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🤖 Neuralink's brain chip, 200,000-year-old human species, secret US military base buried 100 feet deep in Greenland ice

Plus: Secret parachute may have revealed DB Cooper identity after 5 decades, FBI reopens case

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink, the brain-computer interface firm, said it has received a green light to launch a new feasibility study for using its brain implant and a robotic arm.

Through a post on X, Neuralink announced the approval and launch of the feasibility study to extend brain-computer interface (BCI) control using the N1 implant to “an investigational assistive robotic arm.”

The startup says that the launch of the study is an important step towards restoring not just digital but also physical freedom in those who need it the most. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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Neuralink’s PRIME study involves placing a small, cosmetically invisible BCI implant in a part of the brain that plans movements.

This implant allows the people with quadriplegia to control external devices like computers, and smartphones with their thoughts. The BCI implant removes the need for any physical movement or the need of any wires.

Musk’s startup has been inviting people with disabilities – like limited or no ability to use both hands due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – to join their patient registry. Earlier this year, Noland Arbaugh, a 30-year-old who became paralyzed from the shoulders down after a 2016 accident, became the first person to receive Neuralink’s brain implant in January 2024.

A new species of hominin or humans has been discovered in Northern China with an unforgettable physical feature— large heads.

Everyone knows the Neanderthals, homo sapiens, and Denisovans are amongst the first human species. The sapiens are considered the modern humans in that grouping that migrated out of Africa. However, according to research out of China, the number of prehistoric human species might be growing.

“The morphological diversity among late Quaternary hominin fossils from eastern Asia is greater than we expected,” the authors of a new study stated.

In a remarkable discovery during an April 2024 flyover of Greenland, NASA scientists uncovered the remnants of a hidden city buried deep beneath the ice.

Known as Camp Century, this Cold War-era U.S. military base lies buried under 100 feet of the Greenland Ice Sheet. NASA’s Chad Greene, aboard a Gulfstream III aircraft, captured a striking radar image revealing the site. “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a NASA cryospheric scientist. “We didn’t know what it was at first.”

This eerie discovery is part of an effort to map Greenland’s ice using advanced radar technology, though uncovering an abandoned base wasn’t on the agenda. Built in 1959 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Camp Century once stretched across 21 underground tunnels spanning 9,800 feet.

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