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Writer Fuel: 2600-Year-Old Asyrian Tablet Tells Tale of Flood Similar to Noah’s Ark

Noah's Ark - deposit photos

What it is: Also known as the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, this fragment of a baked clay tablet contains cuneiform inscriptions describing an epic flood that swept through Babylon. It is considered one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world. Where it was found: Nineveh (also known as Kouyunjik), an … Read more

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Writer Fuel: GPT-4 Passes the Turing Test

turing test - Deposit Photos

We are interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) online not only more than ever — but more than we realize — so researchers asked people to converse with four agents, including one human and three different kinds of AI models, to see whether they could tell the difference. The “Turing test,” first proposed as “the imitation … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Could a Cosmic Dust Storm Have Triggered an Ice Age on Earth?

Earth Ice Age - Deposit Photos

Scientists believe Earth may have briefly lost protection from the sun around two million years ago, left to endure the extreme environment of interstellar space as the solar system passed through a dense cloud of gas and dust between stars. At that time, early human ancestors shared our planet with prehistoric animals like mastodons and … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Zombie Fires Add Another Climate Change Threat

zombie fire - deposit photos

So-called “zombie fires” in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smoulder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in early May, way ahead of the usual fire season in the far north, and can reignite for … Read more

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Writer Fuel: What Is the “Eye of the Sahara”?

Eye of the Sahara - Deposit Photos

The “Eye of the Sahara” — also known as the “Eye of Africa” or the Richat structure — is a giant rock dome, carved with concentric rings, that looks like a giant bullseye when seen from above. The eye is visible from space and has been known to astronauts and scientists since the earliest crewed … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Sorry Guys – Planet Vulcan Was Just a Mirage

Vulcan

A planet beyond the solar system that has been compared to Spock’s homeworld Vulcan in the Star Trek franchise may have been nothing more than an illusion caused by a jittery star. The extrasolar planet or “exoplanet” (a term for a planet outside of our solar system) was proposed to orbit a star called 40 … Read more

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Writer Fuel: MIT Gives AI the Power to Reason. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

AI / Artificial Intelligence - deposit photos

MIT researchers have developed a new method to help artificial intelligence (AI) systems conduct complex reasoning tasks in three areas including coding, strategic planning and robotics. Large language models (LLMs), which include ChatGPT and Claude 3 Opus, process and generate text based on human input, known as “prompts.” These technologies have improved greatly in the … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Scientists Map Lost “Atlantis” Continent Off of Australia

Atlantis - Deposit Photos

One of the most extraordinary stories of human migration unfolded around 70,000 years ago, as humans crossed from Southeast Asia into modern-day Australia, traversing a now-submerged, Atlantis-like landscape, and becoming the first people to call that land home. A rich archaeological record provides ample evidence that this happened. But researchers have long been stumped by … Read more

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Writer Fuel: Scientists Testing a New Vaccine for Brain Cancer

vaccine - deposit photos

For the first time, scientists have tested a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine in a patient with a deadly form of brain cancer — and it triggered a strong immune response. The vaccine, which was described in a study published on May 1 in the journal Cell, was created by extracting genetic material called RNA from … Read more

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Writer Fuel: How Venus Lost Its Groove

Venus - Pixabay

Scientists have identified a water-loss mechanism on Venus that could explain how the once water-rich world became completely parched. In the newly identified process, linked to a previously overlooked molecule high in Venus’ atmosphere, water escaped Venus at double the rate previously estimated. As faster water loss means less time is needed to boil away … Read more