​Asteroid belt, new target of United Arab Emirates ● ChatGPT scored higher in tests than doctors ● Oldest traces of Homo sapiens discovered in South Africa

Asteroid belt, the new goal of the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates has announced plans to launch a space shuttle to explore the asteroid belt, even sending a rover to the surface of a red asteroid called 269 Justitia in search of life. This is not a very distant plan, but one that should become a reality in 12 years at the most.

The Arab project comes only three years after the success of the space module “Hope”, which successfully entered the lower layers of the atmosphere of Mars, where it studies weather phenomena and Martian seasonal cycles. For those who don’t know, the UAE became the first Arab country to reach Mars and the second country to successfully enter the Red Planet’s atmosphere on its first attempt (the first being India with the Mars Orbiter mission).

According to representatives of the UAE space agency, the space shuttle, aimed at the asteroid belt, will be launched in 2028, and seven years later, in 2034, it will reach its final destination, the red asteroid 269 Justicia. two red asteroids discovered in our solar system.

The shuttle, named MBR explorer after its ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, will be launched to Venus, where its gravity will be used to create a slingshot effect that will send the shuttle into the asteroid belt. The speed will be 33 thousand kilometers per hour, and the journey will last, as I mentioned, seven years.

One of the goals of the MBR will be to search for the elements necessary for life (water and organic compounds) that are thought to have arrived on Earth via asteroids. Another goal is to explore the possibility of using the mineral resources of asteroids to support long-duration space missions.

In fact, the UAE has big plans. Perhaps the biggest of these is the construction of a permanent Martian base, a project scheduled for completion in 2117. We don’t know why at the time, but it’s certain that they made their plans better.

ChatGPT scored higher on tests than doctors

A new study by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that artificial intelligence has surpassed humans in an area that few expected.

In particular, the authors of the study created a set of 195 questions that ChatGPT, together with several doctors, had to answer. The questions were selected from specialist forums where doctors answer patients’ questions.

For example, about how dangerous it is to swallow a toothpick or what consequences a bruise can have from hitting the head with a metal object. The answers were then analyzed by a team of specialists, not knowing which answers were given by humans and which by AI.

The final result showed that 78.6% of the answers considered to be the best came from AI. Motivation? The answers provided much more information. In total, the texts written by ChatGPT were about four times longer than those written by humans. Then, and here comes a very interesting aspect, they showed much more compassion for patients.

The problem with these responses is that while they are polite, responsive, etc., they can contain errors. Some that patients take for granted can lead to unwanted consequences. After all, everything is based on some algorithms, some of which can also give errors, for example, invented answers or incorrect solutions.

In such situations, according to American researchers, the outcome will be intermediate. That is, artificial intelligence can take over some tasks of doctors, such as answering patients, but the answers must always be checked and changed, where appropriate, by a real person.

The oldest traces of Homo sapiens were discovered in South Africa

Such archaeological evidence of the presence of our species in one or another geographical area is extremely rare. Then, at least as far as the African continent is concerned, those over 50,000 years old could have been counted on the fingers of one hand, let alone two with condescension, a decade or so ago.

The situation tends to change. Today, the number of such traces has reached 14 in Africa alone. In the last five years, seven of them have been discovered in South Africa alone. And if the most recent ones were dated at 71,000 years, then the oldest ones are approaching a respectable age of 153,000 years.

The 153,000-year-old traces were discovered in the Garden Route National Park in the south of the country, and they significantly exceed the old records (the Nahun site – 124,000 years and Langeban – 117,000 years).

This information is even more important because official archaeological reports have shown that the presence of Homo sapiens in southern Africa dates back to 100,000-110,000 years ago. Obviously, this does not mean that South Africa is suddenly becoming the cradle of humanity. On the contrary, it shows that the human species occupied a much larger area than previously thought.

As for his origin, we still have to wait until everything becomes clear. To date, the oldest human (definitely human) fossils have been found in East Africa, Israel, and China, ranging in age from 200,000 to 130,000 years old.

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