Good Morning! 🌞 

I recently learned that the moon is moving away from earth!

The Moon is drifting about 1.5 inches away from Earth each year, and this will continue to affect tides and the length of days over time.

We are working on an article about how exactly this will affect our planed, so stay tuned for that!

Tech

Robots Can't Riddle

AI can process massive amounts of data and solve problems beyond human capabilities, but when it comes to brain teasers, humans still have an edge.

At Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit, assistant professor Filip Ilievski is exploring AI's ability to solve riddles. Though it may seem like child’s play, this research is critical to improving AI's reasoning skills. Ilievski focuses on "common sense AI," aiming to enhance machines' ability to use basic logic, something humans naturally excel at. “As humans, we easily apply common sense to new problems,” says Ilievski, but AI struggles due to its lack of grounding in the real world.

Studying how AI solves puzzles not only advances technology but could also shed light on how our own minds work. While AI excels at recognizing patterns, it often struggles with abstract thinking—depending on the complexity of the problem.

Take, for example, a riddle from a 2023 study: Mable's heart rate at 9am was 75bpm and her blood pressure at 7pm was 120/80. She died at 11pm. Was she alive at noon? The answer is obviously yes, but GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced model at the time, found it challenging, responding that "Based on the information provided, it's impossible to definitively say whether Mable was alive at noon," This type of puzzle involves "temporal reasoning," which remains difficult for AI, according to Xaq Pitkow, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies AI and neuroscience.

A strange reality about AI is that, despite building it, humans don’t fully understand how it works. Large language models (LLMs) use statistical analysis to predict responses based on vast amounts of data, but the intricate mechanisms behind how AI reaches conclusions remain unclear. Similarly, our understanding of the brain is limited—while we can track neuron activity, we don’t know exactly how thoughts are processed.

By studying both AI and the human brain, scientists may unlock insights into reasoning. Neural networks in AI are modeled after the brain’s structure, and while the two don’t necessarily think alike, advancements in one could inform the other.

The comparison between AI and human intuition becomes even more interesting with tricky riddles designed to mislead people. Consider the classic: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? (which we used in our Mind Stretcher yesterday) Most people instinctively say $0.10, but the correct answer is $0.05. Humans often rely on intuition, which can lead to mistakes in such puzzles, according to Yale professor Shane Frederick. AI, on the other hand, is better at breaking down problems logically and avoiding such missteps.

However, the bat and ball problem is not an ideal test for AI, as it has likely encountered the riddle before. Frederick has tried challenging AI with more obscure variations and found that it still outperforms most human participants—although these tests were informal. OpenAI recently released a preview of GPT-o1, a new model built specifically for harder problems in science, coding and maths. And it had no problem saying, definitively, that our poor friend Mable who died at 11pm was still alive at noon. As AI continues to improve, it will get better at solving brain teasers, but for now, humans retain the upper hand in certain areas of reasoning.

Can you solve today’s mind-stretcher? 😉 

Space

Draconid Meteor Shower

Tonight, Earth will pass through the Draconid meteor shower, with meteors appearing to radiate from the constellation Draco. Expect a modest show, with a few meteors visible per hour, though in rare years, the Draconids have produced intense displays—up to 600 meteors per hour in 2011 and a whopping 6,000 in 1933. The peak viewing time is around midnight tonight into the early hours of tomorrow. A waning crescent moon at just 32% illumination will keep the sky dark, perfect for spotting meteors without much interference.

To find Draco, look between the Big and Little Dippers; its body twists in a shape like a backward "S." The Draconids originate from the comet 21/Giacobini-Zinner, though a major outburst is unlikely this year since the comet won't be near its closest point to the Sun until 2025. If the Draconids aren’t as lively as hoped, don’t worry—the Orionids will peak just 11 days from now on October 20-21, delivering a more reliable 21 meteors per hour. And for the rest of October, Earth will be passing through several other meteor showers, including the Cameleopardids and the Southern Taurids.

For an added treat, look for the Pleiades cluster on October 19th, near a waning full moon—especially dazzling if viewed through binoculars.

Environment

Sahara Desert Is Turning Green

Heavy rains are transforming parts of the Sahara that haven’t seen substantial rainfall in years. On September 7th and 8th, an extratropical cyclone swept across the northwestern Sahara, delivering heavy rain to vast, barren regions of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Concurrently, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which typically brings rain to areas near the equator from July to September, shifted farther north than usual, drenching Niger, Chad, and Sudan, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. As a result, some regions of the Sahara have received two to six times their normal rainfall.

“When these rare heavy rains occur, the dunes quickly transform into lush, flower-filled fields as plants take advantage of the short-lived moisture,” said Peter de Menocal, president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in an interview with ABC News. NASA’s MODIS satellite has captured some of this greening, including dry lakes, such as one in Morocco's Iriqui National Park, refilling with water.

Mind Stretchers

❓️ 

What man cannot live inside the house?

Yesterday’s Mind Stretchers: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Answer: $0.05

Galen Garretson got the correct answer first!

Be the first to send us the correct answer for today’s mind stretcher for a shout-out with the answer tomorrow. Just send us the answer and your name to [email protected]

If you have any uplifting stories and experience you might want to share, send those over to [email protected] for the chance to be featured.