your science briefing for 02.04.2025
Our severely underwhelming technological future, the secret proteins hiding in our genomes, using gravity waves to communicate across the cosmos, and more...
The future is here and it’s… underwhelming to put it mildly. Despite all the buzz and all the heady promises, the gadgets and AIs of the future aimed at consumers are rather buggy, annoying, half-finished, and seem to rotate around the idea that giving us new ways to be bored out of our gourds but with shiny neon lights and gizmos trying to do everything for us — or rather, half-ass everything for us — is the Next Big Thing we’ve all been waiting for since the web… (Defector)
For all the worry that our radio signals may have attracted the attention of predatory alien civilizations as per the Dark Forest Solution to the Fermi Paradox, pretty much all of our signals eventually decay into gibberish. Our most powerful radio waves spread too thin to carry their encoding. Our most energetic lasers decohere into a faint light. And both can only cope with so much interference. But what if we used gravitational waves instead? Since they wobble the very fabric of space the time, they could cross the entire universe without a hitch. Theoretically, of course… (Universe Today)
Evolution is good at many things. It helps the most adaptable and efficient organisms survive and expand. It pushes us to adapt to new environments. It can even select for solutions to biological crises. But one thing it’s bad at doing is cleaning up after itself. This is why we still have an appendix even though we no longer eat grass, and why if we hear a sound, our ears still try to move in its direction, even though they no longer can carry out the maneuver… (The Guardian)
Dark matter, dark energy, and now, dark proteins? New research looking at genes that seem to encode a protein but don’t actually produce one shows that among the many false hints at new biochemistry, there are some genes capable of building several very interesting, actually stable proteins stable. Armed with this new information, scientists want to see what the “dark protenome” can do and what secrets it holds… (Nature)
Just for, you know, reasons, it may be a really good idea to learn more about how your typical malignant narcissist really sees the world, and know that far from being cold or cruel sadistic trolls, they’re actually hypersensitive to any and all criticism and pretty much spontaneously combust under any criticism or pushback, unable to handle the very idea that others may not also see them as superior humans in every way, shape, and form… (Psychology Today)