All posts tagged: Dark

The Dark Side of Mindfulness

The Dark Side of Mindfulness

Published by Daniella Wilson

In 2004, Willoughby Britton, then a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona, began recruiting participants for a study that, she felt sure, would show meditation improves sleep. Britton, a meditation teacher, was so devoted to the practice that she saw herself as a “double agent,” someone who uses science to promote meditation. Although she had grown up in a nonpracticing Episcopalian home, she’d become deeply invested in Buddhist teachings. She read meditation books in her spare time and at one point considered becoming a Buddhist nun. She was confident that meditation improved most things, including sleep; it had already improved much about her own life. For her study, Britton split 26 participants into two groups: one that would go through an eight-week-long meditation class, and one that would serve as a control group. She brought them all into a lab to sleep overnight while sensors measured their brain waves, muscle activity, and eye movements. But when she reviewed the results, she was dismayed to find they were the opposite of what …

FBI Investigating Report Of Millions Of Driver’s Licenses Sold On Dark Web

FBI Investigating Report Of Millions Of Driver’s Licenses Sold On Dark Web

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times, The FBI said Wednesday it is investigating a site on the dark web after reports it was selling more than 150 million U.S. and Canadian driver’s licenses. Among them was the license information of the assistant director of the FBI. Driving licenses from different USA states. Shutterstock “The FBI can confirm that it is looking into the incident,” a spokesperson for the FBI told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, we decline to comment further.” There is no stated timeline for the investigation, the agency said. Independent journalist Brian Krebs was the first to detect the criminal site, which was advertised on a Russian cybercrime forum with his own Virginia driver’s license appearing as a free sample on the site. That detail caught his attention and led him to examine the rest of the site. He published a report on Sept. 1 detailing that the site was offering digital scans of millions of the licenses. He said that …

Iran warns US ‘dark days ahead’ in threat to cripple oil supplies | World | News

Iran warns US ‘dark days ahead’ in threat to cripple oil supplies | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

Iran has issued a huge warning to the US with a chilling threat to cripple oil supplies to the country. Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref warned Americans they “should start thinking about stockpiling gasoline and fuel”, as tensions between Tehran and Washington continue to escalate. He said: “The Americans should start thinking about stockpiling gasoline and fuel. Dark months await the American economy.” Aref also warned that recent US attacks had fundamentally changed Tehran’s approach to its security. Writing on X, he said: “America’s new crimes against the Iranian nation have changed our security equations and defence doctrine.” He added: “From now on, our response will be ‘asymmetrical,’ ‘multi-layered,’ and ‘depriving the aggressor of security.’” The stark warning comes amid renewed fighting between the US and Iran and growing concerns over oil supplies passing through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes. Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Washington could attack Iran “at any time”, although he did not expect the renewed fighting to continue for “too …

Scientists Have Found the Most Convincing Evidence Yet of a Dark Matter Particle

Scientists Have Found the Most Convincing Evidence Yet of a Dark Matter Particle

Published by skeptic

More than a kilometer underground, in what used to be a gold mine, inside a tank filled with tons of liquid xenon, “something” struck the nucleus of an atom. The tiny collision left an unusual energy signature that researchers are still unable to explain, but the scientists behind the experiment believe this could be the most convincing physical evidence of dark matter to date. Dark matter is one of the most important and elusive substances in astrophysics. Though it makes up about 85 percent of the matter in the universe, we can’t observe it directly because it doesn’t interact with light or much else. Most of the evidence for its existence comes from its gravitational effects, the mass of dark matter having tugged on the atoms of the early universe to form stars, galaxies, and the vast web of intergalactic structures visible today. But the enigma of dark matter is complex. Scientists don’t even know what it is made of, whether it’s a single type of particle or an entire set of particles that interact …

NIST scientists invent a quantum crystal detector to hunt for dark matter

NIST scientists invent a quantum crystal detector to hunt for dark matter

Published by Jenni Sidey

A crystal of roughly 150 trapped beryllium ions used quantum entanglement to measure extremely weak electric fields beyond the standard quantum limit. The sensor reached an electric-field sensitivity of about 240 nanovolts per meter per square root hertz, more than an order of magnitude better than leading Rydberg-atom electrometers at the time. Similar trapped-ion systems could eventually search for ultralight dark matter such as axions or hidden photons, although the experiment itself did not detect dark matter. A disk of electrically charged atoms only about 200 micrometers wide has demonstrated how one of quantum mechanics’ strangest effects can become a powerful measuring tool. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology created the sensor from roughly 150 beryllium ions held inside a strong magnetic field. Repulsion between the charged particles caused them to arrange themselves naturally into a flat, two-dimensional crystal. The researchers then entangled two very different properties of that crystal: its collective mechanical motion and the electronic spins of its ions. The result was a sensor capable of detecting weak electric fields …

LUX-ZEPLIN detector makes surprising discovery in search for dark matter

LUX-ZEPLIN detector makes surprising discovery in search for dark matter

Published by Jenni Sidey

LUX-ZEPLIN recorded one high-energy nuclear recoil that researchers have not been able to match convincingly to known detector backgrounds. The event has a global statistical significance of 2.6 sigma, intriguing enough for closer study but far below the 5-sigma standard used to claim a particle discovery. If dark matter caused the interaction, several models point toward a WIMP heavier than about 200 GeV/c² and interactions more complicated than the simplest WIMP scenarios. Nearly a mile beneath South Dakota, an experiment built to catch some of the universe’s most elusive particles has recorded one interaction that scientists cannot easily explain. That single event is not a dark matter discovery. It is, however, unusual enough that researchers with the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, known as LZ, have decided the wider physics community should take a close look. “We’re very intrigued to see this event in the data, in the region where we expect dark matter to show up, and the competing backgrounds are very low,” said Rick Gaitskell, a Brown University physics professor and LZ spokesperson. “With only one …

NASA launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to investigate dark Universe

NASA launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to investigate dark Universe

Published by skeptic

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has launched on a mission to investigate dark matter, dark energy and the evolution of the Universe. The mission lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy at 7:26 am EDT on Sunday, with the observatory now on a three-month journey towards its operating position around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), roughly one million miles from Earth. The telescope is designed to investigate some of astronomy’s biggest unanswered questions, particularly the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Its combination of a wide field of view and infrared capabilities will allow scientists to survey enormous areas of the sky while looking deep into the history of the cosmos. The early stages of the mission have proceeded successfully. NASA began receiving telemetry seven minutes after launch, while the telescope separated from the Falcon Heavy 31 minutes into the flight. Roman has also successfully deployed its solar panels and lower instrument sun shade and is now heading towards L2, where it will undergo several …

The Dark in Her Veins by M.K. Lobb

The Dark in Her Veins by M.K. Lobb

Published by Jenni Sidey

She is twenty-two years old and both her hands are black to the fingertips. In Sundbourg, sin does not stay a private matter — it surfaces in the veins as a purple-black rot that climbs from the extremities, takes the mind somewhere along the way, and finishes the job. Talin Keller has been killing on the Prophet’s instructions for three years, and her skin has kept every receipt. She bathes in the dark so she does not have to look. The Dark in Her Veins by M.K. Lobb opens on a woman already sentenced by her own bloodstream, and then spends four hundred pages watching her refuse to serve the sentence. The conceit sounds like a punishment mechanic. It turns out to be the best engine in the book. What The Dark in Her Veins Does With Sin Most fantasy that charges its heroes for moral compromise charges them in something invisible: a favour owed, a memory spent, a ledger only the reader is shown. Lobb bills hers in skin, in public, on a schedule. …

This New App Brings 1990s ‘After Dark’ Screen Savers to Modern macOS

This New App Brings 1990s ‘After Dark’ Screen Savers to Modern macOS

Published by skeptic

As noted by Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber, developer Jeff Halter has released a new Afterglow app that allows you to run classic After Dark screen savers on modern macOS versions. “Afterglow is an emulator built specifically for running After Dark modules — the original 68k module code, not a remake or port — with no dependencies on ROMs or classic Mac OS,” said Halter, who has several fun nostalgic projects, such as After Dark space shooter Lunacy and HyperCard player Stacks. Popular Stories Apple Unveiled Four New Products Today Apple today unveiled a new Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro chip options, a new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chip options, a new version of the Polishing Cloth with a lower price, and updated Magic Keyboards for Macs. To learn more about these products, read our coverage below: Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips and More Apple Unveils New Mac Studio With M5 Max and M5… Apple Quietly Refreshes Magic Keyboards Apple today quietly introduced updated Magic Keyboard models …

Dark Matter star Joel Edgerton teases how season 2 speaks to AI fears

Dark Matter star Joel Edgerton teases how season 2 speaks to AI fears

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dark Matter star Joel Edgerton has opened up about how season 2 of the show relates to fears about AI. Last season saw physicist Jason (Edgerton) kidnapped by an alternate version of himself who was hellbent on stealing original Jason’s life. While original Jason eventually reunited with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), this season sees them on the run again after facing down an army of Jasons. But, at the centre of the whole show, is the box, which allows its user to travel inter-dimensionally, leading to it being used in lots of dubious ways – not least by Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi), who is searching for the “perfect world” in season 2. Speaking exclusively to Radio Times about what the series says about our fears around technology, Edgerton explained: “When we were reading season 2 and getting ready to make it, I could see this deeper level of conversation around AI looming, and this responsibility in terms of human beings, their brilliance and ability to create a technology and …