The Weekly Pique

January 15, 2016 By Joe

The Search for Habitable, Earth-like Exoplanets

[pullquote align=”full”]”I invision that our decendants, hundreds of years from now, will embark on an interstellar journey to other worlds. And they will look back at all of us as the generation who first found the Earth-like worlds.”
– Sara Seager[/pullquote]

How We’ll Find Life On Other Planets [TED]

TED Talk (5 minutes) – Aomawa Shields
“I am in search of another planet in the universe where life exists. I can’t see this planet with my naked eyes, or even with the most powerful telescopes we currently possess. But I know that it’s there. And understanding contradictions that occur in nature will help us find it…”

Astronomers Discover “Habitable” Exoplanet Just 14 Light-Years Away [IFLScience!]

Article (4 minutes) – Stephen Luntz
“Appropriately, Wolf 1061c is in the ‘Goldilocks zone,’ a ‘just right’ distance. With a mass at least 4.3 times that of Earth, it could be rocky, and its 17.9-day orbit means an Earth-like average temperature…”

The Search for Planets Beyond Our Solar System [TED]

TED Talk (16 minutes) – Sara Seager
“Who is out there? You know, this question has been around for thousands of years, since at least the time of the Greek philosophers. I’m here to tell you just how close we’re getting to finding out the answer to this question. It’s the first time in human history that this really is within reach for us…”

Scientists Find New Way to Determine if Exoplanets Can Harbor Life [The Daily Galaxy]

Article (3 minutes)
“Researchers have found a new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of a star. For distant stars with planets orbiting them, this information is key in determining whether any of those planets can harbour life…”

How We Found Hundreds of Potential Earth-Like Planets [TED]

TED Talk (19 minutes) – Dimitar Sasselov
“There is immense, powerful potential in life in this universe, especially now that we know that places like the Earth are common…”

Thanks for reading,
Joe Howard

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January 8, 2016 By Joe

The Easiest and Most Effective Ways to Become a Lucid Dreamer

[pullquote align=”full”]”Not all lucid dreams are useful but they all have a sense of wonder about them. If you must sleep through a third of your life, why should you sleep through your dreams too?”
– Stephen LaBerge[/pullquote]

LucidCatcher

Device / App
“Your will become more conscious and aware that this is a dream by questioning everything around you. Once you get to this point start acting immediately. Fly to the moon or be a dragon!”

Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide [Tim Ferriss]

Article (11 minutes) – Tim Ferriss
“The first few times you achieve lucidity, you will likely be so excited that you will wake yourself up…”

Scientists May Have Found The Part of The Brain That Enables Lucid Dreaming [Science Alert]

Resources (1 hour +) – Fiona MacDonald
“Now scientists from Germany believe they may have found the neurological key to the ability. After scanning the brains of regular dreamers and those who are frequently lucid, they’ve found that the region of the brain that enables self reflection is larger among lucid dreamers…”

Lucid Dreaming Techniques for Beginners [World of Lucid Dreaming]

Article (4 minutes) – Rebecca Turner
“Here are my top lucid dreaming techniques for beginners. They range from simple memory exercises (like Reality Checks and Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) to specialized meditation (like Wake Induced Lucid Dreams)…”

3 Must-See TED Talks on Lucid Dreaming [Dream Studies Portal]

3 Ted Talks (37 minutes) – Ryan Hurd
“In these dreams, we are provided with this fully immersive, three-dimentional, multi-sensory hallucinatory experience. So it feels almost like being absorbed into your imagination…”

RELEVANT:

5 Herbs That Will Induce Lucid Dreaming [The Spirit Science]

Article (5 minutes) – LJ Vanier
“This special herb is known to give the dreamer the ability to fly in your dreams. Many Taoists use and recommend this herb for dream mobility, and reports have many users soaring through the skies and all across the universe and even into alternate realities and dimensions…”

Tibetan Dream Yoga [Integral Deep Listening]

Article (1 hour+) – Joseph Dillard
“The ultimate goal in Tibetan dream yoga is to attain conscious awareness while dreaming, called ‘apprehending the dream,’ and then dissolve the dream state. When deprived of physical stimulus (from the sleeping body) and conceptual stimulus (from the dreaming mind), one can observe the purest form of conscious awareness…”

Thanks for reading,
Joe Howard

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January 1, 2016 By Joe

An Introduction to Quantum Computation and Quantum Information

[pullquote align=”full”]“If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics”
– Richard Feynman[/pullquote]

Google and NASA’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab [Google]

Video (6 minutes)
“This is the inside of one of our refrigerators. All of this intrastructure is to basically operate the chip at a temperature that’s two orders of magnitude colder than interstellar space…”

Quantum Computers One Step Closer After Australian Breakthrough [IFLScience!]

Article (4 minutes) – Alfredo Carpineti
“The specific test conducted in Australia used entanglement to run the code. Entangled particles are created together in a specific way so that their properties, such as energy and momentum, are connected. If a property is changed on one particle, for example during a measurement, the others will be affected as well. The changes are instantaneous, even if the two particles are at opposite ends of the universe…”

Google’s Quantum Computer Is 100 Million Times Faster Than Your Laptop [Science Alert]

Article (7 minutes) – David Nield
“Trying to get an understanding of the new developments without a physics degree and a mastery of scientific jargon isn’t easy, but essentially, researchers ran simulated tests of standard computer chips and compared them against the capabilities of the D-Wave 2X when doing the same sums – that’s where the 100 million speed increase was noted….”

RELEVANT:

How Quantum Biology Might Explain Life’s Biggest Questions [TED]

Ted Talk (16 minutes) – Jim Al-Khalili
“Quantum biology asks a very simple question: Does quantum mechanics – that weird and wonderful and powerful theory of the subatomic world of atoms and molecules that underpins so much of modern physics and chemistry – also play a role inside the living cell?”

Your Brain Isn’t a Computer. It’s a Quantum Field. [Big Think]

Article (5 minutes) – Daphne Muller
“The quantum-cognition theory opens the fields of psychology and neuroscience to understanding the mind not as a linear computer, but rather an elegant universe. But the notion that human thought and existence is richly paradoxical has been around for centuries…”

RELEVANT:

The Revolutionary Quantum Computer That May Not Be Quantum At All [WIRED]

Article (21 minutes) – Clive Thompson
“What we’re trying to do is build the most kick-ass computers that have ever existed in the history of the world…”

Thanks for reading and Happy 2016!
Joe Howard

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