Science & Technology news & discussion

How To Count Past Infinity

 

Touching the Asteroid | NOVA | PBS

In October 2020, a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx attempts to reach out and grab a piece of an asteroid named Bennu to bring it back to Earth.

This video is a few days old - we know that touchdown occurred, a sample was collected, although there may be some issues getting that sample hatch closed now...

 

5 REAL Possibilities for Interstellar Travel

The prospect of interstellar travel is no longer sci-fi. It COULD be achievable within our lifetime! But, how would an interstellar rocket-ship work? On this week's episode of Space Time, Matt talks options for interstellar travel - from traditional rocket fuel to antimatter drives, could we travel to other star systems?

 

The World According to Physics - with Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili explores the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, and describes the three pillars of modern physics: quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics.

The Royal Institution (April 2020)

 

The Zipf Mystery

 

Why we might be alone in the Universe

There are trillions upon trillions of stars and worlds in our Universe. Faced with such large numbers, it's tempting to conclude that there must surely be other life out there, somewhere. But is this right? Could the probability of life beginning be a number so small that we are alone? A video essay by Professor David Kipping.

 

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Don't know, as I haven't been following the tech.

Some more recent Julia Greer articles, that might have an answer: https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...hUKEwjfkvGTmNLsAhUVqJ4KHY0wCWoQ4dUDCA0&uact=5

 

No please

 

Talking about the toughest animals on the planet:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/t/tardigrades-water-bears/

What is a tardigrade?

Tardigrades are microscopic eight-legged animals that have been to outer space and would likely survive the apocalypse. Bonus: They look like adorable miniature bears.

Tiny and tough

Tardigrades belong to an elite category of animals known as extremophiles, or critters that can survive environments that most others can't. For instance, tardigrades can go up to 30 years without food or water. They can also live at temperatures as cold as absolute zero or above boiling, at pressures six times that of the ocean’s deepest trenches, and in the vacuum of space.

Their resiliency is in part due to a unique protein in their bodies called Dsup—short for "damage suppressor"—that protects their DNA from being harmed by things like ionizing radiation, which is present in soil, water, and vegetation.

Tardigrades become first animals to survive vacuum of space

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...ome-first-animals-to-survive-vacuum-of-space/

In September last year, a team of scientists launched a squad of tiny animals into space aboard a Russian satellite. Once in orbit, the creatures were shunted into ventilated containers that exposed them to the vacuum of space. In this final frontier, they had no air and they were subjected to extreme dehydration, freezing temperatures, weightlessness and lashings of both cosmic and solar radiation. It’s hard to imagine a more inhospitable environment for life but not only did the critters survive, they managed to reproduce on their return to Earth. Meet the planet’s toughest animals – the tardigrades.

 

NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-sofia-discovers-water-on-sunlit-surface-of-moon/

"NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.

SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.

The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.

Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space,” said Honniball, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Yet somehow we’re seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there."

Molecular water detected on the sunlit Moon by SOFIA

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01222-x

 

Perhaps these guys left the tap running?
https://2001.fandom.com/wiki/Clavius_Base

 

Elon Musk creates Neuralink brain electrode firm

The billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk now wants to merge computers with human brains to help people keep up with machines.

The company called Neuralink, aims to develop new brain-machine interfaces to ‘improve memory or give humans added artificial intelligence’. Neuralink is pursuing ‘neural lace’ technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts.

Welcome to the Machine.

https://neuralink.com/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21750369/

 

Apart from the trillions upon trillions of stars and worlds in our Universe, he also seems to forget about the lifetime of stars and planets, literally billions of years.

In Universe, life has many planets and a lot of time to appear. The basic elements necessary for life to appear, are common everywhere in the space, on the comets and meteors.
He says, on his video, that life is so difficult to apear, because "Abiogenesis" is very very difficult to appear.

I would tell him, that our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, and at around 3.7 billion years life appeared. So it "only" took 0.8 billion years for "Abiogenesis" to appear.
Here, on Earth, clearly the most difficult part was the appearance of complex life, it took nearly 2 billion years to appear!

So, even the difficulty of "Abiogenesis" to appear, it was quite more difficult the appearance of "complex life".

Even more, our planet is not the oldest one, there are older planets with older stars than our Sun, on our galaxy and on the billion billion galaxies of the Universe.

So, for all this, I really don't see how someone can still think we are alone on the Universe. Everything clearly points to the contrary, that the Universe can be plenty of life right now.

About the appearance of complex life, I will quote this article, previously posted:

https://www.sciencealert.com/complex-life-could-have-existed-on-earth-at-least-once-before

"But let's backtrack for a second. Earth has been around for an estimated 4.5 billion years. Around 3.7 billion years ago, while the planet was still relatively fresh, two of the three kingdoms of life we see on Earth today - bacteria and archaea - arose.

It's thought that these simple, single-celled organisms survived for billions of years on their own, until around 1.75 billion years ago, when the third kingdom of life, eukaryotes, appeared.

The eukaryote family tree encompasses all complex organisms on the planet, including animals (that's us), plants, fungi, and protists.

It's still debated exactly how eukaryotes arose, but the most accepted hypothesis is that an archea swallowed a bacterial cell, and the two developed a symbiotic relationships that allowed them to work together to become more complex.

Eventually, the bacteria became the mitochondria we see in our cells today."

The moment the archea swallowed a bacteria and the two developed a symbiotic relationship, was the moment of the beginning of complex life in our planet.
That moment was a very difficult lottery to win, as it took 2 billion years to happen... but finally it happened.
It will take 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion years to appear... but finally life and complex life will appear, as it happened on planet Earth and as it can happen literally on thousands of similar planets in our own galaxy and in the Universe.

 

Human brain is not in the same league as building an electric car.
He can start playing with brains and electrodes, but at least current technology cannot really "merge" computers with human brains... to ‘improve memory or give humans added artificial intelligence’.

 

Not presently, but with rapid advances in neuroscience experts predict that in the not-too-distant future, "We will be able to fully back up our brains."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-years-from-now-your-brain-will-be-connected-your-computer/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/...rge-in-2030s-says-futurist-kurzweil-1.3100124

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/31/15398

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkn...link-merging-your-brain-with-ai/#7f88cc964b07

 

You have raised some vary valid points that I appreciate, but I don't agree that "Everything clearly points to the contrary, that the Universe can be plenty of life right now."

There has been no proof of life anywhere so far.

I actually completely agree with him.

All speculation based on Drake's equation are assumptions and are pointless. Drake had no reference points to base those assumptions on. It's a purely speculative guess at best.

 

I have to wonder if this is something that we actually want.
Our memory is distorted by many influences over time.
We evolve as people and write our own narratives. To be confronted with our actual real memories from 50-years previously could prove to be psychologically catastrophic.

 

We have our own planet reference, what happened here at Earth. I think it's quite a clear reference for this matter.

The man on the video literally says :
"Faith is belief in the absence of evidence".
"Not one supported by observational evidence and statistical reasoning".

And I say, what more evidence than planet Earth life formation, and what more statistical reasoning than the billions upon billions of Stars and planets with similar conditions than Earth does he needs?

Again, during the video, the man says "life is so difficult to appear, because "Abiogenesis" is very very difficult to appear."

Maybe he really doesn't know that in our planet it just took 0.8 billion years for life to appear, after Earth's own formation.

In fact that reflects the easy that is for life to appear on a planet with the right conditions. Complex life, is what is more difficult to appear, not just "Abiogenesis".

I understand your point of view CraigD, but for me that "professor" is just a denier of the most absolute evidence in front of someone's face.

He knows, the billion upon billion of stars and planets. He knows that meteors and comets have all the compounds to start life. He knows that it only takes a planet at the same distance from its star, similar to Earth, to have water and conditions.
But he just took the "life denier" take, I think just to say... ok, 2+2 is not equal to 4.

Well, that's my opinion

 

I really liked the analogy he made about the million prisoners held in solitary confinement being given 20 seconds to pick a lock or they would die.

One of them succeeded, and assumed it was easy.

He didn't know about the other 999,999 prisoners who died.

 

I haven't seen that part of the video

But on that example, just say that here we are not talking about 1 million prisoners, but about 100 billion (just on our galaxy!). And this is not a question of minds or different personalities, this is a question of planets and stars similar like planet Earth.
Same material, same distance to their star, billions of them...

 

Memory manipulation movies such as 'Total Recall' or 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' have that futuristic theme. My best memories are golden, and they just get better with time, wouldn't want to change that. It might help with PTSD or dementia, though cannabis has been shown to help ...being stuck in the past doesn't do anyone any favours. I cleaned out my closet to make space for more random-access memory, lol.

IMO, augmented intelligence will be a rich man's game, or the property of the military.

 

That's a good one!
In fact, the "memory manipulation" ones are some of my favourite sci-fi movies!
Total Recall is a classic, and very good one. In fact everything that comes to our mind are electric impulses, that could be in fact be placed there with an advanced (very advanced!) future technology.
See "Inception", "Virtuosity" (another classic!), another one that I don't remember now the title, but it was about "copying" your memories on another's body 50 years younger, so you can continue living with same "memories" but on a new younger body!

 

Roger Penrose - Did the Universe Begin?

Congratulations to Sir Roger Penrose for winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. Some scientists claim that the universe did not have a beginning. Some theologians contend that the universe did not need a beginning. Yet the universe is expanding, and so run the movie in reverse and there seems to be a beginning. What stakes are riding on whether the universe had a beginning?

 

One of my favourite films is Memento (2000) a neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan (based on an idea by his brother), in which the film's lead character (played by Guy Pearce) suffers from anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new memories) and has short-term memory loss approximately every fifteen minutes. He covers his body in tattoos to keep on track in his mission to find his wife's killer, but when his personal narrative doesn't match reality, what do you think he does?