Lifeboat Foundation

A new AI coding tool enters the race: let’s take a closer look at Devin, a new AI coding assistant (currently in early access).

An initiative that sounds a lot like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth might mark the first time humans have tapped into magma, the molten rock liquid flowing beneath Earth’s crust. In 2026, Iceland’s Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project will drill into a volcano’s magma chamber, seeking to tap into its super-hot fumes to generate geothermal energy at a scale that has never been attempted before.

The endeavor promises to power homes across Iceland with a renewable, limitless energy source. And no, this won’t cause the currently active Krafla volcano to erupt, according to John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks interviewed by New Scientist.

Geothermal energy, a technology harnessed by Iceland for years, involves drilling into hot underground regions to produce steam from heated water. This steam drives turbines, generating electricity. Today, at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy and 70% of all energy used in the island nation comes from geothermal sources.

The Quantum Insider (TQI) is the leading online resource dedicated exclusively to Quantum Computing.

Motor neurons generate movement that depends on the initial head posture, moving the head towards a determined position.

What is dark matter? That question is prominent in discussions about the nature of the universe. There are many proposed explanations for dark matter, both within the Standard Model and outside of it.

Claudia de Rham thinks that gravitons, hypothetical particles thought to carry gravity, have mass. If she’s right, we can expect to see “rainbows” in ripples in space-time.

By Joshua Howgego

The psychedelic compound psilocybin has played a role in hominid lives and perceptions for millions of years.

A very relevant subject for research.

The world appears to contain diverse kinds of objects and systems—planets, tornadoes, trees, ant colonies, and human persons, to name but a few—characterized by distinctive features and behaviors. This casual impression is deepened by the success of the special sciences, with their distinctive taxonomies and laws characterizing astronomical, meteorological, chemical, botanical, biological, and psychological processes, among others. But there’s a twist, for part of the success of the special sciences reflects an effective consensus that the features of the composed entities they treat do not “float free” of features and configurations of their components, but are rather in some way(s) dependent on them.

Consider, for example, a tornado. At any moment, a tornado depends for its existence on dust and debris, and ultimately on whatever micro-entities compose it; and its properties and behaviors likewise depend, one way or another, on the properties and interacting behaviors of its fundamental components. Yet the tornado’s identity does not depend on any specific composing micro-entity or configuration, and its features and behaviors appear to differ in kind from those of its most basic constituents, as is reflected in the fact that one can have a rather good understanding of how tornadoes work while being entirely ignorant of particle physics.

Ever since sharing Ned Block’s talk on it, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind. This week, I decided I needed to go back to the main spokesperson for the issue of subjective experience, David Chalmers, and his seminal paper Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.

I have to admit I’ve skimmed this paper numerous times, but always struggled after the main thesis. This time I soldiered on in a more focused manner, and was surprised by how much I agreed with him on many points.

Chalmers starts off by acknowledging the scientifically approachable aspects of the problem.