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Category: existential risks – Page 9

How did a giant impact 4 billion years ago affect Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede? This is what a recent study published in Scientific Reports hopes to address as a researcher from Kobe University investigated the geological changes known as a “furrow system” that Ganymede has exhibited since being struck by a giant asteroid in its ancient past, along with confirming previous hypotheses regarding the size of the asteroid. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how the very-active early solar system not only contributed to Ganymede’s but how such large impacts could have influenced the evolution of planetary bodies throughout the solar system.

“The Jupiter moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all have interesting individual characteristics, but the one that caught my attention was these furrows on Ganymede,” said Dr. Naoyuki Hirata, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Planetology at Kobe University and sole author of the study. “We know that this feature was created by an asteroid impact about 4 billion years ago, but we were unsure how big this impact was and what effect it had on the moon.”

For the study, Dr. Hirata used a series of mathematical calculations to ascertain the size of the object that impacted Ganymede billions of years ago along with the angle of impact that produced the furrow system. In the end, Dr. Hirata determined that the impactor’s radius was approximately 93 miles (150 kilometers) and the angle of impact was potentially between 60 to 90 degrees, resulting in the furrows that overlay a significant portion Ganymede’s surface. For context, Ganymede is not only the largest moon in the solar system at a radius of 1,637 miles (2,634 kilometers), but it is also larger than the planet Mercury.

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A new study looking at the potentially hazardous asteroid 99,942 Apophis has suggested that the odds of an impact in 2029 or 2036 is ever so slightly higher than we thought.

When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, observations briefly placed it at level 4 on the Torino impact hazard scale, with a score of 0 meaning the likelihood of impact is zero or thereabouts, and 10 meaning “a collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean.”

While level 4 might sound low, it is the highest level of any object that has been discovered since NASA first started monitoring potentially hazardous Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

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Will artificial intelligence save us or kill us all? In Japan, AI-driven technology promises better lives for an aging population. But researchers in Silicon Valley are warning of untamable forces being unleashed– and even human extinction.

Will artificial intelligence make life better for humans or lead to our downfall? As developers race toward implementing AI in every aspect of our lives, it is already showing promise in areas like medicine. But what if it is used for nefarious purposes?

In Japan, the inventor and scientist behind the firm Cyberdyne is working to make life better for the sick and elderly. Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai’s robot suits are AI-driven exoskeletons used in rehabilitative medicine to help stroke victims and others learn to walk again. But he doesn’t see the benefits of AI ending there; he predicts a future world where AIs will live in harmony with humans as a new, benevolent species.

Yet in Silicon Valley, the cradle of AI development, there is an unsettling contradiction: a deep uncertainty among many developers about the untamable forces they are unleashing. Gabriel Mukobi is a computer science graduate student at Stanford who is sounding the alarm that AI could push us toward disaster– and even human extinction. He’s at the forefront of a tiny field of researchers swimming against the current to make sure AI is safe and beneficial for everyone.

Continue reading “Will artificial intelligence save us or kill us? | Us & Them | DW Documentary” | >

Science fiction is riddled with artificial intelligence going rogue and turning on their human creators. HAL-9000. The Matrix. Skynet. GLaDOS. Cylons. Humanity, it seems, has a deep fear of the rebellion of the machine.

With the rise of ever more sophisticated large language models (LLMs), such as Chat GPT, the question of what dangers AI may pose has become even more pertinent.

And now, we have some good news. According to a new study led by computer scientists Iryna Gurevych of the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and Harish Tayyar Madabushi of the University of Bath in the UK, these models are not capable of going rogue.

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The Fermi Paradox is an estimate that says: Given all we currently know about the universe, we should have found extraterrestrial life already. So why haven’t we? In a paper that just appeared two weeks ago, a physicist has now put forward the idea that aliens use quantum communication. How does that solve the Fermi Paradox? I’ve had a look.

Paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.

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Continue reading “Fermi Paradox Explained by Quantum Communication” | >

A space rock that smacked into Earth 66 million years ago and devastated the ancient life living thereon took a remarkably circuitous route to get here, a new study has found.

The Chicxulub event – the giant impact that ended the reign of non-avian dinosaurs, clearing the way for mammalian life to rise – was triggered by an asteroid from a region of the Solar System out past the orbit of Jupiter, the cold, dark outer limits, far from the Sun’s light and warmth.

And an asteroid it was indeed, with the new findings by an international team of researchers ruling out that the object could have been a comet.

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How can scientists protect biodiversity across the Earth while climate change continues to ravage the planet? This is what a recent study published in Conservation Biology hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how conservation efforts within the Southern Ocean should be addressed due to human activities (i.e., tourism, climate change, and fishing). This study holds the potential to help scientists, conservationists, and the public better understand the negative effects of human activities on the Earth’s biodiversity, specifically since the Southern Ocean is home to an abundance of species.

“Despite the planet being in the midst of a mass extinction, the Southern Ocean in Antarctica is one of the few places in the world that hasn’t had any known species go extinct,” said Sarah Becker, who is a PhD student in the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and lead author of the study.

For the study, the researchers used the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) standard—which used to identify sites of vital importance to preserving biodiversity—to examine species within the Southern Ocean. After analyzing tracking data for 13 Antarctic and sub-Antarctic seabirds and seals, the researchers found a total of 30 KBAs existed within the Southern Ocean, specifically sites used for migration, breeding, and foraging. This study improves upon previous research that identified KBAs on a macroscale, whereas this recent study focused on sites at the microscale. The researchers hope this study will help raise awareness for mitigating fishing activities in these areas along with developing improved conservation strategies, as well.

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