17:12 minutes.
After decades of research using sophisticated brain imaging, there’s a growing consensus among neuroscientists that understanding the connections between brain regions may be even more important than the functions of the regions themselves. When it comes to understanding human cognition, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you’d undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they’d be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn’t just appear magical, but appears like physics?
After all, if the cosmos holds other life, and if some of that life has evolved beyond our own waypoints of complexity and technology, we should be considering some very extreme possibilities. Today’s futurists and believers in a machine “singularity” predict that life and its technological baggage might end up so beyond our ken that we wouldn’t even realize we were staring at it. That’s quite a claim, yet it would neatly explain why we have yet to see advanced intelligence in the cosmos around us, despite the sheer number of planets it could have arisen on—the so-called Fermi Paradox.
For example, if machines continue to grow exponentially in speed and sophistication, they will one day be able to decode the staggering complexity of the living world, from its atoms and molecules all the way up to entire planetary biomes. Presumably life doesn’t have to be made of atoms and molecules, but could be assembled from any set of building blocks with the requisite complexity. If so, a civilization could then transcribe itself and its entire physical realm into new forms. Indeed, perhaps our universe is one of the new forms into which some other civilization transcribed its world.
He stepped down from the position of CEO after his company FTX filed for bankruptcy.
Earlier in the spring, effective altruism believer Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was worth $26 billion. As crypto prices dropped, so did SBF’s fortune. However, the turn of events in the past week has meant that the billionaire’s riches have evaporated entirely, leaving him with nothing, just like those who invested in his company, FTX, CNN.
Getty Images.
Continue reading “Crypto’s golden boy SBF’s $16 billion fortune evaporated in a single week” »
The spacecraft successfully enters lunar orbit.
A toaster oven-sized NASA spacecraft will pave the way for a lunar orbital station that will help the U.S. space agency establish a permanent presence on the moon.
Continue reading “NASA’s CAPSTONE became the first cubesat mission to ever visit the moon” »
German-based technology company Continental Automotive claims to have secured its first significant order in the third quarter for its semi-dry brake system called ‘Future Brake System’ (FBS).
The mass manufacture of its semi-dry brake system (also known as FBS 2) is claimed to be worth approximately €1.5 billion (U.S. $1.55 billion), the company declared in a press release on Wednesday.
The idea that planets only develop when a star reaches its maximum size has been challenged by the observation that stars and planets “grow up” together.
Some of the oldest stars in the universe, the building blocks for planets like Jupiter and Saturn start to form when a young star is growing, suggests a new study published on Nov. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The recent findings indicate that stars and planets ‘grow up’ together, challenging a leading belief that planets only form once a star has reached its final size.
With 3,774 days in space under its belt, the solar-powered X-37B has already traveled more than 1.3 billion miles.
After a record-breaking 908 days in orbit for its sixth mission, a U.S. military drone touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, early on Saturday.
“Since the X-37B’s first launch in 2010, it has shattered records and provided our nation with an unrivaled capability to rapidly test and integrate new space technologies,” stated Jim Chilton, a senior vice president for Boeing, its developer.
Continue reading “US military drone lands safely after spending record-breaking 908 days in space” »
There might be room for everyone, or not.
At first glance, the connections between the world’s growing population and climate change seem obvious. The more people we have on this planet, the larger their collective impact on the climate.
The employees past and present are calling it a Twitter “takeover.”
Elon Musk, in a move to wrap himself up in a blanket of his own financing, has bought ad space on Twitter. SpaceX bought the ads for Starlink, and they will play on top of the Twitter platform’s feed for one day in Spain and Australia.
In a tweet in reply to another Twitter account Musk said of the deal, “SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny — not large — ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia & Spain. Did same for FB/Insta/Google,”
Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Starlink buys ad time on Elon Musk’s Twitter” »
Burning plasma fusion reactions, thought to be crucial for building working fusion reactors, are producing more high-energy particles than researchers expected. Solving the mystery of why could be key to making fusion viable.
