Lifeboat Foundation

For self-driving cars and other applications developed using AI, you need what’s known as “deep learning”, the core concepts of which emerged in the ’50s. This requires training models based on similar patterns as seen in the human brain. This, in turn, requires a large amount of compute power, as afforded by TPUs (tensor processing units) or GPUs (graphics processing units) running for lengthy periods. However, cost of this compute power is out of reach of most AI developers, who largely rent it from cloud computing platforms such as AWS or Azure. What is to be done?

Well, one approach is that taken by U.K. startup Gensyn. It’s taken the idea of the distributed computing power of older projects such as SETI@home and the COVID-19 focussed Folding@home and applied it in the direction of this desire for deep learning amongst AI developers. The result is a way to get high-performance compute power from a distributed network of computers.

Gensyn has now raised a $6.5 million seed led by Eden Block, a web3 VC. Also participating in the round is Galaxy Digital, Maven 11, Coinfund, Hypersphere, Zee Prime and founders from some blockchain protocols. This adds to a previously unannounced pre-seed investment of $1.1 millionin 2021 — led by 7percent Ventures and Counterview Capital, with participation from Entrepreneur First and id4 Ventures.

In the last decades of his life, Albert Einstein hoped to unite his description of gravity with existing models of electromagnetism under a single master theory.

It’s a quest that continues to vex theoretical physicists to this day. Two of our best models of reality – Einstein’s general theory of relativity and the laws of quantum mechanics – are as immiscible as oil and water.

Whatever a combination of the two looks like, it will almost certainly reveal foundations to the Universe quite unlike anything we can visualize.

A harsh sun shines down through a cloudless sky, across a vast and unforgiving landscape. It’s covered in gray rock, giant ice sculptures and expansive fields of spiky, yellow and orange bushes. In the distance, intimidating mountain peaks dominate the desolate scene, many miles from the nearest town. Yet alpacas roam freely and flamingos seek out scarce water, both unexpected sights in this wild world.

The extreme environment resembles something from a sci-fi film or another planet, but it’s right here on Earth, on the flanks of the world’s highest active volcano, 22,615-foot Ojos del Salado. Here, on the border of Argentina and Chile, a team of CU Boulder scientists seek to discover how tiny organisms persist at one of the driest and highest points on the planet.

This first-of-its-kind project may ultimately help inform the search for existing and extinct life on other planets.

Pioneer 10 was ahead of its time.

A mere fifty years ago, Pioneer 10 launched and became the first unmanned mission to Jupiter. The mission revealed new details about the Solar System — and sent a message to aliens.

Ceres, the only inner solar system dwarf planet, has brines that could keep a liquid water ocean stable somewhere under its surface.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4TCg4vsz6Ac

How many Dyson Spheres, a hypothetical energy source, could be built around stars in the Milky Way?

Researchers calculated the maximum amount of Dyson Spheres in the Milky Way in order to know what it is they did not find.

In a way, it could mean climate change is linked to an “immature technosphere”.

It’s called an epiphenomenon.

Continue reading “Can a planet ‘think’? The bold idea gets new backing” »

The ExplOrigins early career group invites you to join the 2022 Exploration and Origins Colloquium on February 17th–18th, 2022! The live broadcast portion of this colloquium will begin at 10am ET on February 18th.

We are thrilled to have Dr. Amy Mainzer as our plenary speaker. Dr. Mainzer is a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, principal investigator of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission, and lead of NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission. She also has achieved excellence in science communication, serving as the science curriculum consultant, on-camera host, and executive producer of the PBS Kids series Ready Jet Go! and as the science consultant for the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up.

Continue reading “Exploration & Origins Colloquium 2022: Space Exploration, Origins, & Astrobiology” »

Do organics found on Mars indicate past life or are there nonbiological explanations? When will we definitively know that alien life exists?