Transhumanismus

It is hard to overstate the impact of this American election; it will change everything, everywhere. From the functioning of democracy within the United States to its influence and perception abroad, the effects will be profound. People in Utah, Ukraine, Uruguay, and even Uganda will feel its repercussions. There is no place on the planet […]

The European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for initial work on a mission to visit an asteroid called Apophis. If approved at a key meeting next year, the robotic spacecraft, known as the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses), will rendezvous with the asteroid in February 2029.

Apophis is 340 meters wide, about the same as the height of the Empire State Building. If it were to hit Earth, it would cause wholesale destruction hundreds of miles from its impact site. The energy released would equal that from tens or hundreds of nuclear weapons, depending on the yield of the device.

Luckily, Apophis won’t hit Earth in 2029. Instead, it will pass by Earth safely at a distance of 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers), about one-twelfth the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Nevertheless, this is a very close pass by such a big object, and Apophis will be visible with the naked eye.

NASA and the European Space Agency have seized this rare opportunity to send separate robotic spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis and learn more about it. Their missions could help inform efforts to deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth, should we need to in the future.

The Threat From Asteroids

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit Earth. The impact of this asteroid brought about a global extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Earth is in constant danger of being hit by asteroids, leftover debris from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, asteroids come in many shapes and sizes. Most are small, only 10 meters across, but the largest are hundreds of kilometers across, larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

Artist’s impression of Apophis. Image Credit: NASA

The asteroid belt contains one to two million asteroids larger than a kilometer across and millions of smaller bodies. These space rocks feel each other’s gravitational pull, as well as the gravitational tug of Jupiter on one side and the inner planets on the other.

Because of this gravitational tug-of-war, every once in a while an asteroid is thrown out of its orbit and hurtles towards the inner solar system. There are 35,000 such “near-Earth objects” (NEOs). Of these, 2,300 “potentially hazardous objects” (PHOs) have orbits that intersect Earth’s and are large enough that they pose a real threat to our survival.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

During the 20th century, astronomers set up several surveys, such as Atlas, in order to detect and study hazardous asteroids. But detection is not enough; we have to find a way to defend Earth against an incoming asteroid.

Blowing up an asteroid, as depicted in the movie Armageddon, is no use. The asteroid would be broken into smaller fragments, which would keep moving in much the same direction. Instead of being hit by one large asteroid, Earth would be hit by a swarm of smaller objects.

The preferred solution is to deflect the incoming asteroid away from Earth so that it passes by harmlessly. To do so, we would need to apply an external force to the asteroid to nudge it away. A popular idea is to fire a projectile at the asteroid. NASA did this in 2022, when a spacecraft called DART collided with an asteroid. Before we do this out of necessity, we have to understand how different types of asteroids would react to such an impact.

Apophis, Ramses, and Osiris-Apex

Apophis was discovered in 2004. The asteroid passed by Earth on December 21, 2004 at a distance of 14 million kilometers. It returned in 2021 and will swing by Earth again in 2029, 2036, and 2068.

Until recently, there was a small chance that Apophis could collide with Earth in 2068. However, during Apophis’ approach in 2021, astronomers used radar observations to refine their knowledge of the asteroid’s orbit. These showed that Apophis would not hit our planet for the next 100 years.

The Ramses mission will rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, two months before its closest approach to Earth on Friday, April 13. It will then accompany the asteroid as it approaches Earth. The goal is to learn how Apophis’s orbit, rotation, and shape will change as it passes so close to Earth’s gravitational field.

In 2016, NASA launched the “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer” (Osiris-Rex) mission to study the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. It intercepted Bennu in 2020 to collect samples of rock and soil from its surface and dispatched the rocks in a capsule, which arrived on Earth in 2023.

The spacecraft is still out there, so NASA renamed it the “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Apophis Explorer” (Osiris-Apex) and assigned it to study Apophis. Osiris-Apex will reach the asteroid just after its 2029 close encounter. It will then fly low over Apophis’s surface and fire its engines, disturbing the rocks and dust that cover the asteroid to reveal the layer underneath.

A close flyby of an asteroid as large as Apophis happens only once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Apophis’s arrival in 2029 presents a rare opportunity to study such an asteroid up close, and seeing how it is affected by Earth’s gravitational pull. The information gleaned will shape the way we choose to protect Earth in the future from a real killer asteroid.

Ancient Egyptian Mythology

When Ramses and Osiris-Apex meet up with Apophis in 2029 they will inadvertently reenact a core component of ancient Egyptian cosmology. To the ancient Egyptians, the sun was personified by several powerful gods, chief among them Re. The sun’s setting in the evening was interpreted as Re dying and entering the netherworld.

During his nighttime journey through the netherworld, Re was menaced by the great snake Apophis, who embodied the powers of darkness and dissolution. Only after Apophis had been defeated could Re be revitalized by Osiris, the king of the netherworld. Re could then once again be reborn in the east, rising in the sky once more.

Tomb murals, coffins, and funerary papyri depict Apophis as a large, coiled snake threatening Re as he sails in his solar barque (sailing ship). But Apophis is always defeated, his body pierced by a spear or riven by knives.

Though the asteroid Apophis poses no danger in the near future, Ramses (named after the pharaohs of the same name, which meant “born of Re”) and Osiris-Apex will study it so that one day we will know how to defeat it—or any of its distant brethren.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots has been all play and no work. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas is famous for backflips, parkour, and dance mobs. These require extremely impressive robotic control, but they’re also mostly fun research demos.

Now, six months after the legendary robotics lab unveiled an all-new electric Atlas, they’re showing off more of what it can do. A recent video shows Atlas picking auto parts from one set of shelves and moving them over to another, a job currently handled by factory workers.

Apart from being electric, the new Atlas has a unique way of moving. Its head, upper body, pelvis, and legs swivel independently. So, its head might rotate to face the opposite direction of its legs and torso, Exorcist-style, before the rest of its body twists around to catch up.

The new demo highlights another core change for Atlas. Whereas, in the past, Boston Dynamics meticulously programmed the robot’s most impressive maneuvers, the latest video, by contrast, shows a fully autonomous Atlas at work.

“There are no prescribed or teleoperated movements; all motions are generated autonomously online,” according to a description accompanying the video.

Why release this video now? One, humanoid robots are having something of a moment. And two, ditto for artificial intelligence in robotics. Boston Dynamics led the pack for years, but it didn’t rush Atlas into production for commercial use. Neither has it added significant amounts of AI to the equation. Now, it appears to be interested in both.

Last month, the lab, which is owned by Hyundai, announced a partnership with Toyota Research Institute (TRI) to add artificial intelligence, TRI’s specialty, to Atlas. Alongside pure research, the partnership hopes to make Atlas into a general-purpose humanoid.

It’s an intriguing development. In terms of pure robotics, Atlas is world-class. TRI, meanwhile, is working to develop large behavior models, which are like large language models for robotic movement and manipulation. The idea is that with enough real-world data, AI models like this might develop into a kind robotic brain that doesn’t need to be explicitly programmed for every scenario it might encounter.

Google DeepMind has also been pursuing a similar approach with a vision-language-action model called RT-X and united 33 research labs in an effort to assemble a vast new AI training dataset for robotics. And just last week, a TRI-funded MIT project showed off a new transformer algorithm like the one behind ChatGPT, only designed for robotics.

“Our dream is to have a universal robot brain that you could download and use for your robot without any training at all,” CMU associate professor David Held told TechCrunch. “While we are just in the early stages, we are going to keep pushing hard and hope scaling leads to a breakthrough in robotic policies, like it did with large language models.”

Boston Dynamics isn’t alone in its efforts. If anything, it’s late to the party. A host of companies, many born in the last few years, share the goal of general-purpose humanoids. These include Agility Robotics, Tesla, Figure, and 1X, among others.

In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Boston Dynamics’ Scott Kuindersma said this may be “one of the most exciting points” in the field’s history. At the same time, he acknowledged there’s a lot of hype out there—and a lot of work still to do. Challenges include collecting enough of the right kind of data and dialing in how best to train robotics algorithms.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be more Boston Dynamics videos out soon. “I want people to be excited about watching for our results, and I want people to trust our results when they see them,” TRI’s Russ Tedrake said in the same interview.

AI-Atlas is just getting started.

Image Credit: Boston Dynamics

SYNESTHETES

Tired: Listening to music.
Wired: Feeling the music.

A mind-bending new suit straps onto your torso, ankles and wrists, then uses actuators to translate audio into vivid vibration. The result: a new way for everyone to experience music, according to its creators. That’s especially exciting for people who have trouble hearing.

THE FEELIES

The Music: Not Impossible suit was created by design firm Not Impossible Labs and electronics manufacturing company Avnet. The suit can create sensations to go with pre-recorded music, or a “Vibrotactile DJ” can adjust the sensations in real time during a live music event.”

Billboard writer Andy Hermann tried the suit out, and it sounds like a trip.

“Sure enough, a pulse timed to a kickdrum throbs into my ankles and up through my legs,” he wrote. “Gradually, [the DJ] brings in other elements: the tap of a woodblock in my wrists, a bass line massaging my lower back, a harp tickling a melody across my chest.”

MORE ACCESSIBLE

To show the suit off, Not Impossible and Avnet organized a performance this past weekend by the band Greta Van Fleet at the Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas. The company allowed attendees to don the suits. Mandy Harvey, a deaf musician who stole the show on America’s Got Talent last year, talked about what the performance meant to her in a video Avnet posted to Facebook.

“It was an unbelievable experience to have an entire audience group who are all experiencing the same thing at the same time,” she said. “For being a deaf person, showing up at a concert, that never happens. You’re always excluded.”

READ MORE: Not Impossible Labs, Zappos Hope to Make Concerts More Accessible for the Deaf — and Cooler for Everyone [Billboard]

More on accessible design: New Tech Allows Deaf People To Sense Sounds

The post Make Music A Full Body Experience With A “Vibro-Tactile” Suit appeared first on Futurism.

IN THE FEELS

Today’s prosthetics can give people with missing limbs the ability to do almost anything — run marathons, climb mountains, you name it. But when it comes to letting those people feel what they could with a natural limb, the devices, however mechanically sophisticated, invariably fall short.

Now researchers have created a “synthetic skin” with a sense of touch that not only matches the sensitivity of natural skin, but in some cases even exceeds it. Now the only challenge is getting that information back into the wearer’s nervous system.

UNDER PRESSURE

When something presses against your skin, your nerves receive and transmit that pressure to the brain in the form of electrical signals.

To mimic that biological process, the researchers suspended a flexible polymer, dusted with magnetic particles, over a magnetic sensor. The effect is like a drum: Applying even the tiniest amount of pressure to the membrane causes the magnetic particles to move closer to the sensors, and they transmit this movement electronically.

The research, which could open the door to super-sensitive prosthetics, was published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics.

SPIDEY SENSE TINGLING

Tests shows that the skin can sense extremely subtle pressure, such as a blowing breeze, dripping water, or crawling ants. In some cases, the synthetic skin responded to pressures so gentle that natural human skin wouldn’t be able to detect them.

While the sensing ability of this synthetic skin is remarkable, the team’s research doesn’t address how to transmit the signals to the human brain. Other scientists are working on that, though, so eventually this synthetic skin could give prosthetic wearers the ability to feel forces even their biological-limbed friends can’t detect.

READ MORE: A Skin-Inspired Tactile Sensor for Smart Prosthetics [Science Robotics]

More on synthetic skin: Electronic Skin Lets Amputees Feel Pain Through Their Prosthetics

The post “Synthetic Skin” Could Give Prosthesis Users a Superhuman Sense of Touch appeared first on Futurism.

BRAIN BOOST

There’s a gadget that some say can help alleviate depression and enhance creativity. All you have to do is place a pair of electrodes on your scalp and the device will deliver electrical current to your brain. It’s readily available on Amazon or you can even make your own.

But in a new paper published this week in the Creativity Research Journal, psychologists at Georgetown University warned that the practice is spreading before we have a good understanding of its health effects, especially since consumers are already buying and building unregulated devices to shock them. They also cautioned that the technique, which scientists call transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), could have adverse effects on the brains of young people.

“There are multiple potential concerns with DIY-ers self-administering electric current to their brains, but this use of tES may be inevitable,” said co-author Adam Green in a press release. “And, certainly, anytime there is risk of harm with a technology, the scariest risks are those associated with kids and the developing brain”

SHOCK JOCK

Yes, there’s evidence that tES can help patients with depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, and other serious conditions, the Georgetown researchers acknowledge.

But that’s only when it’s administered by a trained health care provider. When administering tES at home, people might ignore safety directions, they wrote, or their home-brewed devices could deliver unsafe amounts of current. And because it’s not yet clear what effects of tES might be on the still-developing brains of young people, the psychologists advise teachers and parents to resist the temptation to use the devices to encourage creativity among children.

The takeaway: tES is likely here to stay, and it may provide real benefits. But for everyone’s sake, consumer-oriented tES devices should be regulated to protect users.

READ MORE: Use of electrical brain stimulation to foster creativity has sweeping implications [Eurekalert]

More on transcranial electrical stimulation: DARPA’s New Brain Device Increases Learning Speed by 40%

The post People Are Zapping Their Brains to Boost Creativity. Experts Have Concerns. appeared first on Futurism.

MIND CONTROL

The military is making it easier than ever for soldiers to distance themselves from the consequences of war. When drone warfare emerged, pilots could, for the first time, sit in an office in the U.S. and drop bombs in the Middle East.

Now, one pilot can do it all, just using their mind — no hands required.

Earlier this month, DARPA, the military’s research division, unveiled a project that it had been working on since 2015: technology that grants one person the ability to pilot multiple planes and drones with their mind.

“As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control … not just one aircraft but three simultaneous types of aircraft,” Justin Sanchez, director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, said, according to Defense One.

THE SINGULARITY

Sanchez may have unveiled this research effort at a “Trajectory of Neurotechnology” session at DARPA’s 60th anniversary event, but his team has been making steady progress for years. Back in 2016, a volunteer equipped with a brain-computer interface (BCI) was able to pilot an aircraft in a flight simulator while keeping two other planes in formation — all using just his thoughts, a spokesperson from DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office told Futurism.

In 2017, Copeland was able to steer a plane through another simulation, this time receiving haptic feedback — if the plane needed to be steered in a certain direction, Copeland’s neural implant would create a tingling sensation in his hands.

NOT QUITE MAGNETO

There’s a catch. The DARPA spokesperson told Futurism that because this BCI makes use of electrodes implanted in and on the brain’s sensory and motor cortices, experimentation has been limited to volunteers with varying degrees of paralysis. That is: the people steering these simulated planes already had brain electrodes, or at least already had reason to undergo surgery.

To try and figure out how to make this technology more accessible and not require surgical placement of a metal probe into people’s brains, DARPA recently launched the NExt-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. The plan is to make a device with similar capabilities, but it’ll look more like an EEG cap that the pilot can take off once a mission is done.

“The envisioned N3 system would be a tool that the user could wield for the duration of a task or mission, then put aside,” said Al Emondi, head of N3, according to the spokesperson. “I don’t like comparisons to a joystick or keyboard because they don’t reflect the full potential of N3 technology, but they’re useful for conveying the basic notion of an interface with computers.”

READ MORE: It’s Now Possible To Telepathically Communicate with a Drone Swarm [Defense One]

More on DARPA research: DARPA Is Funding Research Into AI That Can Explain What It’s “Thinking”

The post Military Pilots Can Control Three Jets at Once via a Neural Implant appeared first on Futurism.

ONE IN A MILLION TEN

Today, about 10 people on Earth have bladders they weren’t born with. No, they didn’t receive bladder transplants — doctors grew these folks new bladders using the recipients’ own cells.

On Tuesday, the BBC published a report on the still-nascent procedure of transplanting lab-grown bladders. In it, the publication talks to Luke Massella, who underwent the procedure more than a decade ago. Massella was born with spina bifida, which carries with it a risk of damage to the bladder and urinary tract. Now, he lives a normal life, he told the BBC.

“I was kind of facing the possibility I might have to do dialysis [blood purification via machine] for the rest of my life,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to play sports, and have the normal kid life with my brother.”

All that changed after Anthony Atala, a surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, decided he was going to grow a new bladder for Massella.

ONE NEW BLADDER, COMING UP!

To do that, Atala first removed a small piece of Massella’s own bladder. He then removed cells from this portion of bladder and multiplied them in a petri dish. Once he had enough cells, he coated a scaffold with the cells and placed the whole thing in a temperature controlled, high oxygen environment. After a few weeks, the lab-created bladder was ready for transplantation into Massella.

“So it was pretty much like getting a bladder transplant, but from my own cells, so you don’t have to deal with rejection,” said Massella.

The number of people with lab-grown bladders might still be low enough to count on your fingers, but researchers are making huge advances in growing everything from organs to skin in the lab. Eventually, we might reach a point when we can replace any body part we need to with a perfect biological match that we built ourselves.

READ MORE: “A New Bladder Made From My Cells Gave Me My Life Back” [BBC]

More on growing organs: The FDA Wants to Expedite Approval of Regenerative Organ Therapies

The post Lab-Grown Bladders Can Save People From a Lifetime of Dialysis appeared first on Futurism.