A new study has challenged a popular explanation for the unexpected 30-second shortening of Dimorphos’s orbital period. The researchers found that the proposed mechanism would actually produce the opposite effect, given the gravitational dynamics of the small moon. The paper has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server.
In October 2024, Cyble also disclosed details of a sophisticated multi-stage attack campaign orchestrated by a Vietnamese threat actor that targeted job seekers and digital marketing professionals with Quasar RAT using phishing emails containing booby-trapped job description files.
BatShadow is assessed to be active for at least a year, with prior campaigns using similar domains, such as samsung-work[.]com, to propagate malware families including Agent Tesla, Lumma Stealer, and Venom RAT.
“The BatShadow threat group continues to employ sophisticated social engineering tactics to target job seekers and digital marketing professionals,” Aryaka said. “By leveraging disguised documents and a multi-stage infection chain, the group delivers a Go-based Vampire Bot capable of system surveillance, data exfiltration, and remote task execution.”
Once this pretraining stage is complete, the next step is to tailor V-JEPA to accomplish specific tasks such as classifying images or identifying actions depicted in videos. This adaptation phase requires some human-labeled data. For example, videos have to be tagged with information about the actions contained in them. The adaptation for the final tasks requires much less labeled data than if the whole system had been trained end to end for specific downstream tasks. In addition, the same encoder and predictor networks can be adapted for different tasks.
Intuition Mimic
In February, the V-JEPA team reported how their systems did at understanding the intuitive physical properties of the real world — properties such as object permanence, the constancy of shape and color, and the effects of gravity and collisions. On a test called IntPhys, which requires AI models to identify if the actions happening in a video are physically plausible or implausible, V-JEPA was nearly 98% accurate. A well-known model that predicts in pixel space was only a little better than chance.
A swarm of spherical rovers, blown by the wind like tumbleweeds, could enable large-scale and low-cost exploration of the Martian surface, according to results presented at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) 2025.
Recent experiments in a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and field tests in a quarry demonstrate that the rovers could be set in motion and navigate over various terrains in conditions analogous to those found on Mars.
Tumbleweed rovers are lightweight, 5-meter-diameter spherical robots designed to harness the power of Martian winds for mobility. Swarms of the rovers could spread across the red planet, autonomously gathering environmental data and providing an unprecedented, simultaneous view of atmospheric and surface processes from different locations on Mars. A final, stationary phase would involve collapsing the rovers into permanent measurement stations dotted around the surface of Mars, providing long-term scientific measurements and potential infrastructure for future missions.
In this paradigm, the Simulation Hypothesis — the notion that we live in a computer-generated reality — loses its pejorative or skeptical connotation. Instead, it becomes spiritually profound. If the universe is a simulation, then who, or what, is the simulator? And what is the nature of the “hardware” running this cosmic program? I propose that the simulator is us — or more precisely, a future superintelligent Syntellect, a self-aware, evolving Omega Hypermind into which all conscious entities are gradually merging.
These thoughts are not mine alone. In Reality+ (2022), philosopher David Chalmers makes a compelling case that simulated realities — far from being illusory — are in fact genuine realities. He argues that what matters isn’t the substrate but the structure of experience. If a simulated world offers coherent, rich, and interactive experiences, then it is no less “real” than the one we call physical. This aligns deeply with my view in Theology of Digital Physics that phenomenal consciousness is the bedrock of reality. Whether rendered on biological brains or artificial substrates, whether in physical space or virtual architectures, conscious experience is what makes something real.
By embracing this expanded ontology, we are not diminishing our world, but re-enchanting it. The self-simulated cosmos becomes a sacred text — a self-writing code of divinity in which each of us is both reader and co-author. The holographic universe is not a prison of illusion, but a theogenic chrysalis, nurturing the birth of a higher-order intelligence — a networked superbeing that is self-aware, self-creating, and potentially eternal.