What is time? Is it just a ticking clock, or is it something more profound?
In this thought-provoking episode of Into the Impossible, Stephen Wolfram challenges everything we know about time, offering a revolutionary computational perspective that could forever change how we understand the universe.
Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research and the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, and Wolfram Language. Over the course of 4 decades, he has pioneered the development & application of computational thinking. He has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions & innovations in science, technology, and business.
He argues that time is the inevitable progress of computation in the universe, where simple rules can lead to complex behaviors. This concept, termed computational irreducibility, implies that time has a rigid structure and that our perception of it is limited by our computational capabilities. Wolfram also explores the relationship between time, space, and gravity, suggesting that dark matter might be a feature of the structure of space.
The Milky Way contains more than 100 billion stars, each following its own evolutionary path through birth, life, and sometimes violent death.
For decades, astrophysicists have dreamed of creating a complete simulation of our galaxy, a digital twin that could test theories about how galaxies form and evolve. That dream has always crashed against an impossible computational wall.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have identified a natural process in the brain that can remove existing amyloid plaques in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease while also helping preserve memory and thinking ability. This process relies on astrocytes, star shaped support cells, which can be guided to clear out the toxic plaque buildup commonly seen in Alzheimer’s. When the team increased the amount of Sox9, a protein that influences many astrocyte functions during aging, the cells became more effective at removing amyloid deposits. The findings, reported in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that strengthening astrocyte activity could one day help slow cognitive decline linked to neurodegenerative disorders.
“Astrocytes perform diverse tasks that are essential for normal brain function, including facilitating brain communications and memory storage. As the brain ages, astrocytes show profound functional alterations; however, the role these alterations play in aging and neurodegeneration is not yet understood,” said first author Dr. Dong-Joo Choi, who conducted this work while at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor. Choi is now an assistant professor at the Center for Neuroimmunology and Glial Biology, Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Aging is defined as the deterioration of function over time, and it is one of the main risk factors for numerous chronic diseases. Although aging is a complex phenomenon affecting the whole organism, it is proved that the solely manifestation of aging in the hematopoietic system affects the whole organism. Last September, Dr. M. Carolina Florian and her team revealed the significance of using blood stem cells to pharmacologically target aging of the whole body, thereby suggesting rejuvenating strategies that could extend healthspan and lifespan.
Now, in a Nature Aging, they propose rejuvenating aged blood stem cells by treating them with the drug Rhosin, a small molecule that inhibits RhoA, a protein that is highly activated in aged hematopoietic stem cells. This study combined in vivo and in vitro assays at IDIBELL together with innovative machine learning techniques by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.