cosmic seastar

Many aspects make life on our planet possible, but would Earth still be a paradise if it hadn’t been for the collision that created our Moon? Artist's depiction of the Mars-sized planet Theia colliding with the young Earth. The collision is thought to have created the Moon; Source: Wikipedia The Earth is the biggest of the terrestrial planets in our Solar System, and yet it’s fairly small. A look at the terrestrial exoplanets scientists have discovered so far reveals that a certain type of planet exists that we don’t have in the Solar System. Enter Super-Earths.  Super-Earths are terrestrial planets intermediate in size between Earth and the next biggest planet in the Solar System, Neptune —right at the verge where planets go from rocky to gaseous. Some Super-Earths that we know of can be twice as big or even bigger than our own Earth.  About 30% of the roughly 5000 known exoplanets are Super-Earths. So why don’t we have one at home? A look at our own planet and its moon ...

The new AI Safety Clock launched by IMD to assess AGI safety shows that we’re 29 minutes to midnight. What does this mean for us? The AI Safety Clock measures the risk of an uncontrolled AGI; Source: IMD Remember the Doomsday Clock? Yeah, researchers at IMD have now developed an AI Safety Clock, set to 29 minutes before midnight; 29 minutes to the point where Uncontrolled Artificial General Intelligence (UAGI) could pose a significant threat to humanity .  But what does all this even mean?  Generative AI already significantly impacts our everyday lives—from large-language models (LLMs) to social media algorithms to robots being developed to relieve the human workforce in critical tasks. So far, AI is manageable. But AI is also becoming more powerful by the day.  Governments and AI developers across the globe are now preparing for a future of AI in the form of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). An AGI differs from the GenAI we ...

As Europa Clipper moves farther away from Earth on its way to the Jupiter moon Europa, let’s take a look at some of the NASA flagship mission’s ways it’ll change our understanding of life forever.  Falcon Heavy taking off from Kennedy Space Center with Europa Clipper on board; Source: Spaceflight Now Jupiter has 95 known moons, with the four Galilean moons being some of the most interesting worlds of the Solar System. But scientists are particularly interested in Europa, a moon slightly smaller than the Earth’s Moon.  What makes Europa so interesting isn’t its surface, but what lies below, as scientists believe that it harbors a global subsurface ocean. And what Earth has taught us best is that where there’s water, there’s life.  This brings us to the possibility that life exists in the oceans of Europa. Naturally, scientists want to take a closer look to establish whether or not Europa could be habitable—and answering this question will forever alter our understanding...