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A look at revolutionary new materials with seemingly impossible properties.
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Metamaterials offer many properties normally not found in nature, from superior lenses and communications to stealth applications, potentially offering invisibility. Today we’ll examine the science behind that and look at many other possible applications.

AMA thread tonight (Thursday March 29) at 6 PM EST over at /r/space on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/881rbl/ama_this_is_i…_anything/

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Cover Art by Jakub Grygier: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jakub_grygier.

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As demonstrated by breakthroughs in various fields of artificial intelligence (AI), such as image processing, smart health care, self-driving vehicles and smart cities, this is undoubtedly the golden period of deep learning. In the next decade or so, AI and computing systems will eventually be equipped with the ability to learn and think the way humans do—to process continuous flow of information and interact with the real world.

However, current AI models suffer from a performance loss when they are trained consecutively on new information. This is because every time new data is generated, it is written on top of existing data, thus erasing previous information. This effect is known as “catastrophic forgetting.” A difficulty arises from the stability-plasticity issue, where the AI model needs to update its memory to continuously adjust to the new information, and at the same time, maintain the stability of its current knowledge. This problem prevents state-of-the-art AI from continually learning from real world information.

Edge computing systems allow computing to be moved from the cloud storage and to near the , such as devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoTs). Applying continual learning efficiently on resource limited edge computing systems remains a challenge, although many continual learning models have been proposed to solve this problem. Traditional models require high computing power and large memory capacity.

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For all of history, there’s been an underlying but unspoken assumption about the laws that govern the Universe: If you know enough information about a system, you can predict precisely how that system will behave in the future. The assumption is, in other words, deterministic. The classical equations of motion — Newton’s laws — are completely deterministic. The laws of gravity, both Newton’s and Einstein’s, are deterministic. Even Maxwell’s equations, governing electricity and magnetism, are 100% deterministic as well.

But that picture of the Universe got turned on its head with a series of discoveries that began in the late 1800s. Starting with radioactivity and radioactive decay, humanity slowly uncovered the quantum nature of reality, casting doubt on the idea that we live in a deterministic Universe. Predictively, many aspects of reality could only be discussed in a statistical fashion: where a set of probable outcomes could be presented, but which one would occur, and when, could not be precisely established. The hopes of avoiding the necessity of “quantum spookiness” was championed by many, including Einstein, with the most compelling alternative to determinism put forth by Louis de Broglie and David Bohm. Decades later, Bohmian mechanics was finally put to an experimental test, where it failed spectacularly. Here’s how the best alternative to the spooky nature of reality simply didn’t hold up.

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Avi Loeb, Professor of Science at Harvard University, joins us to discuss a recent interstellar visitor, if we’ve already encountered alien technology, and whether we’re ultimately alone in the cosmos.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Whether ‘Oumuamua is alien or natural in origin.
–The culture of science and how it affects fruitful inquiry.
–Looking for signs of alien life throughout the solar system and beyond.
–Alien artefacts and galactic treaties.
–How humanity should handle a potential first contact with extraterrestrials.
–The relationship between what is true and what is good.

You can find the page for this podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2021/07/09/avi-loeb-on-oumuamua-ali…tructures/

Continue reading “Avi Loeb on ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, Space Archeology, Great Filters, and Superstructures” | >

David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at NYU, joins us to discuss his newest book Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Virtual reality as genuine reality.
–Why VR is compatible with the good life.
–Why we can never know whether we’re in a simulation.
–Consciousness in virtual realities.
–The ethics of simulated beings.

You can find the page for the podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2022/01/26/david-chalmers-on-realit…hilosophy/

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According to a University of Portsmouth study, a new physics law could allow for the early prediction of genetic mutations.

The study discovers that the second law of information dynamics, or “infodynamics,” behaves differently from the second law of thermodynamics. This finding might have major implications for how genomic research, evolutionary biology, computing, big data, physics, and cosmology develop in the future.

Lead author Dr. Melvin Vopson is from the University’s School of Mathematics and Physics. He states “In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics. One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that entropy – a measure of disorder in an isolated system – can only increase or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

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Perhaps one of the most common technologies seen in science fiction is anti-gravity and gravity manipulation. Today we’ll examine if there’s an scientific pathways in physics to permit such technology, and what sort of amazing options it might offer if developed in the future.

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: Episode’s Audio-only version:

Continue reading “Clarketech: Anti-Gravity” | >