To the Moon

The most dangerous place in the world for scientists to go is right in between fact and fiction, where the superstition meets the science, where the conspiracies become consensus. 

Granted, being that the purpose of science is to advance the perimeter of ignorance, all cutting edge science, all "new" science, exists in this liminal zone. Maybe this should be revised - it's not a scary place to be for the scientist, actually I'll bet it's pretty exciting. But it's a scary place for the person who has to explain said science to the general public, because it is confusing as hell. The truth is hard. Simple explanations for the fundamental rules of the universe are like military strategy - no plan survives first contact with the enemy. There are so many contingencies, that only the most deeply-steeped genius can tease them apart. And there's also the 'paradox of knowledge' to contend with, something about how the more you know about a thing the less able you are to talk about it in plain language, yet the less you know and the more you can talk about it easily, the lower the quality of your information. (I think nowadays we call that "low credibility information".)

And speaking of which, you've never had so much fun at a science lecture:

Sasquatch Distribution Modelling: Investigating patterns of Bigfoot sightings in North America

Annual Halloween lecture by Prof Joss Wright at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oct 31 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_upySOOzcI

So here we are - the origin of the word "lunatic" comes from "lunar" - suggesting to us, from generations long before we were even calling "science" "philosophy", that the moon makes us crazy. Yet behavioral scientists, neurologists, biologists, etc., all say that's ridiculous. The truth is between the two, and as usual it's complicated.  

Gravitational action of sun and moon influences behavior of animals and plants

Jan 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-01-gravitational-action-sun-moon-behavior.html

Gravitational cycles do not only affect the simplest organisms. Scientific studies have found that humans kept in the dark tend to establish a cyclical fluctuation lasting 24.4 - 24.8 hours, in harmony with the lunar cycle. This tendency has also been noted in people who spend long periods in caves. It conditions the alternation of sleep and wakefulness, meal times, and other metabolic functions.

via University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil: Cristiano de Mello Gallep et al, Are cyclic plant and animal behaviours driven by gravimetric mechanical forces?, Journal of Experimental Botany (2021). DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erab462

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erab462

Image credit: Who am I kidding, this has become futile.

As for the rest of this post, just moon things in general:

Moon cave discovered that could one day house humans

Jul 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce784r9njz0o

Scientists have for the first time discovered a cave on the Moon.

At least 100m deep, it could be an ideal place for humans to build a permanent base, they say. Countries are racing to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but they will need to protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space weather.

Humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.

They found the cave by using radar to penetrate the opening of a pit on a rocky plain called the Mare Tranquillitatis. It is visible to the naked eye from Earth, and is also where Apollo 11 landed in 1969.

Moon landing live: US spacecraft Odysseus begins Moon landing descent

Feb 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/science-environment-68349490?src_origin=BBCS_BBC

Odysseus successfully landed on the surface of the Moon, officially making Intuitive Machines the first commercial company to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface.

Odysseus is also carrying 125 tiny sculptures made by US artist Jeff Koons, making them the first artworks land on the lunar surface.

Researchers figure out how to keep clocks on the Earth, Moon in sync

Aug 2024, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/08/researchers-figure-out-how-to-keep-clocks-on-the-earth-moon-in-sync/

So, the International Astronomical Union has a resolution that calls for a "Lunar Celestial Reference System" and "Lunar Coordinate Time" to handle things there. On Monday, two researchers at the National institute of Standards and Technology, Neil Ashby and Bijunath Patla, did the math to show how this might work.

The Astronomical Journal, 2024. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ad643a

http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad643a

Post Script:

1. We put reflectors on the moon, which you can still see from Earth.

2. The lunar calendar has 354 days, and the Egyptian calendar has 365. This averages to 360, which is coincidentally the number of degrees in a circle. (Is it really a coincidence?)

--via University of Glasgow: An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism. Graham Woan, Joseph Bayley. The Horological Journal, July 2024. bhi.co.uk; https://phys.org/news/2024-06-gravitational-antikythera-mechanism-mystery.html

We Are Not Ready for the Topological Universe

If you are like me, then you think the universe is like a big box, with all the things in it. And if you, like me, learned about Einstein and gravity and relativity in grade school, then you know that inside the big box, the space isn't exactly uniform, that it warps as it nears objects, because gravity. 

But one day soon, in grade school, people will learn that the big box isn't just warped by gravity, but that it's not a box at all. The universe might be more like a jumbled mess of intersecting toroids, bubbles and tubes. 

Anticipating future discoveries: Scientists explore nontrivial cosmic topology

May 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-future-discoveries-scientists-explore-nontrivial.html

Discussing his motivation to pursue this work, he said, "The possibility that the universe has 'interesting' topology is entirely within our Standard Model of physics but is nevertheless typically regarded as exotic."

"I have long been concerned that we would miss an extraordinary discovery about our universe by just looking the other way. In the meantime, there is growing evidence that the universe is not 'statistically isotropic,' i.e. that physics is the same in all directions. Topology is a very natural way for anisotropy to creep into our universe."

via the COMPACT collaboration of scientists including from from Case Western Reserve University: Yashar Akrami et al, Promise of Future Searches for Cosmic Topology, Physical Review Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.171501

https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.171501

Image credit: The above image is the "first topological frequency comb", and is (ostensibly) a photograph taken by Emily Edwards for the University of Maryland and National Institute of Standards and Technology Joint Quantum Institute, where she is recognized for her ability to communicate with the public about quantum science. (I say the image is ostensibly a photograph, because it just looks way too good to be real, and part of me thinks it's just not properly cited. [link]

New measurements of gravitational anomaly at low acceleration favor modified gravity, researcher claims

Sep 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-gravitational-anomaly-favor-gravity.html

When Kuhn talked about revolutions, this is what he was talking about. I'm too young to have felt the excitement upon discovering that E equals MC2, or that gravity affects time. But now I see. 

They keep finding it between binary stars - It's the breakdown of Newtonian gravity at low acceleration, and it's called modified Newtonian dynamics, or MoND, or Milgromian dynamics, because it was introduced 40 years ago by Mordehai (Moti) Milgrom.

While these consistent results are arresting, unlimited reproductions and confirmations are needed for the reported gravitational anomaly to become a true scientific fact. Also, the reported gravitational anomaly will have to be better characterized continually to provide useful constraints on theories.

via Sejong University: Kyu-Hyun Chae, Measurements of the Low-acceleration Gravitational Anomaly from the Normalized Velocity Profile of Gaia Wide Binary Stars and Statistical Testing of Newtonian and Milgromian Theories, The Astrophysical Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad61e9

https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad61e9

Also: Hernandez et al, A critical review of recent Gaia wide binary gravity tests, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2024). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae1823

https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1823

Observational study supports century-old theory that challenges the Big Bang

Sep 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-century-theory-big.html

Big Bang theory suggests the universe started to expand 13.8 billion years ago. At the same time, preeminent astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposed that galaxies that were more distant from Earth did not really move faster, but the red shift was because the light photons lose their energy as they travel through space. And it's called the Tired Light theory.

"The tired light theory was largely neglected, as astronomers adopted the Big Bang theory as the consensus model of the universe," Shamir said. "But the confidence of some astronomers in the Big Bang theory started to weaken when the powerful James Webb Space Telescope saw first light.

via Kansas State University: Lior Shamir, An Empirical Consistent Redshift Bias: A Possible Direct Observation of Zwicky's TL Theory, Particles (2024). DOI: 10.3390/particles7030041

https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/particles7030041

Post Script:

New photonic chip spawns nested topological frequency comb

Jun 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-photonic-chip-spawns-topological-frequency.html

The First Topological Frequency Comb - shines with evenly spaced pristine frequency spikes, relies on a small silicon nitride chip patterned with hundreds of microscopic rings arranged in a two-dimensional grid; a complex pattern of interference takes input laser light and circulates it around the edge of the chip while the material of the chip itself splits it up into many frequencies.

via the University of Maryland and National Institute of Standards and Technology Joint Quantum Institute: Christopher J. Flower et al, Observation of topological frequency combs, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.ado0053

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.ado0053

The New Digital Earth

We are on our way to creating a second Earth in the digital realm, where we can do experiments and run simulations to better understand the real Earth. It's called a digital twin, and it happens in other sectors like medicine (where we can test new drugs in a simulation of your body) or industry (where we can monitor all the variables in the manufacture of a product to find the most efficient method).

Developments in persistent satellite surveillance, vision and other sensing technologies, and climate modeling and forecasting keep getting better, and with each advance in these areas, the digital Earth twin gets closer and closer to the real Earth. 

Image credit: This Size 49 ecumonopolis was built on the video game Stellaris, around Amogus Prime.

Real-time space observations can now keep watch over 'super emitter' power plants

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-real-time-space-super-emitter-power.html

They use NASA's "Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2" (OCO-2; launched in 2014) and the OCO-3, attached since 2019 to the International Space Station (ISS).

"This future capacity will lead to improved CO2 emission information at the scale of countries, cities or individual facilities, enhancing transparency under the Paris Agreement and supporting efforts to reduce emissions causing climate change."

via Environment and Climate Change Canada: Tracking CO2 emission reductions from space: A case study at Europe's largest fossil fuel power plant, Frontiers in Remote Sensing (2022). DOI: 10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240

https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240

Climate simulation more realistic with artificial intelligence

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-climate-simulation-realistic-artificial-intelligence.html

A generative adversarial network made a simple climate model way better, so it can handle more complex data. 

via Technical University Munich: Philipp Hess, Physically constrained generative adversarial networks for improving precipitation fields from Earth system models, Nature Machine Intelligence (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00540-1

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00540-1

Google Earth on steroids' gives a boost to urban development

Dec 2022, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-google-earth-steroids-boost-urban.html

Uzufly's system uses drones to take aerial photographs, producing thousands of images that are transformed into 3D models through the creation of digital twins, or digital replicas of real-world objects. These objects could be buildings, for example, which are georeferenced down to the centimeter. The company's 3D models incorporate a wide range of urban-planning data and can accommodate any type of architectural design at full scale.

via Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne spin-off Uzufly

Image credit: AI Art - Sacred Geometry - 2023

A silicon image sensor that computes

Aug 2022, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-silicon-image-sensor.html

The computer is in the eyeballs of the camera, they are one and the same:

CMOS-integrated "in-sensor processing" and programmable pixels

via Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Houk Jang et al, In-sensor optoelectronic computing using electrostatically doped silicon, Nature Electronics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-022-00819-6

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41928-022-00819-6

Atomic-level 3D models show us how gadgets work

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-atomic-level-3d-gadgets.html

This can create a digital twin at the atomic level:

"Atom probe tomography" can provide a three-dimensional representation of what a material looks like, right down to the atomic level.

via Norwegian University of Science and Technology: K. A. Hunnestad et al, Atomic-scale 3D imaging of individual dopant atoms in an oxide semiconductor, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32189-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32189-0

Wearable wristband captures entire body in 3D

Nov 2022, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-wearable-wristband-captures-entire-body.html

The camera is on the wrist, facing the body, and with that limited information, it can infer what the entire body is doing. 

"Our research shows that we don't need our body frames to be fully within camera view for body sensing," Lim said. "If we are able to capture just a part of our bodies, that is a lot of information to infer to reconstruct the full body."

via Cornell's SciFiLab: Hyunchul Lim et al, BodyTrak, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (2022). DOI: 10.1145/3552312

https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3552312

Worldwide dataset captures Earth in finest ever detail

Nov 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-worldwide-dataset-captures-earth-finest.html

Metabolism of the Anthroposphere is here:

WorldStrat - 10,000km² of free satellite images with resolutions as high as 1.5m per pixel (each pixel is a 1.5m by 1.5m area on the ground), using the SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites from ESA, as well as using the lower resolution Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite.

via University College London and European Space Agency: Julien Cornebise et al, Open High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: The WorldStrat Dataset—With Application to Super-Resolution, arXiv (2022). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2207.06418

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2207.06418

The Real Climate Change is Us Doing This:

Startup claims to offer stratospheric geoengineering as a service

Dec 2022, Ars Technica via MIT Tech Review

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/startup-make-sunsets-promises-to-disrupt-the-stratosphere/

(The company is called Make Sunsets)

Climate Change Makes Robowrapper More Than Just Fashion

I don't know about you, but I'm ok wearing a spacesuit while still on Earth, as long as it has air conditioning. And persistent surveillance of my health data, of course. 

Not that I want to, but I'm ok with it. And I'm not talking Apollo marshmallow man spacesuit. This suit is actually integrated into your own skin. At some point, it will be hard to distinguish between our clothes and our skin. To "wear" something will have a different meaning, and you won't be able to function without a nano-networked-supercomputer covering your entire body (never mind not being able to live without an air-conditioned bodysuit simply because it's too hot). 

Emerging wearable technology uses tiny fibers that can track your blood pressure, heart rate, and more

Dec 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-emerging-wearable-technology-tiny-fibers.html

"It could be a handkerchief which you put on your wrist and it starts giving data."

via American Institute of Physics: "Micro/nano fiber-based non-invasive devices for health monitoring diagnosis and rehabilitation," Applied Physics Reviews, aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0010766

Researchers create powerful unipolar carbon nanotube muscles

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-powerful-unipolar-carbon-nanotube-muscles.html

"Electrochemically driven carbon nanotube (CNT) muscles" sound like a morph suit that's also an exoskeleton.

via University of Texas at Dallas: "Unipolar stroke, electroosmotic pump carbon nanotube yarn muscles" Science (2021). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6528/494

Wearable plasmonic-metasurface sensor for universal molecular fingerprint detection on biointerfaces

Feb 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-wearable-plasmonic-metasurface-sensor-universal-molecular.html

The system contained a flexible sweat extraction process to noninvasively extract and fingerprint analytes inside the body based on their unique Raman scattering spectra. 

Light-emitting tattoo engineered for the first time

Feb 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-light-emitting-tattoo.html

The technology, which uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), is applied in the same way as water transfer tattoos. That is, the OLEDs are fabricated on to temporary tattoo paper and transferred to a new surface by being pressed on to it and dabbed with water. ... could be combined with other tattoo electronics to, for instance emit light when an athlete is dehydrated, or when we need to get out of the sun to avoid sunburn. OLEDs could be tattooed on packaging or fruit to signal when a product has passed its expiry date or will soon become inedible, or used for fashion in the form of glowing tattoos.

via University College London: Jonathan Barsotti et al. Ultrathin, Ultra‐Conformable, and Free‐Standing Tattooable Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes, Advanced Electronic Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1002/aelm.202001145

'Smart clothes' that can measure your movements

Mar 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-smart-movements.html

via MIT: Yiyue Luo et al. Learning human–environment interactions using conformal tactile textiles, Nature Electronics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00558-0

Post Script:

Researchers find space station's surface microbial profile resembles skin of its crew members

May 2020, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-space-station-surface-microbial-profile.html

We will be the spaceship. It will become our bodies, rather, our bodies will become a ship.

via Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Aram Avila-Herrera et al. Crewmember microbiome may influence microbial composition of ISS habitable surfaces, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231838

Fungal ghosts protect skin, fabric from toxins, radiation

Mar 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fungal-ghosts-skin-fabric-toxins.html

There's a fungus that naturally makes melanin, which is protective against ultraviolet radiation, and so they grow the melanin, then etch away the fungus, leaving only the melanin cell. The leftovers are called fungal ghosts, and can become a kind of artificial skin. And also for, you know, "potential for applications in long distance space flight."

via Northwestern University: "Allomelanin: A Biopolymer of Intrinsic Microporosity." Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Low Earth Orbit Package Deals

Outer Space is Open for Business

NASA to open International Space Station to tourists from 2020
June 2019, phys.org

The International Space Station will open to tourists by 2020. I don't need to say much else beyond the headline here, except that in the article, they refer to tourists as astronauts. In other words, soon we can all be astronauts.

Stranded in Space

It occurred to me today that we already live in outer space.

I live for moments like this. You read me the news, like any other day, when you come across a headline that might be interesting, you go ahead and read it through.

Somewhere along the way it occurs to you, that we already live in the future.

Here, a short news article about outer space. It's not hype, in fact it is an article of lamentation. Some computer servers are stuck on the International Space Station that orbits the Earth. They can't catch a ride on any of the transport vessels returning back to the surface.

It's one of those things that really shows you the nature of the world that you're already in. It's not a big deal, it's just a run of the mill article that in 30 years will be totally insignificant.

But if you just stop for one second, and roll it back 10 years even, it really gives you pause. It was 50 years ago now that we first sent people out to that forever distant, impossible destination. Now, we have people living there.

There's someone living there all the time. They're growing vegetables. They exercise. They communicate with their families everyday. There is a bit of a lag I'm sure, but they get to see their families everyday, not much different I imagine, from an international entrepreneur that is away from home often, or the military service member on duty.

It's right in between the mundane and the exceptional, the everyday and the out of this world. It puts you right in that spot where you can see the eyeballs themselves.

image source: The 2013 movie Gravity

Computer servers 'stranded' in space
Feb 2019, BBC

The Shanzhai Sun

"Shanzhai" means "counterfeit goods," which is China's way of saying "Made In China"

Let's start with the story from a few months ago, where China plans to make artificial moons for nighttime illumination. Mirrors in outerspace that redirect sunlight from low earth orbit. Now they're looking pretty good on the nuclear fusion front, i.e., artificial suns.

Granted, you must take every headline about nuclear fusion as fake news, because we are unlikely to see its boundless surplus of power in our lifetime. Depends on who you ask though. At this point, a Chinese reactor is reaching 100 million degrees, which is way more than the Sun itself, but still only enough to maintain such a nuclear meltdown for 10 seconds.

Regardless of "when," folks like the futurist Isaac Arthur do a good job of explaining how this major shift in energy production can be used to transform our world. Megastructures that surround our entire Earth, or spaceships that span the Milky Way, all these things are possible with nuclear fusion as an energy source (some faster than light travel wouldn't help).

Bottom line, this gives a different meaning to the idea of China Fake. Also wondering what the plans look like for Fake Earth and Fake Humans.

Notes:
China's 'artificial sun' reaches 100 million degrees Celsius marking milestone for nuclear fusion
Nov 2018, ABC News

China is launching artificial moons in urban areas
Oct 2018, Astrononmy.com

Isaac Arthur's Science and Futurism Channel

Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, 2008
Chinese Science Fiction

China-Fake
2013, Network Address

Headlines from Outerspace

Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem, but are in fact useless.

There are times when too many good headlines pop up all at once. Here's a sampling of what's going on circa 2018. In 2028, will this all be passé? In 2008, would it have been unfathomable?

On-chip excitation of nanodiamonds embedded in plasmonic waveguides
Oct 2018, phys.org

No clue, just headline wordporn.

Bitcoin miner sent to prison for stealing electricity from train network in China
Oct 2018, The Independent

A man in China has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after stealing electricity from a train network in order to mine bitcoin.

Two Companies Are Going to Manufacture Optical Fibers in Space
Sep 2018, Futurism

Eventually we will all live in computers orbiting the Earth. For now, this is an early example of otherworldly computer manufacturing.

Building a better brain-in-a-dish, faster and cheaper
Sept 2018, phys.org

"What we've done is establish a proof-of-principle protocol for a systematic, automated process to generate large numbers of brain organoids," said Alysson R. Muotri, Ph.D., professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program and a member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine.


Image source: Gee, I sure wish I could attribute a source to this image, but it's been fetched by my "generic search engine" from pinterest (go figure, right?). In case readers here don't know what pinterest is, it's a way for image users to short-circuit Google's own copyright policies (under firm guidance by Getty) by taking images out of their source page and placing them on another page with way higher "finding power," as you might expect by any page owned by the search engine itself. 

Views of the Future

The expanding brain meme is in order.

Look, I'm not in love with Elon Musk or anything, but I got pretty pissed when I read a Futurism article about his interview with Joe Rogan.

I can obviously care less about whether or not somebody "inhaled," I mean, I was around during the Bill Clinton administration, after all. Not to mention, what to hell do people think is going to happen on the Joe Rogan show.

The part I'm upset about is where people seem to think Musk is being a loopy headfreak when he's asked about future-trending topics like AI sentience.

And that's where I'll cut - he's asked when he thinks AI will become sentient. And he responds, very slowly like every other answer he gives during this kind of painful interview - he says something that sounds to many like, "We're all trees, man."

You're thinking, "he didn't answer the question at all." But I think you're wrong. His actual answer went like this:

Joe: How far are humans from creating sentient AI?

Musk: You could argue that any group of people — like a company — is essentially a cybernetic collective of human people and machines. That’s what a company is. And then there are different levels of complexity in the way these companies are formed and then there is a collective AI in Google search, where we are also plugged in like nodes in a network, like leaves in a tree. 

We’re all feeding this network without questions and answers. We’re all collectively programming the AI and Google. […] It feels like we are the biological boot-loader for AI effectively. We are building progressively greater intelligence. And the percentage that is not human is increasing, and eventually we will represent a very small percentage of intelligence.

This is coming from a guy who is making, besides reusable rocket ships and statewide underground transport tunnels and consumer blowtorches, a neural interface system. And in case folks forget, because this was a while ago, he made PayPal. So he knows how things work. He may not be Jaron Lanier but he understands how these things work, and he's telling us that in regards to AI and sentience, we're asking the wrong question.

I'm going to elucidate what I think he was trying to say when he answered this, or at least what maybe he should have said considering his audience in this particular venue.

First, there is a fine line between us and AI. When you consider that we as users are the training program for many of these tools, such as a massive search engine, it should make you wonder which part of it is us and which part the machine.

Second, when we realize that we have essentially been programming these things since the dawn of what I will call for lack of a more neutral word, the surveillance state, we must admit the sentience is already here.

So, even more briefly, what he could have said to the question - when will AI become sentient - was that AI is us, and it's already happened.

All this being said, I spent a good three hours watching a debate on the floor of the Parliament about the real threats of AI, not to mention having watched a good thousand hours of other scientists, researchers, engineers, and other professionals talk about their work in the field. With that, I concluded to myself that a General Artificial Intelligence will not be here for another couple generations, and that the threat will be from ourselves, not a sentient system.

Musk seemed to be in concert with the latter part of this, although he's still pretty spooked about what could happen.

This brings me to my next point, which is that Musk is a guy for whom the world moves way faster than most. We have to remember, if not for him, a working reusable rocket would have taken another 50 years at least. For example, if NASA of some other government agency were in charge of the project. It doesn't mean that because of him the world moves faster, but that when he talks about things, he sees them from a very different perspective, one where amazing things you can barely imagine can happen tomorrow. And he probably assumes that you are in his head with him, which you are not, and Joe Rogan is not, and apparently this writer for Futurism is not.

But fellow speculative fiction enthusiasts are, and hopefully they would agree that it's quite entertaining to listen to this guy talk about things. (Again, if you can get around the 10-second pause before answering every question.)

Finally, full disclosure, I along with Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson am a no-case guy (no cellphone case that is).

Post Script
The comment about how we're probably living in a simulation - I'm not a proponent of this, as there are more convincing arguments against it than for it coming from the physics world. However, his comment on how in the future we will all be living in a game, and it will be indistinguishable from reality, well, I'll ask folks to read Charles Stross' Halting State, or Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End or ... many scifi novels written in the past thirty years? (And also a Network Address post from wayback.)

Patrol the Skies

Today it will 'feel like' 107 degrees in the armpit of New Jersey. You don't know what you've got until it's gone. The backyard swimming pool my parents thoughtfully incorporated into our bucolic suburban domicile is a distant memory.

But Microsoft knows what's up, they put one of its servers underwater in an effort to cool the thing better. No you're not normally supposed to put your computers underwater. Thing is, one of the primary limits to the power of what a computer can do is heat. Computers don't sweat like we do, so we don't notice it, but they work really hard to do all that binary computation. [Today is Leibniz bday, thanks Google Doodle, he refined the binary number system, among many other things integral to our modern world.]

So if we could only figure out a way to keep computers cool. Air conditioning is very expensive, and lemonade doesn't really work (does that really work?). In fact, Microsoft is trying this as a part of their sustainability effort. I know you've recently heard how much energy is used to mine cryptocurrencies - it's more than the energy expenditure of some nations. So if we can figure out a way to cool these things down, that would help a lot.

Now to the main point: We will not stop by putting computers underwater, because there is a place much colder than that, and we've been going there a lot more than usual as of late. Yes, outerspace is the next frontier for high-efficiency computing.

SpaceX, seen above, is well on its way to giving us a cozy place in low earth orbit that we can call home to our global digital infrastructure. Seems to make more sense than dunking your mainframe in a bathtub. And now, if you will for a moment imagine our human future, as we leave the meat behind, to exist entirely in the digitally-mediated reality of a constellation of hundreds of thousands of computer satellites blinking in low earth orbit. 

Notes:
image source: Space Jellyfish from SpaceX launch

Microsoft sinks data centre off Orkne
Jun 2018, BBC

Patrol the Skies Music

Welcome to Asgardia

Asgardia is the first ever space faring nation.

"Asgardia's philosophical envelope is to ‘digitalise’ the Noosphere, creating a mirror of humanity in space but without Earthly division into states, religions and nations. In Asgardia we are all just Earthlings!"

Not sure what a philosophical envelope is, but I do like to see the word Noosphere in print...

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More Three-Body

It's hard to predict the orbital mechanics of three bodies, as seen here. 

Astronomers have found an Earthlike planet in the habitable zone of the closest star to the sun
Toronto Star, Aug 2016

I don't get paid by Liu Cixin or anything but I am crazy about his book, Three Body Problem. And in current news, his story is becoming even more plausible, as the origin for his alien race of Trisolarians is a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the same planet that has now been verified into existence. The Centauri star system is our closest Milky Way neighbor; it's four light years away.

More Crystals Still

Crystal

These Mysterious Ultra-Rare Crystals Probably Formed in Outer Space

Gizmodo, 2016

(Please excuse the fact that I’m posting my science news via gizmodo, I just take it as it comes.)

Quasi crystals have been known for a bit, but "nobody had found a naturally occurring quasicrystal until Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt stumbled upon one in 2007" (Gizmodo, 2016)

Also, Neal Stephenson, in his mindf***ing Anathema, makes reference to a similar aperiodic repetition in his telling of a mindgame similar to chess where one tries to arrange different tiles in a crazy complex pattern that looks random but in fact uses some deep math to get there...(I think the game is called a tangram.)

Interlinks from Network Address:

Diamonds Everything

Weird Computers

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

New type of animated crystal structure discovered

phys.org Jan 2016

“The trio readily acknowledges that they have no idea if such crystals actually exist in the real world but suggest it might be possible that they are in atomic nuclei or in electrons in solids—finding them would be a challenge, however, because they would have to be seen in action, a single snapshot would not convey the motion required to see the symmetry. They also suggest that their new crystal structure could lead to some new math as was the case when static crystal structure math led to applications in number theory and even error correction in computer applications.”

Teaching a machine to spot a crystal
Jun 2018, phys.org

Crystallizing proteins is hard—really hard. Unlike the simple atoms and molecules that make up common crystals like salt and sugar, these big, bulky molecules, which can contain tens of thousands of atoms each, struggle to arrange themselves into the ordered arrays that form the basis of crystals.

"What allows an object like a protein to self-assemble into something like a crystal is a bit like magic," Charbonneau said.

Our Blue Marble

Kazimir Malevich's Black Square 1915

An example of Abstract Art, specifically from the Suprematism movement. It can easily be called the most extreme example of artistic abstraction.

Recently, I was trying to convey the meaning, or at least the relevance of the Black Square to my high school art students. Most people don't understand abstract art, and that's part of what it is,if you want to see it that way - another esoteric tool used by the elite to alienate a people from their own culture. But I like to see art, any art, as simply a reflection of a time and of the mind of a people at a particular time in history. Art is a kind of coping mechanism for society; the society as a whole will call a thing Art if it serves that purpose - to help us to cope with a world we do not understand. Needless to say, as anyone who would try to explain abstract art to group of high school students in a single 45-minute presentation, I was successful only in getting them upset enough to debate with me for 45 mintutes about the ridiculousness of the Black Square.

The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft. The photograph was taken about 5 hours and 6 minutes after launch of the Apollo 17 mission. To the astronauts, Earth had the appearance and size of a glass marble, hence the name.

The Apollo 17 image, however, released during a surge in environmental activism during the 1970s, was acclaimed by the wide public as a depiction of Earth's frailty, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space. NASA archivist Mike Gentry has speculated that The Blue Marble is the most widely distributed image in human history. [link]

Later that night, I thought to myself about the Blue Marble, or rather what I call the Blue Marble Syndrome. I was born in 1980, and so for me, I never lived in a world where man had -not- been to outerspace. This achievement had already taken place well before I was born, and so it never hit me; it was always there. From what I understand through reading history, this image changed not only the lives of the countless individuals who saw it for the first time, but it changed the consciousness of an entire society (as mentioned in the caption above). And I made the parallel - my students couldn't feel the true impact, the true relevance of the Black Square, because they weren't around for its inception.

The next day, I tried explaining this to them. No use. (Back to the more concrete and perhaps practical exercise of distinguishing the difference between representationality and non-representationality in visually-informed art).

And then it happened. Granted, I had been following Curiosity. I stayed up that night like a little kid in utter amazement, but almost a bit moreso at the fact that the entire world was watching along with me, all of us, with the entire crew at NASA, in real time (and at the implications of that superimposed on the idea of the timelag between here and Mars) feeling the same every bit of anxiety, both the good kind and the bad kind, as everyone else. It landed, and it was over. Some months later, I was scrolling through some feeds, and I came across this picture (below), and it stopped me dead in my tracks, and I literally could not take my eyes off of it for a good five minutes; in a very real way, it transported me to another world (superimposed on the fact that it -is- another world I'm looking at) and it took away from me, for those moments, my own thoughts.

I still can't get over it. Neither the image, nor its implications, nor the experience it forced upon me.

Curiosity Self Portrait on Mars February 2013 Image Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Taken in the Yellowknife Bay region of Mars' Gale Crater, the panoramic image was stitched together by NASA from a series of 130 images created in the first week of February by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast camera and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). [The MAHLI frames used to create Curiosity's self-portrait exclude sections that show the arm itself and so MAHLI and the robotic arm are not seen.] 

interactive version

As I'm sure any student of history and art and culture is wont to do, I have spent many daydream-hours lamenting over why I am alive now and not then. Why couldn't I hear Jimi Hendrix turn his guitar into a human-robot voice. Why couldn't I hear Neil Armstrong speak to us from a place that is not Earth. And why couldn't I see that picture of my own planet and feel the same sense of fragility, of isolation, and all the myriad emotions and thoughts that came with it.

It's not that I will no longer lament over being alive today and not yesterday. But I have certainly found comfort in this: Everyone of us, eventually, will be given our own Blue Marble.