R.E. Kearney's Blog, page 21

Human Brain Robots

We have all seen countless movies in which robots take over the world and wipe out humanity, where robots behave like humans and form a whole force to fight against the beings that created them. Most of us didn’t really believe that one day, robots that behave like humans, would actually become real. Until now. Scientists have been able to make tiny human brains and hook them up to robots! For many, it is still unbelievable, but scientists are actually moving closer and closer to creating life in a laboratory.

[image error]The steps that have been taken are just the beginning and there is a very long way to go until scientists are able to completely replicate a human brain and successfully implant it into a metal body.

Scientists have been able to come up with ways to make robots behave like humans. They were able to produce organoids which generate brain waves that could show signs of consciousness, and reproduce qualities of the human brain like being capable of sentience (capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively) and of feeling pain, agony and distress.

It all started at the University of California, San Diego lab, of biologist Alysson Muotri, where the scientists used stem cells to grow organoids. These are tiny, self-organized three-dimensional tissue cultures. These organoids were then packed into a box and shipped to space to see how they develop in a zero gravity environment. As said by Muotri, they are most likely ‘replicating like crazy’ in space. It was then observed that the organoids produced were giving off brain waves or complex designs of neural activities. As the organoids matured, it was observed that they showed changes in the brain waves, similar to the changes that take place in the developing brain of a premature baby. This peculiar finding is forcing the scientists to revisit the limitations of lab-grown mini-organs and the ethical issues surrounding them.

[image error]To proceed with the experiment, Dr. Muotri hooked the mini brains up onto a spider-shaped robot in order to study the neural activity. The results that he got from this could possibly prove that scientists are now able to generate partially conscious life in a laboratory.

Dr. Muotri emphasized the fact that these are just clusters of replicating brain cells, not actual brains. Another point to state is that the mini brains barely scratch the surface of a human brain’s capabilities. The human brain is immensely complex, whereas the mini-brains are just a simple ball of neurons. But, of course, creating these simple balls of neurons, somewhat similar to the human brain, was also once believed to be an impossible task.

As the scientists agree, there is a long way to go to make human brain robots a success in the world of science and technology. But, this is also a huge landmark and many scientist across the globe are experimenting with and are hopeful that this research will not stop here.

Airships

Traveling by air is the fastest and safest mode of traveling. Today, it has become the most frequently used mode of travel, but long before commercial airplanes flew, the skies were dominated by Airships. Airships, as the name suggests, were tremendous in size and flew passengers locally. In terms of design, they consisted of a huge balloon-like structure which received its lift through gasbags. The gasbags generally contained helium but since it wasn’t cheap and an excessive amount of gas was required to keep the airship in the sky, Helium [image error]was later replaced with a much cheaper alternative; hydrogen which was notoriously known for being flammable.

There are three types of Airships, classed by structure – they are rigid airships, semi-rigid airships and non-rigid airships. The non-rigid airships have no structural framework and retain their shape solely by internal pressure. The rigid airships have a structural framework in addition to the gasbags. While the semi-rigid airship combines the structural properties of both rigid and non-rigid airships. Rigid airships were the most frequently used and had a better safety record. First flown by the German General Count Zeppelin, the rigid airships soon received a new name and were all referred to as the Zeppelin.

Developed in 1893, Zeppelin wasn’t commercially flown until the 19th century when a German airline took off carrying passengers in 1910. 4 years later and the airline had already completed more than one thousand flights carrying over ten thousand passengers. By then airships were being used commercially as a mode of travel on a larger scale. Apart from commercial uses, Zeppelins played a crucial role for Germany in World War 1. Used as bombers and deployers, Airships had proved to be useful for both military and commercial travel. This all changed when a German airship carrying 97 onboard abruptly caught fire on May 6th, 1937 in New Jersey, killing almost 37 people. This, along with a number of other [image error]incidents, took away people’s faith and marked the end of airships and the beginning of commercial airplanes on a broad scale which were much safer and faster and could fly internationally.

Now, almost 80 years later, airships are almost unheard of. However, a team of Austrian scientists are currently proposing an airship ten times greater than the Hindenburg for the sole purpose of carrying cargo. This new and unique airship will be capable of lifting more than 20,000 tons of cargo across land and sea. Furthermore, wind speeds at high altitudes can easily cross 150+ kilometers. Using this airspeed could allow the airship to travel around the world in just 14 days. As well as carrying cargo much faster than ships on the same route. Of course, the incident of Hindenburg is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about airships and safety. In this in mind, scientists propose to use carbon fiber as a durable framework as well as automating them so even if an incident is met, there is no loss of life.

Water Discovered On Another Planet

The universe we live in is vast beyond our wildest imagination, we know that it is infinite and the planet we live on is the only planet suited for life. But, Earth is just one of billions of planets that thrive in the vast universe.

[image error]To believe that Earth is the only planet suited to support life amongst is foolish. For years intellectuals have argued that there may exist a planet with conditions somewhat similar to Earth on which life could bloom but so far we have been unable to find it. Until recently, when a planet that goes by the name K2-18b fell under the sight of NASA’s Kepler telescope.

K2-18b is by far the first planet to be discovered that could potentially host life. Lying in the Goldilocks Zone in the Leo constellation, where liquid water has been found, at an ideal temperature to potentially host living organisms in addition to suitable gases that wrap around the planet. First discovered by NASA in 2015, it is approximately 110 lightyears away and behaves much like the Earth, with a few exceptions. For example; the Earth revolves around the sun while K2-18b revolves around a red dwarf that is much cooler than the Sun and only warms up the planet to 10 degrees Celsius. Orbiting at a distance of 14 miles from the dwarf, the planet is said to complete the orbit in approximately 33 days, compared to Earth which completes one orbit in approximately 365 days.

[image error]The most important aspect of determining whether a planet can sustain life or not is by determining if there is water present on the planet. Water compromises about 70% of the Earth, without it, life cannot survive let alone thrive. So, to find a planet that could potentially support life, water is the first priority. 2 years after K2-18b’s discovery, NASA’s sole objective was to search for water on the planet. They found that every time the planet moved in front of the dwarf, the wavelength absorbed by the water dropped. Similarly, as the planet crossed, the wavelength rose. For NASA, this confirmed the presence of water vapors. Further studies show that K2-18b is much bigger than Earth nearly twice the size and has a temperature ranging from 0 to 40 degrees Celsius which is optimal in regards to supporting life. In addition to that, studies show that it may be made up of 50% water.

Knowing that another planet besides Earth exists that can support life is an exciting prospect, but with more than a hundred lightyears between the Earth and its equal, we are not inhabiting it anytime soon. But, maybe one day.

Wormholes

Wormholes are passageways through space-time, that are essentially connecting points between two separate distances or locations in the universe. If visualized, a wormhole is a tunnel connecting the entry and exit points linking two different points in space time, or different galaxies. The best and simplest way to show this phenomenon is a paper example when two dots are drawn at the opposite end of the paper, the paper folded in half and a hole pierced through the dots connecting the two dots with a pencil.

[image error]Wormholes are based as a solution to Albert Einstein’s equation of general relativity – the equation for which accounts for the short child wormholes, or Einstein Rosen Bridges, which essentially acts as giant blackhole linking two areas of space time. The theory suggests that the matter and light that is absorbed from one end escapes out of the other at the point known as a whitehole. This whitehole will be located somewhere else in the galaxy or maybe even in some other dimension.

These theoretical wormholes could be utilized for a variety of different things. Some say that travelling through a wormhole would take less time than through actual space, creating an enormous shortcut between any two destinations. Traveling at light speed seems impossible but we can easily travel faster than light using a wormhole. If two massively separated points are connected in this way, it would be possible to travel conventionally between the two locations, therefore even though the object is travelling slow inside the wormhole itself, it would still reach its destination before a beam of light outside. There are also theories surrounding significant gravitational field. For example, if we can place one end of a wormhole close to a blackhole, which has an incredible amount of gravity and acts to slow down the apparent time, the link between that place and somewhere else could provide the means of time travel.

[image error]Next step into space travelling or travelling to other dimensions, this theory relies on the many-world’s hypothesis and interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that reveals infinite universes in timelines. According to this idea, every choice or branching path that we take, exits in the endless list of others. Experts like Stephen  Hawking suggest that the wormholes could be all around us but they are microscopically small existing in very deceptive spacetime as nothing is completely flat or solid. According to this theory, there are incredibly small holes in every piece of matter including the time itself, even smaller than the atoms. However, being so tiny we can’t even begin to imagine traveling between them or manipulating them.

Of all the options, these are imaginably the least likely scenario, primarily because we are not even sure if the many wormholes interpretations have any basis in reality because scientists are not even sure if wormholes exists. They do exist in theory, but there is no empirical proof that they are there. The whole idea is still far far more science fiction than fact.

Neom – Future city

Neom is a future city that is being planned by the Saudi government and especially the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman. He plans to create a city that will be out of a movie using all sorts of technology and advancements. Some of the features of the city were listed in a 2,300-page document that has been created by the Saudi government while planning for this mysterious and futuristic city.

The city will have many attractions that the tourists will love and will definitely want to see. They will have an artificial moon that will light up the night sky, every night. They plan to have Jurassic park inspired robotic dinosaurs that people interact and mingle with. They also will have robot maids, glow in the dark beaches and even flying cars! This ambitious city looks like something that will attract the whole world and will encourage people to visit Saudi Arabia, which hasn’t really been a hub for tourism, except the holy pilgrimage.

[image error]However, the downfall of this futuristic city is that it will force the local tribes to relocate that have existed in Saudi Arabia for centuries. It is also planned that a human gene-editing clinic will be placed within the city and the city will be under surveillance of the government 24 hours of the day. It seems that the city is more of a dystopian future in books rather than a futuristic, fun tourist spot.

The location that has been planned for this city is the North-west of Saudi Arabia, which at the moment is barren except for a few tribes that live there. The city is said to cost around 500 billion dollars and will need a lot of investment from very rich people and the crown prince himself, who will also be overseeing the construction of the city.

Right now the place where Neom is said to be created is barren and is a large desert, like most of Saudi Arabia. However, the crown prince plans on using the method of cloud seeding, which means that they engineer the clouds to produce rain and this will not only improve the climate of the city but also enable fresh produce to grow on a barren land.

According to the document, Neom plans to have more Michelin star restaurants in one city than anywhere around the world. The city also plans on having the best education provided to children who inhabit the city with holographic teachers. The crown prince wants to give people the best-paying jobs and wants to create a healthy economy where both parties are satisfied.

The chief executive of the city says that they plan on using the latest and most advanced technology; hence this is the reason why some of it is still theoretical and may take time to develop.

Facebook’s Mind Reading Headset

Have you ever imagined a world where you would just think things and they would happen? For example, you thought to send a happy birthday message to your grandmother and your phone does it automatically? Well, this concept seems to be coming closer to becoming reality very soon. In 2017, Facebook decided to create a device which would use your thoughts to type. So whatever you were thinking at that moment would be typed out by Facebook’s new brain-computer. Now Facebook has started to show how far they have come with this invention and how soon consumers can have it in their hands. It is something that will revolutionize technology as it will let the disabled speak and make our daily lives much easier.

[image error]Facebook says that they are in collaboration with scientists and researchers at the University of California to work on this new invention. They stated that they want to connect the world without any limitations whether they are geographical, physical or mental. They want to make the world instantly accessible and completely hands-free. So with collaboration from researchers, Facebook is trying to build a device that will let patients with neurological diseases have a voice again by examining their brain’s activity in real-time.

An experiment was conducted by the researchers where a neurological patient who had been surgically implanted with electrodes on the surface of his brain was asked to answer questions aloud. Around 61% of the time, the computer was able to comprehend and present the correct answer through brain signals alone. Researchers now believe that this could have a real impact on society as it would enable those who cannot speak to now have a voice and share their opinion with the world too.

[image error]However, there is much more work to be done. Right now the project is just at the beginning stage where it is starting to take form. What the researchers aim to achieve will take many years of trials and practice. The researchers want to decode around 100 words per minute with a vocabulary of 1000 words, and they want less than a 17% chance of error. This is a huge goal for the researchers and if this is achieved, it could transform the technological world.

However there are a few downfalls too, the procedure is surgically invasive, which in itself is a huge risk. This is a different model compared to the one aimed for normal consumers which will be manual headsets. Also in the initial trials, there was very limited vocabulary that was tested which means very limited answers could be provided. It leaves a great deal of scope for improvement. This device will take many years to be completed and to reach the consumers and patients, and will need much more money and effort to become a reality.

Elon Musk’s Mars City

Elon Musk has decided to build a city on Mars, the neighboring planet to Earth. It is said that if it were to be built, it would be the most expensive construction in human history and could even cost up to 1/8 of the world’s total economy.

[image error]The CO of SpaceX does not only want to send humans onto mars to visit but he even sees them starting a permanent settlement. If things go according to the Musk’s plan, a proper city and settlement on Mars could be developed as early as 2050.

After that, there are many questions that may arise. Specialists believe that the people living there could develop and evolve according to the conditions of the planet; they could inhabit the planet and even build an economy from ground up. Musk even suggests that they plan on selling people return tickets to Mars at the same price as a house may cost in the United States.

It is said that the new futuristic city will cost within 100 billion dollars to 100 trillion dollars. These assumptions of the numbers are based upon the fact that around 1 million tons of cargo would be needed on Mars and would be transported from Earth to Mars. Hence, the extremely high cost.

[image error]It is said that they will be using the Starship to start the mission onto Mars. The rocket is a 348-foot rocket, made out of stainless steel and is completely reusable, it holds a pressurized cabin which could easily hold up to 100 people within it and take them up to Mars. It is also made to carry payload to Mars, however only if SpaceX can solve the problem of adding more fuel during orbit.

The journey, however, could only take place when Earth and Mars are closest. Hence to build a city by the year 2025, Musk believes that the ships need to start going up to Mars by 2024. He plans to update people in August 2019. He also said that they will be sending 4 ships of which 2 will be manned and other 2 will be unmanned.

The reason that Musk says he wants to carry out this project is that he believes that humans need something to look forward to. Due to climate change and global warming, our future seems to be bleak and depressed. He believes that space travel may be exciting for people and will free humans from the confinements of Earth. It could also be a way to solve all the global warming issues and save the human race from extinction that we are progressing towards, due to the current conditions within the world.

Capturing CO2 from the Environment

CO2 is present in the air and is absorbed by trees and plants from the atmosphere, but to what extent? With all the trees that are being cut down through deforestation, which is credited to urbanization, the carbon dioxide in the air is increasing. Factories and transportation are releasing greenhouse gases into the environment and increasing the temperature of the planet and melting ice. All of this is due to excess carbon dioxide within the atmosphere. However, someone has found a way to use that to the advantage of the plant – by using the carbon dioxide in the air to create energy.  They plan to use CO2, equivalent to that absorbed by 40 million trees in a year.

[image error]Carbon Energy, which is backed by billions of dollars of support, has finally been able to gather enough money to start the design process for their negative emissions project. The purpose of the project is to suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and re-use it to create energy. This facility is based in Calgary, Canada at the moment. The company has been able to raise 68 billion dollars for its project of using carbon dioxide from the air to create energy and is to date the most money raised for technology.

Steve Oldham, the owner of the company believes that besides awareness of environmental change and money, we also need technology to play a part. And he believes technology can play a major role in trying to turn around the environmental disaster that stands ahead of us. Through technology, new and innovative ways can be discovered to fix a problem which seems to have no solution. Through one factory, if 40 million trees worth of carbon dioxide is being used, then with many different factories in different parts of the world, a big change can be brought about in the world.

[image error]What the company plans to do is to use the carbon dioxide in the air and create carbon out of the air. The carbon will then be stored under-ground in the 230-acre factory and used to create fuel for different cars. Many different companies, like Chevrolet, might be interested in the company as a way to decrease their carbon footprint.

If big companies start to invest in projects like this and also become their customers, the difference to the environmental crisis the world is facing could be huge. Not only does this open ways for new technology and new ways to help the environment but it is also creating jobs, an alternative way of acquiring fuel and also helping companies reduce their own carbon emissions.

AI Universe

Our universe is billions of years old, so old that sometimes it is hard to fathom. But the rate of change has steadily increased to the stage that we are now capable of giving intelligence to machines. However, a new artificial intelligence machine has been created which will also help the human race understand our own universe better. It will show it to us in a broader perspective and help deepen our understanding. For the first time in history, astrophysicists are using 3D technology and artificial intelligence to generate complex 3D simulations of our universe. The results are so fascinating that even the creators are baffled by them.

Shirley Ho, a group leader at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City says that the simulations they have created can easily be run within a few milliseconds. However, other fast simulators take at least a couple of minutes to do the same thing. She also says that their simulations are much more accurate.

[image error]The project is called the “Deep Density Displacement model” or D3M for short. This is the name given to it because of the speed and accuracy of the project, which was not the biggest shock to researchers rather the fact that it could accurately predict how the universe would look after tweaking certain parameters. Shirley Ho says that it was like “teaching image recognition software with lots of pictures of cats and dogs, but then it’s able to recognize elephants.”

The predictions and model created by D3M have become a necessity for those working in the field of theoretical astrophysics. This is because scientists want to know how the cosmos might evolve or change under various scenarios and tweaks. It is also a way to test a few of their theories about the universe.

D3M is also able to show how gravity shapes and impacts on our universe. Gravity is the main focus of the model as gravity is the most important force with the greatest impact. These most accurate simulations are able to calculate effect on billions of particles over the entire age of the universe.

[image error]A deep neural network powers the D3M by feeding it 8000 different simulations from the highest accuracy model. The neural networks take training data and make calculations on the information, and then researchers compare the resulting outcomes with the expected outcomes. As time goes by, neural networks become faster and adapt.

After training the D3M, the researchers took it for a test run. They ran a simulation for a box shaped universe 600 million light years in size. Slower machines took hundreds of hours to compute the data, while the fastest previous model was a bit faster, but not as accurate. However, the D3M was able to compute it in 30 milliseconds.

The D3M is an amazing project that helps astrophysicists understand the universe better and make more accurate predictions and discoveries. It has made the universe a little more practical to explore.

Neuralink

Neuralink is a company founded by the ever famous Elon Musk. Musk is famous for Tesla and SpaceX, all of which have made much advancement in the field of science and technology. He has now come up with another brilliant technological idea that may revolutionize medicine. His company Neuralink is a medical technology startup which aims to create a brain machine. He aims to create an ultra- bandwidth machine which interferes with the brain and connects humans and computers together. Neuralink recently held a conference where a few key details were revealed.

It is a product

[image error]There are various ways to read or manipulate brain waves and neural connections within our brain. Some are non-invasive and use tools like helmets to read brain waves. A perfect example is an EEG. Yet, it is quite imprecise. However, there are invasive ways of interfering with the brain’s functioning. They are more precise, but can harm the individual too. For example, brain surgery. The probes used in it are big and cause destruction. Neuralink also has an invasive product, but it will not have huge probes, rather it will be a microchip inserted within the brain. It will read the brain with minuscule probes weaving through.

The chip is called N1 and contains 1024 electrodes. It is very small and will be inserted into the brain to read it and connect it to the machines.

It can be viable soon

By next year, the company plans on having a human clinical study trial. They aim to focus on healthcare than any other advancement, so in their trial they have decided to include patients that have quadriplegia due to C1-C4 spinal cord injuries. This set up will be such that 4 chips will be used and the patients will be able to use their smart phones using their brain. They can also control a mouse and keyboard through a Bluetooth connection. The team currently is using animals for testing and Musk claims they made a monkey control a computer with his brain.

The surgery for the product will be Lasik

As the probes are too small and fine to be inserted by human hands, Neuralink has created a robot alongside to perform the surgery. The surgery will generate an incision of no more than eight millimetres and will be performed under an hour.

There’s an application

[image error]Neuralink has developed an application that is available on your iPhone. The chip will connect to your iPhone through an application and the person using it will be trained through that as well. There will be no big probes – it will all be through Bluetooth.

Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk’s original goal has always been to merge with artificial intelligence so at the end of the day it does not turn on the human race. This is a concept he strongly believes in. Right now Neuralink is focusing on the healthcare aspect of the chip; however, the end goal for Musk is to create symbiosis with artificial intelligence.