Cool, didn't notice that.

Intelligence Amplification.

This dazzling new scifi-themed music video by electro house musician Steve Aoki looks like it could be made into an actual movie. It features Angger Dimas, My Name Is Kay — and none other than Ray Kurzweil who adds his two cents about the future.

You might want to crank the volume — this song is sick.

Historians credit James Cook with discovering Australia back in 1770. But a long ignored discovery of five African copper coins in its Northern Territory, along with a map with an "X" on it, suggests somebody beat him to it — and by a long shot.

If validated, the coins could mean seafarers from distant lands reached Australia much earlier than previous thought.

The coins were initially found in 1944, and then sent to a museum in 1979 where they were identified. The Australian soldier who found them, Maurie Isenberg, marked an old map with an "X" were he stumbled upon them. Now, Ian McIntosh, an Australian scientist and professor of anthropology at Indiana University in the US, is planing an expedition in July to revisit the location.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Professor McIntosh and his team of Australian and American historians, archaeologists, geomorphologists and Aboriginal rangers say the five coins date back to the 900s to 1300s.

They are African coins from the former Kilwa sultanate, now a World Heritage ruin on an island off Tanzania. Kilwa once was a flourishing trade port with links to India in the 13th century to 16th century.

The copper coins were the first coins produced in Sub-Saharan Africa and, according to Professor McIntosh, have only twice been found outside Africa: once in Oman and Mr Isenberg's find.

Archaeologists have long suspected that there may have been early maritime trading routes that linked East Africa, Arabia, India and the Spice Islands, even 1000 years ago. Or the coins could have washed ashore after a shipwreck.

More.

Image: AAP.

Good news, everyone! A new interpretation of string theory is proposing that Boltzmann Brains — those disembodied brains that could emerge spontaneously in outer space — will never outnumber humans.

Yes, this sounds super-weird, but the whole Boltzmann Brain thing has troubled scientists for quite some time now. It was named after the theoretical physicist who came up with the concept, Ludwig Boltzmann. He theorized that freak disembodied minds will eventually pop into existence owing to the right configurations of matter and energy.

Freak Observers

It might seem entirely implausible that such a thing could happen, but if you consider that our universe could expand forever, and that it exhibits quantum fluctuations (i.e. random variations arising from a state of chaos), these brains are fully within the realm of possibility.

Think of it this way: Instead of having a monkey type randomly for an infinity, imagine all the different permutations of matter and energy in deep space over the course of an infinity. Eventually, a fully functional mind will emerge from the mixture.

And in fact, given an infinitely long timespan, these brains could emerge independently over and over again until they completely outnumber all other kinds of minds. This won’t happen until far, far into the future, but the concern is that it could eventually happen.

Now, it’s worth noting that these entities won’t look like giant brains floating in space — but they will exhibit many of the same characteristics, including self-awareness.

String Theory to the Rescue

But according to physicists Raphael Bousso and Claire Zukowski, Boltzmann brains may forever be in the minority — and it all has to do with the kind of universe we find ourselves in — or more accurately, the kind of multiverse we find ourselves in.

String theory proposes that there are a large number of universes, and that they come into existence via eternal inflation. As one universe continually expands, others percolate within it, and we call the whole shebang the multiverse.

In our particular universe, the past is distinct from the future; the Second Law of Thermodynamics is in full effect as we move increasingly towards a state of disorder. Eventually, our universe will become prime real estate for Boltzmann brains — but not yet, given its relatively high state of organization.

Indeed, a universe that’s featureless and infinite will be fertile ground for Boltzmann Brains. If those types of universes are common, and if most universes end up in such a murky state, then we’re seriously outnumbered by them. So the question now is, what happens to most universes?

Writing in New Scientist, Adam Becker explains more:

Zukowski and Bousso's latest work suggests this won't happen. Universes are constantly budding off a parent universe in the multiverse, so the parental characteristics can determine what kinds of "baby" universes form within it – and whether those universes will stick around long enough to be filled with Boltzmann brains or decay first.

Bousso and Zukowski performed a mathematical analysis of multiverses that start out in one of two different initial states: an older model first suggested by Stephen Hawking and his colleague James Hartle, and a newer model that has come out of mathematical treatments of the string multiverse. While the Hartle-Hawking model ended up overrun with Boltzmann brains, ordinary human-like consciousnesses prevailed in the newer model. That makes our view of the universe reassuringly normal in such a multiverse.

Phew. We can all rest easier now.

Read the entire study at Physical Review D: “Multivacuum initial conditions and the arrow of time.”

Wearables pioneer Steve Mann has joined forces with Meta, an ambitious startup that’s currently working on the world’s first entry-level augmented reality glasses.

Meta, which has been under development for the past two years, is the brainchild of Columbia University computer and neurological science student Meron Gribetz. His team has developed a prototype that goes far beyond the simple head’s up notification offered by Glass, instead offering a full augmented reality system.

It's considerably bigger, clunkier, and heavier than Glass (it weighs about half a pound), but its range of features certainly sets it apart. The device is equipped with a pair of Epson 3D screens running at 960 x 540; stereoscopic effects allow for depth perception.

And now, Meta has announced that University of Toronto professor Steve Mann, the father of wearable computing, will be joining the company as its chief scientist.

The Register reports:

Mann met Gribetz at the LevelUp gaming conference in Toronto, where Gribetz was demoing his Meta prototype, and the pair realized they were kindred spirits.

"We brought Mann on board because of his expertise in two key areas: miniaturization and mediated reality," Gribetz said. "Mann has been developing a Google Glass-like device for years but recognized now was not the right time for something of that scale, because of the limitations of such a device."

According to Gribetz, Mann's experience with occlusion – hiding or modifying real-world objects using 3D rendered overlays – will be especially advantageous for Meta.

The startup’s recent Kickstarter campaign blew past its initial $100,000 target within the first five days, and is now sitting at $112,600. It’s developer kits quickly sold out in the $550 and $650 pledge tier. According to Gribetz, the first devices will ship to developers on September 13 — so this project appears to be really moving along.

The Meta 1 Developer Kit will allow for visualization and interaction with 3D virtual objects in the real world with simple hand gestures. The kits includes see-through augmented reality glasses, a depth camera, and a software developer’s kit (which includes sample applications and documentation). Meta works with Unity3D — the same graphics rendering engine supported by Oculus Rift — which will allow users to pick up and manipulate their own 3D digital objects.

Related: "Google Glass Ushers in the Next Wave of Cybernetic Hate Crimes," and "What may be the world's first cybernetic hate crime unfolds in French McDonald's."

Images via Meta.

Definitely the kind of thing Mann envisions, also.

Six weeks after he was born, Kaiba Gionfriddo began to experience severe breathing difficulties, the result of a rare obstruction in his lungs called bronchial malacia. In desperation, doctors attempted a technique never tried before on a human: they 3D-printed a splint from biological material.

Before they could do such a thing, however, the University of Michigan doctors had to get emergency clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The experimental treatment had only ever been tried before on animals.

Live Science explains more:

To construct the splint, doctors made a precise image of Kaiba's trachea and bronchus with a CT scan. Then, using computer modeling, they created a splint that would exactly fit around the airway, said study researcher Scott Hollister, a professor of biomedical engineering at the university. The model was then produced on a 3D printer.

The device is made out of a material called polycaprolactone, and will dissolve after about three years. By that time, Kaiba's windpipe will have grown, reducing pressure on the organ, and the splint will no longer be needed.

A splint like Kaiba's splint can be made in about 24 hours and costs about one-third the price of a hand-carved version, Green said.

Earlier this year, a 2-year-old girl became the youngest recipient of a bioengineered organ. This latest medical breakthrough is considered the first time that a 3D printed device was used in an emergency to save a life.

Kaiba is now 20 months old and is doing "wonderful."

Images: New England Journal of Medicine.

For the fourth time since 1956, Portlanders have rejected a plan to fluoridate the city's water. It's the only city among the nation's 30 most populous that avoids the practice — prompting critics to complain that the city is simply being anti-science.

Dr. Strangelove image via American Buddha.

The point of water fluoridation is to prevent tooth decay — one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in the world. It doesn't affect the appearance, taste, or smell of drinking water. Nor does it pose any kind of health risk.

But as Orac of the Respectful Insolence blog recently wrote, we can now "chalk one up for the forces of anti-science, quackery, and pseudoscience."

His awesome takedown of Portland's anti-fluoridation campaign starts like this:

What bothers me about this decision is not so much that it was made but how it was made. I didn’t call this vote a victory for antiscience and quackery just because Portland voted against fluoridation. I called it a victory for antiscience and quackery because classic antiscience arguments appear to have won. It would be one thing if the decision had been made dispassionately based on the evidence and it was decided that the potential benefits weren’t worth it. Kyle Hill provides a very good description of the science of why from a public health perspective the case against fluoridation doesn’t hold water. The issue, of course, is that people don’t decide things strictly based on the science and the evidence. They might think that they do, but they don’t. Not even skeptics do. I realize that some of the cranks out there might not believe that I understand that, but I do. For instance, even though the pro-fluoridation forces had the stronger argument on a number of fronts, be it the safety of low level fluoridation or how since 1945 the fluoridation of drinking water has reduced tooth decay by 40-70% in children and tooth loss in adults by 40-60%, those arguments didn’t resonate. Neither did pointing out that fluoridation achieves these benefits with very little downside. What did resonate were campaigns about the “evils” of fluoridation, virtually all of which are canards, tropes, and just plain not true.

He points to this poster:

And this picture:

And this TV ad with Ed Begley:

Orac responds:

I wondered how many times he’d repeat the word “chemical,” although I must give the producers of this commercial props for saying, “We don’t help kids by adding more chemicals to their water.” Hmmm. One wonders if Mr. Begley is as horrified by the addition of chlorine to his drinking water. It’s a very clever line that plays into people’s fears of “chemicals” and environmental contamination, the purest demagoguery. The ad finishes up with bold letters saying “Please vote no to fluoridation chemicals” and a link to cleanwaterportland.org. Chemicals? Fluoridation involves adding only one chemical. In any case, Clean Water Portland (CWP) is chock full of distortions used by antifluoridation cranks. There again is the old familiar “Fluoridation chemicals are unpurified industrial byproducts from fertilizer manufacturing, and are not the same as the fluoride in toothpaste.” In fact, reading the website, I’m hard pressed to find CWP referring to anything but “fluoridation chemicals” rather that fluoride or fluoridation. It’s repeated so often that it’s jarring to me and clearly meant to play on people’s fear of chemicals rather than on reason or evidence.

After going into considerable detail as to why fluoridation is far from toxic and why it's a good idea (and I encourage you to read the entire article), he concludes:

In any case, public policy is best driven by science and evidence, where the best science informs the political process. In the case of Portland, from where I stand, the question of whether water fluoridation was good public policy was not decided that way in Portland.

Image: Skylines/Shutterstock.

Remember that wild scene in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter when that wooden bridge was set ablaze? Well, as you'll see in this unbelievable video, sometimes reality can match the best that special effects has to offer.

This railroad bridge used to run across the Colorado River between San Saba and Lometa in the U.S. state of Texas. Firefighters spent 15 hours in a futile attempt to extinguish the fire, but they eventually gave up, deciding that it should just burn out.

Either that or they really, really wanted to see the whole thing collapse.

What you’re looking at is the first direct observation of an atom’s electron orbital — an atom's actual wave function! To capture the image, researchers utilized a new quantum microscope — an incredible new device that literally allows scientists to gaze into the quantum realm.

An orbital structure is the space in an atom that’s occupied by an electron. But when describing these super-microscopic properties of matter, scientists have had to rely on wave functions — a mathematical way of describing the fuzzy quantum states of particles, namely how they behave in both space and time. Typically, quantum physicists use formulas like the Schrödinger equation to describe these states, often coming up with complex numbers and fancy graphs.

Up until this point, scientists have never been able to actually observe the wave function. Trying to catch a glimpse of an atom’s exact position or the momentum of its lone electron has been like trying to catch a swarm of flies with one hand; direct observations have this nasty way of disrupting quantum coherence. What’s been required to capture a full quantum state is a tool that can statistically average many measurements over time.

But how to magnify the microscopic states of a quantum particle? The answer, according to a team of international researchers, is the quantum microscope — a device that uses photoionization microscopy to visualize atomic structures directly.

Writing in Physical Review Letters, Aneta Stodolna of the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in the Netherlands describes how she and her team mapped the nodal structure of an electronic orbital of a hydrogen atom placed in a static (dc) electric field.

After zapping the atom with laser pulses, ionized electrons escaped and followed a particular trajectory to a 2D detector (a dual microchannel plate [MCP] detector placed perpendicular to the field itself). There are many trajectories that can be taken by the electrons to reach the same point on the detector, thus providing the researchers with a set of interference patterns — patterns that reflected the nodal structure of the wave function.

And the researchers managed to do so by using an electrostatic lens that magnified the outgoing electron wave more than 20,000 times.

Image: Examples of four atomic hydrogen states. The middle column shows the experimental measurements, while the column at right shows the time-dependent Schrödinger equation calculations — and they match up rather nicely.

Looking ahead, the researchers plan on using the same technology to look at how atoms react within a magnetic field.

You can read the entire study at Physical Review Letters: "Hydrogen Atoms under Magnification: Direct Observation of the Nodal Structure of Stark States."

Supplementary sources: Physics World, American Physical Society.

Images: APS/Alan Stonebraker.

That bridge owed nothin' to no one.

My pleasure! I love reporting on stuff like this.

Yup now fixed tx

Archaeologists have uncovered nearly 5,000 cave paintings at 11 different sites in Mexico, the likely product of early hunter-gatherers. What’s even more remarkable is that the area was previously thought to be uninhabited.

The discovery was made in the north-eastern region of Burgos in the San Carlos mountain range of Tamaulipas. Archaeologist Martha García Sánchez, who works out of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah), recently presented these findings at the Historic Archaeology meeting held in Mexico’s National History Museum.

The 4,926 paintings, which appear in hues of red, yellow, black, and white, depict humans, animals, and insects. They also show skyscapes and abstract scenes. And in one painting, the archaeologists were able to identify an atlatl, a pre-Hispanic hunting weapon. The paintings are offering an unprecedented glimpse into pre-Hispanic culture and life, including depictions of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Other images hint at religion and astronomy.

One cave had as many as 1,550 different scenes.

The paintings were likely produced by at least three distinct groups of hunter-gatherers in the region. Prior to this discovery, archaeologists didn’t think that pre-Hispanic peoples occupied the Burgos area.

To make these paintings, early North Americans used organic dyes and minerals. The archaeologists will now perform a chemical analysis to determine the exact components — and to date the sites; they've been unable to pinpoint a timeframe because no physical artifacts have been recovered. It’s quite possible that the paintings could be traced back to 6,000 B.C.

So who were these people? And what happened to them? The History Blog offers an explanation:

There are references to indigenous groups who fled the conquering Spaniards and hid out in the San Carlos mountains for 200 years. As late as 1750 there are records of these nomadic peoples making it hard to evangelize Burgos. There are no official names of the tribes. They are referred to by nicknames assigned them based on perceived characteristics like “painted” or “mangy,” clothing or activities like “shoemakers,” or the family names of ranchers by the random assortment of conquistadors, religious men and indigenous peoples who ran into them.

There wasn’t much in the way of congress, therefore. The Spanish avoided following them into the mountains, and since there was a literal bounty on their heads — 25 pesos for every indigenous scalp and 60 pesos for every ransomed “captive” — these groups were destroyed before anything about them was recorded. We know basically nothing about their languages, religious rituals and cultural traditions. This huge cache of art, therefore, is an immensely important anthropological resource.

Sources: BBC, Red Orbit, History Blog.

Images: Inah.

Ah, that came from the History Channel via Huffington post. Forgot to add that to the list of sources.

An emerging branch of science known as exometeorology is offering remarkable insights into the conditions found on some of the more extreme planets in the galaxy — including the weird and mind-boggingly massive weather patterns experienced on a hot Jupiter that's 385 light years from Earth.

Hot Jupiters are those exotic class of extrasolar planets that are very similar in size and composition to Jupiter — but these massive gas giants orbit around their parent stars at ridiculously close distances. They’re located anywhere from 0.015 to 0.5 AU from their suns (1 AU = distance from Earth to the Sun).

Needless to say, the surface temperatures of hot Jupiters are extreme, hence the name. And to make things even more interesting, these planets are tidally locked; they all feature a daylight side that’s perpetually facing the sun.

Looking to predict the kind of weather experienced on these planets, Nikole Lewis of MIT recently conducted an analysis of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-2b — a planet in an eccentric orbit around its sun (it only takes 5 days or so to complete one orbit). She put together a kind of exoplanetary weather map using a technique called SPARC/MITgcm that was developed by Nick Cowan of Northwestern University.

Because these planets are tidally locked, astronomers are able to observe their various phases, like crescent, gibbous, and full. Then, by measuring the infrared brightness of the planet during the course of its different phases, they’re able to make a rudimentary map of temperature found at the various longitudes.

Which is nothing short of incredible when considering just how far these planets are from Earth.

Using this technique, Lewis concluded that HAT-P-2b’s star-facing side features a daytime temperature of 2,400 Kelvin (2,127 degrees Celsius). The night-facing side, on the other hand, experiences a temperature of 1,200 K (927 degrees Celsius). So even at night, this planet is ten times hotter than Jupiter.

The 1,000 degree difference between the two sides is extreme — no doubt. This atmospheric dynamic results in vicious winds that howl across the surface at thousands of miles per hour. Yes, thousands.

By using Jupiter as a guide for the models, Lewis and her colleagues imagined what would happen to it if its surface temperature was dramatically increased and the rate of its rotation greatly diminished. The result, say the researchers, were supersized weather patterns — including a Great Red Spot that was a quarter of the size of the planet.

Interestingly, regular clouds of water and methane can’t form in such hot environments, leading the researchers to speculate that hot Jupiters have clouds made of silicate — essentially clouds of rock and dust.

You can check out the study here.

Source: NASA.

Images: Hubble.

Arne Olav likes to create ridiculous new species by splicing together two or more real animals. The resulting chimeras look like something right out a bizarre fantasy movie.

The work of Reddit user Arne Olav comes to us from PetaPixel which recently showcased his images. You can also find more at his Reddit submissions page.

Be sure to read the entire article at PetaPixel, which includes more images and an explanation from Olav about how he does it.

A new software program called GoogleFaces uses Google Maps and facial recognition software to isolate geographic structures that look like human faces. It's far from perfect, but the program has uncovered some remarkably face-like surface features.

Humans are good at picking out faces from everyday objects and structures — a characteristic known as pareidolia; we see faces nearly everywhere, whether it be on the foam of our lattes or the surface of Mars.

Looking to take advantage of this psychological phenomenon, designers at Berlin's Onformative developed an algorithm that scans the surface of the Earth with Google Maps, picking out geographical structures that are likely to be construed as having face-like features.

Here's how the software works.

One of the key aspects of this project, is the autonomy of the face searching agent and the amount of data we are investigating. The source of our image data is halfway voluntary provided by Google Maps. Our agent flips through one satellite image after the other, in order to feed the face detection algorithm with landscape samples. The corresponding iteration algorithm steps sequentially along the latitude and longitude of our globe. Once the agent circumnavigated the world, it switches to the next zoom level and starts all over again.

In order to process the face detection algorithm on top of different satellite images and store the geographical coordinates, we needed a precise communication between our standalone application and a virtual browser surfing Google Maps. Therefore we decided to use ofxBerkelium, which is an OpenFrameworks wrapper for Berkelium. This library offers the possibility to capture browser images within a standalone application and to communicate via Javascript.

This video shows GoogleFaces at work:

All images Onformative/GoogleMaps.

[Via Geek]