To the Stars with Data: August 22 2021
Visualizing Earth's biomass, "neurograins", solar power plants in space, and more
Hello Datanauts!
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the metaverse, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). If you know any good news sources, newsletters, or other fun resources on the topic, I’d appreciate if you share them!
This week’s issue is a bit shorter than normal as I prepare to move to my new home. Regular-sized issues will resume on September 5!
Let’s go to the stars with data!
Thought-Provoking Data Viz
Quick hits. Mark Belan visualized the data from a 2018 paper that measured the biomass of living things on Earth. In the visualization, biomass refers to the amount of carbon organisms contain. Animals make up only 0.47% of all biomass while plants and bacteria make up a vast majority, with 82.4% and 12.8% respectively. Humans comprise only 0.01% of Earthly biomass.
Digging deeper. This measure of biomass only includes life as we know it. We expect there to be an abundance of species we have not yet cataloged (i.e. the author of the article notes that we think we only know of ~0.001% of microbes). There may even be other forms of life on Earth we have not yet discovered or recognize! If you’re interested in learning more, see the shadow biosphere hypothesis, but keep in mind that studies thus far have been inconclusive.
Earth News
🧠 Researchers successfully test array of small devices, “neurograins”, in mouse brain
Quick hits. In an attempt to gather data from a wider section of the brain than other brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), researchers successfully developed and tested "neurograins"; the neurograin is a salt grain-sized neural implant that reads and stimulates brain activity. A patch sitting outside the skull wirelessly powers the neurograins and receives their transmissions. The researchers tested an array of 48 neurograins in mice but think the technology could support an array of up to 770.
Digging deeper. This is exciting for a number of reasons. Chief among them is invasiveness: many of the current powerful brain-computer interface technologies require invasive surgery. If we can make BCIs small enough, we may be able to implant them with little to no invasiveness (i.e. I discussed a BCI stent a few weeks ago). An array of smaller BCIs also allows for the reading of greater diversity in neural activity while also requiring less power. If you’re interested in learning more about BCIs, I recommend Wikipedia!
🤖 Bonus. Watch Atlas, a Boston Dynamics robot, parkour
Space News
☀ China plans to construct a solar power station in space
Quick hits. China plans to construct a solar power station in space that beams energy back to Earth by 2030. Though they’ve encountered delays, they are completing construction on a testing facility soon. They plan for the array to produce 1 gigawatt in 2049 (1 gigawatt is an equivalent output of the current largest nuclear power reactor). This endeavor is partially motivated by China’s goal to become carbon neutral by 2060.
Digging deeper. Humans have known about high-power microwave transmission for decades (i.e. NASA published a paper on it in 1975), but the tech has been difficult to implement. The UK has been testing the feasibility of this tech and the US military plans to test this technology within the next few years, launching a satellite in 2024 after a number of experiments.
Something that makes you think
🌏 Decouple vs. degrow instead of progressive vs. conservative
Quick hits. In New World Same Humans, a futuristic-thinking newsletter, David Mattin argues that we should transition from progressive vs. conservative to decouple vs. degrow when it comes to discussing climate change. “Decoupling" means that we transition our economies from depending on carbon while "degrowers" argue that we should accept limits to our economies and learn to adapt in a changing world.
Digging deeper. In the US, the current positions of the two major parties are “climate change is bad and we need to do something about it” and “climate change isn’t real [and thus we don’t need to address it]”. I posit that two options that at least acknowledge climate change—both decoupling and degrowing—is better than one option denying climate change exists.
Future-Thinking Companies
🍄 Fable Foods. They make alternative meat out of shiitake mushrooms! They recently raised $6.5m AUD.
🌱 v2Foods. A popular plant-based meat alternative in Australia. Their meat can be produced in "any standard meat production facility". They raised €45m in August 2021.