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Articles by Ella Alderson
Master ChatGPT With These Commands
By Ella Alderson Get the most out of the powerful AI tool Most people using ChatGPT don't know how to get the full value out of the tool. As it's a powerful system that can help with everything from education to mental health, business and coding, knowing how to get what you want from the chatbot can be a tremendous asset in your everyday life. This is what's made OpenAI's ChatGPT so popular...
This AI Must Be Stopped.
Why tech experts are signing a petition against it A still from the short film "Slaughterbots" depicts an autonomous drone targeting a human skull. Let us ponder a moral question for just a moment. Is it right for an unthinking, unfeeling object to take a human life? That is to say, should the decision of life or death fall into the hands of an object which has no understanding of life and its value? We're not talking about a gun which must be wielded by a person to cause harm...
The Sweat-Powered Smartwatch
By Ella Alderson Why you may never need to charge your wearables again For hundreds of years, self-winding watches have offered the wearer a symbiotic relationship not attained with regular automatic or manual watches. Automatic watches rely on a battery and manual watches rely on the wearer to regularly wind them by hand. But there is an aspect of the organic and the intimate with self-winding...
The Nuclear Propulsion Engine Is Almost Here!
By Ella Alderson And it could prove NASA's most ambitious project yet In an attempt to facilitate mankind's exploration of the Solar System, NASA has partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to finally bring to life one of our most ambitious and controversial engineering projects: the creation of a nuclear rocket engine. This thermal beast...
The Powerful Weight-Loss Drug Selling Out Across the Country
By Ella Alderson It's effective. But it's also controversial. The blockbuster medicine is a once-weekly injectable that was meant primarily to help regulate blood sugar in diabetic patients. But it came with a fortuitous side effect: consistent and noticeable weight loss. For some users this rate of weight loss was 10 pounds a month...
A Breakthrough New Mechanism for Rejuvenating Human Cells
By Ella Alderson "The body [can] remember how to regenerate and be young again, even if you're already old and have an illness." Both of these mice are 16 months old, but the mouse on the right experienced a series of DNA breaks. Image by D. SINCLAIR/HMS. From the depths of human innovation have surfaced a variety of new methods that bring us one step closer to that long sought-after fountain of youth. Incredible...
A Technology "Bigger Than AI" Is Becoming Reality
It could change the world - but there is controversy A diamond anvil cell, used to place materials under high pressure. Image by Pamela C. Burnley, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This new technology is "bigger than AI", according to the scientists that created it. It's the subject of the most popular article I've ever written - The Technology That Will Change Everything - as it promises to completely transform computing, energy, medicine, and the economy all at once...
When Earth Has 12 Suns
By Ella Alderson Mankind's artificial stars of the future We are attempting to save planet Earth from the sun. In 1 billion years the star's luminosity will have increased by 10%, causing a runaway greenhouse effect on the planet and boiling our oceans until Earth resembles its tragic sister planet, Venus. In 5 billion years this situation will become even more dire; the sun will reach its Schönberg-Chandrasekhar...
When Jupiter Becomes a Star
By Ella Alderson The fate of our Solar System It is now common knowledge that mankind has harnessed revolutionary amounts of power, and in doing so has changed the fate of the environment for the worse. Our actions and lack of self-control have spread a wildfire across our home, endangering animals, people, and entire ecosystems alike. We are in the midst of an ecological disaster of our own making. But we are...
The Truth About Conscious AI
By Ella Alderson It's a question of "when", not "if" We need to make sure we're defining AI the same way. There are two kinds of robots. The first is either controlled by a human being in real time or is programmed to do and say specific things. For example, The Predator is a drone designed to fire missiles at terrorists. The drone itself is not choosing the targets, it is instead receiving input from...
Ships Capable of Interstellar Travel
By Ella Alderson How we'll journey deep into the stars Mankind depends on exploration. We long to satisfy our curiosity for what lies in every direction, expanding trade routes and learning to adapt to new terrain. And while it used to suffice for us to explore the Earth, we're now directing our gaze somewhere far from home. Star systems light years away are the future - not only because the...
The Plan to Destroy Mercury
By Ella Alderson And a good chunk of the rest of our solar system, too. The idea of a Dyson sphere is a fascinating one. It's a megastructure built around a star that would be capable of harvesting the star's entire energy output. This sort of radiation-absorbing shell would provide enormous amounts of energy to a more advanced civilization. It was named after the astrophysicist Freeman Dyson who...
This Psychological Experiment Teaches Us a Valuable Lesson
By Ella Alderson There's an answer to your helplessness Imagine there's a classroom where a teacher has handed out a paper to all the students. The paper is numbered 1-3 with each number having its own scrambled letters. The students must decipher these letters into a word. For example, the letters PCA could be deciphered into CAP.
If You Don't Change This, Your Life Will Never Improve
By Ella Alderson Most of our negative experiences stem from one thing It took the husband and wife team of Will and Ariel Durant more than 40 years to write up the history of both Western and Eastern civilizations. Spanning 11 volumes in total and finding itself the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for its book Rousseau and Revolution, most of us would...
I Cured My Panic Attacks
By Ella Alderson Without therapy or medication, and now I want to share the secret with you I'd attempted to write this article before, thinking that I had overcome my overwhelming anxiety. And yet in the midst of writing it my hands began to shake and my mind once more began to race with those relentless, bullying thoughts, "What if it's not true? What if you're a liar and what if...
The Funny Thing About Astrology
By Ella Alderson You're not the sign you think you are, but it doesn't matter For those of you interested in astrology and the forecast of your future, there is a vital piece of information you're missing. In fact it may be that for your entire life you've been associating with the wrong sign.
Relativity for Children
By Ella Alderson Anyone can understand Einstein I have a ball. The ball has mass. Mass tells us how much matter is in the ball. Matter is stuff we can see and touch. I have another ball! It's bigger than the first. The bigger ball has more mass. The smaller ball has less mass.
2030 to Mark the Decline of Civilization
And its possible collapse, according to MIT study When the Limits to Growth report was first released it received a scathing review in The New York Times. Critics called it “misleading and empty”. Despite being the work of a team of scientists from MIT, Limits to Growth was accused of passing off pseudoscience as real science, with the authors of The New York Times going as far as calling it “garbage”. According to them, the report had little to actually teach.
The Algorithm That (Recently) Changed the World
“This will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything.” Earlier this year, an algorithm was released online — full and completely free — for academics to use. This algorithm represents one of the most important scientific discoveries of our lifetimes, showcasing the growing potential for AI to alter the course of our civilization.
The Interstellar Engine We Could Build Today
Uranium. One element with two very different outcomes. In one scenario it could devastate our civilization, crumbling once great cities and natural vistas to an ashen and radioactive ruin. But in another it works to do just the opposite. Inside aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin’s Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR), uranium acts as the fuel which allows us to become an interstellar species. Read Full Article »
The Interstellar Engine We Could Build Today
Nuclear Salt Water Rockets move at a fraction of the speed of light Uranium. One element with two very different outcomes. In one scenario it could devastate our civilization, crumbling once great cities and natural vistas to an ashen and radioactive ruin. But in another it works to do just the opposite. Inside aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin’s Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR), uranium acts as the fuel which allows us to become an interstellar species.
A Nuclear Renaissance Could Soon Begin
Small Modular Reactors have been called the future of nuclear Rendering of a Small Modular Reactor. Image by NuScale. The irony of nuclear power is that despite it being one of the safest forms of energy available, its use has declined over the years in no small part due to public concern. Very few accidents have ever taken place at nuclear power plants. Yet when they do the results are nightmarish catastrophes which have turned people against it.
This New Kind of Rocket Is Disrupting the Industry
And will change our relationship to spaceflight forever With a launch scheduled in 2024, Relativity Space will have accomplished something not even SpaceX has yet been able to do. The company has managed to create a new vision for spaceflight, transforming the aerospace industry and making their rockets strong competitors for Blue Origin and SpaceX in just 6 short years. But they’re also transforming spaceflight for the average person.
The End of All Plastic Could Finally Be In Sight
Thanks to this booming trend in biotechnology The thread-like growth of mycelium. One of the greatest lies ever sold to humanity is the recyclability of plastics. The three green arrows placed on packaging were supposed to be a symbol of progress — a symbol that we would take better care to reuse materials and lessen the strain on our planet. Instead, the recycling icon became the opposite.
Bunicorn Community Airdrop on CoinMarketCap
As part of our efforts to continue to engage meaningfully with the Bunicorn community, we are extremely excited to finally bring to you the BUNI airdrop for the contributing community members of Bunicorn. We will be distributing tokens to its longstanding community members to value their contribution to the project. The airdrop will be conducted by Coinmarketcap, our media partner.
Leaving Cobo to continue the Cobo Vault legacy
Keystone: A new hardware wallet company Hi everyone I am Lixin. Former head of hardware at Cobo. I was leading a team developing Cobo’s hardware wallet product line — Cobo Vault. I intended to build Cobo Vault as an ultimate security tool that provides self-custodial solutions against hacks on centralized services essentially to prevent tragedies like the Mt.Gox from ever happening again. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with this belief necessarily.
This Long-Awaited Technology May Finally Change the World
Solid-state batteries are poised to emerge in the coming years Envision this: there is a technology currently undergoing testing that, when released to the public, will become a long-awaited revolution in energy. This new technology promises to be safer and more efficient than anything we have on the market now.
This Is the Unbelievable Future That Awaits
Life in the age of true nanotechnology What happens when the sweeping wave of technological progress meets our understanding of atomic physics? Manipulating atoms has, up until now, allowed us to make powerful bombs, computers, power plants, and the impressive works of art we call particle accelerators. Yet these feats are small in comparison to what lies ahead.
The Man Struck By a Particle Accelerator Beam
A bizarre case, and the only one like it in the world A diagram and an image show the inside of the Russian U-70 synchrotron. Image by Mikhail Orlov. If you ask a physicist what would happen if you were to stick any part of your body into a particle accelerator, you will be met with the same answer time and time again: they don’t know. They may have some vague notion of how it would affect your body, but not a single clear answer emerges.
This Technology Could Become an “Engine of Destruction”
The truth is darker than you imagine Pandora’s box — a term we now use to describe an object which brings great and unexpected consequences — was not a box at all. The original Greek story describes it as a terracotta jar. Pandora herself is, according to the Greek myth, the first woman on Earth. The Gods have bestowed upon her a bounty of blessings to the point where her very name means “the one who bears all gifts”.
30 Solutions to the Fermi Paradox
A retro sci-fi adventure I often wonder if the majority of us choose to believe in life on other worlds because of scientific reasons, or sentimental ones. There are, of course, plenty of encouraging numbers about the many Earth-like exoplanets and the many radiating stars around which habitats might form. The odds seem to be in the favor of extraterrestrial life. But then there is the reality of things: the silence, the lack of any evidence that anyone out there is listening at all.
The Terrifying Results of a New AI Study
Containment algorithms don’t work for our machines I am haunted by a story. It’s a story only a handful of paragraphs long, written by a man in the 50’s regarding a superintelligent cybernetics machine. In its sparse half a page length the story introduces us to a powerful computer — an accumulation of billions and billions of smaller computers finally connected at the moment a man named Dwar Ev throws a switch. It is mankind’s first interaction with this new cyber-entity.
The Idea Of God Has One Major Flaw
I don’t believe, especially as an aspiring scientist, that I can call myself an atheist. At most I can claim to be agnostic for there is no way to prove that God doesn’t exist. Having grown up in the Southeastern United States, I was introduced at a young age to Christianity. It remains the religion with which I am most familiar.
Sliding Block on a Movable Wedge - Solution Using Lagrangian Mechanics
I’m working through some examples of physics problems that use Lagrangian Mechanics. Oh, what’s that? You aren’t sure about this whole Lagrangian thing? Well, here you go — my introduction to this physics method. Also, here is a more basic example finding the motion of a half-Atwood machine. The Moving Wedge Problem OK, so here is the problem: A 100 gram block starts from rest on top of a frictionless wedge. The wedge can also slide.
The Race For The World’s Next-Generation Computer
There were many doubts as to whether or not quantum computing could ever become a reality. The circuitry relies on tricky manipulation of ions and photons, or otherwise requires temperatures near absolute zero. It is, by all means and purposes, an immense test of mankind’s cleverness and aptitude for innovation. Yet just 3 days ago a machine in a provincial part of what is an ambitious and newly-empowered China has, for the second time in human history, shown quantum supremacy.
Latest evidence on the indirect impacts of C19 on education and learning - 5 January 2021
Rachel Glennerster, Chief Economist, Sarah Lane Smith and Hannah Chisambi, Education Research Team, and Anna Rudge, Senior Economist, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). As we move into 2021, we will continue to look at rigorous evidence that shines a light on the many indirect impacts of Covid-19 on peoples’ lives globally. In May last year, we saw new research showing the long term impact of learning as a result of school closures during the Pakistan Earthquakes by RISE.
If Jupiter and Saturn Collide
A simulation shows the results of this destructive event The largest ocean in the Solar System exists in an unexpected place. It is unlike any ocean on Earth, or even like those on a promising lunar world like Europa. This ocean resides somewhere beneath the soft bitten-peach atmosphere of Jupiter, vaporous and crystal-colored, made not of water but of liquid hydrogen. The hydrogen becomes a liquid as both temperatures and pressures mount beneath Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The Race For The World’s Next-Generation Computer
There were many doubts as to whether or not quantum computing could ever become a reality. The circuitry relies on tricky manipulation of ions and photons, or otherwise requires temperatures near absolute zero. It is, by all means and purposes, an immense test of mankind’s cleverness and aptitude for innovation. Yet just 3 days ago a machine in a provincial part of what is an ambitious and newly-empowered China has, for the second time in human history, shown quantum supremacy.
James Cameron’s Titanic, Re-reviewed 23 years later for the 2020 audience
An ill-advised large gathering of people aboard an undoubtedly sinking ship. Last night I watched James Cameron’s Titanic for the first time. I regret waiting 23 years to see it. Not because I’ve missed out on over two decades of experiencing some powerful cinematography and the truly cathartic release of sobbing over (only) an epic love story patched over a near-unfathomable tragedy, but because I missed the opportunity to watch this unencumbered by today’s present.
How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?
Since the start of the space race in the 60’s, the price of reaching lower earth orbit (LEO) has been in the $10,000 to $100,000 per kg range. With the notable exception of the Saturn V (the rocket that took us to the moon) nearing $5,000/kg. Then SpaceX came to town, and since, the price has been plummeting: The Falcon 9 delivers to LEO for $2800/kg, Falcon Heavy for $1400/kg, and Starship with a projected $50/kg. This is the story of SpaceX’s accomplishments.
Guess Who Just Achieved Quantum Supremacy
The race for the world’s next-generation computer intensifies There were many doubts as to whether or not quantum computing could ever become a reality. The circuitry relies on tricky manipulation of ions and photons, or otherwise requires temperatures near absolute zero. It is, by all means and purposes, an immense test of mankind’s cleverness and aptitude for innovation.
Take a 360-degree virtual tour of the White House with Obama family
Your weekly guide to Virtual Reality — Newsletter #48 Félix & Paul Studios, together with the Oculus team at Facebook, launched an expansive Facebook 360 experience at the White House. U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama personally take viewers inside nine famous areas of the White House, in an intimate guided tour.
The One Technology That Will Change Everything
We are on the threshold of a new age Many of us know the fairytale story of the perpetual motion machine. It’s a machine that can continue to work forever without an energy source. You set the machine into motion just once and it’ll continue to do work eternally without any added energy on your part. Something like this would become a source of free and endless power, completely revolutionizing our world in its mystical process. But it’s “mystical” for a reason.
The Unfortunate Reality of Teleportation
Why we may never want to use this technology A man gets ready to teleport in the movie “The Fly” from 20th Century Fox. The truth is that teleportation already exists. It was theorized in a 1935 paper written by Einstein and two of his colleagues, Podolsky and Rosen. It was later proven in experiments during the 1990’s. For decades we have known that it is possible, at the quantum level, to teleport particles from one location to another.
The Dark Forest Theory of the Universe
By Ella Alderson A terrifying answer to "where are all the aliens?" There may be a good reason for the Great Silence. Image by Troy Moon. It's a pleasant night in the city. There's a cool wind and a luminous moon giving off a soft light that trickles down through the buildings and mixes with the hazy but weak street lights. You're on your way back home through the empty roads, walking in the unsettling silence. It's unsettling because it's deep...
The Haunting World of the Mirrorverse
Three scientific mysteries which suggest a parallel world The simulation was a simple one. There were just 1,000 particles ambling about on the screen, living in their digital world governed by Newtonian physics. At their highest complexity the particles were spread away from one another as if curiously exploring the boundaries of their artificial landscape, perhaps hoping to find one of its sharp edges. They interacted under the guidance of gravity.
Why the universe might be conscious
This is a pathbreaking conversation with Dr. Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician and physicist at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He works at the cutting edge of an ever urgent question — is the universe conscious? He explains to Grin why the answer could well be, yes. Johannes Kleiner seeks to climb new heights in our understanding of the universe. 1. What do you mean when you say that ‘the universe might be conscious’ or the ‘universe might experience consciousness’?
The SpaceX of China set to Launch in 2020
Galactic Energy wants to develop a Chinese equivalent of the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX continues to be a trend-setting company. Companies in the world now consider SpaceX a serious player in the launch industry. Other companies strive to achieve the accomplishments SpaceX did in the first ten years of operation. Even cross the pacific ocean and visit China. The SpaceX inspiration shows up in companies like Galactic Energy. In many ways, SpaceX became a benchmark for other new space companies.
A 21st century panopticon called Facebook.
How Foucault’s thought adapted to the digital revolution Foucault. Dear old weird scholar, you lived in the middle of the XX century with all its dramatic brutality and, of course, you could not have imagined the astonishing growth of the internet and the daily use of social media, to whom we are addicted. Ironically, as history is used to be, you died in 1984, the year chosen by Orwell for the setting of his dystopian masterpiece.
Reset
Image: NASA (rotated/cropped). License: CC BY-NC 2.0. Reset Disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources — UNISDR, 2009. 1. Disease The disease came from the outer space, as it was predicted in many movies and docufictions. A comet brought the virus to the Earth, some scientists said.
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