Scientists have developed new night-vision filters for eyeglasses that allow people to see clearly in the tech.

The ultra-thin film is comprised of nanometre-scale crystals that transform infrared light into images that people can see. Per the study paper :

The researchers say the tech could one day be applied to standard glasses and other lenses, and powered by a tiny built-in laser. They also envision employing machine learning to simultaneously enhance the light-matter interactions.

Dragomir Neshev, a professor in physics at the Australian National University (​ANU), said the prototype tech is the first of its kind:

Neshev’s bold prediction is based on the tech’s low cost, light weight, and ease of producing, which could make them accessible to everyday users.

The researchers the tech could help people drive at night or walk home after dark.  But as anyone who’s played Call of Duty knows, it could also prove useful in warfare.

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Flawed algorithm used to determine UK welfare payments is ‘pushing people into poverty’

A flawed algorithm that determines the social security benefits received by people in the UK is causing hunger, debt, and psychological distress, Human Rights Watch has warned.

The model calculates the benefits people are entitled to each month based on changes in their earnings. But Human Rights Watch discovered a defect in the system.

The algorithm only analyzes the wages people receive within a calendar month, and ignores how often they’re paid. This means that people who receive multiple paychecks in a month — a common occurrence in irregular and low-paid work — can have their earnings overestimated and their payments dramatically shrunk.

Human Rights Watch says the system could be improved by using shorter periods of income assessment or averaged earnings over longer periods of time. While the government evaluates these proposals, the watchdog has called for urgent measures to be implemented, such as one-off grants for applicants.

“The government has put a flawed algorithm in charge of deciding how much money to give people to pay rent and feed their families,” said Amos Toh, senior AI and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government‘s bid to automate the benefits system – no matter the human cost – is pushing people to the brink of poverty.”

The algorithm is a core part of Universal Credit, a revamp of the UK‘s welfare system that combines six benefits into one monthly sum.

The system was designed to streamline payments, but has been widely criticized since its launch in 2016. Anyone who applies for it has to wait for five weeks before they receive their first payment, and people with limited digital skills or internet access have struggled to manage the online system.

The algorithm the UK uses reflects a global trend to automate social security systems. Last October, a UN human rights expert said these programs were often designed to slash welfare, ramp up government surveillance, and generate profits for corporate interests.

Human Rights Watch wants the UK government to take a more human-centered approach. But problems with the algorithm shouldn’t let the policymakers off the hook.

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Our universe may have a doppelganger full of white holes and black stars

Einstein and other early proponents of quantum mechanics felt strongly that black holes, somehow, were the key to solving the whole… universe problem .

How did the universe get here? When did it get here? How big is it? What’s it made of?

Unfortunately, our position in the cosmos makes it difficult to answer any of those questions. We’re stuck here about 1,500 light years away from the nearest black hole.

Scientists have posited many explanations for the existence of black holes, but all we really know about them is that they suck .

Theoretically, black holes have infinitely dense centers. And that’s almost not worth thinking about – it’d take forever to fully contemplate infinity. But it does stand to reason that the existence of an infinitely massive singularity would intimate the existence of an object with an infinitesimally small central mass. A white hole , if you will.

White holes

Scientists basically describe white holes as origin stories for black holes.

Imagine you’re staring at the edge of a black hole and you see a single particle enter it. It should take an infinite amount of time for that particle to travel through the center of the black hole due to its infinite mass.

So, if you time-traveled infinitely far into the future, you’d still see that particle being sucked into the black hole.

But what would happen if you then turned around and traveled infinitely backwards through time to get back to where you started? It’s paradoxical to imagine a vacuum sucking backwards, so we have to imagine the opposite of a black hole.

A white hole would be infinitesimally mass-less, at least in the respect that it would be a force that was as repulsive as a black hole is inescapable.

Yet, strangely, by description each would have an essentially impassable core mass.

Black stars

Scientists believe black holes are formed when stars collapse in on themselves. And that energy has to go somewhere.

Unfortunately, as we’ve established it would literally take forever to traverse the center of a black hole, it may be impossible to ever make the journey.

That might stop us from finding the truth, but the universe may not need our validation to exist in its true form.

Black holes could be collapsing to the edge of infinity where foreverness meets the eternal nothingness of a dark universe doppelganger.

Even though our black universe could be infinitely expanding, it may also be held in place by a white universe. Maybe white holes function as multiversal drain plugs that keep our universe’s physical and dark matter from leaking out through black holes.

Perhaps the white universe would appear as an infinitely bright cosmos dotted with black stars – lightless quantum entities, eternally frozen in a state of collapse – and infinitesimal, ever-shrinking points called white holes.