Lifeboat Foundation

The world wants to “transition” away from fossil fuels toward green energy, but the difficult reality is this: Dirty fuels are not going away — or even declining — anytime soon.

The total amount of renewable energy that’s available is growing. That’s good news for a world threatened by potentially devastating climate change.

But the increase in renewable energy is still lower than the increase in global energy demand overall. A “transition” from fossil fuels may come someday, but for now, renewable energy isn’t even keeping pace with rising energy demand — so fossil fuel demand is still growing.

It recommends that NASA coordinate, build and launch three flagship space observatories capable of detecting light over a broad range of wavelengths. It suggests that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) fund two enormous ground-based telescopes in Chile and possibly Hawaii, to try to catch up with an advanced European telescope that’s under construction. And for the first time, it issues recommendations for how federal agencies should fight systemic racism, sexism and ot… See more.

Its ‘decadal survey’ pitches big new space observatories, funding for large telescopes and a reckoning over social issues plaguing the field.

It’s awe-inspiring to realize that there is a complex intelligence in every living cell. Two questions arise: Is it the intelligence of the cell? That seems inconsistent with how we usually use the word “intelligence.” If we see that a one-celled life form functions with lot of intelligence, perhaps it is more like a book that contains great ideas. Paper doesn’t create ideas; neither, by itself, does protoplasm. Something else is at work.

If the cell itself does not create the intelligence it embodies, what does? Panpsychists argue that all of nature participates in some way in consciousness and humans are the most highly developed example. Theists argue that only a mind outside the universe could create something like human consciousness.

As we learn more and more about the intricate complexities of nature, perhaps debates over the origin of life, intelligence, consciousness, and similar topics will increasingly be between panpsychists and theists rather than materialists and theists. A whole new environment.

An international team of space researchers working with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has found previously unknown organic molecules on Mars using a new experiment aboard the Curiosity rover. The results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

To date, NASA has sent nine orbiters and six rovers to Mars, in part to learn more about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. To that end, the planet has been photographed with various types of cameras. More recently, rovers have dug down into the Martian soil to collect samples for analysis. The goal of such work is to learn more about the chemicals in the soil on or near the surface, but more specifically, to see if it contains organic molecules. If so, they could be evidence of life or prior life on the planet. The rovers have found organic molecules, but samples were not sufficient to claim they were produced or used by a living organism. Thus, the search continues. In this new effort, after the Curiosity rover’s drill stopped working in 2,017 the control team chose to conduct a type of experiment that had not been done by the rover before.

Curiosity carries an instrument called the Sample Analysis at Mars, an array of cups that hold samples of soil as they are being analyzed. The array has 74 cups—all but nine of them are empty most of the time. The other nine hold chemicals that are used to conduct other kinds of experiments. Because of the drill malfunction, the team at NASA chose to drop soil samples into the cups containing the chemicals and then to analyze the chemicals released due to reactions. The researchers found organic molecules in the soil that had never been seen on Mars before. While the new experiment did not find evidence of life, it did show that there are other novel ways to test for it on Mars and other planets.

Use the code “Undecided” to get Curiosity Stream for less than $15 a year! https://curiositystream.com/Undecided. Before you blow your fuse and start leaving your nuclear fusion jokes in the comments, there’s been a major fusion development we have to talk about and it’s kind of a nuclear bombshell… poor choice of words… it’s big news. It’s all about high temperature semiconductors (ie. magnets).

Watch Exploring the 1,000 Mile Car Battery — Aluminum Air Hype? https://youtu.be/9OOq3f6mUxU?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7UWp64ZlOKUPNXePMTdU4d.

Continue reading “Exploring Why This Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Matters” »

An exploration of SETI and the possibility of detecting alien von Neumann probes at focal points of stellar gravitational lensing.

http://www.patreon.com/johnmichaelgodier.

Continue reading “Detecting Alien Von Neumann Probes” »

AI tools could speed the process of finding new drugs.

Google parent company Alphabet is launching a new company called Isomorphic Laboratories which will use AI tools for drug discovery. It will build off the protein folding work from DeepMind.

Learning science is about understanding complex systems and interactions among their entities. Telescopes are for observing objects that are far away, and microscopes are for exploring the tiniest objects. But what tools do we have for visualizing general patterns, processes, or relationships that can be defined in terms of compact mathematical models? Visualizing the unseeable can be a powerful teaching tool.

SETI Institute affiliate Dr. Mojgan Haganikar has written a book, Visualizing Dynamic Systems, that categorizes the visualization skills needed for various types of scientific problems. With the emergence of new technologies, we have more powerful tools to visualize invisible concepts, complex systems, and large datasets by revealing patterns and inter-relations in new ways. Join the SETI Institute’s Pamela Harman as she explores what is possible with Haganikar.

Continue reading “SETI Live: How to Better Visualize Complex Systems?” »

Short for circuit layer operations per second.

IBM has announced the creation of what could become the new performance metric for quantum computers: Circuit Layer Operations per Second (CLOPS). The aim is to allow customers and providers of quantum systems to easily understand performance differences between products.