Is the Universe Bigger Than It Ought to Be? Is our universe infinite or closed? Because the visible Universe is expanding, the most distant visible things are much further away than its estimated 14-billion year age. In fact, the photons in the cosmic microwave background have traveled a cool 45 billion light years to get here. That makes the visible universe some 90 billion light years across. The real universe, however, is much bigger. We now know this thanks to statistical analysis by Mihran Vardanyan at the University of Oxford and colleagues. The key to measuring the actual size of the universe is to measure its curvature. Astronomers know that waves in the early universe became frozen in the cosmic microwave background. The problem is that when scientists examine the various data from the different models they get different answers to the question of its curvature and size.
The Vardanyan model says that the curvature of the Universe is tightly constrained around 0. The Daily Galaxy via MIT Technology Review. EcoAlert: NASA Sees Fewer Big Asteroids Endangering Earth (However...) A NASA orbiter has observed that there are only about 20,500 near-Earth asteroids larger than 100 meters, according data from thw Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, which surveyed the skies with an infrared camera. WISE only spotted a few hundred nearby asteroids, but that was enough to project how many are out there. However, astronomers estimate that they have identified only a quarter of near-Earth asteroids 100 meters and up. meanwhile, observations from the WISE mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping open the case on one of Earth's greatest mysteries.
Around 142.5 million years ago Gosses Bluff crater shown above was formed by an object thought to be around 600 meters in diameter. The crater we see today is actually a lot smaller than the original depression due to erosion. Visible light reflects off an asteroid. The Daily Galaxy via JPL/NASA. Beyond Stephen Hawking: "Supermassive Black Holes Could Have Regions Where Life and Planets Exist" The inner workings of supermassive black holes may be less hostile than we realize, possibly with stable regions where life and even planets could exist, according to Russian cosmologist Vyacheslav Dokuchaev at Moscow's Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Charged and rotating black holes have a complex internal structure that allow photons and particles of much greater magnitude to safely orbit the central singularity. Gravitational tides within the central singularity are so powerful that even light gets sucked Dokuchaev has studied the dynamics of surrounding stable periodic planetary orbits, that neither neither terminate at the central singularity nor exit the black hole, creating space for life in the spinning black hearts of the active galactic nuclei.
"We hypothesize that the advanced civilizations may live safely inside the supermassive black holes in the galactic nuclei being invisible from the outside," writes Dokuchaev in his study. "Crunching the Universe" --Physicists One Step Closer to Quantum Computing. "Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.
" David Deutsch- Quantum computing pioneer -Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. Rice University physicists have created a tiny "electron superhighway" that could one day be useful for building a quantum computer, a new type of computer that will use quantum particles in place of the digital transistors found in today's microchips. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Rice physicists Rui-Rui Du and Ivan Knez describe a new method for making a tiny device called a "quantum spin Hall topological insulator.
" The device, which acts as an electron superhighway, is one of the building blocks needed to create quantum particles that store and manipulate data. Today's computers use binary bits of data that are either ones or zeros. What Existed Before the Big Bang? A "Third Realm"? --Alien Technology Could Exist That's Beyond Matter. Much of the current thinking about advanced extraterrestrial life that may be a million to a billion years more advanced that the human species, depicts life forms that have evolved into intelligent AI-powered machines.
Even Stephen Hawking has recently asked "Why isn't the Milky Way crawling with intelligent machines. " SETI chief astronomer, Seth Shostak says: "If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News. "But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century. So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence. " But what if advanced super-intelligent life is no longer matter based? What id they exist at a higher level concept than matter. Are matter and information all there is? "The Human Brain Will Be Computer Simulated by 2020" "The key lies in decoding and simulating the cerebral cortex — the seat of cognition.
The human cortex has about 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. " Reverse-engineering the human brain so we can simulate it using computers may be a reality by 2030. It would be the first step toward creating super computers that are more powerful than the human brain by being networked into a cloud computing architecture to amplify their processing capabilities powered by intelligent algorithms, says Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Singularity is Near. “The singular criticism of the singularity is that brain is too complicated, too magical and there’s something about its properties we can’t emulate,” Kurzweil told attendees at the Singularity Summit over the weekend reported wired.com. “But the exponential growth in technology is being applied to reverse-engineer the brain, arguably the most important project in history.”