The Quantum Feedback Loop

James Myers

What kind of future is taking shape with current developments in science and technology? The Quantum Record publisher and host of the Plato's Pod podcast, James Myers, speaks with scientists, technologists, philosophers, and others about the latest discoveries and thinking at the frontiers of knowledge. In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, The Quantum Feedback Loop podcast aims to open the wonders of the sciences and their first principles to the widest possible audience,

  1. 16시간 전

    How the Asteroid Institute Defends Earth from Asteroids

    In this episode of The Quantum Feedback Loop Podcast, we speak with Alec Koumjian and Joachim Moeyens, researchers from the B612 Foundation's Asteroid Institute, about the vital mission to protect Earth from potentially devastating asteroid strikes. Alec shares, among many topics, the Institute's achievements since speaking with us over two years ago. Since then, the team has continued to build a suite of software and engineering applications for asteroid discovery, including visualization tools and open-source resources freely available for citizen scientists to calculate impact probabilities for known and recently discovered objects. Asteroid discovery is especially important following the success of NASA's 2022 DART mission that tested asteroid-deflection technology. Joachim explains how the Institute is responsibly incorporating AI into their work, describing the innovative THOR algorithm and how new data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory - currently in its pre-survey phase and already producing impressive results - is contributing to their research, among many other topics. Watch the full episode to learn about the THOR algorithm, public-access ADAM Platform, their "secret sauce," and much more! Help us make thoughtful scientific conversations more visible. By liking, commenting, and sharing this episode, you help support independent science communication and enable future interviews with leading researchers and innovators. Subscribe for more conversations on science, technology, and the future we are building.

    How the Asteroid Institute Defends Earth from Asteroids
  2. 2025. 05. 14.

    Lindsay House: Leading 20,000 Citizen Scientists to Uncover Dark Energy’s Secrets

    Astronomer Lindsay House returned to the podcast to update us on her citizen science project called Dark Energy Explorers. Around the globe, 20,000 explorers are using data from the world’s third largest telescope to observe patterns in the movement of galaxies from between 9-11 billion years ago, to understand how the expansionary force of dark energy operates. As Lindsay explains, dark energy, which comprises 70% of the universe’s mass, is undetectable to our instruments but exerts an expansionary force by adding space between physical objects. Since 1998, we’ve known that the universe is expanding more rapidly over time, at rate that was thought to be a constant rate of acceleration. However, new evidence is pointing to an unexpected reduction in the speed of expansion. What function is dark energy exercising in time, if dark energy's force can both increase and decrease the rate of universal expansion? Would dark energy's variability lead to a revision of the “lambda-CDM” model of cosmology, which is based on a constant expansion rate? The observations of the Dark Energy Explorers community from 159 countries, sharing knowledge translated into 9 languages, are contributing to expanding understanding of the still-mysterious expansionary force of dark energy. The Dark Energy Explorers are, as Lindsay says, the humans “in the loop,” as the capabilities of AI and machine learning help to make vast numbers of groundbreaking connections with astronomical data. Hear Lindsay tell the story of Dark Energy Explorers, and how scientists are coming to understand more about dark energy, the fascinating and invisible force of expansion.

    Lindsay House: Leading 20,000 Citizen Scientists to Uncover Dark Energy’s Secrets

소개

What kind of future is taking shape with current developments in science and technology? The Quantum Record publisher and host of the Plato's Pod podcast, James Myers, speaks with scientists, technologists, philosophers, and others about the latest discoveries and thinking at the frontiers of knowledge. In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, The Quantum Feedback Loop podcast aims to open the wonders of the sciences and their first principles to the widest possible audience,