The prospect of interstellar travel is no longer sci-fi. It COULD be achievable within our lifetime! But, how would an interstellar rocket-ship work? On this week’s episode of Space Time, Matt talks options for interstellar travel — from traditional rocket fuel to antimatter drives, could we travel to other star systems? Watch this episode of Space Time to find out!
“Quantum Entanglement & Spooky Action at a Distance”:
Quoted: “Masters went on to say that, because financial services involve Americans’ livelihoods (and not just, say, their taxi ride to Brooklyn), regulations ruling the space are many multitudes more complex than they are in other industries — and the 100-plus year-old banks have a leg up in dealing with these rules.
“Anyone who imagines that as a result of the advent of new technology we will see a world where incumbent financial institutions who provide vital, heavily-regulated intermediated services, custodial services, safe-keeping services will be decimated and completely removed from the picture overnight is just naive and wrong,” she said, pointing out that customers of legacy banks can pay bills and deposit checks through their iPhones — so it’s not as if there’s been no innovation in traditional financial services.”
First micropigs, now dogs: Scientists in China have used a gene-editing technique to produce the world’s first genetically engineered pooches. Although these two endeavors share scientific roots, with their production aimed at assisting medical research, unlike the teeny tiny pigs, the researchers behind this latest project are not intending to sell their customized animals as pets.
So it probably won’t come as a surprise that the dogs weren’t engineered to be cuter, fluffier or more pocket-sized: they had their DNA tweaked to make them more muscly. The first of many potential edits the team would like to carry out, this was done with the forces in mind.
With greater muscle mass, the dogs “are expected to have a stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications,” researcher Liangxue Lai from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health told MIT Technology Review. Later on down the line, the scientists would like to manipulate the dog genome in order to mimic human diseases, which could better our understanding and treatment of certain conditions.
“The nature of work, employment, jobs, and economics will have to change over the next 35 years, or the world will face massive unemployment by 2050. This was a key conclusion of the Future Work/Technology 2050 study published in the “2015−16 State of the Future.””
A Russian defense firm that produces the brand-new Armata T-14 tank also plans to build an army of new combat robots within the next two years. This would be a next step towards machines guided by artificial intelligence, the manufacturer says.
Uralvagonzavod, the company that introduced the ‘super tank’ Armata T-14 back in May, is now trying to step away from piloted military technologies and is eager to develop artificial intelligence.
” We will be able to show prototypes in 1.5 to 2 years. We are gradually moving away from crewed machines,” Vyacheslav Khalitov, the company’s deputy director general, said Tuesday.
Rendering of a virus used in the MIT experiments. The light-collecting centers, called chromophores, are in red, and chromophores that just absorbed a photon of light are glowing white. After the virus is modified to adjust the spacing between the chromophores, energy can jump from one set of chromophores to the next faster and more efficiently. (credit: the researchers and Lauren Alexa Kaye)
MIT engineers have achieved a significant efficiency boost in a light-harvesting system, using genetically engineered viruses to achieve higher efficiency in transporting energy from receptors to reaction centers where it can be harnessed, making use of the exotic effects of quantum mechanics. Emulating photosynthesis in nature, it could lead to inexpensive and efficient solar cells or light-driven catalysis,
This achievement in coupling quantum research and genetic manipulation, described this week in the journal Nature Materials, was the work of MIT professors Angela Belcher, an expert on engineering viruses to carry out energy-related tasks, and Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum theory and its potential applications, and 15 collaborators at MIT and in Italy.
Cryonics is a legitimate science-based endeavor that seeks to preserve human beings, especially the human brain, by the best technology available. Future technologies for resuscitation can be envisioned that involve molecular repair by nanomedicine, highly advanced computation, detailed control of cell growth, and tissue regeneration.
With a view toward these developments, there is a credible possibility that cryonics performed under the best conditions achievable today can preserve sufficient neurological information to permit eventual restoration of a person to full health.
