Embark on a profound exploration with us as we scrutinize the pioneering yet contentious efforts of Neuralink and its first human trial, delving into the ethical quandaries and safety concerns that accompany such groundbreaking work. We'll also immerse ourselves in the enchanting advances of AI in interpreting the language of sperm whales, uncovering the mysterious depths of our oceans' gentle giants. The horizon of innovation is vast, and this episode promises to shine a light on the intricate balance between technological ambition and the moral compass guiding it.
Venture beyond the Earth's atmosphere as we discuss the reality-bending potential of warp drive technology, a concept inching from the pages of science fiction towards tangible scientific inquiry. With Japan's audacious plan to capture solar energy from space, we're on the cusp of revolutionizing how we sustain our world with clean, constant power. These discussions are not just about the marvels of technology, but about the impact they could have on our future — a future where the sky is not the limit, but rather the starting line.
Concluding with a testament to the human spirit, we recount acts of heroism amid nature's fury, from the courage of surfers transforming into rescuers in Brazil's floods to a personal narrative of a narrow escape from a tornado’s wrath. Through these stories, we honor the resilience that binds us in times of crisis. Join us for a compelling narrative that weaves the threads of technological advancements, the wonders of our natural world, and the incredible fortitude of humanity into a tapestry of hope and determination.
Embark on a profound exploration with us as we scrutinize the pioneering yet contentious efforts of Neuralink and its first human trial, delving into the ethical quandaries and safety concerns that accompany such groundbreaking work. We'll also immerse ourselves in the enchanting advances of AI in interpreting the language of sperm whales, uncovering the mysterious depths of our oceans' gentle giants. The horizon of innovation is vast, and this episode promises to shine a light on the intricate balance between technological ambition and the moral compass guiding it.
Venture beyond the Earth's atmosphere as we discuss the reality-bending potential of warp drive technology, a concept inching from the pages of science fiction towards tangible scientific inquiry. With Japan's audacious plan to capture solar energy from space, we're on the cusp of revolutionizing how we sustain our world with clean, constant power. These discussions are not just about the marvels of technology, but about the impact they could have on our future — a future where the sky is not the limit, but rather the starting line.
Concluding with a testament to the human spirit, we recount acts of heroism amid nature's fury, from the courage of surfers transforming into rescuers in Brazil's floods to a personal narrative of a narrow escape from a tornado’s wrath. Through these stories, we honor the resilience that binds us in times of crisis. Join us for a compelling narrative that weaves the threads of technological advancements, the wonders of our natural world, and the incredible fortitude of humanity into a tapestry of hope and determination.
Thank you, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Thank you, hey there. Welcome to another episode of Inspired Earth. We've got an update on Neuralink as well as an update on the whale language decoding process as that evolves, and then we've got some stuff about the warp drive and then solar energy from space is kind of gonna be a mix of two different things, and then we're gonna end it off on a rescue. So that's good to have another rescue. So we'll start off with futurism here in. Neuralink knew its implant was likely to malfunction and first human patient did brain surgery anyway. So who saw that coming? Pretty much everybody right. After publicizing its first ever human trial this year, elon Musk's brain chip company, ne Neuralink, was forced to admit that wires in the patient's neural implant had become loose. And now Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources at the company, that the startup has known for many years that wires in its brain chip are known to retract, meaning that Musk's venture knew about the safety issue and forged ahead with the patient's brain surgery anyway. I wonder if the brain patient knew about this beforehand or not? That's what I'm curious about. This all sounds alarming in light of all the horrific news about the startup's monkey brain experiments which have drawn scrutiny from policymakers in Washington DC and it doesn't say this. But also many universities have spoken out against the massacre of monkeys by Neuralink, because they're just burning through monkeys, man. They all get sick and die immediately whenever they get this Neuralink thing. I think it's been like hundreds, probably thousands of monkeys by now that they have killed uh just by giving them implants, which is terrible, but that's just insane to even think about. But the fact that they're putting it into humans and stuff just takes it to a whole nother level of uh that you have to process this, I mean them. Doing that to the monkeys is absolutely abhorrent and and terrible. But then to move on to humans when you haven't even figured out the monkeys yet, it's terrible. And the us fda apparently knew about the ongoing wire issues before approving approving trials. Reuters reports and declined to comment on this recent news. It did tell the news agency that it's observing Neuralink's test subjects. I wonder how much the FDA got paid to do that, because you know it all comes down to money. The FDA is basically a business, but in January Neuralink discloses its first human trial and called it a success because its subject, nolan Arbaugh I think that's how you pronounce it a 29-year-old quadriplegic, was able to play video games like Mario Kart with his mind using Neuralink's brain computer interface implanted in his skull.
Speaker 1:
The implant is made up of a battery, communications chip, a microprocessor and other tech packed into a quarter-sized circular container. Emanating from the implant are 64 wire threads finer than a human hair and which are woven into the brain's motor cortex so that it may read the patient's mind. So it's like inside the brain. It's kind of freaky. After they inserted the implant in Arbaugh's brain, neuralink researchers noticed that the data from the device declined over time, signaling that some of the wires had come loose. Some at Neuralink think that the air introduced inside of Arbaugh's skull during surgery might have been a factor. Neuralink says it's compensated for the issue by making the device's algorithms more sensitive. Somehow I feel like that's not going to fully compensate for that. Anonymous sources told Reuters that wires coming loose in future patients may degrade the performance on the brain chips, and even tweaking the algorithms may not be enough to compensate for the loss, also redesigning the chip's wires' threads so they could anchor onto the brain could result in neurological damage if wires come loose once again or Neuralink decides to remove the implant.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's not like you can easily go back in and and undo this stuff. Jeez, this sounds like a nightmare. I mean, this sounds like a total. I would not want to work on this. Hopefully these kinks can get worked out, as seen in arbo's case.
Speaker 1:
The brain chip holds enormous promise for disabled people, but that's obviously not an excuse to scrimp on safety, which they clearly have. And the fda what? What are you doing? Letting them do this stuff? And that's all I just, I'm just gonna leave it on that. What are what is the FDA doing? Like, because they're clearly not like interested in safety. That's just a joke right there. So that's just turns into a joke.
Speaker 1:
But here we have the update with uh scientists on the whale language and there's kind of a little bit of controversy in this one. I'll read it at the end of the article. It's like part of the article here. But a team of scientists say they have discovered a phonetic alphabet using AI, with whale language, and that scientists have accomplished a whale of a feat. They've identified a previously unknown complexity in whale communication by analyzing thousands of recorded sequences of sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence. Variations in tempo, rhythm and the lengths of whales click sequences, called CODAS, weave a rich acoustic tapestry. These variables hint that the whales can combine click patterns in multiple ways, mixing and matching phrases to convey a broad range of information to one another. What sperm whales are saying with their clicks remains a mystery to human ears Still.
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Uncovering the scope of whales' vocal exchanges is an important step toward linking whale calls to specific messages or social behaviors. The scientists reported May 7th in the journal Nature Communications. This work builds on a lot of prior work focused on the understanding of the calls of sperm whales. However, this is the first work that has started to look at sperm whale calls in their wider communicative context and in the context of exchanges between whales, which has made some of the findings possible. Understanding what aspects of their codas they can control and vary helps us understand how they can encode information in their calls.
Speaker 1:
The researchers dubbed their catalog of sounds combinations of phonetic alphabet for sperm whales, comparing variations in the whale's click sequences to the production of different phonetic sounds in human speech. And this is where the controversy comes in. But while the team's findings are interesting, that term offers a misleading perspective on whales' vocal interaction, said Dr Luke Rindle, researcher at University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom, whose work focuses on communication of marine animals, in an email. So he emailed them his criticism. It's kind of funny. The presentation of the phonetic alphabet is nothing of the sort, said Rendall, who was not involved in the research. So this is somebody on the other side of the planet saying hey, you got it wrong. It's kind of funny, although that would be a British accent, not a southern country accent.
Speaker 1:
The way the tempo variation is used is completely different to how, say, we use elements of an alphabet to construct linguistic expression. There's no evidence of that and it's not a super helpful interpretation because it forces everything into a restricted and somewhat oversold perspective of is it human language or not, when there are a much broader range of interpretations available. So I gotta give them kudos that that does make sense. But I mean we always have to relate it back to ourselves. I mean they're just trying to, like, make news. You know that's how they they're they're making, they're sensationalizing it and making it about humans, because that's the only thing that we care about. If we made it about the whales, then we wouldn't care about it. So it's the reason that the researchers made it about human language. That's just my opinion on it, but that's like some psychological news spin, mumbo jumbo. But so they used AI to do it right.
Speaker 1:
So sperm whales producing their clicks by forcing air through an organ in their heads called a spermaceti, and these sounds can be as loud as 230 decibels, louder than a rocket launch and capable of rupturing human eardrums. Another team of scientists previously reported in the journal Scientific Reports For the study. For the new study, the researchers used machine learning to detect patterns in audio data collected by the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, a repository for observations of sperm whales that inhabit the Caribbean Sea. 60 sperm whales, a subset of groups of about 400 whales known as the Eastern Caribbean Clan, and the vocalizations were recorded between 2005 and 2018. Prior research had identified 150 types of CODAs in sperm whales worldwide, but in the Caribbean whales just used 21. The scientists examined the timing and frequency of 8719 coda sequences and solitary whale utterances and choruses and in-call response exchanges between whales when visualized with artificial intelligence. Previously unseen coda patterns emerged.
Speaker 1:
So it's interesting that they like took an audio and made it visual and then found stuff that they wouldn't find by just listening to it. That's pretty fascinating. And then here, if you want to go and read the article, there's like a whole segment here of what different sounds mean and like how they're trying to differentiate between all of this different stuff. Uh, I'm not going to read that, but if you're interested in it, they do talk about the types of sounds and the interpretation of that. But actually many of us have been waiting for advanced technology to allow us to do something like this for decades, said Brenda McCowan, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Veterinarian Medicine, in an email. And so, yeah, that's pretty interesting. We'll see what comes from that next. Maybe we'll eventually be able to speak to them. But uh, yeah, there is some controversy, of course, of how we even interpret the data. So that's kind of interesting. But the next one we'll move on to was a pretty, pretty out there one. This is very, very new. It's very Warp drive may be possible using real physics.
Speaker 1:
First of its kind, model hints, and this was published two days ago with IFL Science, and before I read it, I just want to mention that this is kind of interesting that Popular Mechanics also had an article on this and it was no bueno. It's not good. Popular Mechanics usually has good articles, but I don't know what happened with this one and I got to the bottom of it and I was just like what did I even read? I didn't get any information from this. I scrolled down to the comments and that's exactly what the comments were saying, repeating words in the very first sentence. So this is another one I hate. This article was allowed to be published, if one can even call it that. It's almost quite literally, the same sentence said over and over again. And yeah, that's just other people. It really is just the same sentence over and over again. And yeah, there's just other people. It really is just the same sentence over and over. So it's very strange that this is like such a groundbreaking type of thing and then Popular Mechanics would drop the ball on even talking about it.
Speaker 1:
Alright, I'm sure everybody's excited about the warp drive, so here we go with that. Making the jump to warp speed might not require us to leap beyond the limits of physics. A team of researchers has argued Previously. All models of achieving this ultra-fast propulsion have relied on whimsical energy sources that contradict the properties of matter. Yet the new study suggests it may be possible to build a warp drive that doesn't run on fictional fuel.
Speaker 1:
In the sci-fi realm, warp drives enable spacecraft to move at light speed by compressing space-time in front of the ship and expanding everything to the rear, creating a warp bubble. Most strongly associated with Star Trek, that technology has helped to squeeze countless intergalactic adventures into a standard episode running time and has inspired numerous physicists to try and come up with a blueprint for their own working model. Famously Mexican theoretical physicist, miguel Alcubierre devised the so-called Alcubierre Drive in 1994. The one problem with this model, however, is that it can only function using something called negative energy, which has never been observed in the real universe. To get around this slight inconvenience, the authors of the new study claim to have a mathematical proof that warp drives can in fact be built without the need for exotic fuels exotic fuels.
Speaker 1:
According to their calculations, the interplanetary transport system can feasibly be constructed using traditional and novel gravitational techniques to create a warp bubble that can transport objects at high speeds. Within the bounds of known physics, the solution involves combining a stable matter shell with a shift vector distribution that closely matches well-known warp drive solutions such as the Albuquerque metric, alcuberry metric. Sorry, summing up the significance of these findings in layman's terms, study author Dr Jared Fuchs explained in a statement that we've shown warp drives might not be relegated to science fiction. Unfortunately, the physicists say that warp drive probably wouldn't be able to reach light speed, but could come pretty close. In essence, the plan involves engineering warp drives to gravitate like ordinary matter, thus eliminating the need for the fictitious dark energy, although such a design would still require a considerable amount of energy. It demonstrates that the warp effects can be achieved without exotic forms of matter. These findings pave the way for future reductions in warp drive energy requirements. So that's bizarre.
Speaker 1:
And let's look at what is a warp drive. Here we have a warp drive that gives warping space and time. So it's warping space and time and isn't like the velocity that it's going kind of irrelevant? If it's warping time, if you're just, if you're just like moving the universe around you as you're going, then like how fast you're going is kind of irrelevant, wouldn't it be because you're traveling through time? I don't know about this stuff, but that would be my question for them.
Speaker 1:
Japanese satellite will beam solar power to earth in 2025. Japan's upcoming space-based solar power demonstration will beam power to Earth next year. Japan is on track to beam solar power from space to Earth next year, two years after a similar feat was achieved by US engineers. The development marks an important step towards a possible space-based solar power station that could help wean the world off of fossil fuels amid intensifying battles with climate change. And I'm not sure if any of you guys remember, but didn't we talk about um the dod, saying that they have the technology to send sunlight from space, from space-based solar power stations, in like 2001 or like the early 2000? Maybe it wasn't 2001, but it was the early 2000s. They already said that they could do this. So here we are again doing stuff that we've already had the technology to do forever.
Speaker 1:
But speaking at the International Conference of Energy from Space held here this week, kouachi Ejichi, an advisor at the Japanese Research Institute, japan Space Systems, outlined Japan's roadmap toward an orbital demonstration of miniature space-based solar power plant that will wirelessly transmit energy from low Earth orbit to Earth. It will be a small satellite about 180 kilograms or 400 pounds that will transmit 1 kilowatt of power from the altitude of 400 kilometers. 1 kilowatt is about the amount of power needed to run a household appliance such as a small dishwasher, for about an hour, depending on its size. Therefore, the demonstration is nowhere near the scale required for commercial use. The spacecraft will use a 22 square foot 2 square meter onboard photovoltaic panel to charge a battery. The accumulated energy will then be transformed into microwaves and beamed toward a receiving antenna on Earth. Because the spacecraft travels very fast, around 17,400 miles per hour or 28,000 kilometers per hour 28,000 kilometers per hour the antenna elements will have to be spread over a distance of about 25 miles, three miles apart, to allow enough energy to be transmitted. The transmission will only take a few minutes, ejiji said, but once the battery is empty, it will take several days to recharge. The mission of the project called Ohisama, japanese First Sun, is on track for launch in 2025. The researchers have already demonstrated wireless transmission of solar power on the ground from a stationary source and they plan to conduct the transmission from an aircraft in December. The aircraft will be fitted with identical photovoltaic panels as will be flown on the spacecraft and will beam down power over a distance of 3-4 miles, according to Ajitshi.
Speaker 1:
Space-based solar power generation, first described in 1968 by former Apollo engineer Peter Glaser, has been considered science fiction. Although theoretically feasible, the technology has been impractical and too costly, as it requires enormous structures to be assembled in orbit to produce the required power output. But according to experts speaking at the conference, that situation has changed as a result of recent technological advances and the urgency to decarbonize the world's power supply to thwart climate change. Unlike most renewable power generation technologies used on Earth, including solar power and wind energy, space-paced solar power could be available constantly, as it would not depend on the weather and the time of day. Currently, nuclear power or gas and coal fired fired power stations are used to cover demand when wind stops blowing or after sunset. Improvements in technology could help partially solve the problem in the future, but some pieces of the puzzle are still missing to secure a seamless, carbon neutral power supply by the middle of this century, as stipulated in international climate change agreements.
Speaker 1:
And it says that SpaceX giant rocket ship could allow a space-based solar power to become a reality and that last year, cal tech uh, california tech built a satellite and beamed solar power for the first time allegedly allegedly there's a big allegedly after that, because we already know the dod was all over this like two decades ago. It has been since, as well as the DOE, which is exactly what I'm out to read, many more space-based solar power demonstration projects are in the pipeline. The technology is studied by space and research agencies all over the world, including the European Space Agency, darpa and US Air Force. So it doesn't even mention DOE or DOD. Thank you.