Physicist Sean Carroll on entropy, complexity, and the origins of life:
6 min.
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Continue reading “All of the universe’s disorder, explained in 6 minutes” »
Could a future superintelligence bring back the already dead? This discussion has come up a while back (and see the somewhat related); I’d like to resurrect the topic because … it’s potentially quite important.
Algorithmic resurrection is a possibility if we accept the same computational patternist view of identity that suggests cryonics and uploading will work. I see this as the only consistent view of my observations, but if you don’t buy this argument/belief set then the rest may not be relevant.
The general implementation idea is to run a forward simulation over some portion of earth’s history, constrained to enforce compliance with all recovered historical evidence. The historical evidence would consist mainly of all the scanned brains and the future internet.
1,769 views • Premiered 82 minutes ago • #worldsciencefestival #quantumentanglement #briangreene
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a state-of-the-art technique that captures and processes information across a given electromagnetic spectrum. Unlike traditional imaging techniques that capture light intensity at specific wavelengths, HSI collects a full spectrum at each pixel in an image. This rich spectral data enables the distinction between different materials and substances based on their unique spectral signatures.
Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) has attracted significant attention in the food and industrial fields as a non-destructive technique for analyzing the composition of objects. A notable aspect of NIR-HSI is over-thousand-nanometer (OTN) spectroscopy, which can be used for the identification of organic substances, their concentration estimation, and 2D map creation. Additionally, NIR-HSI can be used to acquire information deep into the body, making it useful for the visualization of lesions hidden in normal tissues.
Various types of HSI devices have been developed to suit different imaging targets and situations, such as for imaging under a microscope or portable imaging and imaging in confined spaces. However, for OTN wavelengths, ordinary visible cameras lose sensitivity and only a few commercially available lenses exist that can correct chromatic aberration. Moreover, it is necessary to construct cameras, optical systems, and illumination systems for portable NRI-HSI devices, but no device that can acquire NIR-HSI with a rigid scope, crucial for portability, has been reported yet.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has arrived in Beijing on an unannounced trip, where he is expected to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang in Beijing, during which Mr Li told Mr Musk that Tesla’s development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation.
“Honoured to meet with Premier Li Qiang. We have known each other now for many years, since early Shanghai days,” Mr Musk posted on social media platform X, as he appeared in a picture with the premier.
Neuromorphic computing is about mimicking the human brain’s structure to deliver more efficient data processing, including faster speeds and higher accuracy, and it’s a hot topic right now. A lot of universities and tech firms are working on it, including scientists at Intel who have built the world’s largest “brain-based” computing system for Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Intel’s creation, called Hala Point, is only the size of a microwave, but boasts 1.15 billion artificial neurons. That’s a massive step up from the 50 million neuron capacity of its predecessor, Pohoiki Springs, which debuted four years ago. There’s a theme with Intel’s naming in case you were wondering – they’re locations in Hawaii.
This new propulsion system could rewrite the rules of spaceflight—not to mention completely defy conventional physics.
Scientists have hailed the “exciting” discovery of a type of porous material that can store carbon dioxide.
The research, published in the journal Nature Synthesis, saw a team led by scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh create hollow, cage-like molecules with high storage capacities for greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and sulphur hexafluoride. Sulphur hexafluoride is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and can last thousands of years in the atmosphere.
A Chinese company says it’s successfully developed a brain chip and implanted it into a monkey — who can now remotely control a robot arm with the device.
That’s according to state-run news media outfit Xinhua, putting Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink on notice that there will be international as well as domestic competition for his brain-computer interface venture.
The company, Beijing Xinzhida Neurotechnology, which is backed by the Chinese government, unveiled its device, the NeuCyber Array BMI (brain-machine interface) System at a technology convention in Beijing on Thursday, according to Reuters.
For this technique to work at very high fidelity, a very fast and very sensitive bolometer is needed to measure the quantum state before it decays. In 2020, the Finnish researchers unveiled a bolometer that used graphene as its absorber – a fast and sensitive design that was intended for use in quantum computing. Unfortunately, this bolometer degraded over time and the team instead used an older bolometer design involving interfaces between superconductors and normal metals.
Möttönen says that the researchers had initially not expected the older design to be effective for reading out the states of individual qubits. He also expects that the read-out fidelity could be boosted using improved graphene bolometers. “I’m hoping to get the new graphene bolometers out of the oven soon,” he says.
David Pahl at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes that the work is very preliminary, but potentially very important. He says that the two most important performance metrics for a scheme to read out quantum states are the fidelity and the speed: “The state of the art speed that we’ve seen in the past year is 0.1 μs and 99.5% fidelity…[Möttönen and colleagues] showed 14 μs and 61.7%,” he says.
