U.S. Military Uses Lasers to Shoot Down Mexican Cartel Drones at Southern Border

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Aug. 28):

U.S. military forces used a laser system to knock three Mexican drug cartel drones out of the sky at the southern border earlier this week.

The operation took place during the overnight hours Tuesday and into Wednesday, according to U.S. Northern Command.

The task force behind the operation said troops used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL, against the three drones.

In a post on X, U.S. Northern Command shared a still image from Joint Task Force Southern Border of the laser being deployed.

The right tools. The right authorities. In the hands of trained warfighters.

Three cartel drones defeated.@JointTFSB is delivering real capability where it matters — defending our forces, securing our borders in support of @CBP, and defending the homeland.

We Have The Watch.… https://t.co/nVJ8nmWwWL

— U.S. Northern Command (@USNorthernCmd) August 28, 2026

The military said it was determined the drones were hostile and posed a threat to U.S. troops, as well as Customs and Border Protection personnel on the ground.

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the task force’s commander, praised the technology and the operation.

“The successful defeat of these adversarial drones is a direct testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of the JTF,” Taylor said in a statement.

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” he added.

Taylor also made it clear that U.S. military and border patrol personnel would not tolerate being surveilled by hostile paramilitary groups.

“By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance,” Taylor said.

Per the task force commander, the Mexican government offered its assistance.

“We also greatly appreciate the support of our Mexican Army partners as we work together to combat this threat to the border region,” he said.

Defense News reported earlier this year that the U.S. military was readying itself to use the AMP-HEL system domestically.

“As drone warfare spreads beyond distant conflicts, laser weapons are an increasingly attractive domestic countermeasure,” the outlet’s Jared Keller wrote.

“While kinetic interceptors and electronic warfare may be considered suitable for chaotic battlefields, their potential for collateral effects makes them far too risky for consistent domestic applications,” he added in his report.

Keller concluded, “And even if collateral damage wasn’t a concern, expending expensive missiles on the 1,000 cartel-operated drones that cross the border with Mexico monthly is economically unsustainable, especially for a Pentagon that’s already rapidly burning through munitions as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal. [source]

Nice! Cool! 

Another article and a video on the subject:

• Drone activity at U.S.-Mexico border drops 75% after U.S. uses laser weapon, military says
• THIS Is The Secret Reason The El Paso Airport Was Shut Down [video]

Humanity Isn't a Problem to Solve: Technology Needs a Telos

From Breakpoint.org (Sept. 21, 2023):

Pixar’s Wall-E has proven to be among the most profound and prophetic films of the last 20 years. After hopelessly polluting the Earth and leaving an army of robots to clean up the planet, humans now live aboard a giant ship built by a company that promises to take care of all its passengers’ needs. Thus, humans are left with nothing to do but amuse themselves and eat a lot.

Many Christians wrote off the Pixar classic because of its hyper-environmentalist message. However, the film’s commentary on human exceptionalism and vocation, specifically the inability of our machines to do our most important work for us, was spot-on. In the world of Wall-E, human beings have a purpose, or a telos that cannot be reduced to maximizing comfort, safety, and convenience.

In the biblical account of reality, humans exist to glorify and love God, and to serve as His special representatives and co-rulers in creation. Human inventions should help towards achieving those ends, extending our abilities, and mitigating the effects of the Fall. Wanting to replace ourselves with our devices assumes that humanity is the central problem of the world that needs to be solved.

Recently in First Things, Matthew Crawford argued that an anti-human worldview like the one parodied in Wall-E now dominates our tech and governing classes. Those who are behind everything from smartphone apps to pandemic policy share a basic belief that human beings are inferior to machines. We are, as he puts it, “stupid,” “obsolete,” “fragile,” and “hateful.”

Crawford opens his essay with an example of a driverless car created by Google that froze at a four-way stop. Apparently, the drivers around the car didn’t behave as it had been programmed to expect. However, rather than admit the limits of the car’s “artificial intelligence,” one Google engineer remarked that what he’d learned from the incident is that humans need to be “less idiotic.” The premise is that humans are not the crown of creation but problems to be solved.

Of course, it is quite possible that, once they’ve worked out all the bugs, driverless cars will lead to less accidents and road deaths. However, one of the bugs to be worked out are the programmers who hate humans, which makes the point of this essay ring true. So much of our high-tech culture, from the social media algorithms that tell us what we want to the transhumanist fantasies about uploading our consciousness to computers, assumes that humanity is an obstacle to be overcome.

Much of our public life also assumes the basic idiocy and inadequacy of humans: take health officials more concerned with controlling people than limiting the spread of a virus or legislation quashing parental rights in order to “affirm” gender-confused minors.

C.S. Lewis saw this impulse decades ago and recognized how it would grant growing power to certain people over and above others. In his masterpiece The Abolition of Man, Lewis warned of those he called “conditioners,” who considered themselves above such common human frailties. Of course, as Lewis pointed out, the conditioners are also human, but in denial that they too are vulnerable to the same frailties as everyone else. Their danger lies in the fact that they are oblivious about their frailties, especially their moral frailties.

It is good that humans have bodies that limit us to one location and the need for food, sleep, and friendship. These limits are part of our design. Because we are designed, we must be guided by values and not merely algorithms. It is good that we take time to learn, to appreciate beauty, to feel wonder, and to have burning questions about what is behind all that we see. God made us this way, so that, eventually, our seeking would lead back to Him. Though He intends to redeem us from the ravages of sin, He never intends to optimize us into efficient machines. Apparently, He considers being human as something “good,” even “very good.” So much so, in fact, He took on flesh Himself.

Wall-E got it (mostly) right. Technology is good but needs a telos—a purpose for existing. That purpose cannot be to replace, transcend, or circumvent God’s good design for human beings.

In short, technology and public policy should be human-shaped, not the other way around. [source]

Amen.

ICE Plans to Issue Gloves That Can Deliver Electric Shocks

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 12):

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of "conductive distraction and de-escalation devices" for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.

The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.

DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, wrote in an email, "Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject."

The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published as early as Friday.

Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone's skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.

"It's immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting," said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. "If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool."

Peters said he believed ICE's planned purchase would likely be the largest from the company to date. He said he could envision ICE officers using the gloves to help remove uncooperative subjects from cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.

"For smaller officers or weaker officers or older officers, I think it has a great advantage" because it can produce faster takedowns and shorten confrontations, he said.

The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting "verbal defiance or belligerence," or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women or elderly or disabled people.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have no confidence that ICE officers will use the devices appropriately. She questioned why the devices would be necessary for civil immigration enforcement and noted those getting shocked might have no advance warning.

"ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do," she said. "Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public."

Supporters say the devices are generally used in specific jail and transport situations, rather than broadly to patrol on the streets. They have been used to subdue violent suspects who are refusing to get into squad cars and inmates who are harming themselves and threatening officers, according to Compliant Technologies.

Peters said he expected the devices to be misused by a small number of employees, as with other policing technologies, but he said they are unlikely to cause injuries. He said it would be important for ICE to have robust policies and training in place.

To use the device, officers must complete a course and be recertified every two years, the manufacturer says. [source]

I guess cattle prods were out of the question? Maybe, they would have been too awkward to use. It seems, from the article, that ICE officers can't adjust the shock amount. Probably, a good idea.  The anti-ICE nuts' are going to love this tech! Their heads are going to explode when they hear this news.

How American Soldiers Invented GPS On Labor Day Weekend In 1973

From The Federalist.com (Aug. 31, 2023):

With the letters GPS, we instantly recognize an innovation that has revolutionized our lives. The concept was born half a century ago in a sweltering room at the Pentagon over Labor Day weekend in 1973.

That’s the genesis of the concept for a constellation of platforms orbiting the Earth, transmitting radio signals to determine location. Many years of calculation, experiment, and miniaturization led to the Navigation Signal Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR) satellites that became known as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The dedication and intellect of the engineers, scientists, and technicians involved led the way to worldwide freedom from getting lost — and governments’ ability to always know where you are if you’re carrying a phone.

……..

The Beginnings of Satellite Positioning

So how did that all change? A few days after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a few hundred miles above the Earth’s surface, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory realized the satellite could be tracked from the ground merely by the radio signals its transmitters emitted by exploiting the Doppler shift as it passed.

In August 1966, the U.S. Air Force submitted proposal 621B to engage these principles in reverse: using the satellite to locate a ground position, such as for search-and-rescue operations. Although useful for military use, that was not economically scalable. It also required an enormous quantity of satellites for global coverage from low-Earth orbit.

Then over Labor Day weekend in 1973, a group of U.S. Air Force officers led by Col. Bradford Parkinson met in empty Pentagon rooms to bring this idea to fruition. Ground receivers had to be passive, with no feedback to the transmitters in orbit. The system had to operate worldwide. Intersection from four separate signal emitters within the line-of-sight would correspond to a single receiver location.

Measuring the time elapsed can calculate the distance between the satellite and the receiver. Depending on these time delays, the intersection of the spheres corresponds to the receiver’s location, allowing trilateration plus time offset to compensate for the receiver’s temporal inaccuracy. The convergence in this example points to a location in northern Europe.

Configuring GPS

The Atlas booster then available constrained the payload mass for reaching medium orbit. The teams chose a constellation of at least 24 platforms with 12-hour orbital passes at 12,500-mile altitude to satisfy payload requirements, mapped into six orbital planes with four or five satellites per plane.

To distinguish multiple satellites operating on the same frequency, James Spilker at the company Aerospace created code division multiple access, or CDMA. This technique assigns a particular identifier to each transmitter.

Richard Schwartz and Hugo Fruehauf at Rockwell miniaturized and radiation-hardened rubidium vapor oscillators to serve as the NAVSTAR atomic clocks. These achievements from Air Force, Rockwell, and Aerospace teams are summarized in the Lonely Halls documentary.

Fixing What Went Wrong with the Concept

Sources of errors for this plan abounded. Among these included space-time dilation, revealed by Albert Einstein in 1905 and 1915. Due to special relativity, the NAVSTAR satellite’s orbital speed of 2.4 miles per second decelerates the clocks by seven microseconds per day.

By contrast, general relativity speeds up those same clocks by 45 microseconds per day due to the GPS satellite’s greater distance from the Earth’s core. That reduces that gravitational influence compared to the surface.

Together, failure to compensate for these effects induces an error of more than six miles per day. So before launch, the satellite clocks are slowed down by 0.000000045 percent to synchronize with ground stations.

Additional sources of error include free electrons in the ionosphere, Sagnac distortion, and Earth’s axis perturbations called the Chandler wobble. GPS compensates for these by incorporating two separate transmit frequencies, calibrated against each other, as well as atmospheric modeling and coordinate transformation between transmitter and receiver.

GPS Finally Launches in the 1970s

Led by Roger Easton, Naval Research Laboratory developed a pair of proof-of-concept satellites to test time-based navigation. These were launched in 1974 and 1977.

Starting in February 1978 and continuing until October 1985, the Air Force launched 10 prototype Block-I NAVSTAR satellites aboard Atlas F rockets for testing. From February 1989 through November 1997, it launched nine Block-II and 19 Block-IIA by Rockwell aboard Delta-II rockets (after the exclusion of the Space Shuttle). This formed the initial GPS constellation.

Today, 31 GPS satellites remain operational, not counting four reserve or spare platforms. Various improvements have been incorporated.

Throughout their development, GPS satellites have shared common features. Shown below is the Block-II configuration, weighing about one ton (about double the prototype Block-I). Louvers on the side dissipate excess heat via thermal radiation to maintain consistent internal temperature. Attitude thrusters adjust satellite orientation. Photovoltaic solar arrays convert sunlight into electrical power. [read more]

Interesting military history.

U.S. Space Command Warns Russia Planning ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ With Nuclear Weapon in Orbit (VIDEO)

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Apr. 18):

Russia is reportedly developing a nuclear weapon designed to be deployed in space that could cripple global communications and cause widespread disruption.

General Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, has admitted that Washington is “very concerned” about plans to place a nuclear anti-satellite weapon into orbit.

“They are thinking about placing in orbit a nuclear anti-satellite weapon that would hold at risk everyone’s satellites in low Earth orbit, and that would be an outcome that we just couldn’t tolerate,” Whiting said.

The weapon could be used to destroy large numbers of satellites in low Earth orbit, potentially taking out communications systems, GPS networks and parts of the global internet.

A detonation in orbit could damage or destroy up to 10,000 satellites, roughly 80 percent of those currently in space.

Officials have described the potential attack as a “space Pearl Harbor.”

Whiting said the threat forms part of a broader pattern of Russian activity in space, including widespread GPS and satellite communication jamming.

“The problem with GPS jamming is it’s being done in a way that’s affecting civil aviation in eastern Europe and across southern Europe,” he said.

“When we put at risk civilian airliners full of citizens just trying to go on business or holiday, that’s incredibly problematic.”

The general said Russia is seeking ways to counter what it sees as Western military advantages by targeting space-based systems.

“They look at the United States, they look at NATO and they see an overmatch there of conventional arms,” Whiting said.

“And they believe that novel ways of trying to undermine the United States and NATO, such as by neutralizing our space capabilities, helps them to level the battlefield.”

The proposed weapon would violate the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits placing nuclear weapons in orbit.

U.S. officials have been aware of the threat for at least two years, with intelligence first briefed to Congress in 2024.

Whiting warned that space is increasingly becoming a central domain for future conflict.

“The next big war will likely be a war that starts in space,” he said.

He also urged allies to increase defense spending in the sector, noting that Britain currently spends less than one percent of its defense budget on space capabilities. [source]

Hope not, then again not surprising. The Chi-Coms are probably thinking along the same lines too.

Another threat in orbit:

‘There are threats in orbit’: Space Force chief sounds alarm over Chinese, Russian space assets

Is It Time to Ban Electric Vehicles?

From Townhall.com (Aug. 15, 2023):

The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, "There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes." The resulting fire is "very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous."

Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.

A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.

FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It's happening all over the country as these blazes have become commonplace. Cars and e-bikes are randomly blowing up in driveways and garages.

Now let's be honest: 13 deaths in a city the size of New York with some 8 million people is hardly an epidemic. Regulations should always be based on a cost versus benefit calculation, or there would be no cars at all.

And yet the same scaremongers on the left who have zero tolerance and want bans for small risks when it comes to everything from swimming pool diving boards, gas stoves, plastic straws, vaping, fireworks and so on, have a surprisingly high pain threshold when it comes to people dying or suffering critical injured from "green" electric battery fires.

Or consider this: In 1965, Ralph Nader almost single-handedly helped ban the popular Chevrolet Corvair -- famous for its engine placed in the back trunk of the car. Nader's bestselling shock book "Unsafe at Any Speed" declared the car was deadly. But there was no real evidence of that claim, and to this day there are no reliable statistics on how many passengers -- if any -- died in Corvairs from rear-end accidents.

What is indisputable is that EVs will cause far more deaths than Corvairs ever did.

One other example: There have been more fatalities in just one city in a single year from lithium-ion batteries in cars than all the people who died from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident -- which was zero.

Yet, after the accident, thanks to the environmentalists' fear campaign (with the help of the blockbuster anti-nuke movie "The China Syndrome"), no domestic nuclear plants were built for three decades. That is despite the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.

But with EVs, the greens are pushing aside any concerns about the collateral damage of deaths and injuries. Biden wants to mandate that nearly ALL new cars sold in the U.S. be EVs by 2032. If that happens, many thousands of Americans may die or will be inured from electric vehicle fires.

All this is especially hypocritical because once upon a time the left's mantra was "no trading blood for oil." Now they are willing to trade blood in exchange for getting Americans to stop using oil. An irony of all this is that because of all the energy needed to produce windmills, solar panels and electric batteries, new studies are showing that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to this "net zero" transition is close to zero. It turns out, green energy causes some pollution, too.

For the record, I'm not in favor of the government banning EVs or e-bikes or just about anything. I just believe that we should make policy decisions based on real and factual risk assessments, not false scares and sensationalism.

As for the future of EVs, maybe it's time for Ralph Nader to write a sequel to "Unsafe at Any Speed." [source]

I don't know about banning them, but electric vehicles aren't the environmental savior the Left thinks they are.

The Robot That Beat Iran To Two American Pilots

From Daily Wire.com (June 9):

An AI-powered U.S. Navy drone boat played a key role in rescuing the crew of a downed American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, marking what military officials say is the first real-world rescue operation involving an unmanned surface vessel.

After the helicopter went down, the two American crew members remained stranded in the waters off Oman for nearly two hours as the U.S. military rushed to reach them before Iranian forces could.

On Tuesday, President Trump revealed that Iranian forces had shot down the aircraft and vowed that the United States would respond.

“I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said on Truth Social. “There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

The unmanned vessel responsible for rescuing the crew is a Saronic Corsair, Capt. Tim Hawkins, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told the Wall Street Journal.

“When it comes to search and rescue, you utilize the best asset that is the closest and the quickest, and that was the case in this instance,” Hawkins said.

The drone boat transported the soldiers to a safer location at sea, where they were later hoisted aboard a helicopter and evacuated to receive medical care. Both are in stable condition, according to Hawkins.

While such sea drones have been used in exercises, they have not been used in real-life, he added.

The vessel, which was deployed to CENTCOM in March shortly after the conflict with Iran began, is operated by the Navy’s Task Force 59, which has evolved rapidly since its creation in 2021.

The unit specializes in integrating artificial intelligence and autonomous systems into real-world maritime operations and has already tested more than 23 different unmanned platforms across the Middle East.

According to the Journal, Ukraine has used these types of vessels to target Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

The incident comes just days after Iran struck Israel with at least 24 missiles for the first time since the ceasefire went into place about two months ago. In response, Israel fired back before both sides agreed to halt attacks at Trump’s request. [source]

Nice.  Cool American tech.

Malcolm McLean: The Unsung Capitalist Hero Who Changed the World One Container at a Time

From Mises.org (Aug. 25, 2022):

Ask the average person what they believe to be the most economically important innovation of the twentieth century, and they’ll probably point to the internet. The internet has certainly disproved Paul Krugman’s prediction that it would have no greater impact on the economy than the fax machine, but even this transformative technology may only warrant a silver medal when compared to something much more banal: the intermodal shipping container.

The shipping container was the brainchild of Malcolm McLean. A twentieth-century rags-to-riches story, McLean began his foray into the transportation business with only a high school education. Working as a gas station clerk, he’d saved up $120 to purchase a used truck by age twenty-one, and in 1944, he founded his first company, McLean Trucking. In the booming postwar economy, McLean was able to expand his business in an increasingly integrated global economy.

McLean’s business primarily involved shipping freight to and from ports for overseas exchange, and he was bothered by a transportation bottleneck that had impeded foreign exchange since the ancient world: every piece of freight had to be unloaded from the truck and reloaded onto ships, dramatically increasing the overall cost of long-distance trade.

McLean had the idea to simply ship the truck itself, but this traded the freight-transfer bottleneck for an inefficient use of space. McLean’s next idea was to load only the truck’s container.

Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Commission stood in his way. McLean owned a trucking business, and federal regulations would not allow somebody to own both a trucking and shipping company. McClean sold his trucking company in 1955, which by then had grown to 1,770 trucks, for $25 million dollars.

With the capital he received from the sale of his company, he secured a loan for $22 million and purchased a pair of World War II tanker ships to carry his patented containers, which he designed to stack on top of each other for overseas transportation. The containers could easily be transferred to eighteen-wheelers or railroad cars. By the 1960s, McLean’s new venture was turning a profit, and shipping costs were dropping rapidly. In 1969, he sold his company for $530 million, which he reinvested in further ventures to improve containerization. By the end of the 1970s, he owned a fleet of forty-four hundred container ships.

McLean also realized that his business did not depend on the monopoly protection of his design, so he released the patent for his container to the International Organization for Standardization, royalty-free. He understood that holding jealously to his patent would only slow trucking, railroad, and shipping companies’ adoption of his technology, and he had nothing to fear from competition.

The effects of McLean’s innovation are hard to capture in mere numbers, as it helped entire economies—such as Singapore and Hong Kong—leapt from preindustrial to modern seemingly overnight (coupled, of course, with the freest markets in the world, as even the most transformative technology cannot overcome the barriers imposed by a controlling state).

McLean received his flowers in the business community, taking his place in the Forbes Business Hall of Fame in 1982. But he remains largely an obscure figure, despite being perhaps the single most important force behind the explosive growth in global wealth of the second half of the twentieth century. Thanks to McLean’s seemingly simple idea, the cost of loading a ship fell from nearly $6 per ton in 1956 to only 16 cents by 2006 (adjusted for inflation, that would be a reduction from nearly $60 to roughly a quarter)!

McLean is the unsung hero of containerization, the revolutionary economic change that, as Marc Levinson put in the subtitle of his book The Box, “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.” [source]

American innovation at its best.

Dream-shaping tech from MIT channels suggestions into your dreams

From Live Science.com (Sept. 25, 2020):

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person's dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes.

To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces — a group that develops wearable systems and interfaces to enhance cognitive skills — used a technique called targeted dream incubation (TDI).

Prior studies have shown that during a rare dream state known lucid dreaming, in which a sleeper is aware that a dream is taking place, dreamers can use that awareness to consciously shape aspects of their dreams. TDI takes advantage of an early sleep stage, known as hypnagogia, to achieve a similar result (though not quite "controlling" dreams outright), researchers told Live Science.

During hypnagogia — a semi-lucid dream state that occurs during the onset of sleep — TDI introduced "targeted information" to a sleeper, "enabling direct incorporation of this information into dream content," the scientists wrote in a new study, published in the August issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. They conducted dream experiments by performing "serial awakenings" during daytime napping sessions in 25 participants.

Subjects first recorded audio prompts in an app, such as, "remember to think of a tree" and "remember to observe your thoughts," and then prepared for sleep, according to the study.

A hand-worn sleep tracker monitored the subject's heart rate, electrical changes on the skin surface, and the amount their fingers were bent or relaxed, to detect when a sleeper entered hypnagogia and was therefore "open to influence from outside audio cues," said lead study author Adam Haar Horowitz, a doctoral candidate in MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group. The Dormio sleep tracker communicated with the app, "which delivers audio at the correct times, and records audio of dream reports" when the subject is awake, Haar Horowitz told Live Science in an email.

Just as a subject drifted off to sleep and entered hypnagogia, Dormio would coordinate with the app to wake them up with the pre-recorded prompts. This cycle repeated several times, with the sleeper also recording a brief "dream journal" entry into the app when they were awakened.

"Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream," Haar Horowitz said. "Often, they are transformed — a 'tree' prompt becomes a tree-shaped car — but direct incorporation is easily identified."

The scientists found that 67% of the subjects' dream reports mentioned dreams that incorporated a tree. "I was following the roots with someone and the roots were transporting me to different locations," one participant recalled. Another mentioned "a tree from my childhood, from my backyard. It never asked for anything." The same subject, in later awakenings, described "trees splitting into infinite pieces" and "a shaman, sitting under the tree with me, he tells me to go to South America."

"Dream reports increased in bizarreness and immersion with each awakening," but the scientists did not develop a universal rating system for the bizarreness of the dreams, the study authors reported. [read more]

Sci-fi to sci-fact. The benefits and drawbacks of the tech from Grok:

MIT's TDI/Dormio tech offers exciting opportunities for creativity boosts, therapy, and self-understanding by bridging waking intention with dreaming. However, it comes with ethical pitfalls around autonomy, privacy, and unintended psychological effects. As dream engineering advances, balancing benefits with safeguards (as the MIT team has discussed in their ethics work) will be crucial. More independent, long-term studies are needed before widespread adoption.

NASA Will Launch Artificial Star into Earth’s Orbit, Costing $19.5 Million

From The Gateway Pundit.com (June 21, 2024):

NASA is planning to launch an artificial star into the Earth’s orbit.

According to Futurism, the artificial star will be about the size of a toaster and equipped with eight lasers.

The creation of the star is part of NASA’s $19.5 million space project called Landolt.

The Landolt project aims to help scientists accurately measure real stars in space and are hoping it will assist in studying dark energy.

Per Futurism:

NASA is planning to launch an unusual payload, roughly the size of a toaster and outfitted with eight lasers.

Its job is to imitate stars and other celestial objects like supernovas, Live Science reports, by beaming lasers straight into their instruments back on the surface.

The false star is part of the space agency’s $19.5 million mission dubbed Landolt, and is designed to allow scientists to get more accurate measurements of real stars. Researchers suggest it could even help study dark energy, the mysterious hypothetical form of energy that’s been used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

“Even with today’s modern instruments, measurements of the true brightness of stars have only been known to a few percent,” said NASA Exoplanet Science Institute deputy director and Caltech astronomer David Ciardi in a statement. “Landolt will enable an improvement in those measurements by more than a factor of ten.”

The launch date of the artificial star will be in 2029. [source]

Interesting. But I would rather have the private sector (or even a university/universities—they have huge endowments) pay for it other than the taxpayers.

Other NASA news:

• NASA and US Space Force team up for planetary defense, moon trips and more
• NASA strikes asteroid with spacecraft in historic planetary defense mission
• NASA uses GPS on the moon for the first time
• NASA radar picks up frozen, buried Cold War base Camp Century
• NASA’s U-2 spy plane found gamma rays in 90% of lightning storms

Quantum internet breakthrough could help make hacking a thing of the past

From Siddarth Koduru Joshi on Live Science.com (Sept. 3, 2020):

The advent of mass working from home has made many people more aware of the security risks of sending sensitive information via the internet. The best we can do at the moment is make it difficult to intercept and hack your messages — but we can't make it impossible.

What we need is a new type of internet: the quantum internet. In this version of the global network, data is secure, connections are private and your worries about information being intercepted are a thing of the past.

My colleagues and I have just made a breakthrough, published in Science Advances, that will make such a quantum internet possible by scaling up the concepts behind it using existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Our current way of protecting online data is to encrypt it using mathematical problems that are easy to solve if you have a digital "key" to unlock the encryption but hard to solve without it. However, hard does not mean impossible and, with enough time and computer power, today's methods of encryption can be broken.

Quantum communication, on the other hand, creates keys using individual particles of light (photons) , which — according to the principles of quantum physics — are impossible to make an exact copy of. Any attempt to copy these keys will unavoidably cause errors that can be detected. This means a hacker, no matter how clever or powerful they are or what kind of supercomputer they possess, cannot replicate a quantum key or read the message it encrypts.

This concept has already been demonstrated in satellites and over fiber-optic cables, and used to send secure messages between different countries. So why are we not already using it in everyday life? The problem is that it requires expensive, specialized technology that means it's not currently scalable.

Previous quantum communication techniques were like pairs of children's walkie talkies. You need one pair of handsets for every pair of users that want to securely communicate. So if three children want to talk to each other they will need three pairs of handsets (or six walkie talkies) and each child must have two of them. If eight children want to talk to each other they would need 56 walkie talkies. [source]

How the Amazing Rescue of Two American Airmen Unfolded

From Red State.com (Apr. 5):

Overnight, the U.S. military pulled off one of the most difficult missions in the playbook: the rescue of a downed aircrew deep inside enemy territory.

Easter morning, an F-15E weapons systems officer was extracted from atop a 7,000-foot ridge in southwestern Iran, having been on the run since Friday (this sounds sort of Biblical, doesn't it).

This is how the operation played out. Mind you, it is all based on reports patched together from various sources. U.S. Central Command has yet to issue a statement on either the loss of the aircraft or the successful rescue of the flight crew. President Trump was not quite that constrained; see 'WE GOT HIM!' President Trump Responds As Second Airman Is Rescued From Enemy Territory in Iran – RedState.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Friday morning, April 3. An F-15E Strike Eagle was apparently hit by Iranian fire near the village of Talkhuncheh, Isfahan Province, Iran. There is a lot of boasting from the Iranians about an advanced passive infrared detection system used to guide a missile. There are online accounts linking the downing to Russian ships arriving at Iranian ports. We don't know the cause, but based on the history of the Operation Epic Fury air campaign, the plane going down from a bird strike is just as likely as an Iranian anti-aircraft missile. Both pilot and weapons systems officer (WSO) eject.

When the pilots punched out, they would have transmitted a MAYDAY on Guard frequency. This would have alerted the Combat Search and Rescue element that was on standby. The WSO, who is reported to be a lieutenant colonel, is reportedly injured during ejection. This is not unusual. Within a short period of time, an image of one of the ejection seats appears on social media.

The pilots have some emergency supplies, including a radio and a personal defense weapon that is stored under the seat.

Within a short period of time, a CSAR element composed of an MC-130J refueling aircraft and two HH-60 "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters was spotted near the scene. I know, you're asking why they are called "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters. The original "Jolly Green Giant" was the HH-53B designed for CSAR work during the Vietnam War. The name stuck. [read more]

Glad the awesome American commandos were able to rescue the downed airman in Iran. Great job guys. 

Other articles on the rescue:

• Commandos Probed Deep Into Iran to Rescue Downed Airman
• Baker to Newsmax: CIA Played Key Role in Rescue of Airman in Iran
• The secret, never-before-used CIA tool that helped find airman downed in Iran: ‘If your heart is beating, we will find you’
• Trump, US Feared Iran Trap in F-15 Crew Rescue
  

Japanese company successfully tests a manned flying car for the first time

From koat.com (Aug. 30, 2020):

A Japanese company has announced the successful test drive of a flying car.

Sky Drive Inc. conducted the public demonstration on Aug. 25, the company said in a news release, at the Toyota Test Field, one of the largest in Japan and home to the car company's development base. It was the first public demonstration for a flying car in Japanese history.

The car, named SD-03, manned with a pilot, took off and circled the field for about four minutes.

"We are extremely excited to have achieved Japan's first-ever manned flight of a flying car in the two years since we founded SkyDrive... with the goal of commercializing such aircraft," CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said in a statement.

"We want to realize a society where flying cars are an accessible and convenient means of transportation in the skies and people are able to experience a safe, secure, and comfortable new way of life."

The SD-03 is the world's smallest electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle and takes up the space of about two parked cars, according to the company. It has eight motors to ensure "safety in emergency situations."

"In designing an unexplored, new genre of transportation known as the flying car, we chose the keyword "progressive" for inspiration," Design Director Takumi Yamamot said.

"We wanted this vehicle to be futuristic, charismatic and desirable for all future customers, while fully incorporating the high technology of SkyDrive.

The company hopes to make the flying car a part of normal life and not just a commodity. More test flights will occur in the future under different conditions to make sure the safety and technology of the vehicle meet industry standards.

The success of this flight means that it is likely the car will be tested outside of the Toyota Test field by the end of the year.

The company will continue to develop technologies to safely and securely launch the flying car in 2023, the news release said. No price has been announced. [source]

Cool. Here come the Jetsons.

A ‘brain organoid’ biochip displayed serious voice recognition and math skills

From PopSci.com (Dec. 12, 2023):

Your biological center for thought, comprehension, and learning bears some striking similarities to a data center housing rows upon rows of highly advanced processing units. But unlike those neural network data centers, the human brain runs an electrical energy budget. On average, the organ functions on roughly 12 watts of power, compared with a desktop computer’s 175 watts. For today’s advanced artificial intelligence systems, that wattage figure can easily increase into the millions.

Knowing this, researchers believe the development of cyborg “biocomputers” could eventually usher in a new era of high-powered intelligent systems for a comparative fraction of the energy costs. And they’re already making some huge strides towards engineering such a future.

As detailed in a new study published in Nature Electronics, a team at Indiana University has successfully grown their own nanoscale “brain organoid” in a Petri dish using human stem cells. After connecting the organoid to a silicon chip, the new biocomputer (dubbed “Brainoware”) was quickly trained to accurately recognize speech patterns, as well as perform certain complex math predictions.

As New Atlas explains, researchers treated their Brainoware as what’s known as an “adaptive living reservoir” capable of responding to electrical inputs in a “nonlinear fashion,” while also ensuring it possessed at least some memory. Simply put, the lab-grown brain cells within the silicon-organic chip function as an information transmitter capable of both receiving and transmitting electrical signals. While these feats in no way imply any kind of awareness or consciousness on Brainoware’s part, they do provide enough computational power for some interesting results.

To test out Brainoware’s capabilities, the team converted 240 audio clips of adult male Japanese speakers into electrical signals, and then sent them to the organoid chip. Within two days, the neural network system partially powered by Brainoware could accurately differentiate between the 8 speakers 78 percent of the time using just a single vowel sound.

Next, researchers experimented with their creation’s mathematical knowledge. After a relatively short training time, Brainoware could predict a Hénon map. While one of the most studied examples of dynamical systems exhibiting chaotic behavior, Hénon maps are a lot more complicated than simple arithmetic, to say the least.

In the end, Brainoware’s designers believe such human brain organoid chips can underpin neural network technology, and possibly do so faster, cheaper, and less energy intensive than existing options. There are still a number of hurdles—both logistical and ethical—to clear, but although general biocomputing systems may be years down the line, researchers think such advances are “likely to generate foundational insights into the mechanisms of learning, neural development and the cognitive implications of neurodegenerative diseases.”

But for now, let’s see how Brainoware can do in a game of Pong. [source]

Interesting and weird. If the biochip can be developed further it could possibly be used for voice authentication for security.

More biochip articles:

• Dystopia: World's first 'biological computer' uses human brain cells that are 'raised in a simulation'
• Lab-grown human brain tissue used to control robot
• Brace yourself: Making computers from human brains is the new environmentalism
• Scientists grow mini human brains to power computers
• Computer run on human brain cells learned to play ‘Doom’
• Scientists seek to create 'biocomputers' using lab-grown, human pseudo brains

The world’s largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor is up and running

From Pop Sci.com (Dec. 4, 2023):

Japan and the European Union have officially inaugurated testing at the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion plant. Located roughly 85 miles north of Tokyo, the six-story, JT-60SA “tokamak” facility heats plasma to 200 million degrees Celsius (around 360 million Fahrenheit) within its circular, magnetically insulated reactor. Although JT-60SA first powered up during a test run back in October, the partner governments’ December 1 announcement marks the official start of operations at the world’s biggest fusion center, reaffirming a “long-standing cooperation in the field of fusion energy.”

The tokamak—an acronym of the Russian-language designation of “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”—has led researchers’ push towards achieving the “Holy Grail” of sustainable green energy production for decades. Often described as a large hollow donut, a tokamak is filled with gaseous hydrogen fuel that is then spun at immense high speeds using powerful magnetic coil encasements. When all goes as planned, intense force ionizes atoms to form helium plasma, much like how the sun produces its energy.

Speaking at the inauguration event, EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson referred to the JT-60SA as “the most advanced tokamak in the world,” representing “a milestone for fusion history.”

“Fusion has the potential to become a key component for energy mix in the second half of this century,” she continued.

But even if such a revolutionary milestone is crossed, it likely won’t be at JT-60SA. Along with its still-in-construction sibling, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Europe, the projects are intended solely to demonstrate scalable fusion’s feasibility. Current hopes estimate ITER’s operational start for sometime in 2025, although the undertaking has been fraught with financial, logistical, and construction issues since its groundbreaking back in 2011.

Experts alongside Simson believe creating sustainable nuclear fusion would mark a revolutionary moment that could ensure an emissionless, renewable energy future. Making the power source a feasible reality, however, is fraught with technological and economic hurdles. Researchers have chased this goal for a long time: The world’s first experimental tokamak was built back in 1958 by the USSR.

While researchers can now generate fusion energy at multiple facilities around the world, it is usually at a net loss. By advancing the technology further at facilities like JT-60SA, however, industry experts think that it is only a matter of time until fusion reactors regularly achieve net energy production gains.

In the meantime, another possible road to fusion energy is making its own promising gains. Earlier this year, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Northern California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a net energy gain for the second time using what’s the inertial confinement fusion method. In this process, a high-powered laser is split into 192 beams that then hit a capsule containing a pellet of tritium and deuterium. The resultant X-rays generate pressure and temperatures that then initiate fusion.

No matter which process—be it tokamak reactors or ICF lasers—a successful nuclear fusion facility could play a major role in finally shifting humanity away from fossil fuels. [source]

America should be trying this. But the Left is too obsessed with wind turbines and solar energy. Fusion energy is much cleaner and safer than fission energy.

UChicago scientists discover way to make quantum states last 10,000 times longer

From UCChicago.edu (Aug. 13, 2020):

If we can harness it, quantum technology promises fantastic new possibilities. But first, scientists need to coax quantum systems to stay yoked for longer than a few millionths of a second.

A team of scientists at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering announced the discovery of a simple modification that allows quantum systems to stay operational—or “coherent”—10,000 times longer than before. Though the scientists tested their technique on a particular class of quantum systems called solid-state qubits, they think it should be applicable to many other kinds of quantum systems and could thus revolutionize quantum communication, computing and sensing.

The study was published Aug. 13 in Science.

“This breakthrough lays the groundwork for exciting new avenues of research in quantum science,” said study lead author David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering, senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. “The broad applicability of this discovery, coupled with a remarkably simple implementation, allows this robust coherence to impact many aspects of quantum engineering. It enables new research opportunities previously thought impractical.”

Down at the level of atoms, the world operates according to the rules of quantum mechanics—very different from what we see around us in our daily lives. These different rules could translate into technology like virtually unhackable networks or extremely powerful computers; the U.S. Department of Energy released a blueprint for the future quantum internet in an event at UChicago on July 23. But fundamental engineering challenges remain: Quantum states need an extremely quiet, stable space to operate, as they are easily disturbed by background noise coming from vibrations, temperature changes or stray electromagnetic fields.

Thus, scientists try to find ways to keep the system coherent as long as possible. One common approach is physically isolating the system from the noisy surroundings, but this can be unwieldy and complex. Another technique involves making all of the materials as pure as possible, which can be costly. The scientists at UChicago took a different tack.

“With this approach, we don’t try to eliminate noise in the surroundings; instead, we “trick” the system into thinking it doesn’t experience the noise,” said postdoctoral researcher Kevin Miao, the first author of the paper.

In tandem with the usual electromagnetic pulses used to control quantum systems, the team applied an additional continuous alternating magnetic field. By precisely tuning this field, the scientists could rapidly rotate the electron spins and allow the system to “tune out” the rest of the noise.

……

“This approach creates a pathway to scalability,” said Awschalom. “It should make storing quantum information in electron spin practical. Extended storage times will enable more complex operations in quantum computers and allow quantum information transmitted from spin-based devices to travel longer distances in networks.” [read more]

365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity

From White House.gov (Jan. 20):

One year ago today, President Donald J. Trump returned to office with a resounding mandate to restore prosperity, secure the border, rebuild American strength, and put the American people first. In just 365 days, President Trump has delivered truly transformative results with the most accomplished first year of any presidential term in modern history.

From negative net migration for the first time in 50 years to the largest homicide drop on record, trillions in reshored investments, peace deals ending multiple wars, record energy production, and massive bureaucracy cuts, President Trump has put America First with urgency — and he’s just getting started.

SECURING AMERICA’S BORDERS AND PUTTING AMERICANS FIRST

1. Achieved negative net migration in 2025, reversing a 50-year trend and restoring U.S. control over immigration flows for the first time in a generation.
2. Removed more than 2.6 million illegal aliens from the United States through deportations and voluntary self-departures.
3. Carried out over 650,000 arrests, detentions, and deportations of illegal aliens — including the worst of the worst criminal illegal alien killers, rapists, gang members, and repeat offenders.
4. Deported more than 400,000 illegal aliens charged with or convicted of crimes.
5. Induced two million self-deportations by ending Biden-era release incentives and restoring credible consequences.
6. Reduced illegal border crossings to their lowest level since the 1970s, completely eradicating the Biden-era invasion.
7. Cut fentanyl trafficking at the southern border by 56%.
8. Permanently ended dangerous “catch-and-release” policies nationwide by detaining illegal aliens rather than releasing them into the interior — resulting in a 99.9% decrease in illegals being released into the country during the Biden era.
9. Maintained zero illegal alien releases into the country’s homeland for eight consecutive months, restoring deterrence at the border.

…….

REBUILDING AN ECONOMY FOR WORKING AMERICANS

1. Drove gas prices to their lowest level in nearly five years, with prices below $3 per gallon in 43 states and below $2 per gallon in 19 states.
2. Created 654,000 private-sector jobs following deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence.
3. Ensured 100% of net job growth went to native-born Americans by enforcing immigration laws.
4. Achieved massive economic growth, with real GDP rising 4.3% in the third quarter of 2025 — smashing economists’ expectations and setting the stage for future growth, with GDP projected to be even higher in the fourth quarter as President Trump’s policies continue to take effect.
5. Oversaw the largest increase in blue-collar wage growth in nearly 60 years.
6. Increased private-sector real earnings by $1,100 annually — earning back some of the $2,900 in purchasing power workers lost under Biden.
7. Tamed inflation, running at just 2.4% since President Trump took office — down 70% from its Biden-era peak.
8. Brought inflation under control by enforcing fiscal restraint, reversing runaway spending growth, and restoring policy credibility, driving core inflation to multi-year lows.
9. Achieved the lowest mortgage rates in three years by stabilizing mortgage-backed securities markets and expanding liquidity — driving monthly housing payments to their most affordable levels in over two years.
10. Oversaw existing home sales rising to the strongest pace in three years as income growth finally outpaces home price gains.
11. Delivered a historic stock-market rebound, with the major stock indices all hitting repeated new record highs.
12. Signed the Working Families Tax Cut, delivering the largest middle-class tax relief package in modern U.S. history and saving 5.9 million jobs.
13. Delivered on his No Tax on Tips campaign promise.
14. Delivered on his No Tax on Overtime campaign promise.
15. Delivered on his No Tax on Social Security campaign promise for our great seniors.
16. Delivered unprecedented tax relief for small businesses and other key industries, building on the successful Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from his first term and opening the door for new levels of prosperity to come.
17. Secured congressional passage of a $9 billion rescissions package, permanently canceling wasteful spending — like the wasteful taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS.
18. Terminated wasteful foreign aid programs inconsistent with America First priorities through a $5 billion pocket rescission.
19. Reduced wholesale egg prices by 89% following the Trump Administration’s intervention, supply stabilization, and regulatory relief.

[read more]

Wins that the fake news probably won't report.

Pentagon’s AI initiatives accelerate hard decisions on lethal autonomous weapons

From AP News.com (Nov. 25, 2023):

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (AP) — Artificial intelligence employed by the U.S. military has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces’ missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia. It tracks soldiers’ fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space.

Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China. The ambitious initiative — dubbed Replicator — seeks to “galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in August.

While its funding is uncertain and details vague, Replicator is expected to accelerate hard decisions on what AI tech is mature and trustworthy enough to deploy - including on weaponized systems.

There is little dispute among scientists, industry experts and Pentagon officials that the U.S. will within the next few years have fully autonomous lethal weapons. And though officials insist humans will always be in control, experts say advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications will inevitably relegate people to supervisory roles.

That’s especially true if, as expected, lethal weapons are deployed en masse in drone swarms. Many countries are working on them — and neither China, Russia, Iran, India or Pakistan have signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.

It’s unclear if the Pentagon is currently formally assessing any fully autonomous lethal weapons system for deployment, as required by a 2012 directive. A Pentagon spokeswoman would not say. [read more]

I hope the autonomous weapons can distinguish between friendly and enemy combatants enough. And what about firewalls to prevent the enemy (or any mischievous person for that matter) from hacking the weapons?

You’ve probably never heard of terahertz waves, but they could change your life

 From PopSci.com (Mar. 22, 2022):

There’s a gap on the electromagnetic spectrum where engineers can not tread.

The spectrum covers everything from radio waves and microwaves, to the light that reaches our eyes, to X-rays and gamma rays. And humans have mastered the art of sending and receiving almost all of them.

There is an exception, however. Between the beams of visible light and the blips of radio static, there lies a dead zone where our technology isn’t effective. It’s called the terahertz gap. For decades now, no one’s succeeded in building a consumer device that can transmit terahertz waves.

“There’s a laundry list of potential applications,” says Qing Hu, an electrical engineer at MIT.

But some researchers are slowly making progress. If they stick the landing, they might open up a whole new suite of technologies, like the successor to Wi-Fi or a smarter detection system for skin cancer.

The mystery of the terahertz

Look at the terahertz gap as a borderland. On the left side, there are microwaves and longer radio waves. On the right side lies the infrared spectrum. (Some scientists even call the terahertz gap “far infrared.”) Our eyes can’t see infrared, but as far as our technologies are concerned, it’s just like light.

Radio waves are crucial for communication, especially between electronic devices, making them universal in today’s electronics. Light powers the optical fibers that underpin the internet. These realms of technology typically feed off different wavelengths, and uneasily coexist in the modern world.

But both realms struggle to go far into the terahertz neutral zone. Standard electronic components, like silicon chips, can’t go about their business quickly enough to make terahertz waves. Light-producing technologies like lasers, which are right at home in infrared, don’t work with terahertz waves either. Even worse, terahertz waves don’t last long in the Earth’s atmosphere: Water vapor in the air tends to absorb them after only a few dozen feet.

There are a few terahertz wavelengths that can squeeze through the water vapor. Astronomers have built telescopes that capture those bands, which are especially good for seeing interstellar dust. For best use, those telescopes need to be stationed in the planet’s highest and driest places, like Chile’s Atacama Desert, or outside the atmosphere altogether in space.

The rest of the terahertz gap is shrouded in mist. Researchers like Hu are trying to fix this, but it isn’t easy. [read more]

AI Photo Editing and the Blurring of Fact and Fantasy

 From Breakpoint.org (Dec. 5, 2023):

One of the best features of our smartphones is the ability to apply a few tweaks to our photos before sending them to relatives or sharing them on social media. Using a phone’s built-in tools, we can bump up the brightness or fix red eye, with the desired result of a photo that looks more like the real-life moment when we snapped it. Of course, these same tools can now deliver photos even “better” than what we saw in real life. We can even create moments that didn’t happen in real life.

Is it okay to pass those off as real? What is the boundary between fiddling with a photo and faking one? Does it even matter?

Such questions will soon be forced on us through the integration of artificial intelligence with smartphones. Popular figures on Instagram have already demonstrated how easy it is to alter a mood or look, airbrushing a photo of a crying woman, for instance, into a beaming and happy version of herself. Images entirely generated by AI, often incorporating real people’s likenesses, are becoming nearly indistinguishable from photos.

Writing recently at The New York Times, tech editor Brian Chen described how devices like Google’s Pixel 8 come with an AI-powered “Magic Editor,” a tool that can remove and add objects, move subjects around, and even stitch together elements from multiple photos into a new one. The result is imagery that is partially make-believe and, though it comes from the camera app and is stored with other “photos,” can no longer strictly be called photography. These snapshots of alternate realities fudge the truth in front of your lens, which is the point, since they’re closer to “exactly the photo you want.”

According to Ren Ng, a computer science professor at Berkeley, this means that “[a]s we go boldly forth into this future, a photo is no longer a visual fact.” AI-powered photography and editing means that people will “increasingly have to question whether what they see in their images is real—including photos from loved ones.” Of course, this goes further than just personal photos, and will contribute, Ng thinks, “to the spread of fake media online when misinformation is already rampant and it’s hard to know what to trust.”

Last month, in fact, Hamas falsely accused Israel of faking images of atrocities using AI. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how future conflicts will be sparked by a convincing image posted online.

Increasingly, the fundamental worldview question of our age is “What is real?” Fake photos, artificial wombs, and AI chatbots posing as friends are just a few examples of technology that is challenging our understanding of reality, including our understanding of who we are and why and even whether we need each other.

Christians should have a clear answer. Nonnegotiable purposes and relationships have been built into creation by God, things humans were designed to pursue and steward in particular ways. This is not an infinitely malleable world. We are not infinitely malleable creatures, able to invent and reinvent ourselves as technology permits. This applies both to big changes like amniotic pods replacing mothers as well as seemingly trivial changes like “photography” tools.

Here are two principles to keep in mind as we “go boldly forth into this future” of AI, smartphones, and photography.

First, we should never lie, not even with AI. That means we need to define the term “photograph.” Is it a shared visual fact, a representation of reality that can establish everything from family memories to journalistic truth, or is it an idealized digital painting? We shouldn’t get in the habit of passing one off as the other.

Second, we shouldn’t look to technology to replace human ability. Somewhere between using AI to edit out a trash can in a family photo and using it to create a fake family member for Instagram, a moral line is crossed. That line is on a slope, and we are about to find out just how slippery it is. Planting your feet firmly and intentionally now is a good idea.

Christians should be pro-technology and pro-human. God gave humans the ingenuity to make such tools, and they can be used to glorify Him and love others. However, tools—like their users—need a purpose grounded in God’s design for reality. The moment our tools begin using us, or severing our relationship with that reality, something has gone wrong.

We need wisdom in the days ahead, not just artificial intelligence. [source]

Good principles to live by.