ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 399

Is consciousness just an illusion?

By Anna Buckley

The cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett believes our brains are machines, made of billions of tiny “robots” – our neurons, or brain cells. Is the human mind really that special?

In an infamous memo written in 1965, the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus stated that humans would always beat computers at chess because machines lacked intuition. Daniel Dennett disagreed.

A few years later, Dreyfus rather embarrassingly found himself in checkmate against a computer.

And in May 1997 the IBM computer, Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Many who were unhappy with this result then claimed that chess was a boringly logical game. Computers didn’t need intuition to win. The goalposts shifted.

Daniel Dennett has always believed our minds are machines. For him the question is not can computers be human? But are humans really that clever?

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Hunt for cancer ‘tipping point’ heats up

By Heidi Ledford

Databases worldwide are rapidly swelling with the sequences of thousands of cancer genomes. Now, some scientists are advocating that researchers shift their focus back in time: to study the DNA of tumours in their adolescence, before they commit to being cancerous.

At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers gathered on 2 April to discuss the growing call to sequence the genomes of pre-cancerous lesions — abnormal growths that sometimes progress into full-blown cancers. The results could help researchers to determine which tumours warrant treatment and could aid the development of therapies to block cancers on the path to malignancy.

It is a project that is now near the top of the cancer research wish list, says oncologist Elizabeth Jaffee of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “This is something that has really taken off throughout the cancer community,” she says.

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US bill restricts use of science in environmental policymaking

By Brian Owens

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a future in which its hands will be tied on making many policies if a new bill becomes law.

Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill, the HONEST Act, that would prevent the EPA from basing any of its regulations on science that is not publicly accessible – not just journal articles themselves, but all of the underlying data, models and computer code.

“The HONEST Act requires EPA to base new regulations on sound science that is publicly available, and not hidden from the American people,” said Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chair of the House science committee, who sponsored the bill, in a statement. “The days of ‘trust me’ science are over.”

“Allowing EPA’s data to be independently reviewed promotes sound science that will restore confidence in the EPA decision-making process,” said Smith.

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Oldest dust ever spotted in the universe seen in distant galaxy

By Shannon Hall

The early universe was filthy. That much can be garnered from a new detection of cosmic dust in a galaxy whose light reaches us from when the universe was only 600 million years old.

In the past 10 years, astronomers have learned that dust is forged during the aftermath of the supernova deaths of massive, short-lived stars. But many mysteries surround dust’s origin. Astronomers, for example, don’t know how dust can withstand the violent shockwaves from supernovae and precisely how long it takes to form.

With that in mind, Nicolas Laporte at University College London and his colleagues turned ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, towards the early universe. They studied a star-forming galaxy called A2744_YD4, whose light dates back to just 200 million years after the birth of the earliest stars.

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In Poland’s Crooked Forest, a Mystery With No Straight Answer

by Joanna Klein

In Poland’s Krzywy Las, or Crooked Forest, the pine trees look like potbellied stick figures. On some 400 trees, the trunks buckle out 90 degrees, creating bark-covered bellies that drag just above the earth, oddly, all pointing in the same direction — north.

No one knows for certain what caused this unusual stand of trees in a protected forest, just outside the town of Gryfino, Poland. The town was mostly destroyed during World War II, and the truth of the forest was lost with it.

Strangely bent trees exist in other parts of the world, but not in such great numbers nor as neatly arranged as in Poland’s Crooked Forest. You can visit this little patch of land in northwest Poland any time, but the cusp of spring is the perfect chance to see the trees in winter’s bare-boned attire, without its bitter temperatures.

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Genetic details of controversial ‘three-parent baby’ revealed

By Sara Reardon

When a US fertility clinic revealed last year that it had created a baby boy using a controversial technique that mixes DNA from three people, scientists were quick to raise the alarm. Some objected on ethical grounds, and others questioned the scientific claims made by the clinic’s leader, physician John Zhang.

Now, after months of intense debate and speculation, Zhang’s team has provided more details about the child’s conception, in a paper published on 3 April in Reproductive Biomedicine Online1. But major questions remain about the long-term health of the boy, and whether the experiment will ultimately advance reproductive medicine.

Techniques to create ‘three-parent babies’ seek to offer mothers a way to have a child without passing on metabolic diseases caused by faulty mitochondria, the structures that provide energy to cells. Researchers do this by exchanging the diseased mitochondria of a prospective mother with those of a healthy, unrelated donor: the ’third parent’.

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With Vice President Pence breaking tie, Senate passes anti-Planned Parenthood bill

By Nicole Gaudiano

WASHINGTON — Vice President Pence cast a tie-breaking Senate vote Thursday to pass legislation that will allow states to withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood and other health care providers that perform abortions.

The measure, which now goes to President Trump for his signature, dismisses an Obama-era rule banning states from denying federal funds to such organizations.

Pence’s vote was needed to break a 50-50 tie. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska broke with their party, voting against the measure.

Republicans have said the Obama rule should be overturned to allow states the right to steer funds away from abortion providers, if they choose.

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Watching SpaceX’s historic relaunch and landing of a used rocket

By Amy Thompson

Even Elon Musk was speechless – well, for a moment. Last night SpaceX launched and successfully landed an orbital rocket that had already flown once before: a first in space history.

I was one of the few hundred people who had travelled by bus to the Saturn V Center, part of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to watch SpaceX attempt to deliver on the promise of reusable rockets. Benches were set up facing the strip of water that separated viewers from the fury of the nine engines powering SpaceX’s flagship rocket — the Falcon 9.

It wasn’t long before those benches were packed full of people; families who had travelled from near and far, some even planning their whole trip around this one mission.

The excitement grew as the minutes ticked away, inching us closer to launch time. A bald eagle perched nearby as we waited. Finally, at 6.27 pm Eastern Standard Time on 30 March, the Falcon 9 roared to life, filling the evening sky with the thunderous rumble of rocket engines. There was a loud cheer as the Falcon lifted off the launch pad, carrying a communications satellite into orbit.

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James Webb telescope: Hubble successor set for yet more tests

By Jonathan Amos

Engineers are getting ready to box up the James Webb Space Telescope and send it to Houston, Texas.

The successor to Hubble, due for launch in 2018, is going to be put inside the giant thermal vacuum chamber where they tested the Apollo spaceships.

For 90 days, JWST will get a thorough check-up in the same airless, frigid conditions that will have to be endured when it eventually gets into orbit.

The telescope’s aim will be to find the first stars to shine in the Universe.

To achieve this goal, the observatory is being given an enormous mirror and instruments that are tuned to detect some of faintest objects on the sky.

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How giant marine reptiles terrorized the ancient seas

By Traci Watson

Valentin Fischer had always wanted to study fossils, perhaps dinosaurs or extinct mammals. Instead, when he was in graduate school, Fischer ended up sorting through a pile of bones belonging to ancient marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs — a group that had been mostly ignored by modern palaeontologists. It was not exactly his dream job.

“I said, ‘Ohhh, ichthyosaurs, so boring’,” recalls Fischer. “They all look the same. It’s always a pointy snout and big eyes.”

Fischer put his feelings aside and dutifully began combing through the fossils stored in a research centre in provincial France. Among the specimens stashed in plastic boxes was an ichthyosaur skull that had been partially destroyed by ants and tree roots while buried underground. When Fischer cleaned up the skull, he realized that it was probably a species new to science.

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