Goto

Collaborating Authors

 civilization


Time traveler claiming to be from the year 4413 delivers ominous warning about humanity's fate

Daily Mail - Science & tech

You're viewing the US edition You can switch to the UK or AU homepage at any time using this menu. Terrifying footage shows church collapse as huge 7.4-magnitude earthquake hits Colombia, burying people beneath collapsed buildings, with dozens dead Courtroom stunned as OnlyFans model is sentenced to six years in prison for killing boyfriend in knife attack... and she'll be out in two Brad Pitt reveals he has battled suicidal thoughts and'couldn't see a way out' as he opens up on'family stuff' amid estrangement from his children with Angelina Jolie Lindsay Clancy's psychiatrist admits she NEVER had face-to-face appointment with her... despite prescribing barrage of medication before children's killings: Live updates'Sinister' truth about'It' girl Hallie Batchelder: Hard-partying influencer's X-rated act caught on video as obscene nickname and'substances' confession are revealed A tiny receipt detail exposed my friend's cheating partner: JANA HOCKING reveals the tricks to catching ...


The Download: AI agents for science, and the "censorship-industrial complex"

MIT Technology Review

Plus: A new Amazon data center could become the US's most polluting power plant. In 2024, Google DeepMind scientists shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a neural network, AlphaFold, which predicts the structures of proteins. It showed that AI could make groundbreaking scientific discoveries, but AlphaFold may not be the best template for accelerating science. Instead, another approach may hold the key: AI agents. AlphaFold relied on a dataset of roughly 170,000 experimentally validated protein structures that took 53 years and roughly $21 billion worth of experimental work to assemble. Comparable datasets will be difficult or impossible to create in many fields.


The Chinese Philosopher Americans Can't Stop Fighting About

WIRED

Yiyang Zhuge was already an intellectual celebrity in China. Her viral interview with Christopher Nolan made her famous in the US--and quickly turned her into a political Rorschach test. Yiyang Zhuge learned last week that when you go extremely viral, the people you have been following for years suddenly start following you back. Zhuge logged onto X and found that a string of famous professors and scholars were in her list of new followers. A PhD candidate in political philosophy at Boston College, Zhuge had previously only lurked on X to keep up with the latest debates and gossip in academia.


America Is Finally Taking Extraterrestrials Seriously

TIME - Tech

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. There was nothing much happening in Jerome and Benno Leuer's yard in Hamel, Minn. on August 11, 1948.


To Understand the Ending of The Odyssey, You Must First Understand 'Zeus' Law'

TIME - Tech

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?


The Oligarchy Is Afraid of Itself Too

Mother Jones

Musk v. Altman is a fight over how much power is too much in Silicon Valley. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. In May 2016, Elon Musk did something out of character that he has now spent years of his life trying to undo: He made what he believed to be a charitable donation. The world's richest man is also among its stingiest. Musk's private foundation often doles out less than the minimum percentage required by law.


Ancient Mayan water filters stopped a lot--just not mercury poisoning

Popular Science

The civilization made the most of its technology, but everything has its limits. Mayan society often relied on cinnabar, a deep red pigment that got its hue from mercury sulfide. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. A trio of ancient reservoirs in present-day Guatemala is revealing both the strength--and limitations--of Mayan water science. While the civilization's purification techniques resulted in comparatively clean drinking sources, archaeologists say the unknowable consequences of a commonly used, deep-red pigment consistently subjected the Indigenous population to toxic mercury poisoning .


The Search for Alien Artifacts Is Coming Into Focus

WIRED

From surveys of the pre-Sputnik skies to analysis of interstellar visitors, scientists are rethinking how and where to look for physical traces of alien technology. Science fiction is awash in the material remnants of extraterrestrial civilizations, which surface in everything from the classic books of Arthur C. Clarke to game franchises like and . The discovery of the first interstellar objects in the solar system within the past decade has sparked speculation that they could be alien artifacts or spaceships, though the scientific consensus remains that all three of these visitors have natural explanations. That said, scientists have been anticipating the possibility of encountering alien artifacts since the dawn of the space age. "In the history of technosignatures, the possibility that there could be artifacts in the solar system has been around for a long time," says Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester.


Why SpaceX Is Finally Gearing Up to Go Public

WIRED

Like so many things in Elon Musk's orbit, a lot of it may come down to AI. SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm. This represents a major change in thinking from the world's leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk . The Wall Street Journal and The Information first reported about a possible IPO last Friday, and Bloomberg followed that up on Tuesday evening with a report suggesting the company would target a $1.5 trillion valuation. This would allow SpaceX to raise in excess of $30 billion. This is an enormous amount of funding.


The Download: how to fix a tractor, and living among conspiracy theorists

MIT Technology Review

You live in a house you designed and built yourself. You rely on the sun for power, heat your home with a woodstove, and farm your own fish and vegetables. This is the life of Marcin Jakubowski, the 53-year-old founder of Open Source Ecology, an open collaborative of engineers, producers, and builders developing what they call the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). It's a set of 50 machines--everything from a tractor to an oven to a circuit maker--that are capable of building civilization from scratch and can be reconfigured however you see fit. It's all part of his ethos that life-changing technology should be available to all, not controlled by a select few. What it's like to find yourself in the middle of a conspiracy theory Last week, we held a subscribers-only Roundtables discussion exploring how to cope in this new age of conspiracy theories.