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Mar 5, 2023

Upside-down anglerfish and other alien oddities spotted in one of the world’s deepest trenches

Posted by in category: futurism

Pictures from a submarine dive to the 20,000-foot-deep Kermadec Trench in the South Pacific reveal weirdos from the deep, some of which may be new to science.

Mar 5, 2023

Is it a millipede, or a rock? The ‘evidence’ we’ve already found life on Mars

Posted by in category: alien life

Group of academics say they have identified fossilised sponges, corals, worm eggs, algae and more on planet’s surface.

Is it a millipede? Is it a rock?

That is the question that is troubling some scientists who believe that life may already have been found on Mars, if you just look carefully enough.

Mar 5, 2023

Chimpanzees have their own language — and scientists just learned how they put “words” together

Posted by in category: evolution

The discovery of a chimp group’s 390-word “language” has profound implications for the evolution of human speech.

Mar 5, 2023

Philip K Dick :: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale :: Alternate Version :: Audiobook

Posted by in categories: alien life, government, robotics/AI

Subscribe for more great Philip K Dick audiobooks ::
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OaAFInNSwLdyueyI6Taxg.

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” is a short story by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a melding of reality, false memory, and real memory. The story has been the subject of two film adaptations, 1990’s Total Recall, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the story’s protagonist; and 2012’s same-titled with Colin Farrell in a similar role.

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Mar 5, 2023

Ask Ethan: Did our Universe really arise from nothing?

Posted by in category: cosmology

The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here’s how that’s possible.

Mar 5, 2023

New analysis of ancient human protein could unlock secrets of evolution

Posted by in category: evolution

Tiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.

Researchers believe a new technique – known as proteomics – could allow them to identify the proteins from which our predecessors’ bodies were constructed and bring new insights into the past 2 million years of humanity’s history.

Mar 5, 2023

It from Bit: Pioneering Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Information, the Nature of Reality, and Why We Live in a Participatory Universe

Posted by in category: cosmology

All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.

Mar 5, 2023

A Win for the World’s Oceans Was Struck Yesterday in New York

Posted by in categories: governance, habitats

It will protect ocean habitats beyond the boundaries of coastal waters that fall under the governance of national governments.

Mar 5, 2023

Who’s afraid of organoid intelligence?

Posted by in categories: biological, mathematics, robotics/AI

For fans of bioethical nightmares, it’s been a real stonker of a month. First, we had the suggestion that we use comatose women’s wombs to house surrogate pregnancies. Now, it appears we might have a snazzy idea for what to do with their brains, too: to turn them into hyper-efficient biological computers.

Lately, you see, techies have been worrying about the natural, physical limits of conventional, silicon-based computing. Recent developments in ‘machine learning’, in particular, have required exponentially greater amounts of energy – and corporations are concerned that further technological progress will soon become environmentally unsustainable. Thankfully, in a paper published this week, a team of American scientists pointed out something rather nifty: that the walnut-shaped, spongy computer in your skull doesn’t appear to be bound by anything like the same limitations – and that it might, therefore, provide us with something of a solution.

The human brain, the paper explains, is slower than machines at performing basic tasks (like mathematical sums), but much, much better at processing complex problems that involve limited, or ambiguous, data. Humans learn, that is, how to make smart decisions quickly, even when we only have small fragments of information to go on, in a way that computers simply can’t. For anything more sophisticated than arithmetic, sponge beats silicon by a mile.

Mar 5, 2023

Wind-Powered Cargo Ships Are the Future: Debunking 4 Myths That Stand in the Way of Cutting Emissions

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

And yet the scientific consensus is that 1.5℃ is the real upper limit we can risk. Beyond that, dangerous tipping points could spell even more frequent disasters.

Luckily, the IMO will revise its strategy this July. I and many others expect far more ambition—because zero shipping emissions by 2050 is a necessity to keep the 1.5℃ limit credible. That gives us less than three decades to clean up an industry whose ships have an average life of 25 years. The 2050 timeline conceals that our carbon budget will likely run out far more quickly—requiring urgent action for all sectors, including shipping.

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