Lifeboat Foundation

German researchers hoping to be the first to successfully measure quantum flickering directly in a completely empty vacuum are setting their sights on 2024.

If successful, the first-of-their-kind experiments are expected to either confirm the existence of quantum energy in the vacuum, a core concept of quantum electrodynamics (QED), or potentially result in the discovery of previously unknown laws of nature.

Quantum Flickering, Ghost Particles, and Energy in the Vacuum.

Physicists from the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have been conducting research on the matter constituting the atomic nucleus utilizing the world’s three most powerful particle accelerators. Their focus has been on mapping the “primordial soup” that filled the universe in the first millionth of a second following its inception.

Intriguingly, their measurements showed that the movement of observed particles bears resemblance to the search for prey of marine predators, the patterns of climate change, and the fluctuations of stock market.

In the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, temperatures were so extreme that atomic nuclei could not exists, nor could nucleons, their building blocks. Hence, in this first instance the universe was filled with a “primordial soup” of quarks and gluons.

To teach an AI agent a new task, like how to open a kitchen cabinet, researchers often use reinforcement learning—a trial-and-error process where the agent is rewarded for taking actions that get it closer to the goal.

In many instances, a human expert must carefully design a reward function, which is an incentive mechanism that gives the agent motivation to explore. The human expert must iteratively update that reward function as the agent explores and tries different actions. This can be time-consuming, inefficient, and difficult to scale up, especially when the task is complex and involves many steps.

Researchers from MIT, Harvard University, and the University of Washington have developed a new reinforcement learning approach that doesn’t rely on an expertly designed reward function. Instead, it leverages crowdsourced feedback, gathered from many non-expert users, to guide the agent as it learns to reach its goal. The work has been published on the pre-print server arXiv.

Physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Central South University in China have demonstrated that, combining specific materials, heat in technical devices can be used in computing. Their discovery is based on extensive calculations and simulations. The new approach demonstrates how heat signals can be steered and amplified for use in energy-efficient data processing.

The team’s research findings have been published in the journal Advanced Electronic Materials (“PT-Symmetry Enabled Spintronic Thermal Diodes and Logic Gates.”).

Information signals are encoded as thermal spin waves (red arrows). Logical operations are realized with two magnetic strips (signal conductors) and precisely controlled with current pulses in a spacer (platinum). (Image: Berakdar group)

The ISS just celebrated its 25th anniversary — soon, the station will be hanging up its boots.

A team of AI researchers from EquiLibre Technologies, Sony AI, Amii and Midjourney, working with Google’s DeepMind project, has developed an AI system called Student of Games (SoG) that is capable of both beating humans at a variety of games and learning to play new ones. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes the new system and its capabilities.

Over the past half-century, computer scientists and engineers have developed the idea of machine learning and artificial intelligence, in which human-generated data is used to train computer systems. The technology has applications in a variety of scenarios, one of which is playing board and/or parlor games.

Teaching a computer to play a board game and then improving its capabilities to the degree that it can beat humans has become a milestone of sorts, demonstrating how far artificial intelligence has developed. In this new study, the research team has taken another step toward artificial general intelligence—in which a computer can carry out tasks deemed superhuman.

As an optimist, I believe it will be a catalyst for changes that will help all of us to learn faster and achieve more of our potential.

Focus on the data

Where do I start? Let me start by noting that, in all the conversations about artificial intelligence, very few people are talking about the data. Most people don’t recognize that AI is actually extremely stupid without data. Data is the fuel that shapes the intelligence of AI. Everyone seems to assume that more and more data will be available as AI evolves. But is that assumption valid?

A high-tech soccer ball that helps with more accurate offside decisions will make its European Championship debut next year in Germany after being used at the 2022 World Cup.

European soocer governing body UEFA and manufacturer Adidas unveiled the ball for Euro 2024 in Berlin on Wednesday. It is named “Fussballliebe,” the German word for “love of soccer,” and will be used at next year’s 51-game tournament from June 14-July 14.

A chip fixed on a gyroscope inside the ball sends data 500 times per second to record the point at which it is kicked. The “kick point” helps match officials make offside decisions using multiple camera angles to create 3D visualizations that illustrate player movement.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently used its powerful Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to peer into the very center of our Milky Way Galaxy, revealing stunning details in a star-forming region known as Sagittarius C (Sgr C) like never before, which includes approximately 500,000 in this single image. Sgr C is located approximately 300 light-years from the exact center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A*, which is a supermassive black hole. For context, the Milky Way is approximately 105,000 light-years across, so Sgr C being only 300 light-years from the center of the Milky Way is extremely close.

“The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation,” said Dr. Rubén Fedriani, who is a Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellow at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain and a co-investigator of the project. “Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it.”