research

Is Consciousness A Quantum Phenomenon?

Is consciousness a quantum phenomenon?

"A silent symphony is playing inside your brain right now as neurological pathways synchronize in an electromagnetic chorus that's thought to give rise to consciousness." Not going to lie, the musical terminology caught my fancy straightaway.

Consciousness - defining it, measuring it, even proving it exists - has continued to stymie researches. It's a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts," je ne sais quo, "I know it when I see (feel) it" phenomenon. And pinning down its nature would revolutionize how we think about nearly everything.

The possibility that quantum mechanisms may be involved has always been rejected because quantum activity is very delicate and fragile, and our brains are hot and messy. But what if biology has figured out how to do something we haven't? It wouldn't be the first time....

https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-entanglement-in-neurons-may-actually-explain-consciousness

The Future Is Going to Be Weird

Well OF COURSE brain chips are going to replace phones. One of my safest "predictions," to be honest. And I love that the future is going to be weird!

““The Future is Going to Be Weird.” Elon Musk Predicts Brain Chips Will Eventually Replace Phones”: https://thedebrief.org/the-future-is-going-to-be-weird-elon-musk-predicts-brain-chips-will-eventually-replace-phones/

The Search for the Anti-Aging Holy Grail

Faster, please! None of us here are getting any younger....

Important finding: the mice didn't just live 25% longer - they were healthier in virtually every respect for that extended lifespan.

Still partially in mouse trials, but the drug is already being tested in humans for other purposes. This one may be more real than most?

Slightly click-baity headline: “Experts create anti-aging holy grail drug that extends life 25% and prevents cancer and gray hair” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13644081/Experts-anti-aging-extends-life.html

“In just 25 weeks following the therapy, the animals had a lower risk of cancer, no gray hair, improved vision and better muscle functionality. The treated mice had fewer cancers, and were free from the usual signs of ageing and frailty, but we also saw reduced muscle wasting and improvement in muscle strength.”

“Anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in ageing humans in the future.”

Professor Cook told the BBC that while the trial is not yet completed, the data has suggested that the drug is safe for humans.” 

Directly Imaging Exoplanets

What's that giant blue blob in the bottom left quadrant? It's an exoplanet. I haven't done the digging to confirm, but it feels like this is the highest quality direct imaging of an exoplanet we have achieved so far.

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching in 2027, is going to bring another huge leap forward in finding and imaging exoplanets, but this is already really impressive. Being able to see these planets is going to change everything.

"This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star. The observations were made using NACO, the adaptative optics instrument for the VLT in infrared light, and using a technique called differential imaging, which improves the contrast between the planet and its dazzling host star. The star itself has been removed from the picture during processing to enhance the view of the faint exoplanet and its position is marked. The exoplanet appears at the lower left.

The blue circle is the size of the orbit of Neptune in the Solar System."

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1324a/

SETI and Dyson Spheres

First, a disclaimer: I doubt that any of these initial candidates will pan out. Striking gold the first time we pan for it seems unlikely; we'll likely need to both refine the process and develop even more powerful, refined instruments.

But, I think this is a superior way to conduct SETI research. The truth is, in order for a civilization to be advanced enough for us to find them across the vast distances involved, they're likely going to need to be able to construct Dyson structures.

Now, whether we want to attract the attention of a species so advanced is another question (interestingly, one I'll be talking about on a panel at MisCon next weekend!). But we should definitely be looking!

“A Study Suggests We Found Potential Evidence of Dyson Spheres—and Alien Civilizations”: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a60780331/dyson-sphere-evidence-alien-civilizations/

“For more than half a century, scientists have wondered if searching for technosignatures like Dyson Spheres from super-advanced civilizations could help us discover intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Two new studies analyze data from star-gazing satellites to develop a framework for eliminating false positives or potential natural explanations in that search.

Each study found evidence that a handful of stars among the millions observed contain excess radiation that’s consistent with potential Dyson spheres and can’t be immediately explained away as a natural phenomenon.”

And if you want to deep-dive into the science of this research, here’s a piece on the always excellent and thoughtful Centauri Dreams blog: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/05/18/seven-dyson-sphere-candidates/

Starship Soars

Welcome to the future of spaceflight, everyone! This week, in its third test flight, Starship made it to space, oribiting the planet for around 40 minutes before heading home. No, it didn’t make it all the way to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but that’s what testing is for, and it traveled so much farther, for so much longer, than ever before. I was a little twitchy after the second explosive test, but I’m now very optimistic for the future of this spacecraft and what it means for our journey to the moon, then onward to Mars and throughout the solar system.

Now enjoy these absolutely stunning photos of the flight:

Babes in the Woods

Read yet another article this week about new findings on an early-universe galaxy that * shouldn't exist * according to our current scientific understanding, because "something something dark matter something something." At this point, I feel like this is the state of our "understanding" of astrophysics.

We are truly babes in the woods. With blindfolds on, waving around a dime-store metal detector. We know legions more than we ever have in the history of humanity - but imagine what we can know tomorrow.

Is Anyone Out There?

Two reknowned researchers, an astrobiologist and a planetary scientists, have bet a bottle of whiskey (hopefully a good one) over whether we will discover convincing evidence of *technological* life in the universe in the next 15 years: https://mindmatters.ai/2024/01/science-wager-extraterrestrials-will-be-spotted-within-15-years/

Per the two: "Our conclusion is that advanced extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) is either (1) extremely rare or non-existent in our galaxy or (2) these civilizations are deliberately hiding from us. No other possibility seems very likely."

I'm not at all sure that no other possibility is very likely. For instance, see Universe Today's excellent series on SEVENTEEN hypotheses of why we haven't yet detected intelligent life in the universe: https://www.universetoday.com/119727/beyond-fermis-paradox-i-a-lunchtime-conversation-enrico-fermi-and-extraterrestrial-intelligence/

Also, I'll readily concede there might not currently be many (any?) other advanced civilizations in the Milky Way, but our galaxy is a minuscule dot in the cosmos....

...which is why FTL will not be enough. We need wormholes!*

*also, I'm almost finished rewatching Farscape, and at this point it's All Wormholes, All The Time.

Webb's Incredible View of Cassiopeia A

Isn’t this just an astonishing image? We thought we knew Cassiopeia A, but we were wrong.

“Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) view of Cas A displays a very violent explosion at a resolution previously unreachable at these wavelengths. This high-resolution look unveils intricate details of the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.” Learn much more about the image and the history of our study of Cas A, go here: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2330/

The Rhapsody of Space

See what I did there? ;)

From NASA: “For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans.

Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data through the sense of hearing instead of seeing it as images, a more common way to present astronomical data.

A new phase of the sonification project takes the data into different territory. Working with composer Sophie Kastner, the team has developed versions of the data that can be played by musicians.”

Listen and learn more here.

Protostar

From Webb’s newest observation:

Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. This image of HH 211 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals an outflow from a Class 0 protostar, an infantile analog of our Sun when it was no more than a few tens of thousands of years old and with a mass only 8% of the present-day Sun (it will eventually grow into a star like the Sun).

The image showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them. Webb reveals this scene in unprecedented detail — roughly 5 to 10 times higher spatial resolution than any previous images of HH 211. The inner jet is seen to “wiggle” with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar. This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.

Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-snaps-supersonic-outflow-of-young-star

What Is 'Alive'?

I came upon this conversation while working on the Rubicon hardback formatting. I took this screenshot last week - but then this weekend, I was having dinner with family, and we were talking about ChatGPT. Someone posed the question, "if something is designed by us, does that mean it can't be 'alive'?"

While no one (serious) today is suggesting that ChatGPT might be alive, there's going to come a day when we, like Alex, will need to answer this question. It's sure to be one hell of discussion.

Originally posted on Facebook.

Logarithmic Map of the Observable Universe

This is wicked cool! The image is so tall, I had to cut into 4 pieces, so follow the link and check out the full image.

"A Logarithmic Map of the Entire Observable Universe": https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/map-of-the-entire-known-universe/

Originally posted on Facebook.

M74 Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, Courtesy of Webb

M74 Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, 32 million light-years distant, imaged by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument and processed to draw out *even more detail* by Judy Schmidt. You can check out her awesome Flickr page here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/with/52225196953/

Lots of science detail regarding what Webb is doing here: https://www.universetoday.com/.../heres-m74-like-youve.../.

I'm honestly not sure any of us were truly prepared for the images Webb is going to throw our way. How could we be?

Originally posted on Facebook.

Trillions and Trillions

"Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists' and observers' estimates are too low."

- OR -

"Why the science in my books will inevitably become dated by increased knowledge with the passage of time, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Alex uses the "approximately two hundred billion galaxies" in the books, because that's been the best estimate available to us. Now we're talking about 6 trillion? TWENTY trillion???

I can imagine a lot - I'm paid to imagine a lot! - but I think we've found my limit here. What is the universe, even?

P.S.: I'm thinking I can use this number going forward, the justification being that the Kats have a better estimate than we did. But chasing the advance of science is probably a game I can't win - which is fine; I'm just glad it's advancing!

“There are more galaxies in the Universe than even Carl Sagan ever imagined”: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/galaxies-in-universe/

(As an aside, I am amused that this article uses as its header image a “simulated galaxy catalog providing a snippet of sky that might correspond, statistically, with what James Webb expects to see.” I’d say Webb outperformed expectations by a wide margin!)

Originally posted on Facebook.

The Beating Heart of the Milky Way

Say hello to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the beating heart of our very own galaxy!

For a long time, we've *assumed* there must be a SMBH at the center of the Milky Way, collecting a plethora of evidence that supported this theory. But we've never been able to see it, BECAUSE it's at the center of the galaxy, which is obviously a very, very busy, noisy place.

After the Event Horizon Telescope revealed the first ever direct imaging of a black hole in 2019, it turned its attention inward, and has been working diligently ever since to finally snap this picture. And it got it done.

Learn more about the image and all the science it has revealed here: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=305148

Originally posted on Facebook.

Keep Exploring

NASA has extended the planetary science missions of eight of its spacecraft due to their scientific productivity and potential to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the solar system and beyond.

The missions – Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover), InSight lander, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, OSIRIS-REx, and New Horizons – have been selected for continuation

Check that out! Curiosity is such a champ, showing no signs of slowing down on Mars after a decade of exploring the Red Planet. OSIRIS-REx is going to visit * another * asteroid, and New Horizons - can you believe it made its extraordinary visit to Pluto SEVEN years ago - will continue to probe the far outer reaches of our solar system.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-extends-exploration-for-8-planetary-science-missions

Originally posted on Twitter.