After a long hiatus, Richard Branson’s “Spaceship Two” returned to the air and made a successful test flight. If all goes well, he could be sending passengers into space in a few years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/29/richard-bransons-virgin-galactic-just-got-another-step-closer-to-flying-tourists-to-space/
Here’s an in-depth analysis of what it would take to make a solar sail spacecraft that could reach 20% of light speed and go to Alpha Centauri. The engineering challenges are formidable, but not insurmountable.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/the-material-science-of-building-a-light-sail-to-take-us-to-alpha-centauri/
Instead of there being a multiverse, what if there’s only one universe, but different realms within it have distinct ground states?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/dont-be-afraid-of-the-multiverse/559169/
Crews scanning the ocean floor for Malaysia Air Flight 370 stumbled upon two shipwrecks from the late 1800s.
https://www.apnews.com/77038501654b4eb7925d567d37cb7ab8/Historians-name-2-Indian-Ocean-19th-century-shipwrecks
An ocean buoy detected a 78 foot high wave south of New Zealand, making it the largest wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. As the number and density of automated sensors like buoys, weather stations, and drones grow, so will data and film footage of extraordinarily rare occurrences and life forms. In 20 years, you’ll be able to ask your computer to “Show me everything weird that happened today” and spend the next several hours watching video clips from around the world, including places devoid of humans.
https://newatlas.com/record-wave-southern-ocean/54602/
BAE hopes to build a solar-powered, autonomous plane that could stay aloft for 12 months. It could do aerial surveillance and some functions currently performed by satellites.
https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/05/03/bae-systems-partners-with-drone-specialist-for-solar-powered-uav/
“Ocado” is a British grocery store chain that has no brick-and-mortar retail stores and only does home deliveries. Their food warehouses, where groceries are stored and packaged, are heavily automated and use hundreds of robots.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43968495
A fascinating piece that highlights some of the less-obvious ways autonomous vehicles will change the world.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/05/self-driving-technology-is-going-to-change-a-lot-more-than-cars/
It will also probably be easy to program autonomous vehicles to drive in ways that use as little fuel as possible. Many human truck drivers have a hard time keeping up these habits because they require near-constant focus and patience. Moreover, since machines don’t need to sleep, autonomous trucks could structure their routes in such a way that they were mostly on the roads during non-peak hours, like the middle of the night, meaning fewer traffic jams for everybody and less wasted gas.
http://www.fleetowner.com/fuel_economy/fuel-economy-0701
One of the NYT’s auto experts thinks gas-powered cars will be obsoleted by fast-recharging electric cars within five years, and sales of both will sharply shift to reflect this. Without giving a deadline for autonomous cars, he drops a lot of hints it will take substantially longer than five years to become mature and ubiquitous.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/technology/personaltech/electric-self-driving-flying-cars.html
‘”I’ve been at [Consumer Reports] for 19 years and tested more than 1,000 cars, and I’ve never seen a car that could improve its track performance with an over-the-air update,” Jake Fisher, director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, said in a blog post.’
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/30/technology/consumer-reports-model-3-recommended/index.html
A famous and still thought-provoking analysis of the cost-effectiveness of 500 different safety/health interventions. Yes, you can put a price on human life.
https://www.slideshare.net/myatom/tengs-et-al-cost-effectiveness-of-500-life-saving-interventions-2776562
Will America’s new “Right to Try” policy that allows terminally ill people to take drugs still in Phase II clinical trials help much? Probably not, and not just because only 10% of drugs prove themselves effective during Phase II.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/05/25/federal-right-to-try
The FDA shut down two “stem cell therapy” clinics after their treatments for people with vision problems made several of them go blind.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/09/fda-seeks-injunction-to-stop-two-stem-cell-companies-after-patients-blinded/
The reality about “personalized cancer treatments” is that only 15% of cancer patients are eligible, and only 1/3 of them could benefit from it.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/05/02/cancer-sequencing-hype-and-reality
‘The National Cancer Institute’s new goal is to “eliminate suffering and death due to cancer” by 2015.’
–NCI Director Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, 2003
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)68718-7/fulltext
A meta-analysis of women who got the HPV vaccine proves beyond doubt that it works and has no side effects.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/08/health/hpv-vaccines-cervical-cancer-review/index.html
A meta-analysis of fMRI studies that “proved” male and female brains operate differently suggests they might have been flawed, and researchers might have failed to publish null findings.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23976-1
People who go to art school are likelier to get schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/artistic-creativity-and-risk-for-schizophrenia-bipolar-disorder-and-unipolar-depression-a-swedish-populationbased-casecontrol-study-and-sibpair-analysis/B3FFC439154C19A01F779365AF16B3C7
Electroconvulsive therapy has been unfairly maligned, and is actually the most effective treatment for some people with severe mental illness.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180502-the-surprising-benefits-of-electroshock-therapy-or-ect
MDMA, commonly called “Ecstasy,” has proven a remarkably effective treatment for PTSD in preliminary clinical trials. If all goes well, it could be legal for medicinal use in 2021.
https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/02/a-forbidden-remedy-for-veterans-nightmar
America’s early school start times are awful for students and their parents. As early as 1913, the practice’s ill effects on sleep, learning and quality of life were noted. Why do we do it anymore?
https://schoolstarttime.org/early-school-start-times/
Machines hit a new milestone in automating chemical synthesis work.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/05/14/give-it-to-the-machines
Amateur chemist claims to have made a distilling process that can “age” whiskey the equivalent of 20 years in six days. Whether or not his claim is genuine, I think someone will make it work someday.
https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/05/09/bryan-davis-lost-spirits-distillery-booz
Did Betamax actually have better picture quality than VHS? This side-by-side footage analysis suggests not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJs8-I9WtA
“[Intelligence] is a spectrum of abilities since there are many different goals you can have, so it makes no sense to quantify something’s intelligence by just one number [like an IQ score]. To see how ridiculous that would be, just imagine if I told you that athletic ability could be quantified by a single number, the ‘Athletic Quotient,” and whatever athlete had the highest ‘AQ’ would win all the gold medals in the Olympics.”
https://youtu.be/p9eLpRbRk4c
Some alternatives to America’s state borders. I’ve long been a fan of breaking up states with big populations and merging states with small populations to help “even things out.”
https://www.quora.com/Do-U-S-state-borders-make-sense-for-modern-times
There’s substantial evidence that American judges allow their personal political and cultural views to influence their court rulings. Though judges claim to be coldly analytical and objective, it does actually matter whether they’re Republicans or Democrats.
https://www.apnews.com/cc39185fe15346d7a7c7c021bc3d4d90/Is-Trump-right-about-judges’-leanings?-Maybe,-review-shows
Here’s a supposedly genuine military report about the 2004 encounter between a U.S. Navy F/A-18 and a UFO off the coast of San Diego. The sighting was first described in a December 2017 New York Times article. The report deduces that the UFO could change altitude at ballistic missile speeds, was nearly invisible to radar, and might have had a cloaking ability on the visible light spectrum.
https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document_dev/2018/05/18/TIC%20TAC%20UFO%20EXECUTIVE%20REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0.pdf
Between new plane purchases and upgrades of existing planes, the U.S. Navy plans to have at least 650 “Block 3” Super Hornet F/A-18E’s and F’s by 2025. They’re better than the current “Block 2” Super Hornets in every way.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21045/here-is-boeings-master-plan-for-the-f-a-18e-f-super-hornets-future
And in classic fashion, the Navy is dumping its worn-out, excess F/A-18C and D Hornets (note the lack of “Super”) on the Marine Corps. The Navy has 270 of these older fighter planes and will give the Marines 136 of them, mostly to be cannibalized for spare parts. The Navy’s final 134 Hornets will probably be transferred in the future as it gets more Super Hornets and F-35C’s.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19040/navy-to-slash-legacy-f-a-18-hornet-fleet-to-prop-up-beleaguered-usmc-squadrons
The hardships of a Marine Corps F/A-18 mechanic struggling to fix planes that are older than he is. At some point, everything wears out, and the time and money spent on maintenance gets so bad that it’s actually cheaper to buy a newer replacement.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20019/life-on-the-flight-line-confessions-of-a-u-s-marine-f-a-18-hornet-maintainer
Brazil has an 81-year-old river patrol ship still in active service. It originally had a steam engine and now has a helipad.
http://warisboring.com/one-of-the-worlds-oldest-military-ships-is-sailing-down-a-river-in-brazil/
Israel has developed an affordable upgrade kit that converts Soviet-era multiple launch rocket systems into guided weapons.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21023/israeli-made-bolt-on-kit-turns-122mm-grad-artillery-rockets-into-precision-weapons
Israel also used small quadcopter drones to snag incendiary kites released by militant Gazans who were trying to randomly start wildfires across the border in Israel.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20853/israel-uses-drone-racers-to-down-incendiary-kites-and-drones-to-dispense-tear-gas-over-gaza
Some Korean War-era U.S. M41 light tanks are still in service in Third World armies.
http://warisboring.com/m-41-tanks-are-museum-pieces-and-still-in-service/
Indonesia has bought several brand-new U.S. AH-64E attack helicopters and will fly them alongside their old Soviet Mi-35 helicopters.
http://www.janes.com/article/80207/update-indonesia-formally-accepts-first-apache-helos
Greece is upgrading its F-16s and plans to keep them in use until 2048. The prototype F-16 first flew in 1974.
http://www.janes.com/article/79703/update-greece-moves-ahead-with-f-16-modernisation
Boeing got a patent for a detachable, automatic cannon that could be installed in the bomb bays of semi-stealth B-1 bombers, turning them into gunships. The U.S. military first experimented with this kind of weapons system in 1971. Prototype cannons were installed in the bomb bays of bombers made in the 1950s.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20782/boeings-been-granted-a-patent-for-turning-the-b-1b-into-a-gunship-bristling-with-cannons
The U.S. Air Force is heavily upgrading the cockpits of their F-15s.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21081/the-usaf-has-quietly-added-large-multi-function-cockpit-displays-to-its-f-15c-fleet
China has just launched its second aircraft carrier, which could be thought of as an upgraded copy of their first carrier, which was built by the USSR and launched 33 years ago. Does this milestone mean China’s shipbuilding prowess has surpassed Russia’s?
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2145890/chinas-first-domestically-built-aircraft-carrier-begins
Did you know you can build a somewhat OK bullet proof vest out of a thick textbook and a 1′ x 1′ ceramic floor tile?
https://youtu.be/ECug_76_NLg
The Basque Separatists have disbanded, thanks to an improved Basque economy (assisted by investment from Madrid) and a graying of the population. How many other ethnic secession movements could be defused with the same combination?
https://www.apnews.com/448d0d7510b0447abba9597c9c319f63/ETA%27s-bloody-history:-853-killings-in-60-years-of-violence
In 1872, English writer Samuel Butler published the book Erehwon. In it, the main character visits a futuristic, closed society that banned machines because they were improving too fast and people feared they would become smarter than humans and take over. Butler was inspired by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and by the rapid industrialization he saw in England over his lifetime. It’s the earliest example of the the “robot uprising” trope I’ve seen.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/butler-samuel/1872/erewhon/ch23.htm
A few bummer remarks about the state of artificial intelligence. FIRST: ‘The current ways of trying to represent the nervous system…[are little better than] what we had 50 years ago.’ –Marvin Minsky, 2013
https://youtu.be/3PdxQbOvAlI
SECOND: ‘Over the next 30 years, we’re not going to see Commander Data…there is an A.I. bubble right now and people are making a fundamental error on estimating how good A.I. is going to be [and] how quickly.’ –Rodney Brooks, 2017
https://youtu.be/ig1qaqyMIXc
THIRD: ‘I suspect that [building the first true A.I.] means getting rid of back-propagation…I don’t think [back-propagation is] how the brain works.’ –Geoffrey Hinton (helped invent back-propagation in 1986), 2017
https://www.axios.com/artificial-intelligence-pioneer-says-we-need-to-start-over-1513305524-f619efbd-9db0-4947-a9b2-7a4c310a28fe.html
FOURTH: ‘We’re very far from having machines that can learn the most basic things about the world in the way humans and animals can do. Like, yes, in particular areas machines have superhuman performance, but in terms of general intelligence we’re not even close to a rat.’ –Yann LeCun, 2017
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/26/16552056/a-intelligence-terminator-facebook-yann-lecun-interview
Computer scientist Judea Pearl is slightly more optimistic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/machine-learning-is-stuck-on-asking-why/560675/
A fascinating short video showing how a computer-generated Paul Walker was inserted into Furious 7 after the actor died during filming. Within 20 years, I don’t think we’ll be able to tell apart human actors and CGI versions of them.
https://jalopnik.com/how-extensive-special-effects-helped-finish-furious-7-a-1825917978
Unreal Engine 4 – (2018) – Ridiculous Realistic Looking Characters!
https://youtu.be/Vh9msqaoJZw
Google’s “Duplex Assistant” can perfectly imitate humans during brief phone calls. I think machines will pass the Turing Test within 11 years, and shortly thereafter, we won’t be able to tell the difference between human speakers and CGI versions of them: we’ll be able to make machines that can speak using a real human being’s voice, to intelligently carry on conversations with other humans, and to even answer questions and put forth topics of conversation as the imitated human would.
https://youtu.be/ijwHj2HaOT0
Non-invasive, wearable sensors that monitor muscle and nerve activity can be used to accurately represent a person’s physical movements in a virtual reality avatar. The demo video is incredible.
https://youtu.be/5Z5aZK2C3ew
The world’s oldest spider is dead at 43. It was a trapdoor spider, and it survived that long by staying in one hole in the ground its whole life, conserving its energy and avoiding risks (good life advice?).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/04/27/farewell-no-16-scientists-left-miserable-worlds-oldest-spider/
Airborne lead particles that drifted to Greenland from Europe and got trapped in successive layers of ice tell the tale of Rome’s rise and fall. The quantity of lead smelting positively correlates with periods of prosperity.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/14/roman-empire-rise-and-fall-revealed-greenland-ice/608819002/
The longest possible straight-line journeys over sea and land are uncovered, at long last! I wonder if the estimate would change if the Arctic Ice Cap were counted as dry land (explorers have walked across the whole thing before).
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/ocean-path-will-take-you-longest-straight-line-journey-earth
Russia launched the world’s first floating nuclear reactor. It will be towed to the Arctic sea to provide power to a remote town.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/30/607088530/russia-launches-floating-nuclear-power-plant-its-headed-to-the-arctic
Burying nuclear waste in shafts drilled into the seafloor might be the best permanent disposal option.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/