Menu

Blog

Page 11692

Dec 30, 2015

Congress wants NASA to build a deep space habitat for astronauts, and finish it

Posted by in categories: habitats, space

Part of NASA’s recently passed budget plan laid out by Congress urges the space agency to develop a prototype deep space habitat by as early as 2018.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

A Big Year for Biotech: Bugs as Drugs, Precision Gene Editing, and Fake Food

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, internet

Speculations around whether biotech stocks are in a bubble remain undecided for the second year in a row. But one thing stands as indisputable—the field made massive progress during 2015, and faster than anticipated.

For those following the industry in recent years, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In fact, according to Adam Feuerstei at The Street, some twenty-eight biotech and drugs stocks grew their market caps to $1 billion or more in 2014, and major headlines like, “Human Genome Sequencing Now Under $1,000 Per Person,” were strewn across the web last year.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

Extrasolar Planet-Hunting Hits Home

Posted by in category: space

It’s been a short 20 years since Mayor and Queloz first detected 51 Peg b, the first exoplanet discovered around a solar type star. This is my personal take on this all; kind of takes me back. I can still smell the thyme at Haute-Provence.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

Will 2015 Be Remembered as the Breakout Year for Transhumanism?

Posted by in categories: life extension, transhumanism, transportation

My latest piece for The Huffington Post. It’s a recap of 2015 for transhumanism and includes some select stories & videos:


Last year, I wrote that 2014 was a great year for the transhumanism movement. But 2015 was simply incredible — it might end up being called a breakout year. I’m not yet willing to declare transhumanism as “mainstream,” but it’s getting quite close now. Transhumanism has become a word that is used frequently by people around the world and in major media when discussing radical science and technology changing our species.

Below is a quick recap of some select stories in English that came out this year on transhumanism and some of my efforts to bring the future closer.

Continue reading “Will 2015 Be Remembered as the Breakout Year for Transhumanism?” »

Dec 29, 2015

A new thought experiment shows how we could get information from a black hole

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics, singularity

Physicists think they’ve come up with a way to learn a bit about the interior of a black hole — an impossible procedure that shows the insanity of studying the heart of a singularity.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

Researchers Have Succesfully Written Quantum Code On A Silicon Chip For The First Time

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Researchers from the University Of New South Wales(UNSW) in Australia have successfully demonstrated that they can write and control the quantum version of computer code on a silicon microchip. Computers, at the moment, use binary language to operate, 0 and 1. Together, these two bits generate code words that can be used to program complex commands. But in quantum computing language there’s also the option for bits to be in superposition, what this actually means is that they can be 1 and 0 at the very exact same time. This unlocks a massively more powerful programming language, but until now scientists haven’t been able to figure out how to write it.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

[Visual Dictionary] Out of This World Space Art — By Dave Valeza | The Creators Project

Posted by in categories: media & arts, space, space travel

4c4a7c21afc1b0e7c5919a95184bdd6f

“[Dave Valeza] captures the wonder artists worldwide have experienced with the rejuvination of the space industry of the past few years. From finding water on Mars to landing reusable rockets (plural!), 2015 has been a great year for space, and artists are loving it.”

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

This Year in Science

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones, neuroscience, robotics/AI, science, space travel

Futurism presents its annual This Year in Science immersive experience! This year’s themes include robot intelligence, space exploration, drones, CRISPR (a breakthrough gene editing tool), plus a special ‘Futurist of the Year’ award.

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

Interesting Futurism Animation 9

Posted by in category: futurism

Read more

Dec 29, 2015

DNA nanobots will target cancer cells in the first human trial using a terminally ill patient

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

https://lifeboat.com/blog.images/dna-nanobots-will-target-ca...tient.jpg">

BY: DANIEL KORN

The very mention of “nanobots” can bring up a certain future paranoia in people—undetectable robots under my skin? Thanks, but no thanks. Professor Ido Bachelet of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University confirms that while tiny robots being injected into a human body to fight disease might sound like science fiction, it is in fact very real.

Cancer treatment as we know it is problematic because it targets a large area. Chemo and radiation therapies are like setting off a bomb—they destroy cancerous cells, but in the process also damage the healthy ones surrounding it. This is why these therapies are sometimes as harmful as the cancer itself. Thus, the dilemma with curing cancer is not in finding treatments that can wipe out the cancerous cells, but ones that can do so without creating a bevy of additional medical issues. As Bachelet himself notes in a TEDMED talk: “searching for a safer cancer drug is basically like searching for a gun that kills only bad people.”

Read more