Lifeboat Foundation

Join journalist Pedro Pinto and Yuval Noah Harari as they delve into the future of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Together, they explore pressing questions in front of a live audience, such as: What will be the impact of A.I. on democracy and politics? How can we maintain human connection in the age of A.I.? What skills will be crucial for the future? And what does the future of education hold?

Filmed on May 19 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal and produced by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS), in what marks the first live recording of the show: “It’s not that simple.”

Continue reading “Humanity is not that simple | Yuval Noah Harari & Pedro Pinto” »

There’s some potentially big news on the hunt for dark matter. Astronomers may have a handle on what makes this mysterious cosmic stuff: strange particles called “axions.”

Rather than search directly for axions, however, a multinational team of researchers led by Keir Rogers from the University of Toronto looked for something else. They focused on the “clumpiness” of the Universe and found that cosmic matter is more evenly distributed than expected.

So, what role do axions play here? Quantum mechanics explains these ultra-light particles as “fuzzy” because they exhibit wave-like behavior. It turns out their wavelengths can be bigger than entire galaxies. Apparently, that fuzziness plays a role in smoothing out the Universe by influencing the formation and distribution of dark matter. If that’s true, then it goes a long way toward explaining why the matter in the cosmos is more evenly spread out. It implies that axions play a part in the distribution of matter in the cosmos.

After that, those who have been waiting more than a decade for their ride aboard Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered space plane are expected to get their chance. The company said the first of those flights will begin in early August, with monthly flights following that.

“This next exciting chapter for Virgin Galactic has been driven by innovation, determination and a commitment to delivering an unparalleled and truly transformative customer experience,” CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.

Virgin Galactic has been working for years to send paying passengers on short space trips and in 2021 finally won the federal government’s approval. The company completed its final test fight in May.

NASA will partner with SpaceX to make Starship space stations. This is part of NASA partnering with seven U.S. companies to make advanced space capabilities. SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on an integrated low Earth orbit architecture to provide a growing portfolio of technology with near-term Dragon evolution and concurrent Starship development. This architecture includes Starship as a transportation and in-space low-Earth orbit destination element supported by Super Heavy, Dragon, and Starlink, and constituent capabilities including crew and cargo transportation, communications, and operational and ground support.

Making Giant Space Stations Using SpaceX Starships

Each Starship has more than the volume of the International Space Station. They are also similar in size to the external fuel tank of the old Space Shuttle. There were many space station proposals based upon the external fuel tank of the Space Station. It will be easier to build with SpaceX Starships. The steel construction the SpaceX Starship makes them easy to weld, cut and modify. The SpaceX Starships will start being able to support astronauts.

This week my guest Anne Scherer, a professor of marketing at the University of Zurich who specializes in the psychological and societal impacts that result from the increased automation and digitization of the consumer-company relationship.

In this episode we focus on the details Anne covers in, You and AI, a book she co-authored with Cindry Candrian to bring an accessible understanding of the ways in which AI is shaping our lives. This takes on a tour of topics such as our symbiotic relationship with AI, manipulation, regulation, the proposed 6 month pause on AI development, the business advantages of better data policies around AI, the difference between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, and more.

Find out more about Anne and her book at annescherer.me.

Host:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Steven Parton⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The field of photonics has seen significant advances during the past decades, to the point where it is now an integral part of high-speed, international communications. For general processing photonics is currently less common, but is the subject of significant research. Unlike most photonic circuits which are formed using patterns etched into semiconductor mask using lithography, purely light-based circuits are a tantalizing possibility. This is the focus of a recent paper (press release, ResearchGate) in Nature Photonics by [Tianwei Wu] and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania.

What is somewhat puzzling is that despite the lofty claims of this being ‘the first time’ that such an FPGA-like device has been created for photonics, this is far from the case, as evidenced by e.g. a 2017 paper by [Kaichen Dong] and colleagues (full article PDF) in Advanced Materials. Here the researchers used a slab of vanadium dioxide (VO₂) with a laser to heat sections to above 68 °C where the material transitions from an insulating to a metallic phase and remains that way until the temperature is lowered again. The μm-sized features that can be created in this manner allow for a wide range of photonic devices to be created.

What does appear to be different with the photonic system presented by [Wu] et al. is that it uses a more traditional 2D approach, with a slab of InGaAsP on which the laser pattern is projected. Whether it is more versatile than other approaches remains to be seen, with the use of fully photonic processors in our computers still a long while off, never mind photonics-accelerated machine learning applications.

Spacecraft Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for years sending back images. NASA shares the images online. Take a look at what one person discover on an image.

A quartet of chemists at the University of Oxford has, for the first time, found a way to get two beryllium atoms to bond with one another. In their paper published in the journal Science, Josef Boronski, Agamemnon Crumpton, Lewis Wales and Simon Aldridge, describe their process and how they managed to do it in a safe way—and at room temperature. Jason Dutton with La Trobe University, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue, outlining the work done by the team in England.

Beryllium is a strong but lightweight, alkaline earth metal. It is also brittle.

Beryllium only ever occurs naturally when mixed with other elements, forming minerals. It is often found in gemstones such as emeralds. And it is used in a variety of applications, from telecommunications equipment to computers and cell phones. It is also mixed with other metals to create alloys used in applications such as gyroscopes and electrical contacts.

The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the BepiColombo mission in 2018, and it is set to enter orbit around Mercury in 2025. In the meantime, it will be making several flybys of the planet, including a close approach today. That’s because the spacecraft’s route takes it on a series of increasingly close flybys that use the planet’s gravity to adjust its course each time.

In total, between its launch in 2020 and its arrival in Mercury orbit in 2025, the spacecraft will make one flyby of Earth, two of Venus, and six of Mercury. The Earth and Venus flybys are already complete, and today BepiColombo is making its third Mercury flyby, coming within 150 miles of the planet’s surface.

The maneuver will help to slow the spacecraft down so that it can eventually enter orbit. “As BepiColombo starts feeling Mercury’s gravitational pull, it will be traveling at 3.6 kilometers per second [2.2 miles per second] with respect to the planet. That’s just over half the speed it approached with during the previous two Mercury flybys,” explained ESA flight dynamics expert Frank Budnik in a statement. “And this is exactly what the point of such events is. Our spacecraft began with far too much energy because it launched from Earth and, like our planet, is orbiting the sun. To be captured by Mercury, we need to slow down, and we’re using the gravity of Earth, Venus and Mercury to do just that.”