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science

Sophia, the First Robot Citizen

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Sophia

In a video that’s as unsettling as it is awe-inspiring, Sophia — the world’s first robot citizen — breaks down everything from gender to ethical robot design. Sophia spoke last month at a festival of the future called Brain Bar in Budapest, Hungary. Since Sophia was activated in April 2015, she has appeared publicly to speak about women’s rights issues, her own citizenship and other topics. The android made big news in October 2017, when she was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia at the tech summit Future Investment Initiative (FII). And more recently, Sophia spoke at Brain Bar, which describes … Read more

FOR WRITERS: Designer Babies

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child butterfly wings - pixabay

FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Aidee Ladnier: We’ve all heard the scare tactics of politicians warning of the dangers of designer babies, but genetically modified humans are literally due to be born in the next decade. Medical science has made our lives longer and healthier. But what if scientists modify those things that make us fundamentally who we are? Why is it okay to make sure a child is not born with a genetic disease that will kill them prematurely (like cystic fibrosis) but not okay to give an child a higher IQ which would give it … Read more

SPACE: Are Black Holes Actually Colliding Wormholes?

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black hole - pixabay

When two wormholes collide, they could produce ripples in space-time that ricochet off themselves. Future instruments could detect these gravitational “echoes,” providing evidence that these hypothetical tunnels through space-time actually exist, a new paper suggests. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has already detected space-time ripples, called gravitational waves, emanating from merging black holes — discoveries that led to the Nobel Prize in 2017. But while LIGO’s detection was just one of many observations supporting the existence of black holes, these exotic objects still pose theoretical problems. For instance, they seem to be inconsistent with the laws of quantum mechanics. … Read more

SCIENCE: Did Most Men Die Off 7,000 Years Ago?

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warrior - pixabay

Modern men’s genes suggest that something peculiar happened 5,000 to 7,000 years ago: Most of the male population across Asia, Europe and Africa seems to have died off, leaving behind just one man for every 17 women. This so-called population “bottleneck” was first proposed in 2015, and since then, researchers have been trying to figure out what could’ve caused it. One hypothesis held that the drop-off in the male population occurred due to ecological or climatic factors that mainly affected male offspring, while another idea suggested that the die-off happened because some males had more power in society, and thus … Read more

SCIENCE: There’s a Brain in Your Butt

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colon - pixabay

You’re reading these words because you have a brain in your head. But did you know you also have a brain in your butt? OK, not a literal brain — more of an autonomous matrix of millions of neurons that can, somehow, control intestinal muscle movements without any help from your central nervous system. And these neurons don’t actually live in your butt, but they do live in your colon, or large intestine — that tube-like organ that connects the small intestine to the rectum and shepherds what remains of the food you ate through the final leg of the … Read more

SPACE: The Science of Reproducing on Mars

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Mars - pixabay

In 1972, citizen scientist Sir Elton John hypothesized that Mars “ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.” While John’s remarks were never published in a peer-reviewed journal (though they did peak at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart), he’s not wrong about the Red Planet’s inhospitality. With its freezing climate, thin atmosphere and weak gravity, Mars will be a hard place to raise the children necessary to sustain a permanent colony there. And according to a new paper published in the June issue of the journal Futures, conceiving kids on Mars will be even harder. Thinking about … Read more

SCIENCE: Don’t Be Afraid of the Frankenfowl

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Frankenfowl

Scientists recently combined human stem cells with chicken embryos, but that doesn’t mean the researchers are breeding flocks of “frankenfowl.” Rather, the scientists are looking closely at how those embryonic cells organize themselves, to better understand how embryos develop and how cells build specialized body structures. Experiments that graft cells onto a growing embryo date to nearly 100 years ago, and in 1924, such experiments in amphibians led scientists to discover “the organizer,” a region of embryonic cells that manipulates the development of other cells. But an organizer in primate embryonic cells (humans included) has been elusive — until now. … Read more

SCIENCE: Sorry, There Are No Space Octopi On Earth. Probably.

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space octopus - pixabay

Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. I want to believe the conclusions of a new paper that says octopuses are actually space aliens whose frozen eggs first came to Earth aboard an icy meteor. I want to believe that humans, too, are aliens — the final descendants of an extraterrestrial virus that crashed to Earth 540 million years ago and sent evolution spiraling into wild new directions. I want to believe that the universe is one giant biosphere, tossing the same building blocks of life from planet to planet in a never-ending game of cosmic hot potato. I want … Read more

SPACE: Don’t Snort the Moon Dust

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Moon Dust - NASA

In space, they say, no one can hear you sneeze. But Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt was doing a lot of that inside the Challenger command module when he visited the moon in 1972. One day, after a lunar walk, Schmitt accidentally breathed in some of the abundant moon dust that he and his commander had tracked back in to the Challenger living quarters. For a full day, Schmitt suffered from what he described as “lunar hay fever.” His eyes watered, his throat throbbed, and he broke into a sneezing fit. No, Schmitt wasn’t allergic to the moon. NASA scientists … Read more

SCIENCE: Aliens in the Multiverse?

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multiverse - pixabay

Should the search for alien life in our universe come up empty-handed, it might be worth checking in on a neighboring universe instead. According to a new pair of studies in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, there’s a decent chance that life-fostering planets could exist in a parallel universe — even if that universe were being torn apart by dark energy. The idea that our universe is just one of many, perhaps infinite, other universes is known as the multiverse theory. Scientists have previously thought that such parallel universes, if they exist, would have to meet … Read more