Daily Archives: January 28, 2020

Two years ago, documentarian Matt Wolf was poking around the internet when he came across a striking image of eight people in red jumpsuits in front of a glass pyramid. I thought it was a still from a science fiction film, he said. Then I realized it was real.

Wolf and I were in the back of an ice cream parlor in Park City, Utaha plastic cow in a cowboy hat just inches awaydiscussing his new film, Spaceship Earth. Finished just in time for Sundance, its a fascinating portrait of a late-60s counterculture theater group that somehow ended up in the Arizona desert, leading the $200 million scientific research facility Biosphere 2.

The Biosphere 2 experiment documented in Spaceship Earth lasted from 1991 to 1993. Eight individuals across different scientific practices entered an enormous, closed ecosystem intended to replicate all of the diversity of eartha.k.a. Biosphere 1then sealed the doors behind them. The idea was that they would both lead experiments and be the experiment, in a medical as well as sociological manner. The goals were simultaneously altruistic (we may one day need to colonize Mars if we truly screw up our environment) and also profit-driven (we can sell any proprietary technologies we stumble upon).

Biosphere 2 became a tourist attraction and fixture on the nightly news; as a result, there were, to put it mildly, unforeseen complications. Then came a twist ending involving bad faith business practices and a young banker who went on to become one of the 21st centurys most notorious villains. (No spoilers, but you can Google it!)

Spaceship Earth is the fourth feature for Wolf, a sharp-witted, San Jose-bred, New York-based 30-something and Guggenheim Fellow. In 2019, he released Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, the remarkable story of a woman who obsessively taped television for decadesamassing a one-of-a-kind library while simultaneously ruining her own life. Prior to that came Teenage, based on Jon Savages book about the origin of the 20th century concept of adolescence, and Wild Combination, a heartbreaking portrait of musician Arthur Russell, whose work was rediscovered long after his death from AIDS in 1992. In between came a number of shorts, including Its Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, starring Lena Dunham and everyones favorite Plaza Hotel-dwelling little girl, plus a stint as cocurator of film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

His subjects seem at first to have little in common with one another. Im interested in outsider visionary figures who beg for reappraisal, he said when pressed for a recurring theme. He called them hidden histories. Each time he uses a similar method: culling material from an enormous, oftentimes never-before-touched archive. His ideas are frequently born from discovering something weird online.

Wolf was just a kid when the first Biosphere 2 experiment was launchedthough, like the rest of us, he does remember the Pauly Shore film Bio-Dome. The second he learned its story, though, he was absolutely determined to make the film. When the living Biospherians welcomed him and opened their enormous archive of 16mm film and Hi8 video, he recognized an urgency to get this story, with its environmentalist and late capitalist implications, out now.

Despite being initially dazzled by the theatricality of Biosphere 2s look, Wolf does not consider himself a sci-fi guy. He was a shy kid, he told me, and up until his mid-20s, his friends were always older. At the age of 16, he responded to an ad in a queer youth center in San Francisco and ended up the novelty young intern, working on a documentary about Harry Haythe gay activist who cofounded the Mattachine Society and, very in tune with Wolfs later work, the countercultural, anarchic, and spiritual group called the Radical Faeries.

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The Strange Tale of Biosphere 2 Gets a Fitting Showcase in Spaceship Earth - Vanity Fair

Tesla Inc. (TSLA) designs, develops, manufactures, and sells electric vehicles and energy generation and storage systems in the United States, China, the Netherlands, Norway, and around the globe. The company has two segments, automotive and energy generation and storage.

Elon Musk, the founder of the company and guiding force behind its innovation, has been a controversial character. While he has more than a handful of detractors, he has developed a cult-like following. Since late 2019, Mr. Musk has been delivering for his shareholders in a big way. Last week, in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump, in an interview on CNBC, compared Elon Musk with Thomas Edison and the inventor of the wheel. The innovator has other interests outside of Tesla. His Boring Company is developing new modes of high-speed public transportation. SpaceX is working to reduce the cost of space transportation to enable the colonization of Mars. Mr. Musk is not the typical billionaire; he is a man who will go down in history as one of the most significant innovators of his time.

Meanwhile, those who believed in Mr. Musk have been reaping the rewards. The price of Tesla (TSLA) shares have exploded to the upside.

A bumpy ride for Tesla (TSLA) shares in 2019

There were times in 2019, where more than a few analysts believed that the cash burn at Tesla (TSLA) would force the company into bankruptcy.

(Source: Barchart)

As the chart shows, TSLA shares dropped to a low of $176.99 in June 2019, just seven months ago. The stock had more than halved in value from the late 2018 peak of $379.49. Only a handful of believers of Elon Musk remained bullish, and those who bought shares at below the $200 level were rewarded handsomely. Some analysts went as far as calling Mr. Musk a huckster with projections the shares were going to zero when the stock was on its low.

The stock explodes to the upside starting in late 2019 on Q3 earnings

The 2018 high in Tesla (TSLA) shares was $387.48. Just six months after the company was staring into the abyss last June, the stock surpassed the 2018 peak price and rose to a new all-time high in mid-December. The third quarter 2019 earnings blew the cover off the ball for Tesla as the profits beat consensus estimates decisively.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

The chart shows that after missing consensus estimates for three consecutive quarters, Tesla (TSLA) earned $1.86 per share in Q3 when the market expected a loss of 42 cents.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

The chart shows that Tesla (TSLA) shares exploded to the upside, to a high of $594.50, over three times the price in the low in June 2019. The stock closed at $564.82 on Friday, January 24.

In a sign that Mr. Musk has not made believers of all members of the analyst community, a survey of 30 analysts on Yahoo Finance has an average price target of only $368.35 on the stocks with a range between $61.57 and $810.51.

TSLA has a larger market cap than General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) combined

Tesla has come a long way since last June, and a correction in the stock would not be a surprise given its current lofty level. At the close of business last Friday, the company had a market cap of $101.806 billion. In a world where the top companies have valuations of over $1 trillion, the number may not be all that eye-popping. Meanwhile, the combined valuations of Ford Motor Company (F) and General Motors Company (GM) was at $84.705 billion at their respective share prices at the end of last week. Considering that Tesla (TSLA) has a higher valuation than a combination of the two companies that are institutions in the automobile manufacturing business, Mr. Musk has left his detractors with more than a little egg on their faces.

TSLA shares were trading at $545.25 per share on Monday morning, down $19.57 (-3.46%). Year-to-date, TSLA has gained 30.34%, versus a 0.57% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

Andy spent nearly 35 years on Wall Street and is a sought-after commodity and futures trader, an options expert and analyst. In addition to working with ETFDailyNews, he is a top ranked author on Seeking Alpha. Learn more about Andys background, along with links to his most recent articles. More...

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TSLA: Shares of Tesla Leave GM and Ford In The Dust - StockNews.com

A pair of Harvard astrophysicists have proposed a wild theory of how life might have spread through the universe.

Imagine this:

Millions or billions of years ago, back when the solar system was more crowded, a giant comet grazed the outer reaches of our atmosphere. It was moving fast, several tens of miles above the Earth's surface too high to burn up as a fireball, but low enough that the atmosphere slowed it down a little bit. Extremely hardy microbes were floating up there in its path, and some of those bugs survived the collision with the ball of ice. These microbes ended up embedded deep within the comet's porous surface, protected from the radiation of deep space as the comet rocketed away from Earth and eventually out of the solar system entirely. Tens of thousands, maybe millions, of years passed before the comet ended up in another solar system with habitable planets. Eventually, the object crashed into one of those planets, deposited the microbes a few of them still living and set up a new outpost for earthly life in the universe.

Related: 5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids

You could call it "interstellar panspermia," the seeding of distant star systems with exported life.

We have no idea whether this ever actually happened .and there's a mountain of reasons to be skeptical. But in a new paper, Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, both astrophysicists at Harvard University, argue that at least the first part of this story the depositing of the microbes into a comet that gets ejected from the solar system should have happened between one and a few dozen times in Earth's history. Siraj told Live Science that although a lot more work needs to be done to back up the finding, it should be taken seriously and that the paper may have been, if anything, too conservative in its estimate of the number of life-exporting events.

While the study's concept may seem far-fetched, humanity is constantly confronted with seeming impossibilities, like Earth going around the sun, or quantum physics, or bacteria hitching a ride into the galaxy aboard a comet that turn out to be true, Siraj said

And there's been reason to suspect that it might be possible. A series of experiments using small rockets in the 1970s found colonies of bacteria in the upper atmosphere. Comets really do enter and leave our solar system from time to time, and Siraj and Loeb's calculations show that it's plausible, maybe even likely, this has happened to large comets that graze Earth. Comets are porous, and might actually shield microbes from deadly radiation some microbes can survive a remarkably long time in space.

That alone is reason for scientists to take the idea seriously, Siraj said, and for researchers from fields like biology to jump in and figure out some of the details.

"It's a brand new field of science," he told Live Science

However, Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science that he was deeply skeptical of the suggestion that microbes from Earth might have actually turned up alive on alien planets through some version of this process.

The first problem would occur when the comet slammed into the atmosphere, he said. Siraj and Loeb point out that some bacteria can survive extraordinary accelerations. But the precise mechanism by which the microbes would adhere to the comet is unclear, Kane said, since the aerodynamic forces around the comet might make it impossible for any microbes to reach the surface and work their way deep enough below the surface to be protected from radiation.

It's also not clear, he said, whether any microbes would really have been up high in our atmosphere in the first place Those rocket experiments from the 1970s are old and questionable, he said, and we still don't have a good picture of what the biology of the upper atmosphere really looks like today let alone hundreds of millions of years ago, when comet encounters were much more common.

The biggest question, though, Kane said, is what would happen to the microbes after they landed aboard the comet. It's plausible, he said, that some bacteria might survive decades in space long enough to reach, say, Mars. But there's little direct evidence that any bacteria might survive the thousands or millions of years necessary to travel to another habitable star system. And that's really the key idea of this paper: Researchers have long suggested that debris from major collisions might blast life around between our solar system's planets and moons. But exporting life to an alien star system likely requires a more specialized scenario.

Still, Kane said, the calculations in this study of how precisely a comet might skim through the atmosphere were new to him, and "very interesting."

Siraj didn't strongly challenge any of Kane's concerns, but reframed them one by one as opportunities for further study. He wants to know, he said, precisely what the biology of the upper atmosphere looks like, and how comets might react to it. There's reason to think that at least some bacteria might survive super-long trips through deep space, he said, based on how robust they are under extreme conditions on Earth and in orbit. But for now, it's time for scientists across fields to jump in and start filling in the gaps, Saraj said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Physicists: Ancient life might have escaped Earth and journeyed to alien stars - Livescience.com

The American science- fiction series, The Expanse, is confirmed to have a fifth season. Developed by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, it is based on the novel series of the same name, written by James S. A. Corey and the first three seasons aired initially on Syfy. The fourth season is an Amazon exclusive. The first three seasons are available on Amazon as well.

Release Date of Season 5

Season 5 of The Expense was confirmed before even the release of the fourth season. As per the official Twitter page of the series, the production of the fifth season has already begun in October 2019.

Season 1, of ten episodes, aired from 14th December 2015 to 2nd February 2016. The second season of thirteen was back in 2017 and broadcast from 1st February to April 19th. Season 3 of thirteen episodes, aired from April 11th, 2018 to June 26th, 2018. Season 4 of ten episodes released on the 13th of December, 2019, on Amazon Prime Video.

The Expanse Season 5 is expected to release in December 2020.

The Plot

The series is set in the future. In a time when humans have colonized the solar system, Mars has become an independent militant power. The backdrop being, the rising tensions between Earth and Mars have brought them on the brink of war.

The investigation of a case about a missing woman leads to unveiling the biggest conspiracy in the history of humanity.

Season 4 was based on Cibola Burn. The fifth season is likely to the adaptation of Nemesis Games. In the new season, the introduction to some new characters is expected. Expanse crew will be shown trying to go back home amidst the inter- planetary rush.

Cast

Dominique Tipper, Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Frankie Adams, Thomas Jane, Florence Faivre, Cara Gee, and Shawn Doyle will be seen in the leading roles. Other than them, Wes Chatham and Burn Gorman will be seen in central characters with Steven Strait.

The Expanse is very ahead- of- its- time, which piques the interest if viewers. Along with the love of the audience, the series has also received massive critical acclaim. Season 5 is something to look forward to.

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The Expanse Season 5: Filming confirmed; will release later this year. - Union Journalism

Chimpanzees, human beings closest animal relatives, share up to 98 percent of our genes. Their human-like hands and facial expressions can send uncanny shivers of self-recognition down the backs of zoo patrons.

Yet people and chimpanzees lead very different lives. Fewer than 300,000 wild chimpanzees live in a few forested corners of Africa today, while humans have colonized every corner of the globe, from the Arctic tundra to the Kalahari Desert. At more than 7 billion, humans population dwarfs that of nearly all other mammalsdespite our physical weaknesses.

What could account for our species incredible evolutionary successes?

One obvious answer is our big brains. It could be that our raw intelligence gave us an unprecedented ability to think outside the box, innovating solutions to gnarly problems as people migrated across the globe. Think of The Martian, where Matt Damon, trapped alone in a research station on Mars, heroically sciences his way out of certain death.

But a growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists are rejecting that explanation. These researchers think that, rather than making our living as innovators, human beings survive and thrive precisely because we dont think for ourselves. Instead, people cope with challenging climates and ecological contexts by carefully copying othersespecially those we respect. Instead of Homo sapiens, or man the knower, were really Homo imitans: man the imitator.

In a famous study, psychologists Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten showed two groups of test subjectschildren and chimpanzeesa mechanical box with a treat inside. In one condition, the box was opaque, while in the other it was transparent. The experimenters demonstrated how to open the box to retrieve a treat, but they also included the irrelevant step of tapping on the box with a stick.

Oddly, human children carefully copied all the steps to open the box, even when they could see that the stick had no practical effect. That is, they copied irrationally: Instead of doing only what was necessary to get their reward, children slavishly imitated every action theyd witnessed.

Of course, that study only included three and four year olds. But additional research has showed that older children and adults are even more likely to mindlessly copy others actions, and young infants are less likely to over-imitatethat is, to precisely copy even impractical actions.

By contrast, chimpanzees in Horner and Whitens study only over-imitated in the opaque condition. In the transparent conditionwhere they saw that the stick was mechanically uselessthey ignored that step entirely, merely opening the box with their hands. Other research has since supported these findings.

When it comes to copying, chimpanzees are more rational than human children or adults.

Where does the seemingly irrational human preference for over-imitation come from? In his book The Secret of Our Success, anthropologist Joseph Henrich points out that people around the world rely on technologies that are often so complex that no one can learn them rationally. Instead, people must learn them step by step, trusting in the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.

For example, the best way to master making a bow is by observing successful hunters doing it, with the assumption that everything they do is important. As an inexperienced learner, you cant yet judge which steps are actually relevant. So when your bands best hunter waxes his bowstring with two fingers or touches his ear before drawing the string, you copy him.

The human propensity for over-imitation thus makes possible what anthropologists call cumulative culture: the long-term development of skills and technologies over generations. No single person might understand all the practical reasons behind each step to making a bow or carving a canoe, much less transforming rare earth minerals into iPhones. But as long as people copy with high fidelity, the technology gets transmitted.

Ritual and religion are also domains in which people carry out actions that arent connected in a tangible way with practical outcomes. For example, a Catholic priest blesses wafers and wine for Communion by uttering a series of repetitive words and doing odd motions with his hands. One could be forgiven for wondering what on Earth these ritualistic acts have to do with eating bread, just as a chimpanzee cant see any connection between tapping a stick and opening a box.

But rituals have a hidden effect: They bond people to one another and demonstrate cultural affiliation. For an enlightening negative example, consider a student who refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Her action clearly telegraphs her rejection of authorities right to tell her how to behave. And as anthropologist Roy Rappaport pointed out, ritual participation is binary: Either you say the pledge or you dont. This clarity makes it easily apparent who is or isnt committed to the group.

In a broader sense, then, over-imitation helps enable much of what comprises distinctively human culture, which turns out to be much more complicated than mechanical cause and effect.

At heart, human beings are not brave, self-reliant innovators, but careful if savvy conformists. We perform and imitate apparently impractical actions because doing so is the key to learning complex cultural skills, and because rituals create and sustain the cultural identities and solidarity we depend on for survival. Indeed, copying others is a powerful way to establish social rapport. For example, mimicking anothers body language can induce them to like and trust you more.

So the next time you hear someone arguing passionately that everyone should embrace nonconformity and avoid imitating others, you might chuckle a bit. Were not chimpanzees, after all.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Why Imitation Is at the Heart of Being Human - Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley