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A paper, “The potential science and engineering value of samples delivered to Earth by Mars sample return,” authored by 71 scientists is available. According to the summary at Science Daily.


Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science describes the results of a major collaboration among 71 scientists from throughout the international science community to define specific scientific objectives for a Mars Sample Return campaign, to describe the critical measurements that would need to be done on returned samples to address the objectives, and to identify the kinds of samples that would be most likely to carry the key information.

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Not as easy as the movies show. Say it isn’t so.


Incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture and a new computer modeling method to simulate asteroid collisions.

The findings, to be published in the March 15 print issue of Icarus, can aid in the creation of asteroid impact and deflection strategies, increase understanding of solar system formation, and help design asteroid mining efforts.

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Going forward into our exponential future…


“By our very nature, we humans are linear thinkers. We evolved to estimate a distance from the predator or to the prey, and advanced mathematics is only a recent evolutionary addition. This is why it’s so difficult even for a modern man to grasp the power of exponentials. 40 steps in linear progression is just 40 steps away; 40 steps in exponential progression is a cool trillion (with a T) – it will take you 3 times from Earth to the Sun and back to Earth.” –Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution.

Today is a special day for me. My AI assistant Ava scheduled few hours aside from my otherwise busy daily lineup to relive select childhood and adolescence memories recreated in virtual reality with a help of a newly developed AI technique ‘Re: Live’. Ava is my smart home assistant, too. I can rearrange furniture in any room, for example, just by thinking. Digital landscape wallpaper is changed by Ava by knowing my preferences and sensing my moods.

I still like to sleep in an old-fashioned natural way from time to time, even though it’s now optional with accelerated sleep simulation and other sleep bypassing technologies. So, when I opt to sleep, I like falling asleep and waking up on a virtual cloud projected directly to my consciousness, as most VR experiences are streamed via optogenetics.

This platform was applied for the first time in our newly released Longevity Industry in Singapore report, utilizing data on the companies, investors, research labs and non-profit organizations featured in the report.

Aging Analytics Agency is planning to implement a number of updates, additions and enhancement for this platform in the coming months, including interactive and filterable mindmaps, infographics and network diagrams illustrating connections and interactions within the global Longevity Industry, as well as additional features, to be introduced throughout 2019.

Link to Platform: http://mindmaps.aginganalytics.com/

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In my 50s, too old to become a real expert, I have finally fallen in love with algebraic geometry. As the name suggests, this is the study of geometry using algebra. Around 1637, René Descartes laid the groundwork for this subject by taking a plane, mentally drawing a grid on it, as we now do with graph paper, and calling the coordinates x and y. We can write down an equation like x + y = 1, and there will be a curve consisting of points whose coordinates obey this equation. In this example, we get a circle!

It was a revolutionary idea at the time, because it let us systematically convert questions about geometry into questions about equations, which we can solve if we’re good enough at algebra. Some mathematicians spend their whole lives on this majestic subject. But I never really liked it much until recently—now that I’ve connected it to my interest in quantum physics.

If we can figure out how to reduce topology to algebra, it might help us formulate a theory of quantum gravity.

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