Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of astronomers has performed follow-up observations of a nearby alien world known as TOI-1685 b. Results of the observations, published May 21 on the pre-print server arXiv, indicate that TOI-1685 b is a hot and rocky alien world with an Earth-like density.

The so-called “super-Earths” are planets more massive than Earth but not exceeding the mass of Neptune. Although the term “super-Earth” refers only to the mass of the planet, it is also used by astronomers to describe planets bigger than Earth but smaller than the so-called “mini-Neptunes” (with a radius between two to four Earth radii).

Discovered in 2021, TOI-1685 b is an ultra-short-period (USP) super-Earth orbiting an M-dwarf star about half the size and mass of the sun. The system is located some 122.5 light years away.

Astronauts on board the International Space Station were instructed to shelter inside their respective spacecraft after reports indicated pieces of a broken-up satellite were headed their way.

Specifically, the remains of a derelict spacecraft called Resurs-P 1, a Russian commercial Earth observation satellite that launched in June 2013, were spotted by space junk monitor LeoLabs.

“Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs P1 (SATNO 39186), released a number of fragments between 13:05 UTC 26 June and 00:51 UTC 27 June,” Leolabs tweeted late Wednesday evening.

“Supergranules are a significant component of the heat transport mechanisms of the sun, but they present a serious challenge for scientists to understand,” said Dr. Shravan Hanasoge.

How does the Sun’s interior function and produce the energy needed to allow life to exist on the Earth? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by New York University Abu Dhabi (NYU Abu Dhabi) investigated how the Sun delivers heat from its interior to the surface, also known as convection, through its supergranules, whose individual structures have diameters three times greater than the Earth. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the Sun’s convection processes while also challenging previous hypotheses about the Sun’s convection, as well.

For the study, the researchers conducted one of the most in-depth analyses of the Sun’s supergranuales using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, to examine approximately 23,000 supergranules across the Sun’s surface. The team used sound waves to examine the supergranules’ interiors, which previous studies have also done, as well. Through this, the team was able to measure upflows and downflows with incredible precision compared to past studies.

Continue reading “Revealing the Interior Structure of the Sun’s Supergranules” »

In one of the final chapters of his book: Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, David Chalmers asks, have we fallen from the Garden of Eden? “Eden” in this case is a metaphor for living in a world where everything is as it seems, matching our pre-theoretical view of reality.

In Eden, everything exists in a three dimensional Euclidean space. And time flows from one moment to the next with an absolute now across all of space. In Eden, color is an intrinsic property of objects, so the apple really is red. And objects like rocks are truly solid. In Eden, we have free will in the classic contra-causal sense of that term.

Once we lived in Eden. But then there was a fall. We ate of the Tree of Science and were cast out.

Imagine waking up one day to the realization that everything you’ve ever known—the universe, the stars, your own thoughts—could be nothing more than an elaborate computer simulation crafted by an advanced civilization. This is the audacious, mind-bending premise explored by philosopher Nick Bostrom in “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”. Through rigorous reasoning and a blend of cutting-edge technology and philosophical inquiry, Bostrom challenges our understanding of reality itself, posing that the odds we are living in a simulated world may be profoundly higher than we ever considered. As you delve into this thought-provoking investigation, you might just find that questioning the nature of your own existence becomes more thrilling—and unsettling—than any work of science fiction.

Recent advances in deep learning have allowed artificial intelligence (AI) to reach near human-level performance in many sensory, perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive tasks. There is a growing need, however, for novel, brain-inspired cognitive architectures. The Global Workspace Theory (GWT) refers to a large-scale system integrating and distributing information among networks of specialized modules to create higher-level forms of cognition and awareness. We argue that the time is ripe to consider explicit implementations of this theory using deep-learning techniques. We propose a roadmap based on unsupervised neural translation between multiple latent spaces (neural networks trained for distinct tasks, on distinct sensory inputs and/or modalities) to create a unique, amodal Global Latent Workspace (GLW). Potential functional advantages of GLW are reviewed, along with neuroscientific implications.

Keywords: attention; broadcast; consciousness; grounding; latent space; multimodal translation.

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The physicality of the world in which the animal acts-its anatomical structure, physiology, perception, emotional states, and cognitive capabilities-determines the boundaries of the behavioral space within which the animal can operate. Behavior, therefore, can be considered as the subspace that remains after secluding all actions that are not available to the animal due to constraints. The very signature of being a certain creature is reflected in these limitations that shape its behavior. A major goal of ethology is to expose those constraints that carve the intricate structure of animal behavior and reveal both uniqueness and commonalities between animals within and across taxa. Exploratory behavior in an empty arena seems to be stochastic; nevertheless, it does not mean that the moving animal is a random walker. In this study, we present how, by adding constraints to the animal’s locomotion, one can gradually retain the ‘mousiness’ that characterizes the behaving mouse. We then introduce a novel phenomenon of high mirror symmetry along the locomotion of mice, which highlights another constraint that further compresses the complex nature of exploratory behavior in these animals. We link these findings to a known neural mechanism that could explain this phenomenon. Finally, we suggest our novel finding and derived methods to be used in the search for commonalities in the motion trajectories of various organisms across taxa.

Keywords: animal behavior; constraints; exploration; locomotion; memory; mouse; operational space; symmetry.

Copyright © 2024 Fonio and Feinerman.

According to Loorits, if we want consciousness to be explained in terms of natural sciences, we should be able to analyze its seemingly non-structural aspects, like qualia, in structural terms. However, the studies conducted over the last three decades do not seem to be able to bridge the explanatory gap between physical phenomena and phenomenal experience. One possible way to bridge the explanatory gap is to seek the structure of consciousness within consciousness itself, through a phenomenal analysis of the qualitative aspects of experience. First, this analysis leads us to identify the explanandum concerning the simplest forms of experience not in qualia but in the unitary set of qualities found in early vision. Second, it leads us to hypothesize that consciousness is also made up of non-apparent parts, and that there exists a hidden structure of consciousness. This structure, corresponding to a simple early visual experience, is constituted by a Hierarchy of Spatial Belongings nested within each other. Each individual Spatial Belonging is formed by a primary content and a primary space. The primary content can be traced in the perceptibility of the contents we can distinguish in the phenomenal field. The primary space is responsible for the perceptibility of the content and is not perceptible in itself. However, the phenomenon I refer to as subtraction of visibility allows us to characterize it as phenomenally negative. The hierarchical relationships between Spatial Belongings can ensure the qualitative nature of components of perceptual organization, such as object, background, and detail. The hidden structure of consciousness presents aspects that are decidedly counterintuitive compared to our idea of phenomenal experience. However, on the one hand, the Hierarchy of Spatial Belongings can explain the qualities of early vision and their appearance as a unitary whole, while on the other hand, it might be more easily explicable in terms of brain organization. In other words, the hidden structure of consciousness can be considered a bridge structure which, placing itself at an intermediate level between experience and physical properties, can contribute to bridging the explanatory gap.

Keywords: early vision; explanandum; explanatory gap; hidden conscious structure; hierarchy of spatial belongings; multiple hierarchical segregation; phenomenal analysis.

Copyright © 2024 Forti.

A long-running experiment aboard the International Space Station has found an unexpected population of cosmic rays made of heavy hydrogen ions.