What It Would Take for AI to Become Conscious
The great AI consciousness conundrum--Philosophers, cognitive scientists, and engineers are grappling with what it would take for AI to become conscious.“Consciousness poses a unique challenge in our attempts to study it, because it’s hard to define.”--Liad Mudrik, neuroscientist, Tel Aviv University
The Pioneer Anomaly: What Happened To Old NASA Probes At 20 Astronomical Units?--When the probes reached 20 astronomical units, a mystery force began accelerating them toward the Sun, reports IFL Science.
“Are We Alone?”: From Roswell to Oumuamua, Garrett Graff Traces the Long Hunt for Alien Life—In a conversation with Vanity Fair, Graff talks about his new book, UFO, which goes deep on everything from eerie desert encounters to secret Pentagon programs. “There is a lot of reason to doubt that the US government is capable of covering up meaningful knowledge of extraterrestrial civilizations,” he says.
The Big Question: Are we alone in the universe?--Scientists are training machine-learning models and designing instruments to hunt for life on other worlds.“I think within our lifetime we will be able to do it,” says Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “We will be able to know if there is life on other planets.”
SETI Institute gets $200 million to seek out evidence of alien life, reports Conor Feehly for Space.com. New funding will allow the SETI Institute to consolidate and expand its search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The Government’s Search for Aliens and Why They Probably Exist, argues Time--Repeated signals from the center of the Milky Way could be aliens saying hello, new study claims, reports Space.com--"A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to find out by listening for radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Because these pulses stand out against the background radio noise of space, they're an effective way of communicating across long distances.
Is the multiverse unscientific nonsense?--It's all mere speculation. "There’s a pop-science version of the many-worlds interpretation in which each time someone carries out a measurement, the universe splits neatly into a countable number of new universes – say, two, or three, or ten. Newcomers to Everettian quantum theory, I beseech you: read the fine print."
Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit--Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation, reports Charlie Wood for Quanta.com. "The cosmos is full of puzzling objects such as starless worlds that come in pairs. Did these worlds form like planets? Or are they more like tiny failed stars? Astronomers are not sure."
Why NASA is turning to lasers for next-gen space communications--The first tests of optical communications far from Earth will take place aboard the asteroid-bound Psyche spacecraft, reports Knowable.com.
Curated by The Galaxy Report editorial staff