Tripadvisor has a new tool that uses OpenAI's generative AI technology to create custom travel

The meaning of life is the ultimate mystery – why do we exist? And is there a point to… well… anything? These are questions to which we may never find answers, but at least we can define what “life” means in scientific terms. And yet, our understanding of what life is is changing all the time, thanks to space exploration. As scientists continue to hunt for life beyond our own world, biologists are having to rethink the meaning of the word “life” itself. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Generally, biologists explain “life” as connoting a self-sustaining chemical system which is capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolising, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli. This definition works pretty well here on Earth (although there are some important exceptions, such as viruses), but experts have pointed out that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, it may not display the same properties that we’re used to. Indeed, it might be unrecognisable as life as we know it (forget those little green men). In which case, how will we spot it if it ever crosses our path? Astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker and chemist Lee Cronin think they’ve come up with a solution. The pair are now arguing that highly complex molecules found in all living creatures can’t exist thanks purely to chance. Therefore, they say, the universe must have a way of creating and reproducing complex information and retaining a “memory” of all of this.. In an interview with New Scientist, Walker, of Arizona State University, explained their radical idea on how objects come into existence. The concept, known as Assembly Theory, explains why certain complex objects have become more abundant than others by considering their histories. If the theory proves correct, it will redefine what we mean by “living” things and show that we’ve been going about the search for extraterrestrial life all wrong. In the process, we could even end up creating alien life in a laboratory, she stressed. In her discussion with New Scientist, Walker pointed out: "An electron can be made anywhere in the universe and has no history. You are also a fundamental object, but with a lot of historical dependency. You might want to cite your age counting back to when you were born, but parts of you are billions of years older. "From this perspective, we should think of ourselves as lineages of propagating information that temporarily finds itself aggregated in an individual." Assembly theory predicts that molecules produced by biological processes must be more complex than those produced by non-biological processes, as Science Alert notes. To test this, Walker and her team analysed a range of organic and inorganic compounds from around the world and outer space, including E. coli bacteria, urine, meteorites and even home-brewed beer. They then smashed up the compounds into smaller pieces and used mass spectrometry to pinpoint their molecular building blocks. They calculated that the smallest number of steps required to reassemble each compound from these building blocks was 15. And whilst some compounds from living systems needed fewer than 15 assembly steps, no inorganic compounds made it above this threshold. "Our system … allows us to search the universe agnostically for evidence of what life does rather than attempting to define what life is," Walker, Cronin, and others wrote in a 2021 Nature Communications article. The handy thing about this building block system – which they’ve dubbed the “'molecular assembly index” – is that it doesn’t rely on carbon-based organic materials to be identified. In other words, an alien could be made of entirely different stuff entirely and we’d still be able to spot it as life using the index. It also works regardless of what stage of “life” an extraterrestrial being is in – whether it is still in its infancy or has moved into a technological stage beyond our understanding. That’s because all of these states produce complex molecules which couldn’t exist in the absence of a living system. If all of this is hurting your head, let’s just get back to the basics: if there is a secret to life, it might all be down to what we do, not what we are. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Designed for users of high-end creative apps, the Asus ProArt B760-Creator D4 motherboard ($229.99) is

China's commerce minister has urged Japan to end its newly announced curbs on exports of chipmaking equipment, saying it would hurt economic and trade relations between the two countries.

Elon Musk has responded to a parody account pretending to be him on Twitter, calling Mark Zuckerberg a "lizard boy." The fake account with the username @ElonMuskAOC has over 358,000 followers and uses the same image of Musk that the billionaire businessman uses for his Twitter account. Also, their name is "Elon Musk (Parody)" and their profile bio reads: "I’m on a quest to bang AOC on Mars. (Parody Account)." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter On July 7, the parody account tweeted pretending to be Musk where he called Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg "Lizard boy." "I spent $44 billion for this app and now Lizard boy just decided to hit copy and paste," to Meta's new social media platform Threads, which is said to rival Twitter. "It's personal now. See you in the cage, Zuck," the account added, referring to Zuckerberg previously agreeing to a cage fight with Musk after Musk tweeted that he was “up for a cage fight” with him. With 35.5m views, 645,000 likes and 22,000 retweets, the parody account's tweet when viral - so much so that the real Elon Musk replied to the tweet. "So many people think this account is me," he wrote, with the eyes emoji. YouTuber MrBeast weighed asking "It's not?" to which Musk confirmed that was not him behind the tweet or account. Another person @stclairashley pointed out something else: "I love that you didn't dispute Zuck being a lizard boy." "Maybe it's just a case of using too much moisturizer," Musk quipped. Well, we all know Zuckerberg likes to slather on the sunscreen at least... Meanwhile the fake parody account decided to riff off of real Musk's tweet and replied in agreement: "Most likely the case, seems like that type." Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg ends 11-year Twitter break with ‘savage’ tweet about Threads. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

ROME Italy's antitrust agency AGCM said on Thursday it had opened a probe into U.S. technology giant Apple

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Ending a global guessing game on when and where they would meet, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin convened at a rocket launch facility in Siberia

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 21, 2023--

Apple’s next earnings report is just a few weeks away. It’s likely to post a fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue declines.