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We’re getting closer and closer to finding a real Earth-like exoplanet. But finding one is only half the battle. To truly know if we’re looking at an Earth analog somewhere else in the galaxy, we have to directly image it too. That’s a job for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a planned space-based telescope whose primary job is to do precisely that. But even capturing a picture and a planet and getting spectral readings of its atmospheric chemistry still isn’t enough, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv by Kaz Gary of Ohio State and their co-authors. HWO will need to figure out how much a planet weighs first.

Fears that artificial intelligence could rise up to wipe out humanity are understandable given our steady diet of sci-fi stories depicting just that, but what is the real risk? Matthew Sparkes looks at what the experts say

AI predicted that a forgotten breast cancer drug could be repurposed to treat many respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses, and subsequent animal tests suggests it may be right

For those who want a little help composting, take a cue from James Woodford’s experience raising worms – both the small colony of wrigglers he keeps in a sensible bin in his city garden and the dumpster-sized worm farm he has that can turn even animal carcasses into nutrient-dense soil

Trust in MAHA leaders has justifiably collapsed, and the sycophants who previously glorified Dr. Jay Bhattacharya have mysteriously vanished, unwilling to even acknowledge what they helped unleash on us all.

The post Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Who Claims He “Would Have” Perfectly Controlled COVID In 2020, Can’t Even Fix A Few Broken Windows Today first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A new concept suggests SpaceX’s Starship could revolutionize a future mission to Uranus, one of the solar system’s most overlooked planets. By refueling in orbit and helping slow the spacecraft on arrival, it could cut travel time nearly in half. That’s a big deal for a mission that would otherwise take over a decade just to arrive. If it works, it could finally open the door to studying this strange, tilted world up close.

At 06:25 p.m. EDT (03:25 p.m. PDT) on April 1st, the Artemis II mission lifted off from the historic Launch Pad-39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission will send astronauts on a ten-day journey around the Moon and will be the first crewed mission to venture beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the Apollo Era.

A new breakthrough in wireless technology could dramatically boost internet speeds while cutting energy use—by switching from radio waves to light. Researchers have developed a tiny chip packed with dozens of miniature lasers that can transmit massive amounts of data simultaneously, reaching speeds over 360 gigabits per second in early tests.

A fossil bed in China containing animals up to 554 million years old suggests that we may have to reconsider the idea that life suddenly diversified during the Cambrian explosion

Recognising rhythmic patterns was thought to require a big brain, but a series of experiments has shown that buff-tailed bumblebees have this ability, too

About 10 billion years ago, the growth rate of supermassive black holes began to slow dramatically. To this day, the SMBH growth rate still appears to be low. There are three potential explanations for this, and researchers think they've figured out which explanation fits best.

This is a question I’ve entertained for a long time, probably because I’m preoccupied with death.  But I was curious about what would happen if astronauts, like the ones going around the Moon now, found themselves stranded in space with no way to get home, facing death from oxygen depletion or starvation. Or what would happen if the astronauts who were on the Moon years couldn’t start up the Lunar Module to get back to the Command Module and then back to Earth? Would they have been carrying something that would allow them to commit suicide quickly, avoiding a prolonged death?

I asked Jim Batterson, our resident NASA expert, and he didn’t know the answer.  I then turned to the AI bot Grok, which I got for free when X (“Twitter”)—for reasons unknown—gave me a free blue checkmark.

My question to Grok  is in bold below, and the short answer (indented) is that no, American astronauts don’t carry anything to do themselves in, though one Russian astronaut did.  Grok went though the data in 11 seconds, and spat out the following. Note that there are references (the bot gives you the links, which I haven’t included) to check the statements.

Do the astronauts carry cyanide capsules or anything they can use to commit suicide if they are stuck in space? Thought for 11s

No, astronauts do not carry cyanide capsules or any dedicated suicide pills as standard equipment.

iflscience.com

NASA has never issued suicide pills (sometimes called “L-pills” or cyanide capsules) to its astronauts, including during the Apollo lunar missions or on current ISS and Artemis programs. Astronaut Jim Lovell (Apollo 13 commander) explicitly debunked this long-standing rumor: “Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, ‘Did you have suicide pills on board?’ We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.”

iflscience.com

The idea appears to stem from spy-movie tropes, urban legends, or sci-fi (e.g., the film Contact), but it has been consistently denied by NASA and astronauts. Multiple sources, including direct statements from astronauts, confirm that no such pills have ever been part of U.S. spaceflight medical kits.

quora.com

Why the rumor persists, and why pills aren’t needed anywayIn a worst-case scenario of being stranded in space with no rescue possible (e.g., a failed re-entry or detached during a spacewalk), astronauts have pointed out that the vacuum of space itself provides a relatively quick way to end life if someone chose to—by simply opening a suit valve or venting the spacecraft’s atmosphere. This would cause unconsciousness in seconds and death shortly after, making a pill unnecessary.

theguardian.com

NASA’s focus is on prevention and survival: rigorous psychological screening, crew training, rescue protocols (e.g., multiple docked return vehicles on the ISS), and detailed medical kits. Those kits contain painkillers, anti-nausea drugs, antibiotics, etc., but nothing lethal like cyanide.

nasa.gov

If an astronaut were to experience a mental health crisis in space (e.g., becoming suicidal or psychotic), NASA has written procedures: crewmates are instructed to restrain the person with duct tape and bungee cords, monitor them, and administer sedatives like Haldol or Valium (orally or by injection if needed). The goal is stabilization, not euthanasia.

cbsnews.com

One historical exception (Soviet side) The only verified case involves Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first person to spacewalk, in 1965 on Voskhod 2). He stated that he was issued a suicide pill for that specific high-risk mission—in case he couldn’t re-enter the spacecraft and his crewmate had to leave him behind in orbit. His suit ballooned during the walk, and he barely made it back inside after partially depressurizing it. This was not standard practice for the Soviet program overall, and no evidence exists of it being routine for cosmonauts then or now.

iflscience.com

In short, modern astronauts (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc.) rely on engineering, training, and international rescue plans rather than personal suicide options. No agency equips crews with cyanide or equivalent for “stuck in space” scenarios.

In mid-February, Michael Shermer wrote a piece in Quillette called “The truth about free will,” the truth being that we have it, but in the compatibilist rather than the libertarian sense.  This article was a shortened version of a free-will chapter included in Shermer’s new book,  Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. 

I thought that Shermer’s article was confusing, largely because his own definition of free will seemed to smuggle in a bit of libertarianism, but also because the argument for free will seemed to say this: “We have free will because we feel like we have free will.”

Shermer then responded in the pages of Skeptic, the magazine he founded in 1992 and still edits; his response was called “Free will, determinism, and compatibilism: Shermer responds to Jerry Coyne.”  He once again argued for compatibilism, buttressing his argument with statistics showing that most philosophers accept compatibilism (59.1%), with minorities being libertarian free-willers (13.7%), determinists (12.2%, I’m in this camp though I’m not a philosopher), and those who are “other” (14.9%).  The gist of his argument seemed to be this:

I agree with Jerry and Dan that we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature. But I disagree with Jerry that this eliminates free will, or if you prefer “volition” or “choice” (again, this entire field is, to use Jerry’s term, “muddled” with confusion of terminology). My compatibilist work-around is “self-determinism,” in which while we live under the causal net of a determined universe, we are part of that causal net ourselves, helping to determine the future as it unfolds before us, and of which we are a part. My compatibilist position is based on the best understanding of physics today. Let me explain.

Physicists tell us that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy, means that time flows forward, and therefore no future scenario can ever perfectly match one from the past. As Heraclitus’ idiom informs us, “you cannot step into the same river twice,” because you are different and the river is different. What you did in the past influences what you choose to do next in future circumstances, which are always different from the past. So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen. Thus, our universe is not pre-determined in a block-universe way (in which past, present, and future exist simultaneously) but rather post-determined (after the fact we can look back to determine the causal connections), and we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world.

Free will, Shermer wrote, is somehow to be found in billions and billions of neurons, (to paraphrase Sagan):

Coyne is unhappy with my invoking of “emergence” and says I’m being rude to him and Sapolsky and Harris in accusing them of “physics envy,” but that’s what it is! Here, for example, is Sapolsky defending his belief that free will does not exist because single neurons don’t have it: “Individual neurons don’t become causeless causes that defy gravity and help generate free will just because they’re interacting with lots of other neurons.”

In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.

I found that confusing because I saw no freedom in simply saying that humans are part of the “causal net of a determined universe.” And I was confused by the claim that “while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen.” I didn’t understand that, and it seemed to smuggle some magic into the definition. And, as I’ll show below by quoting Sam Harris, I think that compatibilism misses the key feature of most people’s view of free will (yes, there are surveys): “We could have done other than what we did.”  If you say, “yes,” then you are a free willer, but have to specify what aspect of the universe enables us to have done otherwise. If you say, “No, never,” then you are either a determinist or a compatibilist. Determinism needs no further explication, but compatibilism demands that you confect a new definition of free will—one that insists that we have it despite physical determinism.

Now there are at least a half-dozen versions of compatibilism, each proposing a different definition of the “free will” we supposedly have, so compatibilists themeslves have incompatible views about free will! It’s my belief from reading Dennett and others that compatibilism is pursued by people who think that if we don’t think we have some sort of free will, society will fall apart. People will think that without free will, we lack moral responsibility, and apart from that, we’ll all become nihilists unwilling to even get out of bed. After all, what’s the point if everything’s determined?

I have answered both of these assertions before, saying that determinists like me are not nihilists, that society can function even realizing that determinism is true, because people still feel like they have free will, and that we can have “respnsibility” without needing to have “moral responsibility,” which assumes we could have behaved otherwise.

But I’ve written about all this before. Michael was kind enough to allow me to respond to his response in the pages of Skeptic, and you can read my 2000-word response by clicking the screenshot below, or reading the article archived here. (The title comes from an old novelty song, “Yes! We have no bananas,”)

I’ll give just a few quotes from my piece; it’s short enough that you can read it in a few minutes.

[Shermer’s] smuggled-in dualism becomes clear when Shermer claims that although the action of individual neurons may be determined, “billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises.” But how can one neuron be governed by the laws of physics but a group of interacting neurons not be governed by the laws of physics. If they are, then there is no freedom, no volition, no “willed” control of our behavior, and no ability to have done otherwise. Yet Shermer argues that when a group of neurons cooperates, some kind of “will” arises. This dilemma won’t be resolved until Shermer explains the relevant difference between the behavior of one neuron and of a group of neurons.

. . .As Shermer notes, 59 percent of surveyed philosophers are compatibilists while the rest are almost equally divided between libertarians, determinists, and those with no opinion. He deems philosophers the “most qualified people” to pronounce on the problem, but are philosophers more qualified than neuroscientists or physicists? As Sam Harris (a neuroscientist and a determinist) said:

[Compatibilism] ignores the very source of our belief in free will: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.

. . . Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings. [JAC: I love that line.]

Importantly, the “folk” conception of free will—the libertarian version—is what most people think they have. It is that version that permeates society, the legal system, and, of course, religion, and is therefore the most important version to discuss.

And my ending:

Finally, Shermer poses what he sees as an unassailable challenge to my determinism:

In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation [of the monetary sort] in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.

That is a red herring. Like all phenomena in human society, you won’t find monetary inflation in the laws of physics. Nor will you find academics, music, sports, or any other human endeavor. The question is not whether these phenomena are in the laws of physics, but whether they result from the laws of physicsas emergent phenomena wholly compatible with underlying naturalism. And Shermer himself said yes, they do: “we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature.”

The problem of free will is “insoluble” only insofar as Shermer, trying to retain an idea of self-control, and ignoring the massive body of data on affecting volition, has confected a new definition that simply redescribes human behavior. The important question is this: “Is there physical determinism of human behavior or not?” Both Shermer and I agree that there is. In the end, however, Shermer seems to argue that we have free will because we feel like it. One might as well say that there’s a God because we feel like there is one.

That’s it; you can read the argument and come to your own conclusions. For some reason I can’t stop arguing about free will. I guess my persistence is also determined. . .

Nelson Dellis credits techniques like the method of loci for his extraordinary memory. Now, brain scans have revealed the parts of his brain that this approach taps into, and how we can use it to improve our own recall

A galaxy spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, known as Hebe, that existed just 400 million years after the big bang appears to contain extremely pure and young stars

I have enough photos for about 1½ wildlife posts, the half-post being a collection of singletons.  I’m saving all these to fill in lacunae, but as you see there’s a need for more photos. There was a time when I didn’t have to beg for photos, but since people haven’t sent many in, yes, I’m on my knees. At any rate, if you have good photos, of the quality normally posted here, by all means send them in.

Thank you!

I have a love-hate relationship with TikTok, as I do social media in general. It is a great communication tool and allows scientists and science communicators to get their content out to a larger audience cheaply and easily. If you know how to use the internet and social media as a resource, you can find a video about almost any topic. I particularly love the “how to” videos. And yet these applications are also used (mostly used) to spread nonsense and misinformation, or at least inaccurate, misleading, or overly generalized information. The low bar of entry cuts both ways.

As a result I spend part of my time as a communicator with my finger in the dike of social media pseudoscience and science denial. For example, this individual feels his insights into the workings of the human brain need to be shared with the world. His musings are based entirely on a false premise, his apparent misunderstanding of what neuroscientists understand about brain function. He begins with the nicely vague statement, “scientists have discovered”, followed by a completely incorrect statement – that thoughts come to our brain from outside the brain.

Before I get into this old “brain as receiver” claim, I want to point out that this format is extremely common on TikTok in particular and social media in general. This is more worrying than any individual claim – the culture is to present some random nonsense in the format of “isn’t this crazy”, or with with a cynical tone implying something nefarious is going on. Such authors may or may not believe what they say, they may just be trying to amplify their engagement with a total disregard toward whether what they are saying is true or not. They may even be a full Poe – knowing that what they say is nonsense. Either way, they feel it is appropriate to spend the time to record and upload a video without spending the few minutes that would be needed to check to see if what they are saying is even true. The very platform they are using to spread their nonsense often has all the information they need to answer their alleged questions. The culture is profoundly incurious, intellectually vacuous, lacking all scholarship or quality control, and seems to value only engagement. Thrown into the mix are true believers, grifters, and those who display classic symptoms of some form of thought disorder. This is “infotainment” taken to its ultimate expression.

Back to the video at hand – the author begins with an unsourced vague claim, but one that is not uncommon in the “new age” subculture, that our brains are mostly just receivers for a vast intelligence that comes from somewhere outside the brain. He states this as if it is a scientific fact. He then goes on to muse about some new age nonsense regarding being on a higher or lower “frequency” and therefore attracting good thoughts or bad thoughts. Is there any plausibility or evidence for the notion that some of the information that comes to our brain originates somewhere outside the brain? By this I do not mean through the known senses, but that part or all of the “mind” is a non-physical phenomenon, and the brain is a conduit for the mind, interfacing it with the physical body.

This is one formulation of what is known as dualism, which I have written about here many times – that mind and brain are not entirely one phenomenon, but two. My position, which tracks with the consensus opinion of neuroscientists, is that the mind is what the brain does. There is only the brain. The mind is not software running on the brain – it is the brain, simply describing our perception of what the brain is doing. That sci-fi trope of a “consciousness” being transferred from one body to another, or into an object, is simply impossible. Just as you cannot “upload” yourself into a computer. At best you can make a copy that replicates some of your mental functions, but it is in no meaningful way you. You are your brain.

How do we know this is true? This is, far and away, the best inference from all available data. While the brain is incredibly complex and we are still learning lots of the details, it is now entirely clear that the brain is a living information processing machine. Neurons connect to each other forming circuits and networks the can store and process information. These networks correspond to specific functions, and those functions can be altered or destroyed by changes to the corresponding physical circuits in the brain. We have known this for over a century – if you have a stroke that damages part of the brain, you lose that part of your functionality. And this does not only relate to physical things like movement, but also to thought, such as the ability to understand language, to reason spatially or mathematically, to process visual information, etc. This can even have bizarre manifestations, like your ability to feel as if you own or control parts of your body. As our technology has improved we have been able to map the circuits in the brain to finer and finer detail – and throughout the entire process nothing has emerged to challenge this core understanding of neuroscience. The mind is the brain.

There are also many ways in which there is a lack of findings to support any alternative interpretation. For example – no part of the brain is an actual receiver for any kind of external signals, of any frequency. We perceive the world through our sensory organs, and there is no “extrasensory” perception. There is no functionality without a corresponding neurological cause. There does not appear to be any limit to our ability to alter mental function by altering brain function. There is no evidence for mental function outside of brain function. In short, when we look at the brain we find wetware, a living computer, not a receiver of any sort.

All of this information, often patiently explained by experts, is freely available on the internet. All someone has to do is, before they post a video of their incredible opinions, ask a very simple question – is what I am about to say actually true?

The post Brain As Receiver Is Still Wrong first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Astronomers have long argued that dark matter is the invisible scaffolding that holds galaxies together. Without its immense gravitational pull, the rotational spins of galaxies would force them to simply fly apart. But now, scientists have found a string of galaxies that seem to be missing their dark matter entirely. The latest in this string, known as NGC 1052-DF9, is described in a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Michael Keim, Pieter van Dokkum and their team from Yale. It lends credence to a radical theory of galaxy formation known as the “Bullet Dwarf” collision scenario, which has been a controversial idea for the last decade.

If you are unlucky enough to have been bitten by a snake, you are unlikely to want to repeat the experience. Not so for Tim Friede, who intentionally exposes himself to deadly bites in the hope of developing a treatment for the 5 million people who are bitten each year

Framing misinformation as coming from "a senior doctor" overrides skepticism

The post The Doctor’s Voice: Why AI Health Chatbots Believe Medical Lies first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.