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Dec 2, 2022

Superluminal Time Travel + Time Warp Challenge Answer

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel, time travel

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃). Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE

Find out how traveling faster than light and traveling back in time are the same thing. And be sure to tell PBS what types of shows you want to see at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/pbsds2017 25 random participants in the survey will receive PBS t-shirts.

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Dec 2, 2022

AI could have 20% chance of sentience in 10 years, says philosopher David Chalmers

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

AI programs that combine sensing and action and world models might achieve fish-level intelligence, says the NeurIPS 2022 keynote speaker.

Dec 2, 2022

Millions of ‘Silent Synapses’ Could Be The Key to Lifelong Learning

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Newborns need to store vast amounts of new information quickly as they learn to navigate the world. Silent synapses – the immature connections between neurons that have no neurotransmitter activity yet – are thought to be the hardware that allow this rapid information storage to occur early in life.

First discovered decades ago in newborn mice, these potential neurological intersections were thought to disappear as the animals aged. A recent study by researchers from MIT in the US has found this vanishing act might not be as extreme as initially presumed.

The team hadn’t set out to look specifically at these potential connections. Rather, they were continuing previous work on the locations of nerve-cell extensions called dendrites.

Dec 2, 2022

Some companies like Boeing survived WW2 but Focke-Wulf did not. Here’s why

Posted by in categories: business, economics, military

The Second World War left many economies in tatters, yet, despite the carnage, some companies managed to thrive in the aftermath of the war.

World War II, like many other wars in history, was a time when a lot of new technology was made quickly. The war started with piston aircraft and ended with fighter planes, rockets, and nuclear weapons.

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Dec 2, 2022

BAE Systems’ new drone-hunting missiles can take down unmanned aerial systems

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

The experiments were done to prove the effectiveness of 70mm rockets.

BAE Systems has tested its latest drone hunting missiles machine by conducting ground-to-air test firings, according to a press release by the company published on Tuesday.

Rockets fired from a containerized weapon system.

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Dec 2, 2022

The world’s first solar electric car Lightyear 0 now enters production

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

The facility will produce one car a week, to begin with.

Dutch company Lightyear, which has spent the last six years developing technologies to make the world’s first solar-powered electric vehicle has now entered a very important phase of its lifetime. Its first model, Lightyear 0 has now entered production, a company press release said.

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Dec 2, 2022

Megatsunami on Mars linked to an asteroid strike 3.4 billion years ago

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, mapping

The event is likened to the Chicxulub collision on Earth.

A study has found that the megatsunami that swept Mars around 3.4 billion years ago was caused by an asteroid strike on one of its oceans. The event is compared to the likes of the Chicxulub collision—which is believed to have wiped out dinosaurs from the face of the earth about 66 million years ago.

Researchers, led by Alexis Rodriguez of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, have also suggested that NASA’s Viking 1 Lander, which was deployed on a mission to find evidence of life on Mars in 1976, could have landed near the crater of this megatsunami.

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Dec 2, 2022

Yale research may uncover the true cause of Alzheimer’s — Swelling of brain axons

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

They discovered that removing PLD3 from neurons using gene therapy resulted in a significant decrease in axonal swelling.

A study on Alzheimer’s published recently by Yale University is quite attention-grabbing. Because the disease’s crippling symptoms could be brought on by swelling in the brain brought on by amyloid plaques, say the experts.

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Dec 2, 2022

I Interviewed An AI About The Ethics Of AI

Posted by in categories: ethics, robotics/AI

ChatGPT is remarkable. It’s a new AI model from OpenAI that’s designed to chat in a conversational manner. It’s also a liar. Stuck for ideas on what to talk to a machine about, I decided to interview ChatGPT about the ethics of AI. Would it have the level of self-awareness to be honest about its own dangers? Would it even be willing to answer questions on how it behaves?

Yes, it would. And while ChatGPT started off by being commendably upfront about the ethics of what it does, it eventually descended into telling outright lies. It even issued a non-apology for doing so.


An interview with the cutting-edge chatbot, ChatGPT, ends in a little white lie.

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Dec 2, 2022

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Captures Signs Of Weird Weather On Titan For The First Time

Posted by in categories: climatology, computing, space

Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the weirdest and most intriguing worlds in our solar system. It is the only place we know of in the universe for sure beyond Earth that has rivers, lakes and larger bodies of liquid, but on Titan these features are filled with flammable hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

Studying Titan in depth has been difficult due to a thick atmosphere of clouds and haze, but NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is giving scientists their first detailed glimpse of those clouds, and by extension, the weather patterns at work on this unique world.

“We had waited for years to use Webb’s infrared vision to study Titan’s atmosphere,” said JWST Principal Investigator Conor Nixon. “Detecting clouds is exciting because it validates long-held predictions from computer models about Titan’s climate, that clouds would form readily in the mid-northern hemisphere during its late summertime when the surface is warmed by the Sun.”