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Submission + - Did the Galileo Project just find the remains of an interstellar craft? (hotair.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Given all of the other strange news making the rounds this month about space travel, UFOs, and unusual objects, this seems like a rather timely story. Regular readers may already be familiar with Harvard Physicist Avi Loeb. A few years ago, astronomers detected an object hurtling through the solar system which was dubbed Oumuamua. It was unusual because they determined that it had originated from outside our solar system, the first such confirmed interstellar traveler we'd seen. Dr. Loeb caused some waves in the scientific community when he said that his observations of Oumuamua suggested that it might not be a space rock, but instead, possibly a technological object of some kind, potentially from outside our solar system. We'll never know for sure since it continued on and headed back out into deep space.

That gave Loeb an idea. He went back with some of his graduate students and began scanning all of NASA's data regarding meteors that fall into the Earth's atmosphere. After a long search, he found one with a speed and apparent composition that also appeared to have been interstellar in origin. He named it IM1 (Interstellar Metor 1). Even more fascinating, the NASA data was precise enough to determine that the object probably wasn't your usual meteorite and was likely composed of something much denser and harder, potentially suggesting something technological. He was also able to plot right where it came down, just off the coast of Australia.

Rather than leaving that mystery on the shelf, Avi Loeb decided to investigate. He's the head of the Galileo Project and he raised private funds to mount an expedition to go see if any remnants of it could be recovered. (Disclosure: I sent him a few bucks myself because it sounded like a fascinating project.) This month, his ship arrived at the site and began searching for debris by dragging large magnetic sleds across the sea bed. (It's rather shallow there.) Well, yesterday they found something. It's still too soon to say for sure, but it doesn't look or act like a space rock.

"... why would an interstellar object be made of steel unless it was manufactured technologically? The technological origin would be consistent with the flat shape of the recovered shards in Runs 6 and 7 on June 18–19, 2023. The speed of IM1 outside the solar system was higher than any human-made spacecraft so far."

Submission + - Microsoft Says Its Weird New Particle Could Improve Quantum Computers (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft researchers have made a controversial claim that they have seen evidence of an elusive particle that could solve some of the biggest headaches in quantum computing, but some experts are questioning the discovery. Quantum computers process information using quantum bits, or qubits, but current iterations can be prone to error. “What the field needs is a new kind of qubit,” saysChetan Nayakat Microsoft Quantum. He and his colleagues say they have taken a significant step towards building qubits from quasiparticles, which are not true particles but collective vibrations that can emerge when particles like electrons act together. The quasiparticles in question are called Majorana zero modes, which act as their own antiparticle and have a charge and energy that equate to zero. That makes them resilient to disturbances – so they could make unprecedentedly reliable qubits – but also makes them notoriously hard to find. The Microsoft researchers say devices they built exhibited behaviors consistent with Majorana zero modes. The main components of each device were an extremely thin semiconducting wire and a piece ofsuperconductingaluminum.

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has claimed to have found Majorana zero modes. A 2018 paper by a different group of researchers at the company wasretracted from the scientific journalNaturein 2021 after it didn’t hold upto scrutiny. At the time,Sergey Frolovat the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and his colleaguesfound thatimperfections in the semiconductor wire could produce quantum effects easily mistaken for Majorana zero modes. “To see Majorana zero modes, the wire must be like a very long, very even road with no bumps. If there is any disorder in the wire, electrons can get stuck on these imperfections and assume quantum states that mimic Majorana zero modes,” says Frolov. In the new experiment, the team used a more complex test called the topological gap protocol. To pass the test, a device must simultaneously show signatures of Majorana zero modes at each end of the wire, and also show that the electrons are in an energy range where a special kind of superconductivity emerges. “Rather than look for one particular simple signature of Majorana zero modes, we looked for a mosaic of signatures,” says Nayak. The researchers tested this protocol on hundreds of computer simulations of devices, which considered any impurities in the wires, before using it on experimental data. Nayak says they calculated that for any device that passed the topological gap protocol, the probability of there not actually being a Majorana zero mode within it was less than 8 per cent.

Not all researchers in the field are convinced.Henry Leggat the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleaguesrecently publisheda set of calculations showing that this test can be fooled by impurities in the wires. “The topological gap protocol as currently implemented is certainly not loophole free,” he says. Frolov says that a few details imply that what seem to be Majorana zero modes would be revealed as an effect of disorder if the experiment were repeated with even more sensitive measurements. These include small differences between measurements for the left and right edges of the wire, as well as the measurements of electrons’ energies – the same energies can be indicative of emerging Majorana zero modes or of dirt trapping the electrons. Anton Akhmerovat the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands says that for him, the new experiment is not viable evidence that Majorana zero modes have been detected until another team of researchers reproduces it. But this may be difficult as some details of how Microsoft’s devices were manufactured have not been published on account of being trade secrets, he says.

Submission + - US Approves Chicken Made From Cultivated Cells (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves. The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates. The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.

Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays. But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley. The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.

Submission + - China's experimental molten salt reactor receives operating licence 1

Submitted by sonlas
sonlas writes: China's National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) has granted a license for the operation of the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor — Liquid Fuel 1 (TMSR-LF1), a Generation IV reactor, by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP). The project, costing $450 million, was completed in 2021. China is not the first to build a thorium reactor, but previous attempts had only reached the experimental stage.

This reactor, utilizing a special salt coolant, is designed to run at high temperatures for up to 10 years. These new reactors do not need to be built by the seaside and can reach very high temperatures, significantly increasing electricity production efficiency. But that's not the only advantage, as Thorium, which serves both as fuel and coolant, produces very little radioactive waste and is a much more abundant resource than Uranium. In fact, China possesses one of the world's largest thorium reserves, which experts believe are sufficient to power the country for over 20,000 years.

If successful, China plans to build larger Generation IV reactors by 2030, and export this technology, particularly to countries in the Global South..

Submission + - ISPs Say US Should Force Big Tech Firms To Pay For Broadband Construction (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet service providers in both the US and Europe are clamoring for new payments from Big Tech firms. European broadband providers are much closer to realizing the long-held goal of payments from tech companies, as the European Union government is holding an official consultation on the proposal. As the EU process unfolds, the telco lobby group USTelecom is hoping to push the US down a similar but not quite identical path. In a blog post on Friday, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter argued that the biggest technology companies should contribute toward a fund that subsidizes the building of broadband networks. Spalter wrote that Amazon and similar Internet companies should fill what he called a "conspicuously empty seat at the collective table of global high-speed connectivity."

Given that "six companies account for half of all Internet traffic worldwide... Does it still make sense that the government and broadband providers alone fund this critical infrastructure? Is there no shared obligation from the primary financial beneficiaries of these networks—the world's most powerful Internet companies?" Spalter wrote. "We need a modern reset that more equitably shares these financial obligations among those who benefit the most from these connections," he argued. USTelecom members include AT&T, Verizon, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), Windstream, and other telcos. It's one of the biggest trade groups that lobbies for US-based Internet service providers.

[...] USTelecom pointed to the Biden administration's comments in its pitch to make Big Tech firms pay into a central fund like the existing Universal Service Fund (USF) managed by the Federal Communications Commission. "We concur with the US government's position that rather than the payments to broadband providers proposed in the EU, such 'publicly accountable funding mechanisms can better ensure that resources are devoted to key policy objectives, such as improving access and strengthening network security, while avoiding discriminatory measures that distort competition,'" Spalter wrote. The Biden administration's comments didn't call for tech companies to pay into a government-run fund, though. The document noted that the US "approach to financing improvements to broadband infrastructure involves private investments, a national Universal Service Fund, and significant public funding made from general appropriations," but didn't argue for any changes to who pays into the fund.

Submission + - Consumer Group Calls On EU To Urgently Investigate 'The Risks of Generative AI' (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: European regulators are at a crossroads over how AI will be regulated — and ultimately used commercially and non-commercially — in the region, and today the EU’s largest consumer group, the BEUC, weighed in with its own position: stop dragging your feet, and “launch urgent investigations into the risks of generative AI” now, it said. “Generative AI such as ChatGPT has opened up all kinds of possibilities for consumers, but there are serious concerns about how these systems might deceive, manipulate and harm people. They can also be used to spread disinformation, perpetuate existing biases which amplify discrimination, or be used for fraud,” said Ursula Pachl, Deputy Director General of BEUC, in a statement. “We call on safety, data and consumer protection authorities to start investigations now and not wait idly for all kinds of consumer harm to have happened before they take action. These laws apply to all products and services, be they AI-powered or not and authorities must enforce them.”

The BEUC, which represents consumer organizations in 13 countries in the EU, issued the call to coincide with a report out today (PDF) from one of its members, Forbrukerradet in Norway. That Norwegian report is unequivocal in its position: AI poses consumer harms (the title of the report says it all: “Ghost in the Machine: addressing the consumer harms of generative AI”) and poses numerous problematic issues. It highlights, for example, how “certain AI developers including Big Tech companies” have closed off systems from external scrutiny making it difficult to see how data is collected or algorithms work; the fact that some systems produce incorrect information as blithely as they do correct results, with users often none the wiser about which it might be; AI that’s built to mislead or manipulate users; the bias issue based on the information that is fed into a particular AI model; and security, specifically how AI could be weaponized to scam people or breach systems. [...]

The AI Law, when implemented, will be the world’s first attempt to try to codify some kind of understanding and legal enforcement around how AI is used commercially and non-commercially. The next step in the process is for the EU to engage with individual countries in the EU to hammer out what final form the law will take — specifically to identify what (and who) would fit into its categories, and what will not. The question will be in how readily different countries agree together. The EU wants to finalize this process by the end of this year, it said. “It is crucial that the EU makes this law as watertight as possible to protect consumers,” said Pachl in her statement. “All AI systems, including generative AI, need public scrutiny, and public authorities must reassert control over them. Lawmakers must require that the output from any generative AI system is safe, fair and transparent for consumers.”

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