How life on Earth was boosted by an asteroid collision 446m years ago

Something mysterious happened nearly half a billion years ago that triggered one of the most important changes in the history of life on Earth. Suddenly, there was an explosion of species, with the biodiversity of invertebrate animals increasing from a very low level to something similar to what we see today. The most popular explanation for this “Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event” is that it was a result of an uncomfortably hot Earth cooling and eventually heading into an ice age. But what actually triggered the change in temperature? In our new paper, published in Science Advances, we show that its…

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TNW Podcast: Boris comes over to co-host; Slack’s Cal Henderson talks European tech

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast — the show where we discuss the latest developments in the European technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most interesting people in the industry. In today’s episode, Andrii is joined by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, co-founder, member of the board, and former CEO of TNW. The topics discussed include the jobs created by Dutch startups, giant state funding for energy projects, translations of the word ‘computer’, and a bunch of other things in between. In the interview section, we’re featuring a conversation with Cal Henderson, co-founder and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/jUgcNFD

Google’s ‘time crystals’ could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetimes

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: Time crystals are a… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3fdRQlg

Defining humanlike intelligence and entrusting it with our lives, explained by an AI researcher

TNW Answers is a live Q&A platform where we invite interesting people in tech who are much smarter than us to answer questions from TNW readers and editors for an hour. Yesterday, Melanie Mitchell, the author of ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans’ and the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, hosted a TNW Answers session where she spoke about how much we should really trust AI, her worries surrounding the technology, and defining humanlike intelligence in machines. [Read: Chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov predicts AI will disrupt 96% of all jobs] Most fears around AI usually… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2w7anvS

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