Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief

Recently, Elon Musk had the chance to share his thoughts onuniversal basic income (UBI)at the World Government Summit in Dubai. At the Summit,Musk had the opportunity to talk about the future, and the challenges the world will face in the next hundred years including artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and the job displacement expected to come with it.

When asked about the challenges civilization is set to face in the near future,Musk began,deep artificial intelligence, or artificial general intelligence, where you can have artificial intelligence that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth. This is a dangerous situation.

I think we need to be very careful in how we adopt artificial intelligence and that we make sure that researchers dont get carried away. Sometimes what will happen is a scientist will get so engrossed in their work that they dont really realize the ramifications of what theyre doing.

Musk also relayed concerns thatautonomous technology will impact jobs. Twenty years is a short period of time to have something like 12-15 percent of the workforce be unemployed, he said, pointing out the extent of how automation will disrupt car-based transportation.

Displacement due to automation isnt just limited to transportation. Musk argues that the government must introduce a UBI program in order to compensate for this. I dont think were going to have a choice, he said. I think its going to be necessary. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.

Musk believes, however, that the issue goes deeper:

As the UBI discussion continues, various nations and institutions have already begun their own pilot programs to test the model. In a couple of years or less, there might be enough data from these experiments for us to consider just how effective a solution to unemployment UBI is.

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Elon Musk: Automation Will Force Governments to Introduce Universal Basic Income - Futurism

The Economic Development of Space

Former President, Barack Obama is a big advocate of science. During his term, he was a vocal supporter of the burgeoning commercial space industry and supportedprivate and government efforts to send humans to Mars by 2030.

We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of Americas story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time, Obama said in an open letter he wrote last year.

Under Obama, the future of space exploration was bright. So where do all these new policies and initiatives supporting distant space exploration stand under Donald Trumps presidency? Based on a report by Politico, it looks like its back to low-Earth orbit.

In the report, Trump advisers expressed support for sending humans back to the Moon, almost five decades after the US managed to achieve this great feat. The focus, they said, should be the large-scale economic development of space, which means limiting space exploration to the area betweenour planet and the Moon, called the cislunar region.

The direction the administration follows is a more entrepreneurial approach to space, and theyre pretty aggressive about it. Theres a strong focus on leveraging space to create new industries and jobs, with the goal of creating a lucrative space economy, and staking what Trump calls a de-facto claim on the moon.

Trump is bent on dominating space, but his teams approach is centered on privatizing the whole endeavor, calling it the biggest and most public privatization effort America has ever conducted. Following this, theyre targeting private rockets to shuttle civilian astronauts to the Moon by 2020.

While this plan doesnt completely shut down efforts for commercial space flight (in fact, theyre likely to benefit from it), the feasibility of the timeline raises concerns. Two of the biggest private spaceflight companies are barely ready to achieve this goal. Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rockets, scheduled to bring astronauts into space next year, are far from perfect and are already suffering delays. And Elon Musks SpaceX is still reeling from two consecutive rocket explosions. Theres also the matter of the administration wanting to claim property rights on the Moon, which would violate the UN Outer Space Treaty.

All things considered, one glaringly absent element in this whole effort to make America great again in space is the science. This kind of approach to space exploration will be counterintuitive for a scientific field that thrives on continued innovation and discovery. This could ultimately put missions for long term space exploration to a disappointing halt, and put important exploratory initiatives like the James Webb Space Telescope (scheduled for 2018), the next Mars rover (slated for 2020), or sending a lander to Jupiters Europa on the back burner.

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President Trump Wants to Send Humans Back to the Moon by 2020 - Futurism

Multiple Threats in Modern Warfare

Each year at the Red Flag exercise organized by the United States Air Force Warfare Center (USAFWC), the air forces of several NATO countries gather at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada for a series of advanced aerial combat training exercises. This year, one fighter plane took center stage at the event, according to a report by Aviation Week.

Lockheed Martins F-35 Lightning IIstole the show, outperforming its competition with a ratio of 15 kills for every one F-35 that was downed and it all happened in an increased threat environment. In the past, the non-kinetic effects were not fully integrated into the kinetic fight, Air Force Cyber Forward director Col. Robert Cole explained in a statement.

This integration in an exercise environment allows our planners and warfighters to understand how to best integrate these, learn their capabilities and limitations, and become ready to use [these combined resources for maximum] effect against our adversaries, he added.

Lockheed Martins latest fighteris different from those that preceded it precisely because its meant to face multiple threats at a time and react to increasingly complex warfare scenarios. The F-35 is the most advanced multi-role fighter combining advanced stealth capabilities with fighter aircraft speed and agility, fully-fused sensor information, network-enabled operations, and advanced logistics and sustainment, according to Lockheed Martin.

This means that its not just capable of taking on conventional threats and enemy surveillance, it can also deal with cyberthreats and electronic warfare. Before, where we would have one advanced threat and we would put everything we had F-16s, F-15s, F-18s, missiles, we would shoot everything we had at that one threat just to take it out now we are seeing three or four of those threats at a time, Lt. Col. George Watkins told Aviation Week. Just between [the F-35] and the [F-22] Raptor, we are able to geolocate them, precision-target them, and then we are able to bring the fourth-generation assets in behind us after those threats are neutralized.

In short, the F-35s advanced capabilities make it the fighter jet of the future, ready to take on more modern threats. As Watkins said, Its a whole different world out there for us now.

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Lockheed's F-35 Fighter Jet Just Demolished the Competition - Futurism

Red and Blue

Concerns over artificial intelligence (AI) have been around for some time now, and thanks to a new study by Googles DeepMind research lab, it seems that this Terminator-esque future of intelligent machines may not be that farfetched.

Using games, a platform that Googles DeepMind AI is terribly familiar with, researchers have been testing whether neural networks are more likely to cooperate or compete, and if these AI are capable of understanding motivations behind making that choice.

For the research, they used two games with similar scenarios for two AI agents, red and blue.

In the first game, the agents were tasked with trying to gather the most apples (green) in a basic 2D graphical environment. The agents were given the option to tag one another with a laser blast that temporarily removed them from the game. After running the scenario a thousand times, they realized that the agents were willing to cooperate when the apples were abundant, but they turned on each other when the stakes were higher.

The researchers realized that, in a smaller network, the agents were more likely to cooperate. Whereas in a larger, more complex network, the AI were quicker to sabotage one another.

In the second scenario, a game called Wolfpack, the agents played as wolves that were tasked with capturing a prey.When the wolves are close in proximity during a successful capture, the rewards offered were greater. Instead of going all lone wolf, this incentivized the agents to work together.

In a larger network, the agents were quicker to understand that cooperation was the way to go.

The Google researchers hope that the study can lead to AI being better at working with other AI in situations with imperfect information. As such, the most practical application of this research, in the short term, is to be able to better understand and control complex multi-agent systems such as the economy, traffic systems, or the ecological health of our planet all of which depend on our continued cooperation,the study says.

At the very least, the study shows that AI are capable of working together and that AI can make selfish decisions.

Joel Leibo, who was the lead author of the paper, outlines the next steps in an interview withBloomberg, Going forward it would be interesting to equip agents with the ability to reason about other agents beliefs and goals.

Originally posted here:
Google DeepMind Shows That AI Can Have Killer Instincts - Futurism

In Brief

Researchers have discovered a way to make the promising flow battery much more practical. Flow batteries store energy in liquid-filled tanks. Prior to this most recent discovery, flow batteries, after a number of charge-discharge cycles, would suffer from rapid storage capacity degradation.

In order to overcome the degradation hurdle, the researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) modified the structure of molecules in the solution to make them water soluble. This allowed for the electrolytes to be dissolved in neutral water, creating a battery that only loses one percent of its storage capacity every 1000 cycles. According to the officialpress release, the battery is able to run for ten years with only a minimum amount of upkeep.

Unlike other battery liquids, the solution in this new flow battery is both non-toxic as well as non-corrosive. Spilling it on skin or on the floor causes no injury or property damage.

Any innovations in energy storage will only continue to help renewable energy to become as, if not more, of a viable power source. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has stated that building a battery with the capacity to store energy for less than $100 per kWh would make clean energy from sources like the sun and wind on par with traditional power plants. Imre Gyuk of the DOE stated, I expect that efficient, long duration flow batteries will become standard as part of the infrastructure of the electric grid.

Better batteries are a key component in realizing the full potential of renewable energy. As can be seen with the opening of the first Powerpack station in California, battery storage can help ease the burden of demand on a grid during peak usage times. Developments like this that improve batteries will lead to the use of fewer fossil fuels and decrease overall dependence on environmentally damaging sources of power generation.

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Harvard's Remarkable New Battery Can Run For More Than a Decade - Futurism

The Evolution of the Workforce

It almost shouldnt come as a surprise. In an age defined by advancements in the tech industry, it was only a matter of time before the traditional paradigms set by the industrial revolution had to change.

The sophistication of todays technology means factories are turning to computers instead of human employees to get the job done. According to a joint study conducted by Oxford University and the Oxford Martin School, [] 47 percent of jobs in the US are at risk of being automated in the next 20 years. ABall State University studyconcluded that almost nine out of 10 jobs have been lost to automation since 2000, and a factory in China just saw a 250 percent increase in production after replacing 90 percent of its workforce with automated systems.

However, as demand for physical labor goes down, other opportunities are arising, and according to Clive Thompson of Wired, the next big blue-collar job will be coding.

The information technology industry is expected to grow faster than almost any other, with some predicting a 12 percent growth between 2014 to 2024. The problem lies in the fact that coding will require a different technical skill setthan much of todays blue collar work. But thankfully, many employers are responding to the needs of the evolving job market by attempting to make code learning more accessible.

Silicon Valley giants like Google have initiatives designed to engage and teach anyone interested in programming. Schools are working tointroduce codingas early as high school, while various other institutions are offering intensive code-learning programs. This level of education and exposure to coding wont necessarily give these future coders the knowledge to create complex AI algorithms, but it would be enough to qualify them for a well-paying, reliable job in the IT department.

It should also be notedthat coding opportunities reach far beyond the tech industry. Silicon Valley employs only eight percent of the coders in the U.S., andaccording to one study, half of all programming openings are in industries outside of technology, such asfinance, manufacturing, and healthcare. Theres also the draw of compensation. The national average salary for IT jobs is double the national average for all jobs: $81,000 annually.

Its now a matter of demystifying coding as a profession that only gifted computer prodigies are capable of learning. As Thompson points out in his article, several of the skills needed to be successful at blue collar occupations like coal mining intense focus, an ability to function within a team, a level of comfort working with engineering tech, etc. could easily translate into coding. Once people realize that it is a highly specialized skill but one that they can learn to do well, coding has the potential to open more doors to employment in the age of automation.

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The Next Blue Collar Job? Coding - Futurism - Futurism

The Warmest Planet

Even though Mercury is closer to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System.It has surface temperatures of about 460 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit) coupled with a carbon dioxide-rich air that has an atmospheric pressure about 90 times that ofEarths. As such, surface exploration has been virtually impossible in the past, as this extreme heat and pressure woulddestroy scientific equipment. Thatsabout to change.

NASAsGlenn Research Center team has developed extremely durable silicon carbide semiconductor integrated circuits that are tough enough to withstand the harsh conditions on Venus surface far better than any existing tech.

We demonstrated vastly longer electrical operation with chips directly exposed no cooling and no protective chip packaging to a high-fidelity physical and chemical reproduction of Venus surface atmosphere, said lead electronics engineer Phil Neudeck. And both integrated circuits still worked after the end of the test.

This technology, which was only recently demonstrated by NASA, was detailed in the journal AIP Advancesin December 2016.

During the test conducted at NASAs Glenn Extreme Environments Rig (GEER), the engineers were able to prove that their integrated circuits could work under conditions similar to those found on Venus. The chips lasted for 521 hours more than 100 times longer than other electronics previously designed for a Venus exploration.

With further technology development, such electronics could drastically improve Venus lander designs and mission concepts, enabling the first long-duration missions to the surface of Venus, said Neudeck. Though many are making preparations to go to Mars, some researchers suggest Venus as a potential option for human colonization, assuming it could be terraformed.These long-overdue missions would be the first step to exploring that possibility.

The applications of this chip, however, arent just limited to Venus exploration missions. According toGary Hunter, principle investigator for Venus surface electronics development, This work not only enables the potential for new science in extended Venus surface and other planetary exploration, but it also has potentially significant impact for a range of Earth relevant applications, such as in aircraft engines to enable new capabilities, improve operations, and reduce emissions.

Originally posted here:
NASA Finally Has a Computer That Can Survive on Venus - Futurism

In the future, everyones going to have a robot assistant. Thats the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. Theyre calling it Moneypennythe secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bonds womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why cant people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, heres a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. Thats a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Both the World Future Society and the Association of Professional Futurists are headed by women right now. And both of those women talked to me about their desire to bring more women to the field. Cindy Frewen, the head of the Association of Professional Futurists, estimates that about a third of their members are women. Amy Zalman, the CEO of the World Future Society, says that 23 percent of her groups members identify as female. But most lists of top futurists perhaps include one female name. Often, that woman is no longer working in the field.

Somehow, Ive become a person who reports on futurists. I produce and host a podcast about what might happen in the future called Meanwhile in the Future. I write a column about people living cutting-edge lives for BBC Future. And one thing Ive noticed is how overwhelmingly male and white they are.

It turns out that what makes someone a futurist, and what makes something futurism, isnt well defined. When you ask those who are part of official futurist societies, like the APF and the WFS, they often struggle to answer. There are some possible credentialsnamely: a degree in foresight, an emerging specialty that often intersects with studies of technology and business. But the discipline isnt well establishedtheres no foresight degree at Yale, or Harvard. And there are plenty of people who practice futurology who dont have one.

Zalman defines a futurist as a person who embraces a certain way of thinking. Being a futurist these days means that you take seriously a worldview and a set of activities and the recognition that foresight, with a capital F, isnt just thinking about what are the top 10 things this year, what are the trends unfolding.

Frewen says that futurism wont ever be like architecture or medicine, in that its never going to be a licensed field. But there are still things that many futurists agree people in their field shouldnt do. We think of things now as more systems-based and more uncertain, you dont know what the future is, and thats a basic concept, so we try to avoid the people who think they can always know this is going to get better.

Some people think of science fiction authors as futurists, while others dont. Some members of the APF include singularity researchers, others dont want to. Some people lump transhumanists into a broader category of futurists. Others dont. Here are some of the people popularly known as futurists: Aubrey de Gray, the chief researcher at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Research Foundation; Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX; Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google; Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google. They dont necessarily belong to a particular societythey might not even self-identify as futurists!but they are driving the conversation about the futurevery often on stages, in public, backed by profitable corporations or well-heeled investors.

Which means the media ends up turning to Brin and Musk and de Gray and Kurzweil to explain what is going to happen, why it matters, and ultimately whether its all going to be okay. The thing is: The futures that get imagined depend largely on the person or people doing the imagining.

* * *

Why are there so few women? Much of it comes down to the same reasons there are so few women in science and technology, fields with direct links to futurism (which has a better ring to it than strategic foresight, the term some futurists prefer).

Zalman says futurism has actually fought to present itself in a certain way. When the field was founded in the 1960s, it came with a reputation that still lingers a bit today, she says. Like magicians, crystal ball gazers, sort of flakey, thats the reputation that followed the WFS for awhile. Because the field itself had to struggle to be taken seriously, that put more pressure on folks to demonstrate that they were scientific. And it was coded masculine. While futurism includes not simply the future of gadgets, the field found itself pushing away some of the perceived softer elements of foresight: social change, family structures, cultural impactsin favor of mathematical modeling and technology.

Madeline Ashby, a futurist with a degree in strategic foresight who has worked for organizations like Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, and Nesta, says that another big part of the gender imbalance has to do with optimism. If you ask me, the one reason why futurism as a discipline is so white and male, is because white males have the ability to offer the most optimistic vision, she says. They can get up on stage and tell us that the world will be okay, that technology will fix all our problems, that well live forever. Mark Stevenson wrote a book called An Optimists Tour of the Future. TED speakers always seem to end their talk, no matter how dire, on an upward-facing note.

Ashby says that any time she speaks in front of a crowd, and offers a grim view of the future, someone (almost always a man) invariably asks why she cant be more positive. Why is this so depressing, why is this so dystopian, they ask. Because when you talk about the future you dont get rape threats, thats why, she says. For a long time the future has belonged to people who have not had to struggle, and I think that will still be true. But as more and more systems collapse, currency, energy, the ability to get water, the ability to work, the future will increasingly belong to those who know how to hustle, and those people are not the people who are producing those purely optimistic futures.

I dont know if I kind of pick up on the optimism as I pick up on the utter absurdity, said Sarah Kember, a professor of technology at the University of London whos applied feminist theory to futurism for years. And thats great for me in some ways, its been a traditional feminist strategy to expose absurdity. Its a key critique. She points out that as someone whose job it is to take a step back and analyze things like futurism from an outside view, a lot of the mainstream futurism starts to look pretty silly. Youve got smart bras and vibrating pants and talking kitchen worktops and augmented-reality bedroom mirrors that read the tags on your clothing and tell you what not to wear, and theres no reflection on any of this at all, she says.

Both Frewen of the APF and Zalman of the WFS told me that they were concerned about the gender imbalance in their field, and that they are hoping to help change it. But they also both reminded me that, compared to a lot of fields, futurism is a tiny speciality. And its homogeneous in other ways, too. The majority of the WFS members are white, and most of them are 55 to 65 years old. It is not okay for the WFS, although we care about them, to have only men from North America between the ages of 55 and 65, Zalman says. We need all those other voices because they represent an experience.

* * *

Any time someone points out a gender or racial imbalance in a field (or, most often, the combination of the two) a certain set of people ask: Who cares? The future belongs to all of usor, ultimately, none of uswhy does it matter if the vast majority of futurists are white men? It matters for the same reasons diversity drives market growth: because when only one type of person is engaged in asking key questions about a specialtyenvisioning the future or otherwisethey miss a entire frameworks for identifying and solving problems. The relative absence of women at Apple is why the Apple Health kit didnt have period tracking until a few months ago, and why a revolutionary artificial heart can be deemed a success even when it doesnt fit 80 percent of women.

Which brings us back to Moneypenny, and all the other virtual assistants of the future. There are all sorts of firms and companies working to build robotic servants. Chrome butlers, chefs, and housekeepers. But the fantasy of having an indentured servant is a peculiar one to some. That whole idea of creating robots that are in service to us has always bothered me, says Nnedi Okorafor, a science fiction author. Ive always sided with the robots. That whole idea of creating these creatures that are human-like and then have them be in servitude to us, that is not my fantasy and I find it highly problematic that it would be anyones.

Or take longevity, for example. The idea that people could, or even should, push to lengthen lifespans as far as possible is popular. The life-extension movement, with Aubrey de Gray as one (very bearded) spokesman, has raised millions of dollars to investigate how to extend the lifespan of humans. But this is arguably only an ideal future if youre in as a comfortable position as his. Living forever only works if youre a rich vampire from an Anne Rice novel, which is to say that you have compound interest, jokes Ashby. It really only works if you have significant real-estate investments and fast money and slow money. (Time travel, as the comedian Louis C.K. has pointed out, is another thing that is a distinctly white male preoccupationgoing back in time, for marginalized groups, means giving up more of their rights.)

Beyond the particular futures that get funded and developed, theres also a broader issue with the ways in which people think about what forces actually shape the future. We get some really ready-made easy ways of thinking about the future by thinking that the future is shapeable by tech development, said Kember, the professor of technology at University of London.

In the 1980s, two futurists (a man and a woman) wrote a book that invited key members of the futurist community to write essays on what they saw coming. The book was called What Futurists Believe, and it included profiles of 17 futurists, including Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Schwartz. All seventeen people profiled were men. And in some ways, they were very close to predicting the future. They seemed to grasp the importance of the cell phone and the trajectory of the personal computer. But they completely missed a huge set of other things. What they never got right was the social side, they never saw flattened organizations, social media, the uprisings in the Middle East, ISIS using Twitter, says Frewen.

Terry Grim, a professor in the Studies of the Future program at the University of Houston, recalls a video she saw from the 1960s depicting the office of the future. It had everything pretty much right, they had envisioned the computer and fax machine and forward-looking technology products. But there was something missing: There were no women in the office, she said.

Okorafor says that shes gotten so used to not seeing anybody like herself in visions of the future that its not really surprising to her when it happens. I feel like more of a tourist when I experience these imaginings, this isnt even a place where I would exist in the first place, she says. In the type of setting, the environment, and the way everything is set up just doesnt feel like it would be my future at all, and this is something that I experience regularly when I read or watch imagined futures, and this is part of what made me start writing my own.

This is also perhaps why futurists often dont talk about some of the issues and problems that many people face every dayharassment, child care, work-life balance, water rights, immigration, police brutality. When you lose out on womens voices you lose out on the issues that they have to deal with, Ashby says. She was recently at a futures event where people presented on a global trends report, and there was nothing in the slides on the future of law enforcement. The questions that many people face about their futures are lost in the futures being imagined.

* * *

In the 1970s, Alvin Tofflers book Future Shock argued that there are three types of futurism the world needed: a science of futurism that could talk about the probability of things happening, an art of futurism that could explore what is possible, and a politics of futurism that could investigate what is preferable. Futurism has done well to develop the first side, building devices and technologies and frameworks through which to see technical advances. But Zalman says that its fallen down a bit on the other two. Arts and humanities are given short shrift.

In some ways, the art and politics of futurism are the harder pieces of the pie. Technology is often predictable. Humans, less so. The solution to make things better is a really messy policy solution that has to be negotiated, its not pulling the sword from the stone or implanting the alien saucers with your stupid Mac virus or killing the shark, its getting people in a room with free coffee and doughnuts and getting them to talk, said Ashby.

In order to understand what those who have never really felt welcome in the field of futurism think, I called someone who writes and talks about the future, but who doesnt call themselves a futurist: Monica Byrne. Byrne is a science-fiction author and opinion writer who often tackles questions of how we see the future, and what kinds of futures we deem preferable. But when she thinks about futurism as a field, she doesnt see herself. I think the term futurist is itself is something I see white men claiming for themselves, and isnt something that would occur to me to call myself even though I functionally am one, she says.

Okorafor says that she too has never really called herself a futurist, even though much of what she does is use her writing to explore whats possible. When you sent me your email and you mentioned futurism I think thats really the first time I started thinking about that label for myself. And it fits. It feels comfortable.

When Byrne thinks about the term futurists, she thinks about a power struggle. What I see is a bid for control over what the future will look like. And it is a future that is, that to me doesnt look much different from Asimov science fiction covers. Which is not a future Im interested in.

The futurism that involves glass houses and 400-year-old men doesnt interest her. When I think about the kind of future I want to build, its very soft and human, its very erotic, and I feel like so much of what I identify as futurism is very glossy, chrome painted science fiction covers, theyre sterile. She laughs. Who cares about your jetpack? How does technology enable us to keep loving each other?

Original post:
Futurism Needs More Women - The Atlantic

In Brief

In a rather unromantic gesture, on February 14, SpaceX will be launching an antibiotic-resistant superbug into space. The bug will be living in microgravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The bacterium that will be shot into space will be the, often feared, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Even so much as the mention or MRSA send shivers down the spines of many. MRSA is an antibiotic-resistant staph infection that can represent itself in the human body in the skin as painful, swollen, red bumps; but the infection can also travel further into the body, wreaking havoc on bones, joints, even the blood. This potentially life-threatening infection kills more Americans than HIV/AIDS, Parkinsons disease, emphysema, and violence combinedevery year.

So, why would scientists launch this dangerous bacterium into space and bring it aboard the ISS? Well, not for any nefarious or dastardly reason. The purpose of this project is toaccelerate the mutations of the bacterium, allowing the scientists to watch the progression of the bug quicker than its progression on Earth, getting information ahead of those of us back home.

According to lead researcher Anita Goel, CEO of biotech company Nanobiosym, We will leverage the microgravity environment on the ISS to accelerate the Precision Medicine revolution here on Earth. In other words, using information from this study of the sped up life cycle of a MRSA bacterium, these scientists will be able to understand how bacteria change and mutate at a much faster rate than we would on Earth.

This information could be extrapolated to bacteria besides MRSA, and allow scientists to better understand how MRSA (and, in the future, other infections) travel through the body and mutate throughout their lives. This objective could lead to a medical future where even the most formidable antibiotic-resistant bacteria are no longer a fatal threat.

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Elon Musk's SpaceX is Launching a Superbug Into Space - Futurism

In Brief

Scientists aboard the International Space Station (ISS) recently ran an experiment where they let algae loose into the vacuum of space for a full 16 months. And, surprisingly enough, the simple plants survived the harrowing journey. Despite extreme temperature variations, UV radiation, cosmic radiation, and incredible length of time, the algae were brought back aboard still alive.

The researchers aboard the ISS are currently running experiments as part of the Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX) project. Within this experimental algae portion of the project, they tested the durability of algae species that are known to love freezing temperatures. Since the mixture of extreme conditions found in space is impossible to replicate in a laboratory environment exactly, the crew on the ISS used their location to put these cold-loving species to the test. However, despite knowing what these plants will endure on Earth, the scientists were astonished at how much they can really take.

Post-experiment, the researchers aboard the ISS will send these algae samples back to Earth. There, they will be rigorously tested to see the actual extent that the temperatures and combined radiation impacted them. This information could be crucial to future human missions to Mars. It could help to ensure the safety of humans and any plant-based food to be consumed.

However, beyond the positive benefits that this research could have on future missions of humans in space, it could also potentially tell us a little bit more about alien life. According to many, including famed astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, thinking that we are somehow the only living creatures in the universe would be inexcusably egocentric. And, while previously, few would have thought that any plants could survive such an extended stay in space, we now know better. And so, while certain environments in space may seem inhospitable, we now know that life could exist in places we never before would have suspected.

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NASA Discovers an Organism That Can Survive 16 Months in Outer Space - Futurism