The objects humans send to space teach us a lot about the universe, but they are also cluttering it up. While some objects are close enough to be retrieved, others become dangerous, fast-moving bullets that can cause serious damage.

In addition to cleaning up what's already there, MIT Assistant Professor Danielle Wood says that we need to think more sustainably about the technology used in future missions. "We have to ask the question, will we respect the rights of people and the environment as we go forward in space," Wood says.

One possible solution is a wax-based fuel source (made of beeswax and candle wax) for satellites that would be less toxic and more affordable than currently used inorganic compounds, and that would help bring the objects closer to Earth for deorbiting and destruction.

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Former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty reveals the secret to “good power.” In her book "Good Power," former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty challenges the negative connotations often associated with the concept of power. She argues that power can be a force for good, and that building belief is at the heart of good power. Building belief involves creating an environment in which people voluntarily want to do something, rather than being ordered to do so out of fear. Rometty suggests that co-creating the future with others, rather than dictating it, is a key element of building belief. It is important to make the process personal by showing empathy for those involved and being authentic and honest about the challenges ahead. Rometty draws on her own experiences to illustrate these principles. For example, when IBM acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, she acknowledged the risks involved and showed empathy for the changes employees would have to go through. Ultimately, Rometty believes that building belief and empowering others — rather than attempting to sway them with money — is key to being a successful leader. She urges leaders to focus on building their own power first and then using that power to influence and inspire others toward a common goal. About Ginni Rometty: Ginni Rometty was the ninth chairman, president, and CEO of IBM. Under her leadership, the 100-year-old company reinvented 50% of its portfolio, built a $25 billion hybrid cloud business, and established leadership in AI and quantum computing. Rometty also drove record results in diversity and inclusion and supported the explosive growth of an innovative high school program to prepare the workforce of the future in more than twenty-eight countries. Through her work with the Business Roundtable, Rometty helped redefine the purpose of the corporation. She has been named Fortune's #1 Most Powerful Woman three years in a row, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and was honored with the designation of Officier in the French Légion d'Honneur. Today Rometty serves on multiple boards and cochairs OneTen, a coalition committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million Black Americans by 2030 into family-sustaining jobs and careers.

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NASA estimates that more than 500,000 pieces of space trash larger than a marble are currently in orbit. Estimates exceed 128 million pieces when factoring in smaller pieces from collisions. At 17,500 MPH, even a paint chip can cause serious damage.

To prevent this untrackable space debris from taking out satellites and putting astronauts in danger, scientists have been working on ways to retrieve large objects before they collide and create more problems.

The team at Clearspace, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, is on a mission to capture one such object using an autonomous spacecraft with claw-like arms. It’s an expensive and very tricky mission, but one that could have a major impact on the future of space exploration.

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Why should anyone care about the metaverse? Expert Matthew Ball explains what it is, what it isn’t, and why it matters.

Up Next ► Why virtual reality is necessary on a planet of 11 billion   • Why virtual reality is necessary on a...  

By the end of the decade, the Metaverse could be worth between $6 trillion and $13 trillion. But what is it?

The Metaverse is not simply immersive virtual reality or a really cool video game. It's a combination of technologies that allows an unlimited number of users to experience real-time rendered, 3D virtual worlds synchronously and persistently.

It is difficult to predict how the Metaverse will evolve, just as it was nearly impossible to predict the emergence of Facebook during the era of Windows 95. The Metaverse will not replace the internet, but will build upon and extend it.

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Chapters

00:00 - Intro

01:22 - What the Metaverse is not

02:30 - 10-part definition of the Metaverse

02:56 - Part 1: Massively-scaled

03:23 - Part 2: Virtual worlds

03:51 - Part 3: 3D

04:26 - Part 4: Interoperable network

05:41 - Part 5: Real-time rendering

06:14 - Part 6: Synchronous

06:45 - Part 7: Persistent

08:00 - Parts 8 & 9: Unlimited users with individual sense of presence

08:22 - Part 10: Continuity of data

08:55 - Technological eras are bundles

09:17 - 7 subcategories of the Metaverse

09:27 - Subcategory 1: Hardware

09:45 - Subcategory 2: Networking

09:57 - Subcategory 3: Computer powers

10:13 - Subcategory 4: Virtual platforms

10:45 - Subcategory 5: Interoperability standards

11:05 - Subcategory 6: Payment rails

11:18 - Subcategory 7: CAIS

11:46 - 5 stunning Metaverse examples

13:08 - Why do we need to learn about it now?

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About Matthew Ball:

Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion, a diversified holding company which makes angel investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games.

Ball is also a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Senior Advisor to KKR, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and sits on the board of numerous start-ups. His first book, “The Metaverse and How it Will Revolutionize Everything”, was published in July 2022 and became an instant national and international bestseller. Ball is also an “Occasional Contributor” to The Economist, holds bylines at Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the August 8, 2022 cover story for Time Magazine.

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Sure, IQ is important, but is it as impactful as emotional intelligence? Renowned psychologist and author Daniel Goleman explains.

The concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) can be traced back to ancient philosophies, but it was Goleman’s bestseller ‘Emotional Intelligence’ that popularized the term in 1995. According to Goleman, while IQ and smarts can get you good grades and jumpstart your career, it's EQ (what the psychologist often refers to as EI) that sets apart the top performers and leaders in their careers.

Unlike IQ, which remains relatively static throughout life, emotional intelligence can be developed and refined at any age. Goleman emphasizes that enhancing our EQ can make our communities more compassionate, improve how we parent, and help us take better care of the environment.

This knowledge - especially the fact that EQ can be enhanced over time - gives us a powerful tool for personal growth. Understanding and improving our emotional intelligence can directly lead us to better relationships, and can shape our lives with more fulfillment and, eventually, success.

Timestamps:

0:00 - IQ

1:28 - EQ

3:20 - The 4 domains

5:16 - Habit change lesson

7:11 - Emotional (un)intelligence

9:33 - The bus driver

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About Daniel Goleman:

Daniel Goleman is a former science journalist for the New York Times and co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at the University of Illinois, at Chicago). His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books) was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half.

Goleman is also the author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. The book argues that new information technologies will create “radical transparency,” allowing us to know the environmental, health, and social consequences of what we buy. As shoppers use point-of-purchase ecological comparisons to guide their purchases, market share will shift to support steady, incremental upgrades in how products are made – changing every thing for the better.

His other books include Optimal and Altered Traits.

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Why so many people work “bullshit jobs,” with James Suzman

Up next ►► How to find a meaningful job, or find purpose in the job you already have | Aaron Hurst   • How to find a meaningful job, or find...  

Our society is fixated on working. Some of us work 80 hours per week at jobs that don’t fulfill us simply for work's sake. Expert anthropologists, such as James Suzman, even go as far as to say that many of the jobs we work could be considered "bullshit jobs" - a complex job that is not entirely needed in the workforce. These jobs are created and executed because our culture, and lifestyle, are organized around the 8-hour workday.

So why do we work "bullshit jobs?" Many economists would say it is to fix the problem of scarcity. But what many do not know is that in our society, we passed the scarcity threshold in 1980, and most everyone has their basic needs met. So much so that more food goes into our landfills than goes into our stomachs. If scarcity is no longer an issue, why are we still working over 40 hours per week? It's because people have a humane instinct to work and be productive.

If the 40-hour workweek is no longer serving our society, could we be approaching a new economic utopia? Suzman thinks so. In the present day, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers are turning away from unfulfilling jobs and diving headfirst into their hobbies - cooking, writing, painting, and creating. If we keep on this path, our entire economic system is bound to change, making for a richer world where everyone does the work they want to be doing.

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About James Suzman:

James Suzman, Phd is an anthropologist specializing in the Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. A former Smuts Fellow in African Studies at the University of Cambridge, he is now the director of Anthropos Ltd., a think tank that applies anthropological methods to solving contemporary social and economic problems.

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“From the evolutionary perspective, the human brain evolved to feel first and think later,” says neuroscientist and marketing consultant Terry Wu. The part of our brain that controls emotions (the limbic system) and the part that deals with rational thought (the frontal cortex) can send conflicting signals, which leads to bad decision-making.

Stress, easy access to online shopping platforms, and other factors cause the limbic system to overtake the frontal cortex as we seek instant gratification. Retailers cater to our emotional brain so that we shop more, but there are ways to resist the manipulation.

“The important thing is to create some barriers between our desire to shop and shopping,“ says Wu, who suggests establishing designating shopping days, using physical activity to lower stress, and seeking support from friends.

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Pro-athletes are entertainers. Being healthy means something else.

Up Next ► Harvard professor debunks the biggest exercise myths   • Harvard professor debunks the biggest... 

There's a cost to keeping your body running. For every five breaths you take, one is paying for your brain, one is paying for your liver, and another is paying for your muscles. 

On average, your body spends about 1,400 calories per day just keeping you alive, even if you're doing nothing else. This helps explain why we tend to avoid unnecessary physical activity. 

For our ancestors, finding food could be incredibly difficult, so they didn't waste energy. Today, even though have energy sources ready at our fingertips, we still naturally protect how we spend that energy.

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About Daniel Lieberman:

Daniel Lieberman is Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He received degrees from Harvard and Cambridge, and taught at Rutgers University and George Washington University before joining Harvard University as a Professor in 2001. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lieberman loves teaching and has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, many in journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS, as well as three popular books, The Evolution of the Human Head (2011), The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2013), and Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding (2020).

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What's the best way to think about the brain? While most of us think of it as a dense gray matter that’s separate from the physical body, that actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Our brain is made up of 3 layers, and each layer not only directly impacts the other, but has control over the physical body and how you feel.

The 3 functional layers of the brain are the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex. The reptilian brain controls the regulatory systems in your body like hormones, body temperature, blood pressure, and even hunger. The limbic system is the emotional function of your brain, making you feel fear, anger, joy, or gratitude. Finally, the cerebral cortex is the most evolved part of the brain that oversees impulse control, decision making, and long-term planning.

With a better understanding of how each part of the brain functions, we can have more mindful thoughts that will influence more favorable decision-making and outcomes in life. For example, when you think of your favorite memory or something that makes you happy, your reptilian brain will quickly cool down your body and even lower your blood pressure. This can then lead to feeling less stressed, and finding more joy throughout the day.

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About Robert M. Sapolsky:

Robert M. Sapolsky holds degrees from Harvard and Rockefeller Universities and is currently a Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University and a Research Associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. His most recent book is Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.

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Two-thirds of our days are spent alone. The Metaverse will bring us together, argues leading Metaverse thinker Matthew Ball.

Will the metaverse lean more toward dystopia or utopia? If you base your answer solely on Hollywood’s vision of the future, you might say the former, considering that blockbusters like “The Matrix” and “Blade Runner” paint an ominous future where technology has helped fuel massive inequality and human suffering.

But that’s just one vision. In many ways, humans have been exploring metaverse-like worlds for decades, through text-based role-playing games to “Second Life” to the consumer-grade VR systems that have become popular over the past decade — and we’ve done it all without ushering in a dystopia.

The metaverse will soon enable immersive, collaborative, and social experiences that could change not only leisure, but also learning. For young students, the technology could replace paper mache models of volcanoes with something very much like “The Magic School Bus.”

That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate concerns about the metaverse, especially when it comes to questions about who owns what in this emerging world. Matthew Ball, author of “The Metaverse,” explains more in this interview with Big Think.

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About Matthew Ball:

Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion, a diversified holding company which makes angel investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games. Ball is also a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Senior Advisor to KKR, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and sits on the board of numerous start-ups. His first book, “The Metaverse and How it Will Revolutionize Everything”, was published in July 2022 and became an instant national and international bestseller. Ball is also an “Occasional Contributor” to The Economist, holds bylines at Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the August 8, 2022 cover story for Time Magazine.

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