therefore a granular medium, consisting of individual particles. The electrons trickle through a conductor like grains of sand in an hourglass, a phenomenon that can be explained with the aid of quantum electrodynamics.

Flowing water from a tap feels like a homogeneous medium — it is impossible to distinguish between the individual water molecules. Exactly the same thing is true about electric current. So many electrons flow in a conventional cable that the current appears to be homogeneous. Although it is not possible to distinguish individual electrons, quantum mechanics says they should exist. So how do they behave? Under which conditions does the current not flow like water through a tap, but rather trickles like sand in an hourglass?

The hourglass analogy is very appropriate for the scanning tunnelling microscope, where a thin, pointed tip scans across the surface of a sample without actually touching it. A tiny current flows nevertheless, as there is a slight probability that electrons “tunnel” from the pointed tip into the sample. This tunnelling current is an exponential function of the separation, which is why the pointed tip is located only a few Ångström (a ten millionth of a millimetre) above the sample.

We are pleased to announce that QUANT is no longer a car. QUANT is three cars: one street legal e-Sportlimousine, one research vehicle, and one even more ambitious concept car for the mass market.

US and Chinese governments are already testing out their own EmDrive devices on spacecraft, sources say.

Our guest for this show is Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., and he refuses to accept aging as something we can not change. Aubrey is a Biomedical Gerontologist and Chief Scientific Officer of The SENS Research Foundation. I talk more about his background and the SENS Foundation in the interview. Aubrey has put forth a model for aging based on seven types of damage that occur as a product of aging. We discuss this model and the techniques the possibly address each category of damage. This interview is longer than the other thus far but it had me gripped the entire time so enjoy!

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In Brief:

• Experts assert that, in the coming years, robots will take over hundreds of thousands of jobs that are traditionally done by humans.
• In a recent interview, Elon Musk stated that Universal Basic Income may be the only economic response to this increasing automation and job loss.

I’m excited to be featured and have some pictures in a new Washington Post story today about ISideWith. Check it out! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11…-will-you/ #transhumanism #Election2016 #ScienceCandidate

ISideWith.com has boosted support for third-party candidates.

Tesla’s Elon Musk gives a grave warning to those trying to hold back self-driving car technology. According to him, we have it all backwards.

The idea of a world government has been a hot topic in the U.S. elections and throughout history.