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Twenty years ago, the MESSENGER mission revolutionized our understanding of Mercury. We sat down with project head and former Carnegie Science director Sean Solomon to talk about how the mission came together and the groundbreaking work it enabled.

Q: As the principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission, what were your personal highlights or proudest moments throughout the mission’s duration? Sean Solomon: There were many personal highlights for me during the MESSENGER mission, beginning with our initial selection by NASA in 1999 and culminating in the publication by the MESSENGER science team of all of the findings from our mission in a book published nearly two decades later.

The most challenging events in any planetary orbiter mission are launch and orbit insertion. The successful completion of those two milestones for MESSENGER—in 2004 and 2011, respectively—were sources of great pride for me in the technical expertise of all of the engineers, mission design experts, and project managers who contributed to the mission.

In the ever-evolving landscape of scientific discovery, certain paradigms periodically challenge the established norms, compelling us to reconsider the boundaries of what we deem as ‘science.’ One such paradigm is the intersection of quantum physics and metaphysical science. Despite skepticism, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that these two fields are not only compatible but also complementary. This blog delves into how quantum physics supports metaphysical science and argues for its integration into mainstream scientific discourse, underpinned by historical precedents.

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” — Nikola Tesla

Quantum physics, the study of particles at the smallest scales of energy levels, has fundamentally altered our understanding of reality. The principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, entanglement, and wave-particle duality, have revealed a universe far more intricate and interconnected than classical physics ever suggested. These concepts resonate profoundly with metaphysical science, which explores the nature of reality, consciousness, and existence beyond the physical.

And could entire civilizations seek to leave this reality behind?

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Credits:
Transcendence.
Episode 465; September 19, 2024
Written, Produced \& Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Editors:
Dillon Ollander.
John M Smart.
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik.
Ken York.
Sergio Botero.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator

It was a career-defining (and perhaps life changing) moment when Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano, a reproductive biologist by training, realized that because we are able to create life, that same body of information could be harnessed to create youth — that is, radically reverse our biological aging process to a younger time point without losing cellular identity.

In 2014, he and his lab began unpacking this epiphany. They made the radical decision to conduct their investigations in human cells and tissue rather than in rodents, with the expectation that such a start would be a better bridge to human clinical trials.

Flash forward a decade and Dr. Sebastiano and his team stand poised to begin trials in humans. Dr. Sebastiano is, in my opinion, one of the most extraordinary scientists in the longevity space today who flies under the radar of most of us in functional medicine.

In this podcast — which is actually two-in-one because I continued the conversation with him on a second date — you’ll hear about the remarkable work they’re undertaking at his lab. For example: They’ve created a biological clock that encompasses the whole genome consisting of millions and millions of CpG sites. They are able to clearly demonstrate the reversal of bioage using their methodology — a cocktail of Yamanaka factors plus, with clear time limits — which changes the epigenome first, and in so doing influences all of the hallmarks of aging. Teaser: they’ve identified one intervention routinely used in clinical practice that influences their bio age clock in the same way that their cocktail does. What is it? I was riveted with this conversation, as I am sure you’ll be. Leave a review if you like it, and — Yes — let me know what you think. I know this will prompt deep questions for you, as it did for me. ~DrKF

Check out the show notes at www.drkarafitzgerald.com/fxmed-podcast/ for all the relevant links and resources.

Organoid intelligence (OI) is an emerging scientific field aiming to create biocomputers where lab-grown brain organoids serve as ‘biological hardware’

In their article, published in Frontiers in Science, Smirnova et al., outline the multidisciplinary strategy needed to pursue this vision: from next-generation organoid and brain-computer interface technologies, to new machine-learning algorithms and big data infrastructures.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/.

Citation:
Smirnova L, Caffo BS, Gracias DH, Huang Q, Morales Pantoja IE, Tang B, et al. (2023) Organoid intelligence(OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish. Front. Sci. 1:1017235. doi: 10.3389/fsci.2023.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to upload your mind to a computer? To have a digital copy of your personality, memories, and skills that could live on after your biological death? This is the idea behind whole brain emulation, a hypothetical process of scanning a brain and creating a software version of it that can run on any compatible hardware. In this video, we will explore the science and challenges of whole brain emulation, the ethical and social implications of creating digital minds, and the potential benefits and risks of this technology for humanity. Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of whole-brain emulation!
#wholebrainemulation.
#minduploading.
#digitalimmortality.
#artificialintelligence.
#neuroscience.
#braincomputerinterface.
#substrateindependentminds.
#transhumanism.
#futurism.
#mindcloning

The progress of science in the last 400 years is mind-blowing. Who would have thought we’d be able to trace the history of our universe to its origins 14 billion years ago? Science has increased the length and the quality of our lives, and the technology that is commonplace in the modern world would have seemed like magic to our ancestors.

For all of these reasons and more, science is rightly celebrated and revered. However, a healthy pro-science attitude is not the same thing as “scientism”, which is the view that the scientific method is the only way to establish truth. As the problem of consciousness is revealing, there may be a limit to what we can learn through science alone.

Perhaps the most worked out form of scientism was the early 20th century movement knows as logical positivism. The logical positivists signed up to the “verification principle”, according to which a sentence whose truth can’t be tested through observation and experiments was either logically trivial or meaningless gibberish. With this weapon, they hoped to dismiss all metaphysical questions as not merely false but nonsense.