https://youtube.com/watch?v=ySsv5-jSqss
A startup with a $100 million investment wants to implant chips into human brains to enhance their abilities.
This sort of thing is rapidly going mainstream, and de Grey, if still a fringe thinker, seems increasingly less so. At the very least, medical science has progressed to the point where “negligible senescence” — eternal youth, more or less — is something it might be a good idea to start talking about before it is suddenly upon us without our having thought through the implications. As with most of the other miracle technologies that have turned our lives inside out over the past 100 years — rampant automation, nuclear power, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and so on — this one, as Shukan Gendai points out, has its dark side.
Is death inevitable? True, everyone born before Aug. 4, 1900, has proved mortal (the world’s oldest-known living person, a Japanese woman named Nabi Tajima, was born on that date). But the past is only an imperfect guide to the future, as the effervescent present is ceaselessly teaching us.
Must we die? We ourselves probably must. But our children, our grandchildren — or if not them, theirs — may, conceivably, be the beneficiaries of the greatest revolution ever: the conquest of death.
Continue reading “On the quest for the holy grail for as long as we live” »
In Donald Trump’s inaugural speech last January, lost amidst his description of “American carnage,” was a more optimistic promise that the country was “ready to unlock the mysteries of space.”
It’s unclear if the line was anything more than political lip service, but one thing is certain: The quest for the stars is racing forward regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.
A once impossible but now plausible scenario can be found in Andy Weir’s new book “Artemis” (Crown, Nov. 14), which is set in the world’s first lunar city. The action takes place in the year 2080 in Artemis, a city with a population of 2,000 that’s part tourist attraction, part housing complex and part mining operation. The protagonist, Jazz Bashara, whom Rosario Dawson, the audiobook’s narrator describes as “super MacGyver,” is a young porter who runs a small smuggling operation on the side, obtaining contraband, such as alcohol, for the colony’s population. When one of Jazz’s wealthy clients offers her a chance to make the potential score of a lifetime, the young woman finds herself in over her head and caught up in a far-reaching conspiracy.
Continue reading “A baby could be born on the moon in a few decades” »
A team of scientists at the University of California San Diego led by biologist Nan Hao have combined engineering, computer science, and biology technologies to decode the molecular processes in cells that influence aging.
Continue reading “Scientists decipher mechanisms in cells for extending human longevity” »
L amborghini has created the world’s first self-healing sports car. The Terzo Millennio, which translates as third millennium in Italian, has the ability to detect and repair cracks in its body work.
Using sensors the car can conduct its own health check to detect any damages and self-repair itself by filling the crack with nanotubes to prevent it spreading.
The super car was created in collaboration with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.
Continue reading “Lamborghini creates world’s first ‘self-healing’ sports car” »
Air Force lieutenant general Steve Kwast believes a “Kitty Hawk” moment will begin a new era in space. But while the U.S. still leads every other country in space, Kwast cautions that edge is whittling away.
“In my best military judgement China is on a 10-year journey to operationalize space. We’re on a 50-year journey,” Kwast told CNBC.
Kwast, who is also the commander and president of Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, says the United States must “bring together the right talent to accelerate the journey” in a Manhattan Project-like meeting of minds. He says this would push the space industry to an moment like Wright Brothers had when they completed the first successful airplane flight in 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina…
And it is on Singles’ Day, automation, robots, AI and machine learning will be widely applied to all aspects of the annual shopping ritual, right from product selection to delivery.
This year’s November 11 shopping ritual will engage a recommendation algorithm, robots, and chatbots capable of understanding human emotion.
