Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: existential risks – Page 86

For a time 20 years ago, millions of people, including corporate chiefs and government leaders, feared that the internet was going to crash and shatter on New Year’s Eve and bring much of civilization crumbling down with it. This was all because computers around the world weren’t equipped to deal with the fact of the year 2000. Their software thought of years as two digits. When the year 99 gave way to the year 00, data would behave as if it were about the year 1900, a century before, and system upon system in an almost infinite chain of dominoes would fail. Billions were spent trying to prepare for what seemed almost inevitable.

Twenty years ago, the world feared that a technological doomsday was nigh. It wasn’t, but Y2K had a lot of prescient things to say about how we interact with tech.

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An international research group has applied methods of theoretical physics to investigate the electromagnetic response of the Great Pyramid to radio waves. Scientists predicted that under resonance conditions, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal chambers and under the base. The research group plans to use these theoretical results to design nanoparticles capable of reproducing similar effects in the optical range. Such nanoparticles may be used, for example, to develop sensors and highly efficient solar cells. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

While Egyptian are surrounded by many myths and legends, researchers have little scientifically reliable information about their physical properties. Physicists recently took an interest in how the Great Pyramid would interact with electromagnetic waves of a resonant length. Calculations showed that in the resonant state, the pyramid can concentrate in the its internal chambers as well as under its base, where the third unfinished chamber is located.

These conclusions were derived on the basis of numerical modeling and analytical methods of physics. The researchers first estimated that resonances in the pyramid can be induced by radio waves with a length ranging from 200 to 600 meters. Then they made a model of the electromagnetic response of the pyramid and calculated the extinction cross section. This value helps to estimate which part of the incident wave energy can be scattered or absorbed by the pyramid under resonant conditions. Finally, for the same conditions, the scientists obtained the electromagnetic field distribution inside the pyramid.

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The Milky Way could be teeming with interstellar alien civilizations, according to a new study. We just don’t know about it because they haven’t paid us a visit in 10 million years.

The study, published last month in The Astronomical Journal, posits that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be taking its time to explore the galaxy, harnessing star systems’ movement to make star-hopping easier.

The work is a new response to a question known as the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we haven’t detected signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

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There are only two northern white rhinos left worldwide, both of them female. Saving this representative of megafauna from extinction seems impossible under these circumstances, yet an international consortium of scientists and conservationists just completed a procedure that could enable assisted reproduction techniques to do just that. On August 22, 2019, a team of veterinarians successfully harvested eggs from the two females who live in Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya — a procedure that has never been attempted in northern white rhinos before. The eggs will now be artificially inseminated with frozen sperm from a northern white rhino bull, and in the near future the embryo will be transferred to a southern white rhino surrogate mother. The successful procedure was a joint effort by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) Berlin, Avantea, Dvur Kralove Zoo, Ol Pejeta Conservancy and the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

With neither Najin and Fatu, the two northern white rhino females, able to carry a pregnancy, the future of the northern white rhino now rests solely on pioneering artificial reproduction techniques. The successful harvesting of their eggs means that scientists are one step closer to being able to save the northern white rhino from complete extinction.

The procedure was the result of years of research, development, adjustments and practice. “Both the technique and the equipment had to be developed entirely from scratch,” says Prof. Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz-IZW and Dr. David Ndeereh from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), who headed the procedure. “We were able to harvest a total of 10 oocytes — 5 from Najin and 5 from Fatu — showing that both females can still provide eggs and thus help to save these magnificent creatures.”

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Biological weapons could be built which target individuals in a specific ethnic group based on their DNA, a report by the University of Cambridge has warned.

Researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) said the government was failing to prepare for ‘human-driven catastrophic risks’ that could lead to mass harm and societal collapse.

In recent years advances in science such as genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles have opened the door to a host of new threats.

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Asteroids are coming?

The asteroid, dubbed 2019 WR3, has been directly observed some 74 times by NASA since it was spotted in the skies on November 27, so the space agency could calculate its size, speed and trajectory, and determine the threat level.

NASA now believes the space rock measures between 76 and 170 meters (249 and 557 feet) and is travelling at speeds of 27,036kph (16,799mph).

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O,.,o.

In 1981 astronomer Robert Kirshner made a shocking intergalactic discovery. 700 million light years from the Earth lies an enormous, barren sphere known as the Boötes Void. Its very existence challenges what we know about the universe and its origins. The Void is at least ten times larger than the rules of modern physics say is reasonably likely. As a structure, the Void verges on the impossible.

Yet, this disturbing formation is consistent with Nikolai Kardashev’s 1962 theory of advanced alien civilizations and their behavior. Could it be home to a hyper-intelligent extraterrestrial species? A void is a massive region of space that holds either minimal or no galaxies. They are created when mass collapses, and is followed by subatomic particle implosions. With a diameter of 330 million light years, the Boötes Void makes up 0.27% of the observable universe. But according to established scientific understanding its huge size is impossible. The Big Bang theory states that the universe is 14 billion years old, and that it has been expanding exponentially since its birth. Given the age of the universe, there has only been enough time for voids to form that are tens of millions of light years across, not hundreds. Stranger still, is just how empty the Bootes Void is.

It contains only 60 galaxies, around 10,000 fewer than we should expect to find in such a vast expanse. Many believe this means the void is the first observable proof of a Kardashev scale III “master race” civilization. In 1964 Nikolai Kardashev – now Deputy Director of Russia’s Astro Space Centre – published his theory for extra terrestrial development, arguing that civilizations develop in 4 stages. A civilization reaches the third phase when it becomes so technologically advanced that it is able to convert starlight into usable energy. At this point, the species is able to replicate itself at astonishing rates, spreading out across the universe and colonizing galaxies. Many consider this is a necessary step for any civilization to avoid extinction. Could this explain the Void’s chilling dearth of stars?

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An asteroid estimated to be around the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza may hit the Earth on May 6, 2022, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Despite the one in 3,800 odds — a measly 0.026% chance — of the asteroid smashing into the Earth, the worst-case scenario will surely be of a scene akin to the climax of an apocalypse movie, or even worse, as per NASA via The Daily Express on Nov. 16.

If the “city-killer” asteroid, labeled JF1, is to hit Earth, the impact would be equivalent to the detonation of 230 kilotons of TNT. That is 15 times stronger than the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945, which destroyed the whole city with 15 kilotons of force.

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Last week, the BBC reported on the plight of axolotls in Mexico City, which are under threat of extinction. [1] The risk to these creatures is made doubly concerning when you consider their incredible ability to regenerate and apparent immunity to cancer, which is of great interest to scientists and companies working in the Longevity sector. One such company is Bioquark, a Philadelphia-based life sciences company that is working on the development of combinatorial biologics for the rejuvenation and repair of human organs and tissues. Among its clinical plans, it lists the development of therapeutic products for cancer reversion, organ repair and regeneration, and even brain death resuscitation. Nothing major then!

Bioquark has developed a novel combinatorial biologic called BQ-A, which mimics the regulatory biochemistry of the living human egg (oocyte) immediately following fertilization. While ooplasm-based reprogramming has been studied in experiments such as in-vitro fertilization and cloning, Bioquark claims it is the first company to apply it to somatic tissue in mammals.

We spoke with Bioquark’s CEO, Ira Pastor, a 30-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, to find out more about the company and where it’s headed.

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