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- Water Worries, Plausible AGI, Tiny Springs, and Dark Matter Annihilation (Maybe)
Water Worries, Plausible AGI, Tiny Springs, and Dark Matter Annihilation (Maybe)
This week’s science bits from SWTG
Sabine Hossenfelder
April 09, 2025
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AGI “Plausible” by 2030, DeepMind Says
Google’s DeepMind has published a 145-page paper with a strategy for the safe development and handling of Artificial General Intelligence. It details checks during training, evaluation after training is completed, and constant monitoring after deployment. About the timeline, they write, “We are highly uncertain about the timelines until powerful AI systems are developed, but crucially, we find it plausible that they will be developed by 2030.” Paper here, summary here.
In this week’s episode of Science News, we’ve got claims that dark matter has been hiding under our noses this entire time. Physicists have been searching for direct evidence of dark matter for decades, but it’s eluded them… up until now, maybe. According to a group of astrophysicists, the key to detecting dark matter is actually hidden in an anomaly at the center of the Milky Way, one that scientists first detected over a decade ago. But are they right? Let’s take a look.
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Something Is Wrong With Our Water
Figure: Seo et al, Science 387, 6741, 1408 (2025)
A recent study published in Science reveals that climate change has caused a massive drop in global soil moisture in the past two decades, driven by less rainfall and hotter air. The authors also say that the water isn’t in the soil, it’s in the oceans, and has contributed about 4.4 millimetres of sea level rise since 2000, which is approximately 4% of the total estimated sea level rise in that period.
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Tiny Springs Store Energy
Image: Fang et al Nature 639, 639 (2025)
Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed metamaterials in the form of tiny springs that are very efficient at storing mechanical energy. Compared to conventional springs, the new materials, which are made of units measuring less than a millimeter each, store up to 100 times more energy.
These materials are not meant to replace conventional batteries. In terms of energy storage per mass, they would store 1 to 2 orders of magnitude less than lithium-ion batteries, optimistically. Rather, these new materials could temporarily store and release mechanical energy in robot parts or shock absorbers. Paper here. Press release here.
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