Asteroid scientists are already looking forward to six incredible flybys that will take place over just 2 years. The festivities kick off in 2027.
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We submitted the Longevity Peace Prize, worth $5 million dollars to be awarded to any longevity activist(s) in the next 5 years who can get a major world government or the UN to declare “aging a disease” as a policy and to help reverse regulatory hurdles on life extension research. Hopefully, this early version of a prize may one day become reality. https://xprize.org/
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April is gone, and before we move on to May, let’s take a look back at the highlights of last month in the rejuvenation world.
LEAF News
Team and activities
UA2019 wrap-up: The second Undoing Aging conference, concluded over a month ago, was a great experience for the LEAF team, as it offered us the opportunity to talk face-to-face with the actual scientists who, step by step, are bringing about the defeat of aging; to meet with the members of a very friendly and welcoming community; and to learn a lot about this growing field. We shared our thoughts on UA2019 in a few different articles (here, here, and here), and we’ve also taken a lot of pictures for you to enjoy!
Nearly 8,000 light-years away from Earth, astronomers have discovered a black hole that keeps rapidly swinging out jets of plasma clouds into space, according to a new study.
The black hole, known as V404 Cygni, doesn’t behave like others. The jets shoot out possibly within minutes of each other and in all different directions. And while the researchers admit that black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the universe, this one is different.
“This is one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I’ve ever come across,” study author James Miller-Jones said in a statement. Miller-Jones is also an associate professor at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
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Commercial space companies are cropping up left and right in China.
Two Chinese launch startups have successfully tested and demonstrated rockets that set the groundwork for future reusable launch vehicle technology, SpaceNews reports.
China decided to open up the launch of small satellites to private companies in 2014 and at least 15 SpaceX-like startups, according to Reuters, have emerged as a result.
Orbit and Beyond
A new way to store information in molecules could preserve the contents of the New York Public Library in a teaspoon of protein, without energy, for millions of years.
Books can burn. Computers get hacked. DVDs degrade. Technologies to store information–ink on paper, computers, CDs and DVDs, and even DNA–continue to improve. And yet, threats as simple as water and as complex as cyber-attacks can still corrupt our records.
As the data boom continues to boom, more and more information gets filed in less and less space. Even the cloud–whose name promises opaque, endless space–will eventually run out of space, can’t thwart all hackers, and gobbles up energy. Now, a new way to store information could stably house data for millions of years, lives outside the hackable internet, and, once written, uses no energy. All you need is a chemist, some cheap molecules, and your precious information.
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undoing-aging.org/…/judy-campisi-presenting-at-undoing-agin…
More info on Forever Healthy: forever-healthy.org
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The pioneering work of Benjamin Libet showed that our brain begins preparing for movement even before we consciously decide to move. One wonders if someone were to monitor my brain, would they know, even before I do, what action I’m going to take?
It seems an unlikely place to find a discussion on free will, but neuroscientists often grapple with the question of who is making your life choices: Your brain or your consciousness? More importantly, what’s the difference?
A classic experiment from the 1970s and early 1980s that is referenced frequently in these discussions is the work of Benjamin Libet, which showed that the brain begins preparing for movement even before we consciously decide to move. In Libet’s experiment, people were asked to move a finger whenever they were ready. When they had the urge to move, all they had to do was check where the second hand was on the clock. Meanwhile, Libet measured the activity in his subjects’ brains and found that while the conscious decision to move the hand happened on average 200 milliseconds before the person moved their hand, the brain had already begun preparing for this movement a whole second in advance.
The experiment contradicted everything we had believed so far about decision-making. Until then, scientists thought that a person makes a conscious decision to act, and then the brain sends signals to the body that enables us to take that action. But this sequence of events was now under question. Do we really make our decisions, or are they made for us? And, if so, are we still responsible for them? Additionally, if someone were to monitor my brain, could he or she know, even before I do, what action I’m going to take?