The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

Alien Oceans Could Hold Way More Life Than Earth’s Waters Ever Did, New Research Suggests

... new research suggests that some distant worlds could put the Blue Marble's biodiversity to shame.

It's not because these other, hypothetically habitable exoplanets are devoid of humans (though Earth's biodiversity would definitely be looking better without us). Rather, a planet's potential to harbor life could hinge on how well its oceans move nutrients around the world, University of Chicago geoscientist Stephanie Olson said today (Aug. 23) in a presentation at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress in Barcelona. ...

One circulation pattern in particular — known as "upwelling" — may be key to fostering life in the seas, Olson said. Upwelling occurs when wind rushes along the ocean's surface, creating currents that push deep, nutrient-rich water up toward the top of the sea, where photosynthetic plankton live. The plankton feed on these nutrients, allowing them to produce organic compounds that feed larger organisms, which in turn become meals for still-larger organisms, and so on up the food chain.

As members of the food chain die and decompose, their organic remains sink to the bottom of the sea, where they may get caught in another upwelling and feed the surface life again. Thanks to this efficient, underwater recycling system, biodiversity tends to thrive in upwelling areas on Earth (mainly near the coasts). The same is likely true on habitable exoplanets, Olson said, which means that planets with conditions that favor more ocean upwelling may also favor strong biodiversity.

https://www.livescience.com/alien-ex...diversity.html

Also revealed ... these first photos of these aliens of the oceans ...



... ya have to be of a certain age I guess ...

Gassho, J

STLah

[Shokai]

Not another generational thing !!

gassho, Shokai
stlah

[Tairin]

Sea Monkeys? . Thanks for the flash back.

[Jakuden]

Also revealed ... these first photos of these aliens of the oceans ...



... ya have to be of a certain age I guess ...

Gassho, J

STLah

Oh I remember these... they were brine shrimp I think!?

Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday

[Jundo]

Lab-Made Mini Brains Produce Brain Waves Just Like Those of Preterm Babies

... While the cells were dividing and differentiating, they eventually began to "self-organize into something that resembles the human cortex," Muotri said. The cortex is the outer layer of the brain, which plays an important role in consciousness. ...

... After a couple more months of development, the brains fired signals at different frequencies and more regularly, indicating more-complex brain activity, Muotri said.... The scientists then fed the brain wave patterns from the mini brains into the algorithm and found that after 25 weeks of mini brain development, it could no longer distinguish the data coming from the human brain from that deriving from the lab-grown brain. ...

... While a human embryo is connected to the mother and thus receives signals from the outside, these lab-grown brains aren't connected to anything. "These cells have no input or no output they cannot recognize anything happening in the world," Hartung said. So they are "definitely not" conscious.

That's what most scientists would agree on, but "it's hard to say," Muotri said. "We neuroscientists don't even agree [on] what are the measurements that one can do to actually probe to see if they're conscious or not."

The human brain sends its signals to help us interact with our environment. For example, we look at a bug, the eyes send signals to brain cells, which signal to each other and let us know that we are seeing a bug. ...

https://www.livescience.com/mini-lab...uce-waves.html

Buddhism seems to make much the same point, that without external sense data there can be no subject sense of self.

Quantum Gravity Could Reverse Cause and Effect

Any theory of quantum gravity is going to have to grapple with some weird time stuff.

You've probably heard of Schrödinger's cat [and] Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity ... In a new paper, scientists create a mashup of the two by imagining starships near an enormous planet whose mass slows time. They conclude that the starships could find themselves in a state where causation is reversed: One event could end up causing another event that happened before it. ...

... if a futuristic spacecraft were near a massive planet, its crew would experience time as a little bit slower than would people in a fellow spacecraft stationed farther away. Now, throw in a little quantum mechanics, and you can imagine a situation in which that planet is superpositioned simultaneously near to and far away from the two spacecraft. ...
https://www.livescience.com/quantum-...nd-effect.html

Karma becomes Amrak?

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

PS - By the way, l will giving a TED-like talk to scientists here in Tsukuba "Science City" this Friday, if any of you happen to be in town ...



delete nino.jpg

[Jakuden]

PS - By the way, l will giving a TED-like talk to scientists here in Tsukuba "Science City" this Friday, if any of you happen to be in town ...



[ATTACH=CONFIG]5954[/ATTACH]

Cool!

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Shokai]

Awesome, break a leg!!
Will it be possible for us to see a transcript after the fact?

Gassho, Shokai

stlah

[Amelia]

I hope it might be recorded somewhere!

Gassho

Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

I hope it might be recorded somewhere!

Gassho

Sat today, lah

Yes, I will try ... but for a fellow in a science and tech town, it is still sometimes hard to get the recording equipment to work. :-)

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kyotai]

Hope you can get it on video Jundo.

Gassho Kyotai
ST

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCLvmnSJOl0

Gassho, J
STLah

[Jundo]

When a Russian Soyuz spacecraft launches from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station tomorrow night [note: it successfully launched], it will carry a single, if strange, passenger — a humanoid robot, sitting in the commander's chair of the crew capsule.

The robot, dubbed Skybot F-850, is one of the latest versions of Russia's FEDOR robots, which have been developed as an all-purpose stand-in for humans in everything from rescue work to driving cars — and now, flying into space.

It's the first time that a robot will take the commander's place in a Soyuz — the Skybot will monitor and report on conditions during the otherwise uncrewed flight, including the forces on the spacecraft as it enters orbit and the start of zero gravity.

Once it arrives at the ISS, the 6-foot (180 centimeters) Skybot will spend almost two weeks working with the ISS crew before it returns to Earth on Sept. 7, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Alexander Bloshenko, the director of advanced programs and science at Roscosmos, said the first Skybot will serve as a "social companion" and interactive reference guide for Russians on the ISS — it's already equipped with the space station's operational documentation.

The multifunctional robot can answer questions and hold conversations — and even tell jokes, although only in Russian at the moment.

The apparent ability to point ray guns at human targets is a tad concerning ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mLHn6BTisg

Gassho, J

STLah

PS - Pepper, the depressed robot I posted about, has now been successfully repaired and is as cheerful as ever!

[Jundo]

Aha!

"Indra's Net"

A frequently cited expression of this vision of reality is the simile of Indra’s Net from the Avatamsaka Sutra, which was further elaborated by the Huayan teachers. The whole universe is seen as a multidimensional net. At every point where the strands of the net meet, jewels are set. Each jewel reflects the light reflected in the jewels around it, and each of those jewels in turn reflects the light from all the jewels around them, and so on, forever. In this way, each jewel, or each particular entity or event, including each person, ultimately reflects and expresses the radiance of the entire universe. All of totality can be seen in each of its parts.

Fazang illustrated the Huayan teachings for Empress Wu by constructing a hall of mirrors, placing mirrors on the ceiling, floor, four walls, and four corners of a room. In the center he placed a Buddha image with a lamp next to it. Standing in this room, the empress could see that the reflection in any one mirror clearly reflected the reflections from all of the other mirrors, including the specific reflection of the Buddha image in each one. This fully demonstrated the unobstructed interpenetration of the particular and the totality, with each one contained in all, and with all contained in each one. Moreover, it showed the nonobstructed interpenetration of each particular mirror with each of the others.

Now ...

Alex Eskin, a mathematician at the University of Chicago, was awarded the prize for his "revolutionary" project with Stanford mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani. ...

Imagine a room made out of perfect mirrors, Eskin said. It doesn't have to be a rectangle; any weird polygon will do. (Just make sure the angles of the different walls can be expressed as ratios of whole numbers. For example, 95 degrees or two-thirds of a degree would work, but pi degrees would not.)

Now place a candle in the middle of the room, one that shines light in every direction. As the light bounces around the different corners, will it always illuminate the whole room? Or will it miss some spots? ... Eskin said, is that it conclusively answers this old question.

"There are no dark spots," he said. "Every point in the room is illuminated." ...

https://www.livescience.com/breakthrough-prize-mathematics-2019-winners.html

A mathematical proof of Indra's Net!

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

I'm glad Pepper is better!!

Gassho

Sat today, lah