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2026-03-28 22:00:00

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 28) appeared first on SingularityHub.

2026-03-28 06:27:50

The prospect of a sustained human presence beyond Earth orbit is rapidly shifting from science fiction to a near-term reality. NASA has announced an ambitious plan to build a permanent lunar base while also preparing to launch a Mars mission featuring the first interplanetary spacecraft to use nuclear propulsion.

Ever since his first term, returning humans to the moon has been a priority of President Donald Trump. And with NASA’s Artemis 2 mission—the first manned lunar mission in over 50 years—edging closer to the launchpad, that goal is looking more realistic.

This week, at a high-profile event called Ignition, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman unveiled an ambitious new program whose centerpiece is a $20 billion lunar base to be constructed over the next seven years. He also announced plans to launch the first spacecraft to use nuclear propulsion since the 1960s to deliver a fleet of robotic helicopters to the surface of Mars.

“NASA is committed to achieving the near-impossible once again, to return to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term, build a moon base, establish an enduring presence, and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space,” Isaacman said in a press release.

The newly appointed head of the agency framed the plan as America’s response to a new era of great-power competition in space—a thinly veiled reference to China’s plans to land humans on the moon by 2030 and build its own lunar base.

The new moon base will be built in three phases, according to NASA, with the first involving a shift from infrequent, bespoke missions to regular and repeatable ones to test out the mobility, power generation, communications, and navigation technologies required to support a longer-term presence.

To achieve this, the agency plans to dramatically ramp up its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program—which enlists American private space companies to provide frequent, cost-effective cargo missions to the lunar surface—targeting up to 30 robotic landings starting in 2027. It also plans to use MoonFall hoppers, small robotic landers that use short, rocket-powered jumps to travel tens of kilometers, to hunt for useful resources, like ice, in hard-to-reach areas.

“We’re going to send them to do the prospecting, and potentially they could host a variety of payloads,” Carlos Garcia-Galan, program executive for the moon base at NASA, told Science.

In the second phase of the lunar base build-out, the agency will construct “semi‑habitable infrastructure” that can support regular astronaut operations on the moon’s surface, as well as the delivery of a pressurized rover from Japan’s space agency. The final stage will involve the delivery of heavier infrastructure needed for continuous human habitation, including multipurpose habitats being developed by Italy’s space agency and a lunar utility vehicle from Canada.

NASA also announced plans to pause work on its Gateway lunar orbital station, a key component of the original Artemis program that was designed as a staging post for manned missions to the lunar surface and later to Mars. The agency said it will attempt to repurpose some of the equipment developed for the facility to support other missions.

One of these could be another notable project announced at the Ignition event—the launch of a nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft called Space Reactor-1 Freedom to Mars by the end of 2028. The vehicle will rely on a device developed for the lunar space station that can convert heat from a roughly 20-kilowatt nuclear fission reactor into electric power for propulsion.

Once it reaches Mars, the spacecraft will deploy three robotic drones with designs based on the Ingenuity helicopter. Ingenuity completed 72 flights on Mars after arriving with the Perseverance rover in 2021. The drones will use cameras and subsurface radar to scour the planet for water ice and promising locations for future human landing sites.

Given recent turmoil at the agency and massive funding cuts originally proposed by the Trump administration, it remains to be seen whether NASA can pull off such an ambitious vision for the near future of space exploration. But the prospect of mankind having a permanent presence beyond Earth orbit looks closer than ever.

The post NASA Unveils Its $20 Billion Moon Base Plan—and a Nuclear Spacecraft for Mars appeared first on SingularityHub.

2026-03-26 22:00:00

What can you see right now? This might seem like a silly question, but what enters your consciousness is not the whole story when it comes to vision. A great deal of visual processing in the brain goes on well below our conscious awareness.

Some studies have probed the unconscious depths of vision. One source of evidence comes from the neurological condition known as blindsight, which is caused by damage to areas of the brain involved in processing visual information. People with blindsight report that they are unable to see, either entirely or in a portion of their visual field. However, when asked to guess what is there, they can often do so with remarkable accuracy.

For example, in an experiment published in 2004 on someone with blindsight, a black bar was displayed in the portion of the visual field to which the person was blind. The person was asked to “guess” whether the bar was vertical or horizontal.

Despite denying any conscious awareness of the bar, the participant could answer correctly at a level well above chance. The participant even showed evidence of being able to pay attention to the bar—they were faster to respond when an arrow (placed in a healthy area of their visual field) correctly indicated the location of the bar.

The most popular interpretation (though not the only one) is that people with blindsight can see these objects, but not see them consciously. They see what is there, but it all goes on unconsciously, below their awareness.

The phenomenon of inattentional blindness seems to show you can see without the information crossing into your consciousness. Anyone can experience inattentional blindness. The phenomenon has been known about for a long time, but we can most easily get a handle on it by looking at a well-known experiment reported in 1999.

In this experiment, participants are shown a video of people playing basketball and told to count the number of passes between the players wearing a white shirt. If you’ve never done this before, I urge to you stop reading now and watch the video.

In many cases, people are so busy counting the passes that they completely miss a large gorilla walking across the middle of the scene and beating its chest, then walking off. The gorilla’s right there, in the centre of your visual field. Light from the gorilla enters your eyes, and is processed in the visual system, but somehow you missed it, because you weren’t paying attention to it.

The gorilla has more to teach us. In another experiment reported in 2013, radiologists were given a series of lung scans. They were told to look for nodules (which show up as small light colored circles) on each scan. In one of the scans, a large picture of a dancing gorilla was superimposed on top of the lung scan. In this study, 83 percent of the radiologists failed to spot it, even though it was 48 times bigger than the average nodule they were looking for. Some of them even looked directly at the gorilla and still didn’t notice it!

The interpretation of these experiments is controversial. Some scientists suggest that in these kinds of cases, you consciously see the gorilla, but immediately forget it (although a dancing gorilla in someone’s lung doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d forget). Others argue that you see the gorilla, but the information never made its way into consciousness. You saw the gorilla, but unconsciously.

Let’s assume that in the case of blindsight, and inattentional blindness, the information is seen but didn’t make it all the way to consciousness. Then, the question is: What makes some information conscious, rather than the information that stays unconscious? This is one of the central questions for consciousness studies in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

The Brain’s Loudspeaker

There’s no agreement on which is the best theory of consciousness, but in my opinion, the strongest contender is the global neuronal workspace theory.

According to this theory, consciousness is all to do with a particular area of the brain which is the seat of the “workspace.” The workspace is a system with a small capacity, so it can’t hold a lot of information at any one time. The job of the workspace is to take unconscious information and broadcast it to lots of different networks all across the brain. Global neuronal workspace theorists say that broadcasting the information in this way is what makes it conscious.

The job of the workspace is to act like the brain’s loudspeaker, and consciousness is the information that gets broadcast. The workspace takes unconscious information and boosts it so that many of the different systems in the brain hear about it and can use that information in their own processes. The late philosopher Daniel Dennett used to call consciousness “fame in the brain.” The workspace idea is similar.

One of the most striking implications of the global neuronal workspace theory is how little information makes it to consciousness. Since the workspace has quite a small capacity, it follows that we can only ever be conscious of a little at a time. We might think there’s a rich visual world in front of us, full of details, all of which we’re conscious of, but really—according to the theory—we’re only ever conscious of a small portion of that.

Some philosophers and scientists have objected to the theory on these grounds. They suggest that consciousness “overflows” the workspace: We are conscious of more information than can “fit” into the workspace at any one time. Even with these debates still ongoing, I think the global neuronal workspace theory gives us a reasonably clear answer to the question of what consciousness is for and how it interacts with other systems in the brain.

In our brains, consciousness is only the tip of a very large iceberg. But the global neuronal workspace theory might give us insight into what makes that tip so special.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post What We Actually See—and Don’t See—Shows Consciousness Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg appeared first on SingularityHub.

2026-03-25 03:38:32

Try balancing a ruler vertically on the palm of your hand while walking. It’s not easy. Your eyes constantly track its movement. Your arm and hand make tiny adjustments to prevent tilting. All the while, your brain sparks with activity with one clear goal: Keep the ruler upright.

Scientists have now trained mini brains, or brain organoids, to master the same problem, simulated in the digital realm, with electrical zaps alone.

Mini brains have grown popular with researchers since their invention over a decade ago. Commonly made from stem cells, organoids are jam-packed with neurons that form densely connected networks. Earlier versions loosely resembled the developing brains of preterm babies; now they can mimic the neural wiring of a kindergartener. As the blobs become more sophisticated, scientists are asking: Can they learn?

In the new study, researchers challenged the mini brains with a classic engineering task similar to balancing a ruler on your hand. Mastering the task takes practice, but our brains are wired to receive feedback, often in the form of a small jolt of electrical activity. Called reinforcement learning, the technique has already been adapted to train AI—and now, mini brains too.

The goal isn’t to replace silicon-based controllers with living tissue. It’s to test the organoids’ ability to listen and learn and reveal how they break down.

“We’re trying to understand the fundamentals of how neurons can be adaptively tuned to solve problems,” study author Ash Robbins at the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a press release. “If we can figure out what drives that in a dish, it gives us new ways to study how neurological disease can affect the brain’s ability to learn.”

The Mini Revolution

Attaching living brain tissue to computers sounds like science fiction. But brain organoids have already made it reality.

These blobs of brain cells often start life as skin cells that have been turned back into stem cells. After bathing in a special cocktail of nutrients, they develop into various types of brain cells that self-organize into intricate three-dimensional structures similar to parts of the brain. Neurons form networks, ripple with electrical waves, and when connected to other tissues—such as an artificial spinal cord and lab-grown muscles—can control them.

Bioengineers have taken notice, envisioning organoids as potential living processors. Our brains use far less power and are more adaptable than the most advanced neuromorphic chips and brain-inspired AI. Brain organoids linked together into computers could theoretically enable computation in a dish at a fraction of the energy cost.

There are hints this blue-sky idea could work. Scientists have taught hundreds of thousands of isolated neurons to play the video games Pong and, more recently, Doom. Separately, researchers used cultured neurons to control the simple movements of a vehicle.

But mini brains are different. Unlike isolated neurons, organoids’ 3D structures and connections are harder to decipher. Yet predictable learning is essential to realizing “organoid intelligence.” Their electrical activity needs to rapidly adapt to inputs, strengthening or weakening circuits.

Reinforcement learning from trial and error is a perfect test. When we succeed at a new task, neurons in the brain’s reward center blast dopamine and rewire their connections. Failures don’t bring about similar activity. Over time, we learn not to touch a hot pan, take care when hammering a nail, and other life lessons.

But cortical organoids, which resemble the outermost part of the brain, lack neurons that communicate using dopamine. Can they still learn through experience?

Zapping Away

The new study tackled the question with a hybrid organoid-computer system. The team grew cortical organoids from mouse stem cells. These then self-organized into neural networks and developed a layered structure within a month.

The researchers chose this type of brain organoid “due to the cortex’s well-established role in adaptive information processing and its ability to encode, decode, and modify responses to novel inputs,” they wrote.

The team embedded the brain blobs on a chip that captures their electrical pulses and interacts with a computer to “teach” the mini brains and process data. (The chip’s sensors don’t cover the entire organoid as more recent devices do.)

After recording spontaneous activity, the team figured out how best to stimulate the organoids and built a programmable system with a simple interface.

“From an engineering perspective, what makes this powerful is that we can record, stimulate, and adapt in the same system,” said study author Mircea Teodorescu.

Next, the team challenged the organoids with the cartpole problem, a classic engineering task that asks the player to balance an upright pole on a moving cart. If the pole tips over a certain angle, it’s a fail. The player has to constantly adjust the cart as its cargo wobbles.

To train the organoids, the scientists delivered electrical zaps after the pole tipped too far to either side and tracked the responses. In essence, the mini brains played a video game, with human coaches nudging them toward success. The team grouped performance—how long the system balanced the pole—into sets of five trials, each ending when the pole fell. If the most recent performance improved over the previous 20 trials, they considered it a success and delivered no zaps. If performance didn’t improve, the team gave the organoids a zap.

“You could think of it like an artificial coach that says, ‘you’re doing it wrong, tweak it a little bit in this way,’” said Robbins.

Compared to random or no zaps, the rewarding zaps boosted the success rate from 4.5 to 46.5 percent in continuous trials, suggesting the organoids learned from electrical cues alone—without dopamine. A closer look showed the cells released another chemical that strengthens neural connections, and blocking the process prevented them from learning.

“This demonstrates that biological neural networks can be systematically modified through precise electronic control,” wrote the team.

However, the learning didn’t last. After roughly 45 minutes without stimulation, the organoids’ performance reset to baseline. Their fleeting memory may reflect the lack of neural highways required for long-term memory. The team is now culturing multiple types of brain organoids together—each mimicking a different region—to potentially preserve learning and memory.

“These are incredibly minimal neural circuits. There’s no dopamine, no sensory experience, no body to sustain, no goals to pursue,” said Keith Hengen at Washington University in St. Louis, who did not participate in the study. But they could still be nudged toward solving a real control problem. “That tells us something important: The capacity for adaptive computation is intrinsic to cortical tissue itself, separate from all the scaffolding we usually assume is necessary.”

The post These Mini Brains Just Learned to Solve a Classic Engineering Problem appeared first on SingularityHub.

2026-03-24 05:15:01

Floating in a warm, nutritious bath, the slices of mouse brain buzzed with electrical activity. Researchers gave them a few zaps, and parts of the hippocampus strengthened their wiring.

This type of experiment is an extremely common way to decipher how the brain works. The slices, not so much. Preserved in a deep freeze for roughly a week, they restarted some basic processes after being thawed. Neurons lit up, boosted their metabolism, and adjusted connections in the same way our brains do when forming new memories and recalling old ones.

“While the brain is considered exceptionally sensitive, we show that the hippocampus can resume electrophysiological activity after being rendered completely immobile in a cryogenic glass,” wrote University of Erlangen‐Nuremberg scientists in a paper describing the work.

In traditional freezing techniques, ice crystals shred delicate neurons and the connections between them. There would be no chance of recovering memories stored within. The new study used a method called vitrification, which rapidly cools tissue before crystals can form. An improved thawing process protected cells from toxic chemicals in their cryogenic bath.

Both pre-sliced and whole mouse brains recovered after warming, although some neural activity was slightly off-kilter. To be clear, brains can’t be completely revived like in the movies. But the approach pushes the known frontier of what brain tissue can tolerate, wrote the team.

Ice, Ice Baby

Suspended animation is one of science fiction’s oldest tropes. Whether characters are traveling between the stars or awaiting future cures for untreatable diseases, cryogenics is the ultimate pause button they can use to speedrun decades, if not centuries and beyond.

The idea was popularized in the 1960s, when Robert Ettinger “the father of cryonics” argued that people could be frozen and revived in the future, with their memories, cognition, and physical capabilities intact. He took the fringe idea and turned it into a mainstream dream.

But cryosleep has earlier roots. In the late 1800s, scientists realized that certain cells and simple living creatures could survive freezing, suggesting it’s possible to temporarily suspend life.

Liquid nitrogen and other chemical preservatives are now used daily in labs to freeze individual cells—including brain cells—at extremely low temperatures. Many don’t survive, but those that do regain normal function upon thawing. Scientists use the technology to preserve different types of neurons to test theories and share with other labs.

Cryopreserving brain slices or whole brains is far more difficult. These contain the delicate neural branches brain cells use to communicate, which are easily destroyed during the freeze-thaw cycle. Ice is the main culprit. Even with protective chemicals, liquids in cells rapidly solidify into sharp crystals that jab cells inside and out like a thousand knives.

Still, scientists have kept frozen human fetal tissue intact, and cryopreserved rat cells have developed functional networks once thawed. Another effort kept a rodent’s heart structurally intact with a magnetic method that gradually brings the organ back to biological temperature. Techniques to preserve livers and kidneys can keep them in stasis for up to 100 days, and the organs are still healthy enough for transplantation after warming up.

“Progress in cryopreservation of rodent organs has moved the theme of suspending technologies closer to plausibility,” wrote the team.

Structure determines function for each organ. But the brain presents unique challenges. Hundreds of molecules zoom around neurons to build up or whittle down synapses. Others that dot the surfaces of these cells tweak electrical charges to strengthen or weaken activity. Even without tearing up the cell itself, damage to these processes renders neurons incapable of forming or retrieving memories.

Ice is only part of the revival equation. As liquids freeze, they change the pressure of the surrounding environment, causing cells to lose water and shrink. This can collapse internal structures and wreck synaptic connections. Cryoprotectants, such as a sugary liquid called glycerol, limit the damage but are toxic at high doses.

Looking Glass

The authors of the new study turned to vitrification. Here, rapid cooling with cryoprotectants limits damage by freezing cells in a disorganized, glass-like state without forming ice crystals.

They first tested cryoprotectant recipes on brain slices that included the hippocampus, a brain region associated with the formation of memories. After soaking the slices in the chemical cocktails, the team bathed them in liquid nitrogen at a bone-chilling -196 degrees Celsius (−320.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which instantly froze the tissues. They then moved the slices to a −150 degrees Celsius (−238 degrees Fahrenheit) freezer and kept them there for up to a week.

The team could visually see whether each cocktail worked, they wrote. Vitrified slices had a glossy, transparent look; those that failed were dull and opaque.

After slow thawing, the slices sprang back to life.

The cells’ mitochondria ramped up energy production. Neuron membranes and synapses remained intact. And though there were some differences compared to fresh brain slices, the reawakened hippocampal cells mostly retained their usual patterns. Given a few electrical zaps, they strengthened their connections, a mechanism underlying learning and memory.

The team also tried the method on whole mouse brains. They had to repeatedly tweak the recipe to minimize toxicity from the cryoprotectants and ward off severe brain dehydration. But once thawed, slices from the whole preserved brains had intact neural wiring, including complex circuits in the hippocampus. Some brain cells languished and were harder to activate, whereas others perked right up.

It seems some types of neurons are more tolerant to vitrification than others, wrote the team.

Because they recorded activity in brain slices, it’s impossible to say whether the process would restore memory and learning. And the slices naturally deteriorated after 10 to 15 hours, making it hard to say much about longer timescales. To get around this, they could test the method on mini brains, or brain organoids, which better mimic whole brains and can be kept alive for years in culture.

The team is now expanding their work to include human brain slices and preservation of other organs, such as the heart. It’ll take plenty of trial and error. Human organs are far larger and could easily crack from mechanical stress during the cryopreservation process.

But the study shows “the brain is remarkably robust…to near-complete shutdown” into a glass-like state. “This reinforces the tenet of brain function being an emergent property of brain structure, and hints at the potential of life-suspending technologies,” wrote the team.

The post Reviving Brain Activity After ‘Cryosleep’ Inches Closer in Pioneering Study appeared first on SingularityHub.

2026-03-21 22:00:00

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 21) appeared first on SingularityHub.