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.
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.
The discovery of a chimp group’s 390-word “language” has profound implications for the evolution of human speech.
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“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.
Douglas Quail, a simple and ordinary clerk, wishes to visit Mars. Unable to afford it, he visits a company, REKAL (pronounced “recall”) Incorporated, which promises to implant an “extra-factual memory” of a trip to Mars as a secret agent. The procedure involves administration of narkidrine, a sedative and truth drug, which causes Quail to remember and reveal that he actually did go to Mars as a secret government agent. His conscious memories of the trip have been erased, but his initial desire to sign up for the trip cannot be removed. The REKAL staff quickly get Quail out of their office without implanting anything, but his real memories are now returning slowly. At home, he finds physical evidence to support his trip but also remembers that he attended REKAL. This conflict causes him to angrily return for a refund, which he is given.
When two police officers show up to kill him, Quail discovers that his former handlers have been reading his thoughts by means of an implanted device that was used to communicate with him during his mission on Mars. As more memories return, he realizes that he was an assassin for the government, but also remembers how to disarm the cops and escape. Since he can be tracked by the device, this cannot last for long. He thus makes a deal for the memory of his Mars mission to be replaced by a false memory of his deepest fantasy as analyzed by psychiatrists, in order to prevent any further desires to visit REKAL. He is sent back to REKAL for the procedure, but under the narkidrine, he reveals that the memories they are about to implant are real — that aliens visited him when he was nine and were so touched by his kindness and compassion that they decided to postpone their invasion until his death. By simply remaining alive, he is the most important person on Earth, and the government is now unable to kill him.
The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here’s how that’s possible.
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.
All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.
It will protect ocean habitats beyond the boundaries of coastal waters that fall under the governance of national governments.
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.
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.
Research has confirmed the potential of wind propulsion. The maths is simple. Shipping accounts for one billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, almost three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If wind propulsion saves fossil fuels today, the dwindling carbon budget stretches a little further. This, in turn, buys more time to develop alternative fuels, which most ships will need to some extent. Once these fuels are widely available, we’ll need less of them because the wind can provide anything from 10 percent to 90 percent of the power a ship needs.