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Camera traps in Thailand have captured adorable passersby with significant implication for the country’s conservation efforts. While these furry creatures might look like your average house cat, they’re actually wild flat-headed cats (Prionailurus planiceps). These extremely rare wild felines weigh less than half an average pet cat, and they’ve been detected in Thailand for the first time since 1995.

The happy news was confirmed by a survey from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation, and Panthera Thailand, a global wild cat conservation organization, according to a statement emailed to Popular Science. 

“Even species thought to be lost can be rebuilt if we invest in protecting the habitats they depend on,” said Wai Ming Wong, Panthera Small Cat Conservation Science Director. “Flat-headed cats’ persistence in Thailand suggests that these ecosystems still hold remarkable biodiversity but also underscores how urgently we must conserve and restore them before they vanish entirely.” 

Flat-headed cats are named for their particular flat forehead and extended skull. They are Southeast Asia’s smallest wild cat, and have short bodies, slim legs, webbed toes, and stubby tails. They’re also difficult to study. Besides their limited population numbers, they’re small, nocturnal, and favor hard-to-access environments—tropical rainforests, swampy and peat-swamp forests, marshes, lakes, streams, and riverine forests. 

Flat-headed cats are the smallest wild cat in Southeast Asia. Image: DNP/Panthera Thailand

Researchers believe them to be close relatives of leopard cats and fishing cats, and estimate a total population size of 2,500 adults. Flat-headed cats are one of the most threatened wild cats—the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies them as Endangered, and “possibly extinct” within Thailand. 

Nevertheless, remote camera trap images confirmed the wild cat’s reappearance.The traps picked up 13 detections in 2024 and 16 in southern Thailand’s Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary in 2025, within the context of the species’ largest survey. Notably, a mother and her cub were also spotted, verifying the species’ active reproduction in the area. It’s an important find, since flat-headed cat mothers usually have just one kitten  at a time. 

A rare image of a Flat-headed Cat (Prionailurus planiceps) at night, Kinabatangan River, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia. Image: Sebastian Kennerknecht/Panthera.

The flat-headed cat is currently threatened by human-driven habitat loss from land conversion, fishing, agricultural encroachment, hunting, waterway pollution, and domestic animals transmitting diseases. Competition for space further decreases its range, limiting the wild cat to mostly far-flung, untouched environments whose protection is thus crucial. 

“With this new finding, which we plan to submit to the IUCN Red List Committee, we hope the species’ status can be updated to something other than ‘Possibly Extinct,’” Rattapan Pattanarangsan, Conservation Program Manager for Panthera Thailand, tells Popular Science, while adding that the Committee might need more data they don’t possess yet. “Generating this level of evidence will likely require several years of further study before the species’ status can be fully reassessed.”

The announcement comes in time for National Wildlife Protection Day on December 26. The  flat-headed cat detection will lay the groundwork for DNP and Panthera Thailand’s conservation planning regarding the species. 

The post Tiny wild cat spotted in Thailand for first time in 30 years appeared first on Popular Science.

China has built a prototype EUV (extreme ultraviolent) lithography machine in a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen. They had a semiconductor Manhattan Project”. The prototype was completed in early 2025 and is now undergoing testing. It occupies nearly an entire factory floor and was assembled using reverse-engineered components. Ramp-up timeline Functional for chip production around 2028. ...

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The NVIDIA-Groq $20 billion deal announced on December 24, 2025 is a major strategic move in the AI hardware space. NVIDIA and Groq clarified that it is not a full company acquisition. The deal is structured as a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Groq’s inference technology, combined with NVIDIA hiring key Groq personnel. Groq’s founder and ...

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Amid the 872-day siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, nine people died protecting a library. This library was not for books, but for seeds collected from around the globe. The nine who died were food scientists, starving to death alongside 700,000 of their neighbors. The library they were protecting was the world’s first seedbank, an ancestor to current-day genebanks worldwide.

Genebanks are biorepositories used to store genetic material, like seeds and cells. Their origins came from a wanderlusting Russian plant-lover named Nikolai Vavilov who dreamed of a one-stop shop for seeds from all over the world for researchers, scientists, and breeders to learn from and use to fight famine. Vavilov made 115 expeditions to 64 countries, collecting 380,000 samples for the seedbank in Leningrad, growing it into an agricultural bounty so diverse and valuable, even the Germans caught wind of it. After the Nazi siege and Vavilov’s death in the Gulag, his idea turned into something even more monumental: an answer to humanity’s questions as to how to maintain food’s genetic diversity and feed the global population amid disaster, war, and climate change.

Now, there are hundreds of genebanks around the world. “Almost every country has its own national genebank,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, tells Popular Science. And there are countless beyond those. At the Crop Trust, Schmitz and his colleagues work to support genebanks and seedbanks (like genebanks, but focused on seeds) through funding, management, trainings, and technology.  

Coming up on a century in existence, genebanks have become vital to the future of humanity. In the event of a massive emergency, these would be our Noah’s Ark.

Genebanks help protect important plant varieties, such as the West African Bambara groundnut shown here. Image: Crop Trust / Michael Major Genetic diversity and food security

Genebanks are troves of genetic diversity, an essential safeguard against famine. Think of the Irish Potato Famine: If all farmers plant the same variety of potato, a single threat in the form of a fungus, virus, or insect can wipe out an entire nation of crops.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) oversees two genebanks in Morocco and Lebanon. Not only do these genebanks house incredibly diverse collections, but they are also windows into plant and human history. “We collect the crop wild relatives from this region, the first domesticated forms, the primitive forms, and we have our [locally adapted forms],” Athanasios Tsivelikas, ICARDA’s Morocco genebank manager, tells Popular Science. Some of ICARDA’s plant varieties date back to the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. Other, wilder varieties go back even further.

ICARDA’s collection shows us how seeds adapt to challenging climates over centuries. Seeds evolve to better withstand their environments from generation to generation. Many of ICARDA’s seeds evolved in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth and may hold the answer to humanity’s survival on a warming globe. “We are talking about climate resilience. We are also talking about this kind of adaptation to this extreme heat, salinity, and drought conditions,” Tsivelikas says.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) cultivates many unique, traditional plant varieties, like barley (shown here). Image: ICARDA Research and safekeeping

Among their many purposes, genebanks continue to serve as the genetic libraries Vavilov dreamed of, facilitating agricultural research, plant breeding, and farming. Anyone who needs samples can request them from a genebank. 

Plant breeders and researchers may find valuable traits for nutrition or climate resilience in a collection faraway. For example, if someone is trying to create a more nutritious variety of wheat, they may find something that will help them in a roster of seeds from a genebank in a different country. They could then reach out to that genebank with their request and, if their request is approved, the genebank will send them samples of the variety they want to study. 

You can also think of genebanks as agricultural safety nets. In regions that experience natural disaster or war, “they provide emergency support for farmers,” Schmitz says. “Genebanks have been in a position to provide old, adapted seeds to farmers so they could then multiply them again.”

They can be important insurance policies for other genebanks as well. Genebanks send duplicates of their collections to fellow genebanks to ensure an even higher level of safety, should anything happen to their own collection. Among genebanks, there is something called the black box system, where you can send seed duplicates to another genebank for safekeeping only, not for research or anything else. Those duplicates remain yours and yours alone, housed faraway in the event of a disaster.

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A backup for the backup

The vulnerability of genebanks makes this extra assurance essential. Power outages, war, and imperfect infrastructure can compromise a genebank overnight. Just one power outage can be a crisis for a facility that needs to keep temperatures at zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius). 

So, in 2008, experts came up with the ultimate backup plan.

They put a massive global facility in the North Pole, in a part of Norway called Svalbard. There, the farthest north you can go on a commercial airline, the frigid permafrost ensures that even if the power went out, the seeds inside the vault would still be safe. Now, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault houses 1,378,238 seed samples from almost every country globally, with room for millions more. 

“Svalbard is nothing else but a huge backup facility,” says Schmitz. “So that in case one of the 800+ genebanks loses their collection due to [a] thunderstorm, fire, earthquake, or war, you can make sure you have this security backup.” 

On June 3, 2025, several staff members transported ICARDA seed samples into the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in northern Norway. That week alone, 14 genebanks from around the world deposited more than 11,200 seed samples, underscoring the critical role of crop diversity in future food security. Image: Xinhua News Agency / Contributor / Getty Images Xinhua News Agency

Shortly after Svalbard was established, Tsivelikas’ colleagues at an ICARDA genebank in Syria began sending the new facility copies of their seeds via the black box system. When civil war broke out in 2011, they ramped up their shipments, reaching over 100,000 duplicates under Svalbard’s roof. 

And it was lucky they did. In 2014, ICARDA’s genebank in Syria had to be evacuated. “It was the largest disaster we are aware of to genebanks,” says Schmitz.

Tsivelikas’ relief and gratitude at his colleagues’ forethought is palpable to this day. “I cannot express how wise my colleagues in Syria were,” he says. “They were thinking of every possible event that could happen.” While they couldn’t predict the specifics of this civil war, they were ready for it anyway. After the team evacuated, ICARDA established new genebanks in Morocco and Lebanon. 

When the new facilities opened, Tsivelikas was there. He went to Svalbard in 2015 to begin the process of getting the duplicated seeds back to ICARDA. “We managed, from Svalbard, to retrieve the [samples of seeds] to our new genebanks in Morocco and in Lebanon,” he says. 

ICARDA was the first genebank to retrieve its collection from Svalbard, but there have been others since. Now, Sudanese genebank workers are following in the footsteps of those in Syria, sending seeds to Svalbard amid their civil war. These seeds will be essential for rebuilding.

“There are lots of interesting examples where genebanks not only serve as a starting point for modern breeding and modern plant research, but sometimes simply to help farmers after a catastrophe or natural disaster,” Schmitz says.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post The seed vaults that could save humanity appeared first on Popular Science.

Getting that annual check-up can feel daunting for anyone. For a 140-pound leopard whiptail ray (Himantura leoparda) living at the New England Aquarium in Boston, it’s a whole other animal. At the weight of an adult human with a four-foot-three-inch wingspan, just moving the giant fish from its habitat to an exam pool is an exercise in teamwork.

“This process requires eight people on average, so we must ensure we have proper staffing to perform these exams safely from both an animal and human safety aspect,” Dr. Kathy Tuxbury, the New England Aquarium’s Senior Veterinarian, tells Popular Science.

Bringing such a large ray from its habitat into an exam pool takes at least eight people. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

Leopard whiptail rays (also called leopard whip rays) have leopard-like spots and very long, thin tails that can be two to four times the length of their bodies. These tails help them balance, steer through the water, and defend themselves against predators. Including the tail, these rays can be 13-feet-long, and are found in southeast Asian and northern Australian waters.

The New England Aquarium is home to two male leopard whiptail rays, one weighing in at 140 pounds and the other at a whopping 162 pounds. The smaller of the two has been there for 17 years and had his annual physical recently. 

During the ray’s check-up, the aquarists focus on collecting the fish from their exhibit and bringing it into the exam pool. Once the ray is anesthetized, an aquarist gets into the water with the ray to make sure that water is flowing over their gills and to keep the ray in position during his exam.

Veterinarians give the ray an ultrasound. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

“The exam is then performed by one of the New England Aquarium veterinarians in a similar manner as most other animal species taking a head-to-tail approach with examining all aspects of the ray,” says Dr. Tuxbury. “The exam also includes performing an ultrasound and collecting a blood sample for review.”

The aquarium will perform at least one physical exam per year, and others if any additional checkups if needed. As for this male ray’s recent exam, his weight, eyes, skin, and oral health is all normal. His heart, liver and gastrointestinal tract are also working as expected. The ray went back to swimming around his exhibit—and eating—only 30 minutes later. The two leopard whiptail rays eat 2.5 pounds of food every day. 

After getting a clean bill of health, the team lowers the ray back into its habitat. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

You can say hello to the rays and wish them continued good health at the Shark and Ray Touch Tank.

The post Giving a 140 pound stingray a check up requires 8 people appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s something out of a dream or TV show: a married couple takes their dog for a walk and finds a buried treasure worth $10 million. But it actually happened, back in 2013. 

The treasure is the Saddle Ridge Hoard, the largest ever stash of gold coins found in the United States. The couple, who go by John and Mary in the press, have been careful to obscure their identity and the exact place where they live to prevent would-be treasure hunters from showing up on their property. What we do know has mostly been told to the press by David McCarthy, the Senior Numismatist and Researcher at Kagin’s, who helped the couple assess and ultimately sell the hoard. 

“One day, when they were on that path, for whatever reason one of them looked down and there was this can,” McCarthy said in a 2014 interview. “They were used to finding cans and nails and bullets and other weird things from the 19th century on the property, and they were in the habit of digging stuff like that up because they love history.”

The couple tried to open the can with a stick, failed, and tried to carry it home. “They got back to the house and pried the top off and there, nested in the dirt, was a single gold coin…the edge of a single $20 gold piece poking out.” 

The Saddle Ridge Hoard of coins and can in the dirt where they were found. Images: Kagin’s Inc. via CC BY-SA 3.0

Excited, the couple went back to look for more cans—and found one. So they kept looking for more. 

“For about two weeks they kept going back to the site and finding more and more stuff,” said McCarthy. “They found eight cans after going over the area with a metal detector.” 

The total was 1,411 coins with a face value of around $28,000. The modern value was much higher, in part because of inflation but also because so many of the coins were pristine coins highly sought after by collectors. The couple, unsure what to do after finding a stash of coins this big, eventually got in touch with Kagin’s, a company that evaluates and helps sell rare coins that is also McCarthy’s employer.

Where are the coins from?

There is no definitive history of where the coins came from, but there are a few hints according to McCarthy. First, the cans are in varying states of decay, and the coins themselves were minted in years ranging from the 1860s all the way up to the 1890s. This suggests someone was burying coins in the same place at different points in time. The location, within 200 miles of the California Gold Rush, is another potential hint. 

Burying gold was common in Northern California in the 1800s, according to McCarthy, mostly because many people lived hundreds of miles from anything resembling a bank. “If you had 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars in gold that you’d acquired over time, you’re not going to leave it in your house,” he said. “If you don’t have a bank to put it in, the only logical choice is to bury it in the ground. It’s pretty typical human behavior.” 

The idea is that the person hiding the coins died before they could spend them, but also failed to tell their next of kin about the stash. The specifics, though, are odd. Many of the coins were in pristine condition, which implies they were never in circulation. And some were minted thousands of miles away in Georgia, implying their origin has little to do with the gold rush.

The truth is there’s never been a definitive explanation. We may never know who buried the coins, or why. 

Where did the coins end up?

John and Mary decided to sell the majority of the coins. Many of them were available on Amazon, the first time a major coin discovery was sold via the online retailer. The money was used to pay off debts and donated to charity. Two coins were donated to the Smithsonian. And the couple kept a few of the coins for themselves—they intend them to become family heirlooms. 

The two coins dedicated to the Smithsonian. On the left, a 10 Dollar Coin minted in 1888. On the right, a 20 dollar coin minted in 1892. Image: National Museum of American History Has anyone found buried treasure since then?

McCarthy, in 2014, speculated there could be other hoards of coins out there. “There could be dozens of other finds like this,” he said. “Someone at the right time at the right place might find one. I hope so.” 

Just such a find happened in 2023, when 700 gold coins were found in a Kentucky cornfield. The collection was dubbed “The Great Kentucky Hoard”. The oldest coin in the hoard dates to 1863, the height of the American Civil War. This implies the collection may have been buried to keep the coins from being seized by the invading Confederate army. Again, though, we may never know the exact reason the coins were buried. 

What we can see is how the coins were found. There’s a YouTube video showing the exact moment, in case you want to experience the joy of discovering treasure second hand. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover the next stash yourself. 

The post A couple walking their dog found $10 million worth of rare coins appeared first on Popular Science.

Scientists are leaving space fans with one more tasty treat before the year comes to a close. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured a stunning image of the largest protoplanetary disk ever observed, which just happens to be shaped like a giant celestial sandwich. The massive formation of dust and gas, which astronomers call Dracula’s Chivito, resides about 1,000 light-years from Earth and spans roughly 400 billion miles. To put that in perspective, NASA estimates this disk is about 40 times the diameter of our own solar system.

But aside from making stomachs rumble, astronomers say more research into the vampire disk could provide new insights into the early formation of other planetary systems, possibly even our own. Researchers go on to suggest this unusually volatile disk might, “represent a scaled-up version of our early solar system.” The astronomers’ new findings were published this week in The Astrophysical Journal. 

Vampire Disk offer glimpses into dramatic planetary past 

Planetary disks, sometimes called  planet nurseries, are the building blocks of solar systems. All planetary systems initially form disks of gas and dust around young stars. Eventually, planets form as material in the disk coalesces and accumulates. This particular disk, officially designated IRAS 23077+6707, has an estimated mass that’s 10 to 30 times greater than that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Astronomers note it’s both the largest and one of the most unusual disks observed, with filament-like features appearing on only one of its two sides, suggesting it is being shaped by dynamic processes such as recent infalls of dust and gas. This results in a composition that is “unexpectedly chaotic and turbulent.”

“These new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” Kristina Monsch, a study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration between Stanford University and the Smithsonian, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the spooky nickname is a nod to the home regions of the astronomers involved. One is from Transylvania, (hence Dracula) and the other is from Uruguay, whose national dish is a sandwich called “chivito.” The researchers say the image of the flattened disk resembles a hamburger, though an argument could easily be made that it looks more like a hot dog. 

Related: [Hubble Space Telescope caught a second glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS.]

Don’t count out the Hubble just yet 

The Hubble Telescope (launched back in 1990) might not have the most powerful onboard tech compared to the more recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, but it’s still regularly making major scientific contributions. Just this year, Hubble  has caught a rare glimpse of large space rocks colliding, showed a white dwarf eating an object that resembled Pluto, and created the largest photomosaic of the relatively nearby Andromeda galaxy to date. 

“Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets—processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way,” study co-investigator and Center for Astrophysics Joshua Bennett added. 

The post Hubble spots massive sandwich-shaped blob in deep space appeared first on Popular Science.

2025 was full of efficiency innovations and bold initiatives in the world of aerospace. From the most detailed movie of the night sky ever made to the first commercial soft landing on the moon, this year has been an inflection point for exploring and understanding the vast expanse above our heads. We also saw breakthroughs in small changes to commercial airliners that improve efficiency, as well as a new type of rocket engine that might be the future of extremely high speed air travel, plus the closest view of Mercury we’ve ever seen!

(Editor’s Note: This is a section from Popular Science’s 38th annual Best of What’s New awards. Be sure to read the full list of the 50 greatest innovations of 2025.)

Innovation of the Year Vera C. Rubin Observatory by U.S. National Science Foundation & Department of Energy: World’s largest digital camera to conduct 10-year survey of the night sky  Learn More

Prepare to see space like never before. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a groundbreaking US-funded project that will capture the most detailed, dynamic map of the night sky ever made. Using the world’s largest digital camera, it will capture a time-lapse of the entire sky every few nights to reveal billions of objects and catch fast-changing events like supernovae and near-Earth asteroids. Its massive dataset will help scientists better understand dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe while also improving planetary defense. 

The 3,200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera is the size of a small car and twice as heavy, tipping the scales at 6,000 pounds. The sensor’s huge number of megapixels is equivalent to 260 modern cell phone sensors. The camera is so powerful, it could snap a clear image of a golf ball from 15 miles away. 

By making its data widely available, the observatory will also open new doors for discovery for researchers, students, and citizen scientists around the world.

Riblet-shaped coating on 787 by Japan Airlines: Stabilizing airflow, reducing turbulence, and increasing fuel efficiency Learn More

Deployed on Boeing 787-9 aircraft starting in January, the coating uses tiny, sharkskin-like grooves called riblets to guide airflow smoothly along the aircraft’s surface. By keeping the air more organized and reducing small pockets of turbulence, the riblets cut aerodynamic drag, which normally wastes energy. That reduction in drag translates directly into better fuel efficiency, lowering operating costs and reducing the plane’s carbon emissions. Overall, this smart surface technology gives the 787 a quieter, cleaner, and more efficient ride without changing the aircraft’s shape or engines.

Blue Ghost lunar lander by Firefly Aerospace: First commercial company to soft land on the moon Learn More

The Blue Ghost lander was the first commercial vehicle to soft-land on the Moon, marking a major milestone in the shift from government-only lunar missions to public–private exploration with its March 2 touchdown. Over the summer, Firefly Aerospace was awarded a NASA contract to deliver science and technology instruments to the Moon’s south polar region, an area crucial for studying water ice and future human exploration. Successful delivery will help NASA gather data needed for future Artemis missions while proving that commercial companies can reliably operate on the lunar surface, demonstrating the Blue Ghost lander to be a major step toward a more sustainable, commercially driven lunar economy.

Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine by Venus Aerospace: Powering future flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo in under two hours Learn More

Venus Aerospace’s Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) is a new type of rocket propulsion that creates continuous spinning shockwaves to burn fuel far more efficiently than traditional rocket engines. This technology is targeted to enable aircraft to travel at speeds of Mach 4 to Mach 6 (3,069 to 4,603 mph), making routes like Los Angeles to Tokyo possible in under two hours. Because the engine produces more thrust with less fuel, it opens the door to faster, lighter, and potentially more affordable high-speed travel. In short, the RDRE is a key step toward turning ultra-fast, global point-to-point flight from science fiction into realistic transportation.

BepiColombo by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & European Space Agency (ESA): Exploring Mercury closer than ever Learn More

BepiColombo is the most ambitious mission ever sent to study Mercury, a planet that’s hard to reach because of the sun’s intense gravity. The spacecraft carries two orbiters—one built by the European Space Agency (ESA) and one by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)—that will map Mercury’s surface, study its thin atmosphere, investigate its magnetic field, and analyze its interior structure. These measurements will help scientists understand how rocky planets form and evolve, including Earth-like worlds in other star systems. By working together, JAXA and ESA are tackling one of the toughest destinations in the solar system and filling in major gaps in our understanding of the innermost planet.

The post 5 incredible aerospace breakthroughs in 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

The most dreaded time of year rolls around every winter like clockwork: cold and flu season. The time when hand washing increases, sanitizing surfaces intensifies, and old and young schedule regular seasonal vaccines in an attempt to prevent sickness from descending on their households. But there’s one piece of ammunition you should absolutely skip this season—and all year-round—because it does more harm than good: antibacterial hand soap.

While hand washing is vitally important to curb the spread of disease, soap advertised as antibacterial not only doesn’t protect you better from disease, it has far-reaching and possibly harmful effects on your health and the environment. Here’s why to ditch it and use plain soap instead.

How does soap even work?

Regular soap can come in many forms: foaming liquid, bars, and gels. It is little more than a combination of fat or oil, alkaline substances (lye), and water. When you wash your hands with it, it loosens the bond microbes (of which viruses and bacteria are a subset) have made with your skin, which allows water to easily wash them away down the drain.

Antibacterial soap has a similar formula, but with the addition of one or more of three biocide chemicals: benzalkonium chloride, benzethonium chloride, and chloroxylenol. These were not part of the list of 19 antiseptics the FDA banned in consumer wash products in 2016, but they have been flagged as potentially dangerous. The FDA cited the importance of further study to “fill safety and efficacy data gaps,” but rule-making has been deferred for the last nine years.

These antimicrobial chemicals kill microbes instead of simply scrubbing them away. But they don’t differentiate between good and bad bacteria; they kill whatever is most susceptible.

However, “you don’t need to kill the bacteria, you just need to remove the bacteria,” says Rebecca Fuoco, director of science communications at the Green Science Policy Institute.

Antibacterial soap can also disrupt helpful bacteria on your skin that support healthy pH, barrier function, and pathogen defense, she explains. Chemical residues can also linger on skin, extending the disruptive biocide effect beyond the act of washing.

With plain soap, the surviving microbes and new arrivals from the environment can quickly recolonize, which helps keep the skin microbiome healthy, Fuoco states.

Bacteria aren’t always the enemy

Some of those good bacteria also prevent colonization of bad. Only a small fraction cause disease; most are biologically important for digestion, immunity and healthy ecosystems. Many help keep gut and skin microbiomes functioning properly, which helps prevent infections naturally.

“When that balance is repeatedly disrupted by killing off large portions of these microbial communities, their protective functions can break down and leave us more vulnerable to infection,” Fuoco says.

That’s a problem for internal biological systems, but also industrial ones. Many bacteria are used in wastewater treatment systems nationwide to help convert ammonia into nitrogen. When overuse of antibacterial soap runs down drains in large quantities, it has the potential to shut down entire plants.

In San Luis Obispo, California, this likely happened in September of 2020 when the vital process of nitrification—which occurs when bacteria convert toxic ammonia into nitrate, a form of nitrogen readily usable by plants—came to a screeching halt. It only recovered after treatment with expensive anti-antibacterial agents.

After plenty of tests, the most likely culprit became clear: college students returning to school and overloading the wastewater system with quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), a class of chemicals used in disinfectants, soaps, wipes and sprays.

The harmful health impacts of antibacterial products

Scientists are just starting to understand the extent to which these products are linked to human disease, but the downsides are pervasive, and not just when people are first exposed. When soaps, wipes and sprays get washed down the drain, the QACs enter waste treatment systems. 

“Because QACs are not fully removed by wastewater treatment and tend to concentrate in sludge that is applied to land, they can enter rivers and other waters that recharge groundwater or supply drinking water and recycled water systems,” Fuoco describes. QACs were recently detected in New York state drinking water.

“We’re using it so much that it’s coming back to us,” Fuoco says. In fact, researchers measured QACs in people’s blood before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in a paper published in 2021, levels increased by 77 percent, indicating bioaccumulation is significant.

People also absorb QACs through skin contact, inhaling aerosol from sprays or inadvertently ingesting contaminated house dust. Children may be especially susceptible thanks to their close contact with floors and treated surfaces and hand-to-mouth behaviors, Fuoco notes. The American Academy of Pediatrics warns against using antimicrobial products around children.

Studies show correlations between antibacterial products and asthma and COPD in healthcare workers who are frequently exposed to these products in their workplace. Many types of contact can lead to ulcerative skin lesions and contact dermatitis in humans, and rodent studies have linked it to reduced fertility and neurodevelopment, even colitis-associated colon cancer in mice.

Overuse of antibacterial products can also accelerate antimicrobial resistance, leading to superbugs that are immune to the biocides and critical lifesaving antibiotics, Fuoco warns. Antimicrobial resistance is already a global crisis, with resistant infections spreading faster than the development of new antibiotics. 

“We don’t know how much of this crisis is driven by antibiotic versus biocide overuse. The contribution of biocides like QACs has largely been overlooked by global authorities, but we [scientists who study these chemicals] are hoping that will change soon,” Fuoco says. The World Health Organization believes antibiotic-resistant disease could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050 if nothing is done to curb use; currently, there are about 700,000 per year.

Overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture has long been identified as a driver of the global antimicrobial resistance crisis, Fuoco says, but there is growing evidence that antibacterial product use is contributing, too.

Bad for the environment

When products containing QACs are washed down the drain, the chemicals are often released into aquatic environments. Since they are toxic to some fish and many invertebrates, the backbone of the aquatic food web, ecosystem balances can be thrown out of whack.

QACs also accumulate in the soil and on sludge from wastewater treatment plants that is often spread on agricultural products as fertilizer. These chemicals, like PFAS, are persistent, meaning they can be found in soil and other environments years after they are no longer in use.

Antibacterial soaps are not more effective

Independent studies show (and the FDA agrees) that there’s no meaningful health benefit to choosing antibacterial hand soap over plain soap and water when it comes to eliminating microbes on hands and preventing illness. That includes E.coli, viruses, and the “bad” bacteria.There is little evidence that disinfecting wipes, sprays, and laundry sanitizer in homes provides added health benefits beyond regular cleaning and proper laundering, either, Fuoco says.

Additionally, most antibacterial products have to be left wet on surfaces—including hands—for several minutes in order to be as effective as they claim. Most consumers don’t follow those instructions, so products aren’t nearly as effective as they may think.

What to look out for

According to Fuoco and many other scientists, the best and safest choice is to avoid antibacterial and antimicrobial products altogether, particularly those containing QACs or chloroxylenol. Hand washes marketed as antibacterial must list their active antiseptic ingredients. So on labels, look for terms like “antibacterial” or “antiseptic” and check ingredient labels for the ingredients benzalkonium chloride, benzethonium chloride, and chloroxylenol.

When wiping down surfaces in your home or office, opt for plain soap and water instead of disinfectant wipes and sprays. “It’s usually unnecessary to disinfect surfaces in your household,” Fuoco states. The exception is when there’s been blood, fecal matter, or vomit from a sick person on surfaces. Other options like diluted bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol-based products, or citric-acid-based disinfectants can do the job while generally posing fewer health and environmental concerns, she continues.

So, ditch the antibacterial products altogether and fight cold and flu season the old-fashioned way: with plain soap and water. You’ll fare just as well and leave your long-term health and that of the environment better for it.

The post Ditch the antibacterial soap this cold and flu season appeared first on Popular Science.

The popular nursery rhyme This Little Piggy is an early childhood memory for many of us. It’s a poem that involves five little piggies, each corresponding to one of our fingers or toes. Kids love it, but if you pause to think, this simple rhyme raises a curious question: Why do humans have five digits on each of our four limbs in the first place? 

The simple answer is it’s just how we evolved, but determining where these fingers came from and how is a different story. “When you’re talking about why we have five—not six or not four—fingers and toes, I think that’s quite a difficult question,” says Tetsuya Nakamura, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s department of genetics. To find the answer, we need to go back millions of years. 

It all starts with a common ancestor 

All tetrapods, a group that include amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, derive from a common fish ancestor. “If you ask, ‘where did we come from?’ Our common ancestor was fish,” says Nakamura.

Fish initially developed limbs to walk on land during Earth’s Devonian Period, which occurred approximately 360 million years ago. A relatively short time later (evolutionarily speaking), the first four-limbed creatures—which had up to eight digits on each extremity—shed their extra digits. From then on out, five fingers and five toes became a standard feature for the world’s inaugural tetrapods. 

This extinct Devonian fishlike aquatic animal, Tiktaalik roseae, was one of the first vertebrates on land. Image: DepositPhotos

That five-digit plan soon became encoded in our early ancestors’ Hox genes, a set of master control genes that act as a genetic blueprint, assuring that body parts, organs, and limbs end up in their correct locations. Ever since, those Hox genes have determined that all our common ancestors have evolved from that five-digit blueprint. 

Of course, not every living vertebrate has five fingers and toes, but more than 99% of tetrapods (all land species with vertebrae) share the same five-fingered bone structure. This includes sea lions, whales, and seals, which have five finger-like protrusions hidden inside their flippers, and bats, born with webbed fingers that form the structure of their wings. Even horse and bird embryos briefly start off with five digits before redeveloping into hoofs or (in the case of avians) a lesser number of toes. 

Only one in 500 to 1,000 humans are born with extra fingers or toes. This birth difference is known as polydactyly, and is linked to an overexpressive gene known as sonic hedgehog (you read that correctly!). 

Tracing it back to fish 

Still, it wasn’t until 2016 that a group of scientists from the University of Chicago determined how a fish’s fin rays (which are the bony skeletal elements that provide structure, flexibility, and added support for fish fins) eventually evolved into fingers and toes. Nakamura was a member of the team. 

The scientists used tiny, ray-finned fishes like the zebrafish, medaka, and other tropical fish that you often find in home aquariums for their study. They then utilized CRISPR-Cas, a gene-editing technique that allowed them to alter fishes’ DNA, to delete Hox genes required for limb development. 

From there, the scientists compared embryonic cells in these mutant fish to mice as they grew and developed, eventually determining a genetic connection between the two. “We found that our fingers and fish fin rays use the same Hox genes and their functions to develop,” says Nakamura. In other words, fish fin rays and our fingers derive from the same genetic toolkit. 

This massive humpback whale skeleton shows the five finger-like bones hidden inside the massive animals’ flippers. Image: DepositPhotos What it all means

While their research pinned down a direct correlation between the fin rays of fish and the digits of tetrapods, there’s still a lot to learn about how humans developed fingers and toes. “We found that our fingers probably evolved from fin rays, despite the fact that they’re very different structures,” says Nakamura. 

“Many questions remain,” he says. “For example, how did they transform to fingers? And what kind of genes and molecules regulated this transformation?” With better gene-editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9, a more precise kind of CRISPR-Cas system, appearing on the scene over the last decade, Nakamura believes that answers may come sooner than later. 

Other commonalities 

According to Nakamura, tetrapods and fish are genetically similar in other ways as well. For example, the hind limbs of land vertebrates evolved from the pelvic fins of ancestral lobbed-fin fish, while shoulder girdles (the bony structure that forms the foundation of our shoulders) developed from fish gill arches, which are the skeletal loops that support a fish’s gills for breathing and feeding. 

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“Although fish don’t have necks,” says Nakamura, “somehow during evolution, humans separated the skull bone from the shoulder girdle, creating the neck space.” This allowed us to move our heads independently from our bodies for things like hunting and scanning the horizon. 

It’s what’s known as an “evolutionary innovation,” a new trait or feature that allows organisms to further function and adapt, much like how we came to have fingers and toes. “We took the structures that existed in fish fins,” says Nakamura, “and our bodies changed their development over time to finger-like tissues that are more suitable for land.”

It’s just a number 

As to why we have five fingers and five toes? That remains inconclusive, but the number sure does make for a good nursery rhyme. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Why do we have five fingers and toes? appeared first on Popular Science.

BREAKING: SpaceX has announced that Starlink now has over 9 million customers, up from 8M in November and 7M in August 2025. I predicted that SpaceX would get to 9-10 million by the end of 2025. 9 days at 22-23K per day is another 220k-230k.  Starlink added a record 21,275 new customers on average per ...

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In 2015, NASA celebrated the Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th year in orbit by releasing one of its most stunning images to date—a colorful star cluster in the constellation Carina known as Westerlund 2. However, a lot can change in a decade. In January 2023, the HST’s observational capabilities were overtaken when the powerful James Webb Space Telescope imaged the same star cluster. While the HST is still a powerful piece of equipment, the European Space Agency decided to showcase its heir’s technological leaps by closing out 2025 with a new, even more detailed glimpse at Westerlund 2.

The billowing, vibrantly visualized formation located 20,000 light-years from Earth were imaged using the JWST’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). Westerlund 2 is estimated to stretch between 6 and 13 light-years across, and features some of the galaxy’s hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. To fully appreciate the difference between what HST and JWST can see of the cosmos, the ESA also uploaded a slider tool to allow viewers to shift between both images of Westerlund 2. While all of the brightest stars are apparent in 2015’s glimpse, the newer look reveals hundreds of additional, dimmer stars in the background.

Westerlund 2’s young stellar objects are ejecting powerful waves of radiation in all directions, twisting and entangling the large, surrounding gaseous clouds. Although the closer, bright stars immediately stand out from their companions, hundreds of tiny points of light reveal some of their younger siblings. Around them, the thicker plumes of red and orange gas also intermingle with the thinner blue and pink threads to depict a dynamic and highly active stellar nursery.

The JWST’s latest look at Westerlund 2 is more than simply a pretty picture. The data also includes the nebula’s total population of brown dwarf stars, some of which are as small as 10 times the mass of Jupiter. Astronomers can now begin studying how these stellar objects’ surrounding discs form over time, as well as how planets arrive in such huge star clusters.

The post James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes snap images of same nebula, 10 years apart appeared first on Popular Science.

For the past 25 years, an intrepid group of astronauts have spent the holidays 250 miles above the Earth. The crew living and working aboard the International Space Station (ISS) get to eat their turkey (but can’t drink seltzer or use salt) and open presents while traveling 17,500 miles per hour and circling their home planet every 90 minutes. 

Despite that unique vantage, the celebrations often look quite similar to how they would here on Earth. NASA astronauts share special meals packed by the Space Food Systems Laboratory at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the crews will select their menus with help from nutritionists and food scientists before launch. The cargo launches arriving before special occasions often include Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bags filled with foods including clams, oysters, green beans, and smoked salmon, and shelf-stable treats such as icing, candies, almond butter, and hummus. 

ISS crew members will also use the opportunity to connect with loved ones through video calls. According to NASA, these chats and the holiday greetings sent back to Earth are, “a reminder that even in space, home is never far away.”

Browse through a quarter century of ISS holiday celebrations below. (Click to expand images to full screen.)

Expedition 4 crew members, former NASA astronauts Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz, along with Rosocosmos cosmonaut Yuri Onifriyenko, pose for a Christmas photo in December 2022. Image: NASA.
Expedition 13 crew members, Rosocosmos cosmonaut Valery I. Tokarav (left) and former NASA astronaut William McArthur, pose with Christmas stockings in December 2005. Image: NASA.
The six Expedition 30 crew members assembled in the U.S. Destiny laboratory aboard the space station for a Christmas celebration in December 2011. Image: NASA.
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti pictured above the space station on December 20, 2014 during Expedition 42. Image NASA.
Expedition 50 crew members celebrate the holidays aboard the orbiting laboratory in December 2016. Image: NASA.
Four Expedition 70 crewmates join each other inside the space station and join each other inside the space station’s Unity module for a Christmas Day Meal in December 2023. From left are Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency); Commander Andreas Mogensen from ESA (European Space Agency); and NASA Flight Engineers Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli. Image: NASA.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Commander Suni Williams shows off a holiday decoration of a familiar reindeer aboard the ISS on December 16, 2024. The Decoration was crafted with excess hardware, cargo bags, and recently-delivered Santa Hats. Image: NASA.
NASA astronauts Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Don Petit (left) and Commander Suni Williams (right) pose for a fun holiday season portrait while speaking on a ham radio inside the space station’s Columbus laboratory module. Image: NASA.

To remind us here on Earth that we are all still connected so many mileas away, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, and Chris Williams, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, send warm holiday wishes in this message recorded on December 17, 2025.

The post 9 festive ISS holiday celebrations through the years appeared first on Popular Science.

It was as if his muscle memory had evaporated. Twenty-year-old Ethan White couldn’t remember how to use the drumsticks. The snare drum he knew like a part of his own body was suddenly a foreign object. His right hand felt weak, the University of Michigan student thought perhaps it was just fatigue. After all, the Michigan Marching Band had just finished a busy football season with a victory at the 2024 CFP National Championship Game in January. By mid February, Ethan started to notice other odd things—tripping while going up stairs, struggling to hold things in his hands.

In March, an MRI found a tumor on his thalamus, deep in the center of his brain. Ethan was diagnosed with diffuse midline glioma (DMG), a cancer that is a death sentence for the vast majority of people who get it. DMG refers to cancerous tumors that grow on the thalamus, brainstem, or spinal cord. Surgery is out of the question, since these parts of the brain are dangerous to operate on, making it one of the most challenging cancers to treat. 

Primarily affecting children and young adults, DMG has an overall survival rate of only 1 percent. Patients are usually given nine to 12 months to live. While DMG’s prognosis has been grim for decades, patients like Ethan are finally starting to see that change.

Drummer Ethan White first suspected something was wrong when he could not use his drumsticks. Image: Michelle Sherman. Using a biological flashlight

A new FDA-approved treatment called Modeyso is giving patients with DMG more time—adding months, even years, and with quality of life intact. It’s “the first change in standard of care in 60-plus years,” Lisa Ward, co-founder of Tough2gether Foundation, tells Popular Science. Her son Jace passed in 2021 from diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a form of DMG. “It’s the first step and a whole new trajectory of hope.”

Modeyso’s journey into a treatment began a few decades ago. After losing his mother to cancer, Modeyso developer Dr. Joshua Allen became fascinated by cancer defenses that already exist in the human body. 

“Evolution has been working on the cancer problem for a long time, a lot longer than humans,” Allen tells Popular Science. “We all get cancer multiple times throughout our lives. Evolution has given the human immune system ways to recognize and get rid of tumor cells. There’s this really cool stuff in immune cells that can kill tumors but doesn’t cause side effects.” 

Modeyso was approved by the FDA in August 2025. Image: Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

Allen wanted to find a way to bottle this. He began looking for a molecule that could trick tumors into self-destructing. In his research, he used bioluminescence, a tool scientists often use to track how well a cancer treatment is working. The illuminating luciferase gene is the same gene that makes fireflies light up. For Allen, having grown up in Georgia catching fireflies in bottles with his brother, this was full-circle. 

The lab inserted the firefly gene into a TRAIL gene. TRAIL genes are naturally produced by our bodies, and selectively trigger cell death in cancer cells. The fusion of TRAIL and luciferase became a biological flashlight, making cancer cells glow. Whenever a cancer cell turned on the TRAIL gene, it also made luciferase, allowing scientists to detect TRAIL-expressing cells by their bioluminescent signal.

The missing puzzle piece

At the same time, bereaved families were donating the bodies of their deceased children to medical research in hopes of finding new treatments, resulting in experts finding an important mutation they didn’t previously know of. Called H3 K27M, the mutation was present in 70 to 90 percent of the children who had died of DIPG. Scientists realized it was also present in other midline brain tumors. 

This was the missing puzzle piece for Allen and his colleagues. H3 K27M damages a key “off switch” for genes, causing widespread, uncontrolled gene activity that keeps cells in a multiplying state that causes tumor growth.

Dr. Joshua Allen (right) studies the cancer defenses that already exist in the human body. Image: Penn State University.

Now, Modeyso reverses that mechanism. The once weekly dose is in pill form, and can be taken by patients over age one. Allen is calling it “hope in a bottle.” And while it’s not a cure, the drug is helping to extend patients’ lives with very few side-effects. 

“It’s the first big win, to be able to have more time,” Tammi Carr, co-founder of ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation, tells Popular Science. Carr lost her five-year-old son Chad to DIPG a decade ago. 

“When you get a diagnosis like this, you’re told your child has nine to 12 months to live. Every minute matters, and so to be able to have more time is a huge win from a family’s perspective,” Carr says.

Chad Carr (middle) and his family. Chad died from DIPG at the age of five. Image: Tammi Carr.

Twenty-year-old Jace Ward started taking Modeyso after his diagnosis in 2019. The young athlete got 17 months that he wouldn’t have had otherwise before he died in July 2021. 

“The drug worked very well for him,” says Jace’s mother Lisa. “For 17 months, he could play basketball, golf—he could have Christmas and meet his nephew for the first time. All of these memories got made because, instead of six months, he had 17 good months.”

Jace Ward (right) and his mother Lisa. Modeyso helped extend his life by over one year. Image: Lisa Ward.

And sometimes, the treatment works even longer. Thirty-nine-year-old Ben Stein-Lobovits has been taking Modeyso for seven years. Eight years ago, he was at a wedding in Chile when he chalked up the numbness on his tongue to a hangover. Soon after, an MRI showed he had a brainstem glioma. After radiation, he started taking Modeyso.

“I think I’m the longest running patient on it,” Stein-Lobovits tells Popular Science. The father of two has seen a 70 percent reduction in his tumor size, according to his most recent imaging. He now advocates for patients getting on Modeyso as early as they can. 

“The earlier the intervention, the better,” he says.

For people with cancer, more time means holidays, family bonding, and milestones. But it also means possibly being around for when there is a cure. The medicine’s minimal side-effects make it easy to combine with other treatments as well.

The gift of normal

In June 2024, four months after his eerie moment with the snare drum, Ethan started taking Modeyso. He had completed 30 sessions of radiation that helped to shrink his tumor, and his family and doctors saw an opportunity to layer the new drug with a few other medications to keep the tumor at bay.

“Having access to [Modeyso] was a major part of keeping him alive,” Ethan’s mother Michelle Sherman tells Popular Science. 

Ethan was able to live a relatively normal college life for over a year after that—rock climbing, going to class, living with friends. Sherman says it’s given him time and quality of life. Ethan graduated with honors from the University of Michigan on December 14, 2025. 

The post ‘Hope in a bottle’ for a deadly cancer and the firefly gene that lit the way appeared first on Popular Science.

A small but real part of the variation in the policy positions taken by individuals and organizations is explained by two key factors: an econ and a (social/identity/) culture factor. Two diagrams show distributions of stated positions re these factors:

Some “stylized facts” to consider:

1. Each side (i.e., left or right) varies less on one factor more “central” to it than on the other: the left less on econ, the right less on culture. So there are far more (upper left of diagrams) “authoritarian” left econ and right culture folks than there are (lower right of diagrams) “libertarian” right econ and left culture folks. The median left, median right, and libertarian positions roughly form a triangle.

2. The more educated vary less on the less central factor. So the very educated are more polarized, and are more a 1D distribution, while others are more 2D.

3. Policy typically sits more in the middle of this space, compared to median opinion. So policy is more libertarian, and also closer to the median educated.

4. Over centuries, policy has moved toward the left on both axes, though it has moved more in culture than econ over the last half century, and moved more on econ than culture in the prior half century.

5. Compared to high level govt policy, govt policy details, and also individual behavior, sit even more toward the middle of this space. The right divorces more and gives more to charity, while the left conserves less energy and more blocks low income housing.

I’m tempted to explain these patterns this way:

1. In terms of the many details of policy, our implied positions on these axes, averaging over these details, are roughly distributed as independent Normals.

2. But to take a visible abstract position in that middle feels too conformist. Most want instead to look abstractly principled and different.

3. So most prefer to visibly identify with one of the two popular principled and different abstract positions: left econ or right culture. (Fewer take the also principled and different abstract libertarian position.)

4. The more educated more want to be abstractly principled and different, and also accept abstract arguments for correlated econ and culture positions.

5. Being less visible, most policy details, as well as detailed party positions on policy, are not very consistent with abstract positions, and so are pretty random and also more toward the middle of those independent Normal distributions.

6. Being even less visible and more random, most personal actions are on average even more toward that middle.

7. The arguments for the left econ position are more abstract than for right culture, which is why policy changed more on econ during the peak of abstraction, and but has more recently moved more on culture while abstraction was in decline.

Alas, this account suggests that the more abstractly described is futarchy’s outcome measure, the more likely it would be to be pulled toward “authoritarian” left econ and right culture positions, and the more it might might jump back and forth between left and right as different political coalitions took power. An outcome measure that was more a mess of details might be more stable and closer to detailed policy preferences, though alas that also seems more open to gaming and corruption.

One year ago, I predicted in Videos and articles that Elon Musk would build AI data centers on Mars. A few days ago, Elon Musk confirmed the general plan for AI data centers on Mars to an All hands meeting of XAI. I also wrote one third of the book AI Rising. The book is ...

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Vitalik Buterin (VB) on culture:

Zuzalu in 2023 was an experiment: bring ~200 people, from multiple communities -Ethereum, longevity, rationalism, AI - together in one place for two months, and see what happens. … fall away over time: novel governance designs, and a search for legal autonomy. … Over time, popups would get shorter in duration, smaller in scope, and more generic in substance, … I have started advocating for Zuzalu-inspired communities to start having permanent nodes. … I always fear the “regression to the mean” that they will turn into glorified coworkingspaces, and lose all of their cultural or experimental interestingness. …

We have too much of a two-level structure: individuals, very powerful large-scale actors like states, and nothing else. … a successful “intermediate institution” … needs to be some kind of neo-tribe … that focuses, and meaningfully innovates, on the thing that humans do that isn’t generic: culture. … people make the mistake of thinking culture is something that can be explicitly laid down by mission statements and top-down edicts. …

Mistake of over-identifying culture with the purely aesthetic, subjective and group-identity-oriented parts of culture: food, music, dance, dress, architecture styles, and ignore the parts that are functional, whose success or failure drives the success and failure of civilizations. …

Many things … require “immersion” to succeed: lifestyle habits, local public goods such as air quality, work habits, lifetime learning habits, limitations on use of technology, etc. Doing anything truly interesting and unique requires “depth”, and substantial collective investment and effort to create an entire environment oriented around better serving those needs. These things cannot easily be done by an individual …

Culture is a big complicated blob where actions, consequences, statements by leaders and theories by intellectuals all influence each other in every direction. …

What we want is a better “world game” for cultural evolution: an environment where cultures improve and compete, but not on the basis of violent force, and also not exclusively on low-level forms of memetic fitness (eg. virality of individual posts on social media, moment-by-moment enjoyment and convenience), but rather on some kind of fair playing field that creates sufficient space to showcase the longer-term benefits that a thriving culture provides. …

Cultural innovation works better when it arises out of a collection of habits, attitudes and goals that are shared by a particular group, and adapted to the group’s needs. …

So far, I have told two disjoint stories. One is about smaller-scale community-driven projects, and experimentation in culture. Another is about larger-scale politics and business-driven projects, and experimentation in rules.

… I predict that in general the “market structure” will split [these] tribes and zones into distinct categories, because these are different things that require different specialties that are complementary …

People just have to get off their butts and actually create these alternative cultures and environments, and doing it is hard. Startups are also hard. But startups have had a multi-billion-dollar capitalist optimization machine figuring out all the most optimized ways of doing them and rapidly growing them to scale, and turned them into cookie-cutter standardized playbooks. Culture does not have the same profit motive, and culture is inherently not easy to scale. …

I do not literally expect we are going to see a world where most people live in tribes, or even zones. … But I do expect a world that is somewhat more dynamic in both economic and political rules and in cultural dimensions, and that gives people more options. Such a world would be a world where (i) people have more meaningful freedom, both to escape persecution and to choose the kinds of environments that they truly enjoy living in, (ii) we get better innovation both in economic and political rules and in culture, and (iii) instead of the innovation and creativity of the world being concentrated in a few super-centers of global economic and political power, it is globally distributed everywhere across the world. This is a world that I want to live in.

It seems that VB has learned much about culture. But I fear that he, and most of you, still don’t quite get just how severe is our culture problem.

Some aspects of culture, like clothes and food, let people feel enjoy a distinct cultural identity, but are shallow, and don’t much influence biological adaptiveness. Other aspects are deep, like those that set our attitudes and behaviors to family, fertility, death, war, community, and democracy.

Each aspect of culture has a (context-dependent) scale above which it can easily vary, and below which it cannot. Aspects with low scales allow for much variety and experimentation, and thus effective selection, but aspects with high scales allow for far less, and this is where we have a big problem. Deep aspects tend to have higher scales.

When aspects vary one at a time, then to win, innovations must be attractive given the usual distribution over all the other aspects. But when aspects can be varied as packages, parts can win that would not seem attractive by themselves. This is like the evolution of species compared to organisms, or of firm cultures compared to within-firm innovations. These species- and firm- level innovation processes actually matter more than do within-species and within-firm level innovation processes, as we have seen more innovation in fragmented habits and industries.

When we try to innovate in language, tech, business practice, law, and governance, we can often A) see which factors were held fixed while others changed, B) distinguish cause from effect among related factors, and C) see which particular factor changes most contributed to which particular local outcomes of interest. These abilities greatly aid us in identifying promising changes and adapting them to new contexts.

But doing these is just far harder with culture. Which is why culture has far less structured experimentation, or learning of useful lessons from the variations we see. And this is why cultural evolution has long been much more of a simple Darwinian process of natural selection: variations happen, and then some win out over others.

It is thus far easier to promote innovation in say software or governance, compared to culture. To innovate in culture, we can mainly just induce many new cults, cults that try out whole packages of deep high-scale cultural features, that try to last for generations, and that build up sufficient insularity against outside influences to have a shot at actually retaining kids and preserving distinctiveness for generations.

Most of the cultural experiments that VB celebrates have far too little insularity to plausibly serve in this role. More important, due to several centuries of easier talk, travel, and trade, the world now has many orders of magnitude a) too little variety, at cultures level, and also b) too few attempts to start and grow new cults. So I’m afraid that the amount of added variety that VB could plausibly induce in these parameters, even if he induced 100x more from others, is just vastly insufficient to the need.

But VB, or people like him, could plausibly single-handedly induce far more experimentation and thus innovation in governance. And there is a decent chance that we could find far more competent forms of governance, which we might then assign to the task of fixing and improving our processes of cultural evolution, including its variety. Yes, even this seems a long shot, and so my best prediction is that we will fail, and our civilization will decline, to be replaced by descendants of the Amish, Haredim, etc. But its the best shot I can see.

Shane Legg talks about the 1997 and later creation and popular definition of general intelligence. Shane Legg, co-founder and Chief AGI Scientist at Google DeepMind, defines levels of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as a spectrum rather than a single binary threshold. NOTE: He mentions a 1997 paper on nanotechnology security that defined AGI. I, Brian ...

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Massachusetts authorities confirmed Brown University shooter killed MIT nuclear scientist. Redditor (Lamin_Kaare) is a Homeless Man named John and he is a former Brown University student. He is credited for cracking the case wide open by police. He called the tip line and flagged his OWN Reddit post, and was seen on video walking very ...

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OpenAI is holding preliminary talks with Amazon for an investment over $10 billion, including use of Amazon Web Services’ Trainium chips for AI training. This is separate from raising up to $100 billion at a $830 billion valuation, up 66% from October’s $500 billion mark. The $100B raise tells you what Sam Altman and OpenAI ...

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