Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 1876

The great mystery of where all the aliens are in our vast Universe contemplates ancient interstellar civilizations building enormous megastructures that rival worlds or even stars in the immensity… and asks why we can’t see these giant alien artifacts.

David Brin on Event Horizon with John Michael Godier: • A.I. Wars, The Fermi Paradox and Grea…
This Week in Space with Rod Pyle: • Alien Megastructures — Isaac Arthur a…

Sign up for a Curiosity Stream subscription and also get a free Nebula subscription (the streaming platform built by creators) here: https://curiositystream.com/isaacarthur.
Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net.
Join Nebula: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur.
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur.
Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a…
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur.
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord.

Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: Episode’s Audio-only version: / the-fermi-paradox-absent-megastructures.

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Absent Megastructures” | >

Johns Hopkins electrical and computer engineers are pioneering a new approach to creating neural network chips—neuromorphic accelerators that could power energy-efficient, real-time machine intelligence for next-generation embodied systems like autonomous vehicles and robots.

Electrical and computer engineering graduate student Michael Tomlinson and undergraduate Joe Li—both members of the Andreou Lab—used natural language prompts and ChatGPT4 to produce detailed instructions to build a spiking neural network chip: one that operates much like the human brain.

Through step-by-step prompts to ChatGPT4, starting with mimicking a single biological neuron and then linking more to form a network, they generated a full that could be fabricated.

Read more | >

A pair of chemists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has observed communication between rotors in a molecular motor. In their study, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Carlijn van Beek and Ben Feringa conducted experiments with alkene-based molecular motors.

Molecular motors are natural or artificial molecular machines that convert energy into movement in living organisms. One example would be DNA polymerase turning single-stranded DNA into double-stranded DNA. In this new effort, the researchers were experimenting with light-driven, alkene-based molecular motors, using light to drive molecular rotors. As part of their experiments, they created a motor comprising three gears and two rotors and observed an instance of communication between two of the rotors.

To build their motor, the researchers started with parts of existing two motors, bridging them together. The resulting isoindigo structure, they found, added another dimension to their motor relative to other synthesized motors—theirs had a doubled, metastable intermediary connecting two of the rotors, allowing for communication between the two.

Read more | >

Study shows #Glucagon is #Key for #Kidney #Health.

When researchers removed receptors for this hormone (best known for promoting blood sugar production in the liver) from mouse kidneys, the animals developed symptoms akin to chronic kidney disease…

Glucagon, a hormone best known for promoting blood sugar production in the liver, also appears to play a key role in maintaining kidney health. When UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers removed receptors for this hormone from mouse kidneys, the animals developed symptoms akin to chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Their findings, published in Cell Metabolism, shed new light on glucagon’s physiological functions and provide new insights into CKD, a disease that affects hundreds of millions of people around the globe, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Continue reading “Study shows Glucagon is Key for Kidney Health” | >

(alternate spelling noösphere) is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the as the new state of the biosphere[1] and described as the planetary “sphere of reason”.[2][3] The represents the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind’s rational activities.[4]

The word is derived from the Greek νόος (“nous, mind, reason”) and σφαῖρα (“sphere”), in lexical analogy to “atmosphere” and “biosphere”.[5] The concept cannot be accredited to a single author. The founding authors Vernadsky and de Chardin developed two related but starkly different concepts, the former grounded in the geological sciences, and the latter in theology. Both conceptions of the share the common thesis that together human reason and scientific thought have created, and will continue to create, the next evolutionary geological layer. This geological layer is part of the evolutionary chain.[6][7] Second-generation authors, predominantly of Russian origin, have further developed the Vernadskian concept, creating the related concepts: noocenosis and noocenology.[8].

Read more | >

A holographic universe where spacetime is built from quantum bits. In this interview, we hear all about how the concept of entanglement entropy, a measure of quantum information between regions is related to the structure of spacetime. What can we learn from entanglement and entropy about gravity, and what has gravity to say about quantum physics? We find out in this video.

Tadashi Takayanagi is a prominent Japanese researcher most known for his research on holographic entanglement entropy for which he won the 2015 New Horizon award. Tadashi did his Ph.D. at Tokyo University and has obtained postdoc positions at Harvard and Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California. He is currently a professor at Kyoto University and holds a visiting position at Kavli Institute. A well-known hobby of Tadashi is his mineral collection from which he draws inspiration for his research work.

Read more | >

Gödel’s Incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that demonstrate the inherent limitations of every formal axiomatic system capable of modelling basic arithmetic.

The first incompleteness theorem: No consistent formal system capable of modelling basic arithmetic can be used to prove all truths about arithmetic.

In other words, no matter how complex a system of mathematics is, there will always be some statements about numbers that cannot be proved or disproved within the system.

Read more | >

For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to understand how we manage to make the best possible decisions. Due to technical limitations, researchers have so far had to rely on experiments in which monkeys perform tasks on computer screens while the activity of their brain cells is measured.

The animals are trained to sit still in a chair and are therefore restricted in their natural freedom of movement. Since it is now possible to wirelessly record the activity of several individual nerve cells, decision-making in scenarios with natural movement sequences can be investigated.

For the study, a team of researchers from Germany and the U.S. trained two rhesus monkeys to explore an experimental room with two button-controlled food boxes. Each time the monkeys pressed a button on one of the boxes, they had the chance to receive food pellets.

Read more | >