Inside the Nuclear Fusion Facility That Changed the World - TIME (Full Access)   

Shortly after 1 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 5, 2022, Dave Schlossberg, an experimental physicist at National Ignition Facility (NIF), was woken by a phone call. A fusion experiment using NIF’s massive lasers was scheduled to go off that night. Going to bed a few hours earlier, he had told Alex Zylstra, one of the physicists on his team, to call him “if anything interesting happens.” Now Zylstra was seeing data unlike anything the facility had registered before. They seemed to show that the scientists had achieved a monumental step in a decades-long quest to replicate the energy source that powers the sun. Schlossberg picked up. “I think something interesting happened,” Zylstra said.

Researchers at this Livermore, Calif., facility had spent more than 13 years trying and failing to attain fusion ignition, meaning that the reaction outputs more energy than scientists put into it. Some expert observers thought it would never work. Yet, there, in the facility’s experimental database was the evidence. At 1:03:50 a.m., NIF’s 192 powerful laser beams had plowed 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy onto a small gold cylinder, which converted that ultraviolet radiation into powerful X-rays that enveloped a peppercorn-sized diamond capsule containing two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium. For the briefest of instants, the interior of that capsule collapsed to 100 times the density of lead, forcing the hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium and converting a tiny amount of mass into enormous amounts of energy. About 70 trillionths of a second later, the capsule exploded, releasing 3.15 MJ of energy, equivalent to about three sticks of dynamite.

The result was a scientific wonder, a feat that researchers had hoped to create in a laboratory since scientists first started bandying about the idea of using controlled nuclear fusion to produce electricity in the 1950s. That idea—to replicate the reaction that fuels the stars by smashing hydrogen atoms together to form helium—could theoretically provide almost unlimited, emissions-free electricity with none of the safety risks or waste disposal problems of nuclear fission reactors. In practice, though, proving out such a process in the laboratory has eluded scientists and engineers for decades.

Continued here

The Pervasive Loneliness of Autism - TIME (Full Access)   

Loneliness has long been a pervasive issue within the disability community, growing even more pronounced as individuals age. Research indicates that, in particular, autistic adults grapple with markedly higher levels of loneliness compared to their non-autistic counterparts. Ironically, relentlessly pursuing a disabled person’s greatest sign of “success”—independence—might be the very thing that’s setting many autistics on a path towards profound loneliness and fragmented relationships.

The pursuit of self-sufficiency and the coveted ideal of “independence” are deeply American. But, even if inadvertently, it’s fueling disabled individuals’ loneliness. In her book, "The Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation," disability studies scholar Sunaura Taylor highlights the societal fallouts faced by disabled individuals who do not achieve this ideal of independence. Such societal consequences include economic disenfranchisement and social marginalization. But what is not being talked about is that those people who do achieve that type of independence face real costs, too.

Being the optimal version of an “an adult in America” is to move out, live on your own, and build your own family. Within the diverse and vast spectrum of autism, there are undoubtedly autistics who go on to experience fulfilling relationships and establish families of their own in adulthood. That said, for a good number of other autistics, especially those significantly impacted by social interaction skills, as well as sensory and behavioral challenges, their biological families are likely the only real family they will ever have. But there is a sense of societal disapproval attached to living with your biological family in the U.S. in older age, even if this is a common practice in other cultures. In turn, the societal ideal of “independent living” for people with autism translates to living apart from their family and being surrounded instead by a series of paid support staff, who will go home to their own respective families at the end of each work shift.

Continued here

Jane Fonda: The Climate Crisis is Causing a Cancer Crisis - TIME (Full Access)   

About a year ago, I was declared cancer-free after four months of chemotherapy at Providence St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. I had been diagnosed with low-grade B cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. This was not my first encounter with cancer. I’d had breast cancer a number of years prior, which was treated with radiation and then a full mastectomy. I realize I’m lucky. I had caring, attentive doctors and nurses who saved my life. I also realize how much progress has been made in cancer research and I am deeply grateful.

Yet despite that, cancer has become epidemic. Approximately 40% of people in the U.S. will develop cancer and over 1.96 million new cases were expected to be diagnosed in 2023, according to the National Cancer Institute.

I’m a cancer survivor but also a climate activist and I’m very aware of the connection between the environment and health—especially cancer. The same fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis are driving this health crisis. The Environmental Protection Agency keeps finding cancer-causing chemicals derived from fossil fuels—such as dioxins, benzene, and naphthalene—in the air, in our water, our food, our furniture, our clothing, the utensils we cook with…. They are also in our bodies. These poisons are even found in the umbilical cords of newborn children.

Continued here

What Generative AI Reveals About the Human Mind - TIME (Full Access)   

Generative AI—think Dall.E, ChatGPT-4, and many more—is all the rage. It’s remarkable successes, and occasional catastrophic failures, have kick-started important debates about both the scope and dangers of advanced forms of artificial intelligence. But what, if anything, does this work reveal about natural intelligences such as our own?

I’m a philosopher and cognitive scientist who has spent their entire career trying to understand how the human mind works. Drawing on research spanning psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, my search has drawn me towards a picture of how natural minds work that is both interestingly similar to, yet also deeply different from, the core operating principles of the generative AIs. Examining this contrast may help us better understand them both.

The AIs learn a generative model (hence their name) that enables them to predict patterns in various kinds of data or signal. What generative there means is that they learn enough about the deep regularities in some data-set to enable them to create plausible new versions of that kind of data for themselves. In the case of ChatGPT the data is text. Knowing about all the many faint and strong patterns in a huge library of texts allows ChatGPT, when prompted, to produce plausible versions of that kind of data in interesting ways, when sculpted by user prompts—for example, a user might request a story about a black cat written in the style of Ernest Hemingway. But there are also AIs specializing in other kinds of data, such as images, enabling them to create new paintings in the style of, say, Picasso.

Continued here