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The first space race was about flags and footprints. Now, decades later, landing on the moon is old news. The new race is to build there, and doing so hinges on power. In April 2025, China reportedly unveiled plans to build a nuclear power plant on the moon by 2035. This plant would support its planned international lunar research station. The United States countered in August, when acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy reportedly suggested a U.S. reactor would be operational on the moon by 2030. While it might feel like a sudden sprint, this isnt exactly breaking news. NASA and the Department of Energy have spent years quietly developing small nuclear power systems to power lunar bases, mining operations, and long-term habitats. As a space lawyer focused on long-term human advancement into space, I see this not as an arms race but as a strategic infrastructure race. And in this case, infrastructure is influence. A lunar nuclear reactor may sound dramatic, but it’s neither illegal nor unprecedented. If deployed responsibly, it could allow countries to peacefully explore the moon, fuel their economic growth, and test out technologies for deeper space missions. But building a reactor also raises critical questions about access and power. The legal framework already exists Nuclear power in space isnt a new idea. Since the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have relied on radioisotope generators that use small amounts of radioactive elementsa type of nuclear fuelto power satellites, Mars rovers, and the Voyager probes. Nuclear energy in space isnt newsome spacecraft are nuclear-powered. This photo shows the nuclear heat source for the Mars Curiosity rover encased in a graphite shell. The fuel glows red-hot because of the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. [Photo: Idaho National Laboratory, CC BY] The United Nations 1992 Principles Relevant to the Use of Nuclear Power Sources in Outer Space, a nonbinding resolution, recognizes that nuclear energy may be essential for missions where solar power is insufficient. This resolution sets guidelines for safety, transparency, and international consultation. Nothing in international law prohibits the peaceful use of nuclear power on the moon. But what matters is how countries deploy it. And the first country to succeed could shape the norms for expectations, behaviors, and legal interpretations related to lunar presence and influence. Why being first matters The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by all major spacefaring nations including the U.S., China, and Russia, governs space activity. Its Article IX requires that states act with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties. That statement means if one country places a nuclear reactor on the moon, others must navigate around it, legally and physically. In effect, it draws a line on the lunar map. If the reactor anchors a larger, long-term facility, it could quietly shape what countries do and how their moves are interpreted legally, on the moon and beyond. Other articles in the Outer Space Treaty set similar boundaries on behavior, even as they encourage cooperation. They affirm that all countries have the right to freely explore and access the moon and other celestial bodies, but they explicitly prohibit territorial claims or assertions of sovereignty. At the same time, the treaty acknowledges that countries may establish installations such as basesand with that, gain the power to limit access. While visits by other countries are encouraged as a transparency measure, they must be preceded by prior consultations. Effectively, this grants operators a degree of control over who can enter and when. Building infrastructure is not staking a territorial claim. No one can own the moon, but one country setting up a reactor could shape where and how others operatefunctionally, if not legally. Infrastructure is influence Building a nuclear reactor establishes a countrys presence in a given area. This idea is especially important for resource-rich areas such as the lunar south pole, where ice found in perpetually shadowed craters could fuel rockets and sustain lunar bases. These sought-after regions are scientifically vital and geopolitically sensitive, as multiple countries want to build bases or conduct research there. Building infrastructure in these areas would cement a countrys ability o access the resources there and potentially exclude others from doing the same. Dark craters on the moon, parts of which are indicated here in blue, never get sunlight. Scientists think some of these permanently shadowed regions could contain water ice. [Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center] Critics may worry about radiation risks. Even if designed for peaceful use and contained properly, reactors introduce new environmental and operational hazards, particularly in a dangerous setting such as space. But the U.N. guidelines do outline rigorous safety protocols, and following them could potentially mitigate these concerns. Why nuclear? Because solar has limits The moon has little atmosphere and experiences 14-day stretches of darkness. In some shadowed craters, where ice is likely to be found, sunlight never reaches the surface at all. These issues make solar energy unreliable, if not impossible, in some of the most critical regions. A small lunar reactor could operate continuously for a decade or more, powering habitats, rovers, 3D printers, and life-support systems. Nuclear power could be the linchpin for long-term human activity. And its not just about the Moondeveloping this capability is essential for missions to Mars, where solar power is even more constrained. The U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space sets guidelines to govern how countries act in outer space. [Photo: United States Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, CC BY-NC-ND] A call for governance, not alarm The United States has an opportunity to lead not just in technology but in governance. If it commits to sharing its plans publicly, following Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty and reaffirming a commitment to peaceful use and international participation, it will encourage other countries to do the same. The future of the moon wont be determined by who plants the most flags. It will be determined by who builds what, and how. Nuclear power may be essential for that future. Building transparently and in line with international guidelines would allow countries to more safely realize that future. A reactor on the moon isnt a territorial claim or a declaration of war. But it is infrastructure. And infrastructure will be how countries display powerof all kindsin the next era of space exploration. Michelle L.D. Hanlon is a professor of air and space law at the University of Mississippi. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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In the new edition of my book, The Simulation Hypothesis, released in July, Ive updated my estimate of how likely we are to be in a simulation to approximately 70%, thanks to recent AI developments. This means we are almost certainly inside a virtual reality world like that depicted in The Matrix, the most talked about film of the last year of the twentieth century. Even young people who werent born in 1999 tend to know the basic plot of this blockbuster: Neo (Keanu Reeves) thinks hes living in the real world, working in a cubicle in a mega software corporation, only to discover, with the help of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), that hes living inside a computer-generated world. The AI Factor What makes me so sure that we are living in a simulation? There are multiple reasons explored in the book, including a new way to explain quantum weirdness, the strange nature of time and space, information theory & digital physics, spiritual/religious arguments, and even an information-based way to explain glitches in the matrix. However, even while discounting these other possible reasons we may in a simulation, the main reason for my new estimate was because of the rapid advance of AI and virtual reality technology, combined with a statistical argument put forth by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. In the past few years, the rise of generative AI like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Xs Grok has proceeded rapidly. We now have not just AI which has passed the Turing Test, but we already have rudimentary AI characters living in the virtual world with whom we can interact. One recent example includes prompt-generated video from Google Veo. Recently, Google has introduced the ability to create realistic-looking videos on demand, complete with virtual actors and landscapes that are completely AI generated, and speak real lines of dialogue, all based on prompts. This has led to prompt theory, a viral phenomenon of AI-generated video of realistic characters exhorting that they were definitely not generated by AI prompts. Another recent example is the release of AI companions from Grok, which combine LLMs with a virtual avatar, leading to a new level of adoption of the rising wave of AI characters that are already serving as virtual friends, therapists, teachers, and even virtual lovers. The sexy anime girl in particular has led to thousands of memes of obsession with virtual characters. The graphics fidelity and responsiveness of these characters will improveimagine the fidelity of the Google Veo videos combined with a virtual friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/assistant, who can pass what I call, the Metaverse or Virtual Turing Test (described in the new book in detail). The Simulation Point All of this means we are getting closer than ever to the simulation point, a term I coined a few years ago as a kind of technological singularity. I define this as a theoretical point at which we can create virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from physical reality, and with AI beings that are indistinguishable from biological beings. In short, when we reach the simulation point, we would be capable of building something like the Matrix ourselves, complete with realistic landscapes, avatars and AI characters. To understand why our progress in reaching this point might increase the likelihood that we are already in a simulation, we can build on the simulation argument that Bostroms proposed in his 2003 paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Bostrom surmised that for a technological civilization like ours, there were only three possibilities when it came to building highly realistic simulations of their past (which he called ancestor simulations). Each of these simulations would have realistic simulated minds, holding all of the information and computing power a biological brain might hold. We can think of having the capability of building these simulations as approximately similar to my definition of the simulation point. The first two possibilities, which can be combined for practical purposes, were that no civilization ever reaches the simulation point (i.e. by destroying themselves or because it isnt possible to create simulations), or that all such civilizations who reached this point decided not to build such sophisticated simulations. The term simulation hypothesis was originally meant by Bostrom to refer to the third possibility, which was that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. The logic underlying this third scenario was that any such advanced civilization would be able to create entirely new simulated worlds with the click of a button, each of which could have billions (or trillions) of simulated beings indistinguishable from biological beings. Thus, the number of simulated beings would vastly outnumber the tally of biological beings. Statistically, then, if you couldnt tell the difference, then you were (much) more likely to be a simulated being than a real, biological one. Bostrom himself initially declined to put a percentage on this third option compared to the other two, saying only that it was as one of three possibilities, implying a likelihood of 33.33 % (and later changed his odds for the third possibility to be around 20%). Elon Musk used a variation of Bostroms logic in 2016, when he said the chances of us being in base reality (i.e. not in a simulation) were one in billions. He was implying that there might be billions of simulated worlds, but only one physical world. Thus statistically, we are by far highly likely (99.99%+) in a simulated world. Others have weighed in on the issue, using variations of the argument, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, who put the percentage likelihood at 50%. Columbia scientist David Kipping, in a paper using Bayesian logic and Bostroms argument, came up with a similar figure, of slightly less than 50-50. Musk was relying on the improvement in video game technology and projecting it forward. This is what I do in detail in my book where I lay out the 10 stages of getting to the simulation point, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), BCIs (Brain Computer Interfaces), AI, and more. It was the progress in these areas over the past few years that gives me the conviction that we are getting closer to the simulation point than ever before. The Equation In my new book, I argue that the percentage likelihood we are in a simulation is based almost entirely on whether we can reach the simulation point. If we can never reach this point, then the chances are basically zero that we are in a sim that was already developed by anyone else. If we can reach this point, then the chances of being in a simulation simply boil down to how far from this theoretically point we are, minus some uncertainty factor. If we have already reached that point, then we can be 99% confident about being in a simulation. Even if we havent reached the simulation point (we havent, at least not yet), then the likelihood of the simlation hypothesis, Psim , basically simplifies down to Psimpoint, the confidence level we have that we can reach this point, minus some small extra uncertainty factor (pu). Psim Psimpoint pu If we are 100% confident we can reach the simulation point, and the small factor pu is 1, then the likelihood of being in a simulation jumps up to 99%. Why? Per the earlier argument, if we can reach this point, then it is very likely that another civilization has already reached this point, and that we are inside one of their (many) simulations. pu is likely to be small because we have already built uncertainty into our Psimpoint for any value less than 100%. So, in the end, it doesnt matter when we reach this point, its a matter of capabilities. And the more we develop our AI, video game, and virtual reality technology, the more likely it is that at some point soon, we will be able to reach the simulation point. Are we there yet? So how close are we? In the new book, I go through each of the 10 stages and estimate that we are more than two-thirds of the way there, and I am fairly certain that we will be able to get there eventually. This means that todays AI developments have convinced me we are at least 67% likely to be able to reach the simulation point and possibly more than 70%. If I add in factors from digital and quantum physics detailed in the book, and if we take the trip reports of mystics of old and todays near-death experiencers and psychonauts (who expand their awareness using DMT, for example) at face value, we can be even more confident that our physical reality is not the ultimate reality. Those who report such trips are like Platos philosopher who not only broke his chains, but also left Platos allegorical cave. If you read Platos full allegory, it ends with the philosopher returning to the cave to describe what he had seen in the world outside to the other residents, who didnt believe him and were content to continue watching shadows on the wall. Because most scientists are loath to accept these reports and are likely to dismiss this evidence, I wont include them in my own percentage estimation, though as I explain in the book, this brings my confidence level that we are in a virtual, rather than a physical reality even higher. Which brings us back to the inescapable realization that if we will eventually be able to create something like the Matrix, someone has likely already done it. While we can debate what is outside our cave, its our own rapid progress with AI that makes it more likely than ever that we are already inside something virtual like the Matrix.
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Lush forests and crisp mountain air have drawn people to New Yorks Adirondack Mountains for centuries. In the late 1800s, these forests were a haven for tuberculosis patients seeking the cool, fresh air. Today, the region is still a sanctuary where families vacation and hikers roam pristine trails. However, hidden health dangers have been accumulating in these mountains since industrialization began. Tiny metal particulates released into the air from factories, power plants and vehicles across the Midwest and Canada can travel thousands of miles on the wind and fall with rain. Among them are microscopic pollutants such as lead and cadmium, known for their toxic effects on human health and wildlife. For decades, factories released this pollution without controls. By the 1960s and 1970s, their pollution was causing acid rain that killed trees in forests across the eastern U.S., while airborne metals were accumulating in even the most remote lakes in the Adirondacks. In the early 1900s, sanatoriums such as the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook, near Saranac Lake, were built to house tuberculosis patients. The crisp mountain air was believed to help their recovery. [Photo: Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection/Library of Congress] As paleolimnologists, we study the history of the environment using sediment cores from lake bottoms, where layers of mud, leaves, and pollen pile up over time, documenting environmental and chemical changes. In a recent study, we looked at two big questions: Have lakes in the Northeast U.S. recovered from the era of industrial metal pollution, and did the Clean Air Act, written to help stop the pollution, work? Digging up time capsules On multiple summer trips between 2021 and 2024, we hiked into the Adirondacks backcountry with 60-pound inflatable boats, a GPS and piles of long, heavy metal tubes in tow. We focused on four pondsRat, Challis, Black and Little Hope. In each, we dropped cylindrical tubes that plunge into the darkness of the lake bottom. The tubes suction up the mud in a way that preserves the accumulated layers like a history book. Back in the lab, we sliced these cores millimeter by millimeter, extracting metals such as lead, zinc and arsenic to analyze the concentrations over time. An illustration of the authors shows how lake sediment cores capture the history of the region going back thousands of years. [Image: Sky Hooler] The changes in the levels of metals we found in different layers of the cores paint a dramatic picture of the pristine nature of these lakes before European settlers arrived in the area, and what happened as factories began going up across the country. A century plagued by contamination Starting in the early 1900s, coal burning in power plants and factories, smelting and the growing use of leaded gasoline began releasing pollutants that blew into the region. We found that manganese, arsenic, iron, zinc, lead, cadmium, nickel, chromium, copper, and cobalt began to appear in greater concentrations in the lakes and rose rapidly. At the same time, acid rain, formed from sulfur and nitrogen oxides from coal and gasoline, acted like chemical shovels, freeing more metals naturally held in the bedrock and forest soils. Acid rain damaged trees in several states over the decades, leaving ghostly patches in forests. [Photo: Will & Deni McIntyre/Getty Images] The result was a cascade of metal pollution that washed down the slopes with the rain, winding through creeks and seeping into lakes. All of this is captured in the lake sediment cores. As extensive logging and massive fires stripped away vegetation and topsoil, the exposed landscapes created express lanes for metals to wash downhill. When acidification met these disturbed lands, the result was extraordinary: Metal levels didnt just increase, they skyrocketed. In some cases, we found that lead levels in the sediment reached 328 parts per million, 109 times higher than natural preindustrial levels. That lead would have first been in the air, where people were exposed, and then in the wildlife and fish that people consume. These particles are so small that they can enter a persons lungs and bloodstream, infiltrate food webs, and accumulate in ecosystems. A wind map shows how pollution moves from the Midwest, reaching the Adirondacks. The colors show the average wind speed, in meters per second, and arrows show the wind direction about 3,000 meters above ground from 1948 to 2023. Average calculated using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. [Image: Sky Hooler] Then, suddenly, the increase stopped. A public outcry over acid rain, which was stripping needles from trees and poisoning fish, led to major environmental legislation, including the initiation of the Clean Air Act in 1963. The law and subsequent amendments in the following decades began reducing sulfur dioxide emissions and other toxic pollutants. To comply, industries installed scrubbers to remove pollutants at the smokestack rather than releasing them into the air. Catalytic converters reduced vehicle exhaust, and lead was removed from gasoline. The air grew cleaner, the rain became less acidic, and our sediment cores show that the lakes began to heal through natural biogeochemical processes, although slowly. By 1996, atmospheric lead levels measured at Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks had declined by 90%. National levels were down 94%. But in the lakes, lead had decreased only by about half. Only in the past five years, since about 2020, have we seen metal concentrations within the lakes fall to less than 10% of their levels at the height of pollution in the region. Our study is the first documented case of a full recovery in Northeast U.S. lakes that reflects the recovery seen in the atmosphere. Its a powerful success story and proof that environmental policy works. Looking forward But the Adirondacks arent entirely in the clear. Legacy pollution lingers in the soils, ready to be remobilized by future disturbances from land development or logging. And there are new concerns. We are now tracking the rise of microplastics and the growing pressures of climate change on lake ecosystems. Recovery is not a finish line; its an ongoing process. The Clean Air Act and water monitoring are still important for keeping the regions air and water clean. Though our findings come from just a few lakes, the implications extend across the entire Northeast U.S. Many studies from past decades documented declining metal deposition in lakes, and research has confirmed continued reductions in metal pollutants in both soils and rivers. In the layers of lake mud, we see not only a record of damage but also a testament to natures resilience, a reminder that with good legislation and timely intervention, recovery is possible. Sky Hooler is a PhD student in environmental science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Aubrey Hillman is an associate professor of environmental sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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