Time Jumping Multiverse

“This retroactive idea. It has to be that,” says Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose (left), reflecting on a problem about the building blocks of reality that has dogged physics for nearly a century. “Any sensible physicist wouldn't be perturbed by this,” he adds. “However, I'm not a sensible physicist.”

If Penrose isn’t a sensible physicist it’s because the laws of physics aren’t making sense, at least not on the subatomic level where the smallest things in the universe play by different rules than everything we see around us. He has reason to believe this disconnect involves a fissure that divides two different kinds of reality. He also has reason to believe that the physical process that bridges these realities will unlock answers to the physics of consciousness: the mystery of our own existence.  READ MORE...

Telescopes Uses Ripples in TIME

The first JWST image of Earendel, the most distant star known in our universe, 

lensed and magnified ... NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have imaged the most distant star ever observed thanks to a a ripple in spacetime that creates extreme magnification.


It’s currently 28 billion light-years away and its light has traveled 12.9 billion years into JWST’s optics. It existed just 900 million years after the big bang in a galaxy astronomers have nicknamed the Sunrise Arc.

The image of WHL0137-LS, above, was produced from over three hours of observations last weekend—but it’s not the star you think! Ignore the spiky star and instead go to the lower right-hand side (see below).


The ancient star is estimated to have a mass greater than 50 times the mass of the Sun.


Better known as “Earendel,” which means “morning star” or “rising light” in old English—was gravitationally lensed and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137–08 (a.k.a. “Sunrise Arc”) in the foreground.  READ MORE...

Mr. Clean to the Metaverse

While the world debates exactly what the metaverse will and ought to be, two multinationals made a game out of cleaning it up as they seek to determine their place in the internet of the future.

Retail giant Carrefour and consumer-products behemoth Procter & GamblePG -1.2% (P&G) invited wannabe metazens to a virtual party chez Mr. Clean (M. Propre in French) last week. The three-day experiment saw users log into P&G’s LifeLab, where they could help the bald-headed mascot tidy various parts of his home while exploring different P&G products. The goal? Clean as much as you can in two minutes. Users were then also entered in a giveaway with the chance to win a €40 coupon for use on the companies’ websites.

The house looks spotless upon entrance, yet each room has a special task: surf through kitchen counters on a sponge and clean up food splatters or dance while sweeping the bedroom floor.

While retail metaverse initiatives have largely come from the luxury and fashion industries, with Gucci, Prada and NikeNKE -0.4% taking the lead, the more prosaic pairing last week showed the technology could be used for immersive marketing to audiences beyond crypto fanatics and the ultra rich.

“We think that the metaverse is not only for a few people or for luxury brands, it can enter our everyday life and be accessible to all,” says Denise Rodrigues-Vielliard, press manager at Carrefour.  READ MORE...

Space Mining

FEOM FORBES.COM - Jamie Carter

16 Psyche, the large metallic asteroid ideal for space mining. GETTY

We know the age of private space travel is here, but what about the wider commercial space industry? “Space mining” has been talked-up in recent years, but the hype-cycle has peaked with the realization that the technology to fetch rare-Earth metals from distant asteroids is some way off.


That’s not stopped NASA’s plans to launch, in 2022, its “Psyche” mission to a large metallic asteroid called 16 Psyche that’s thought to be largely metallic—and so ideal for space mining.

However, the NASA plans to merely orbit and document 16 Psyche, and in any case won’t reach the asteroid—situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter—until 2026.

Now researchers have uncovered two metal-rich near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that could one day be mined for iron, nickel and cobalt could for use on Earth or in space.

They’re reckoned to be 85% metal and one is thought to contain enough iron, nickel and cobalt to exceed Earth’s reserves.

Published in the Planetary Science Journal, the paper documents the examination of two asteroids, 1986 DA and 2016 ED85, whose light appears to be similar to asteroid 16 Psyche.