Items of Interest

First Ionic Flight

#134
Inspired by the shuttlecraft of Star Trek, researchers at MIT have successful performed the first ionic flight of a solid state fixed wing aircraft using electroaerodynamic thrust! layers of wires underneath the wings create a 20,000 Volt differential between the front and the rear wires, with cause charged electrons to travel through the air from the positive wires to the negative wires. The charged particles push air particles over the wing as they travel, creating a small amount of lift.
Innovation
Science

Podcast Of The Week: The Blindboy Podcast Live with Will St Leger & Tonie Walsh

#133
I'm busy playing catchup with the latest Blindboy podcast episodes and this week I listened to the live podcast with Will St Leger and Tonie Walsh, and it was amazing! If you haven't listened to The Blindboy Podcast yet, the mainstay episodes are Blindboy giving us a podcast hug in his studio speaking straight about wide ranging topics from the historical significance of lapis luzuli to Carl Jung's collective self consciousness, with plenty of hot takes in between.
Life
Podcast

New Galaxy Discovered

#133
A team of astronomers have discovered a new galaxy called ANT 2 while working through data captured by the European Space Agency's GAIA satellite. The new galaxy previously went undetected because of its low density and position behind the shroud of the Milky Way's disc.
Space

AI Gone Awry

#133
Victoria Krakovna has a fantastic list of examples of AI systems that have misbehaved and subverted their way to meeting their incentive goals by sometime hilarious means! Some game systems evolved to clap body parts together to exploit a collision detection bug and generate free game enerrgy.
AI & ML
Innovation

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