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Year 1997 Basically this detailed the use of magnetism to levitate frogs.

When pigs fly? That could be sooner than you think. A group of researchers in the Netherlands and in England has made a frog levitate in a magnetic field. Although the feat might seem no more than a curiosity, researchers say that the floating amphibians may lead the way to a cheap alternative to space-based science experiments.

Many materials are diamagnetic—that is, when placed near a magnet, their atoms fight the magnetic field, and the object tries to scoot away. If such a material is placed in a strong enough magnetic field, it levitates. Superconductors, for example, are perfect diamagnets and can levitate over even weak magnets, which is why levitating trains like those in Japan can fly over the tracks. Organic material like living cells is very weakly diamagnetic, says J. C. Maan, a physicist at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. So he and colleagues employed a very strong magnet (chiefly used for crystallography experiments) to float the frog. It took 16 teslas—a very powerful field indeed—to lift the confused amphibian off the ground.

“It’s a little surprising how easy it is to do this,” says James Brooks, a physicist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. “It’s not incredibly exotic equipment. Any scientist who is awake will ask ‘What can I do with this?’” Brooks notes that the magnetic fields might provide a way to study materials in milligravity—without sending them into space—because the levitating object is in a net zero field. Researchers could study the effects of microgravity on crystal growth and also on the growth and development of living cells, without costly space missions.

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With the rapid development of chatbots and other AI systems, questions about whether they will ever gain true understanding, become conscious, or even develop a feeling agency have become more pressing. When it comes to making sense of these qualities in humans, our ability for counterfactual thinking is key. The existence of alternative worlds where things happen differently, however, is not just an exercise in imagination – it’s a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Perhaps our brains are able to ponder how things could have been because in essence they are quantum computers, accessing information from alternative worlds, argues Tim Palmer.

Ask a chatbot “How many prime numbers are there?” and it will surely tell you that there are an infinite number. Ask the chatbot “How do we know?” and it will reply that there are many ways to show this, the original going back to the mathematician Euclid of ancient Greece. Ask the chatbot to describe Euclid’s proof and it will answer correctly [ii]. [ii.

Of course, the chatbot has got all this information from the internet. Additional software in the computer can check that each of the steps in Euclid’s proof is valid and hence can confirm that the proof is a good one. But the computer doesn’t understand the proof. Understanding is a kind of Aha! moment, when you see why the proof works, and why it wouldn’t work if a minor element in it was different (for example the proof in the footnotes doesn’t work if any number but 1 is added when creating the number Q). Chatbots don’t have Aha! moments, but we do. Why?

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Glass nanoparticles trapped by lasers in extreme vacuum are considered a promising platform for exploring the limits of the quantum world. Since the advent of quantum theory, the question at which sizes an object starts being described by the laws of quantum physics rather than the rules of classical physics has remained unanswered.

A team formed by Lukas Novotny (ETH Zurich), Markus Aspelmeyer (University of Vienna), Oriol Romero-Isart (University of Innsbruck), and Romain Quidant (Zurich) is attempting to answer precisely this question within the ERC-Synergy project Q-Xtreme. A crucial step on the way to this goal is to reduce the energy stored in the motion of the nanoparticle as much as possible, i.e. to cool the particle down to the so-called quantum ground-state.

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From burgers to sausages and steak tips to chicken nuggets, there’s no shortage of plant-based “meat” products on grocery store shelves and in restaurants these days. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have done an impressive job diversifying their offerings, with almost any processed meat you can think of now on their lists (even beef jerky and popcorn chicken). But a key cut of meat is still missing from these big names’ menus: a good old-fashioned filet, just like the cows make ‘em.

I served the steak with quinoa and sauteed veggies, and after a few bites, I couldn’t deny it was both tasty and had a pleasant texture. Did it taste or feel like a real steak? Not really. The real meat it most reminded me of was rib meat, the kind that easily pulls off the bone when the ribs have been slow-cooked; soft and tender, but not dried out. The plant-based steak had a distinctly fatty-like mouthfeel without the excessive oiliness you sometimes get from animal fat.

Marbling Mystery

Achieving this texture, and a realistic “marbling” effect, has been one of the biggest challenges for plant-based meat companies. How do you replicate—with plants—animal tissue that has thin ribbons of fat running through it?

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The most famous one is the cell phone itself: Captain Kirk’s communicator inspired the folks at Motorola to make the first handheld mobile device in 1973. Star Trek: The Original Series (popularly called TOS) from the 1960s also inspired video conferencing. But things started to amp up when, in 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation (aka TNG) hit the floors, with Sir Patrick Stewart in the lead. It became one of the most syndicated shows on television—which is how I discovered it in mid-90s India on the Star network. It fundamentally impacted my life, inspiring me to become the technology writer I am today.

But more than me, this show heralded more technological concepts that are becoming increasingly real. The LCARS computer on the Galaxy-Class USS Enterprise D is basically the foundation of what Google is today. Google’s former head of search, Amit Singhal, often said that the company is “trying to build the Star Trek computer”.

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