Inverse - 💤 The future of sleep

Monday

Nov 28 2022

Did you know that most people spend about one-third of their lives asleep? It might seem pointless to commit this much time to be unconscious. This notion couldn’t be farther from the truth: Sleep is essential to human life as we know it. Despite this, the CDC reports that a third of Americans claim they don’t get enough sleep regularly. Unsurprisingly, sleep is also still somewhat elusive to science: Researchers haven’t fully nailed down what sleep is and why we must devote time to it. But we are getting closer.

This week we bring you five dispatches from the sleep science world, including how researchers are breaking down what nightmares are, how to sleep anywhere, including in a tree, and how to hack your own sleep with science. Rest assured, you won’t get sleepy reading these tales. Welcome to sleep week.

What's New

FUTURE OF SLEEP

Mind and Body

Can you become a morning person? Sleep scientists say it's possible

As any night owl can tell you, “not a morning person” is more than a saying on your aunt’s favorite mug.

Morning and evening people will attest that these two groups are fundamentally different. However, our 9-to-5 society caters more to early birds than night owls. So what makes someone an evening person, and is it possible to transform into a morning person?

The natural inclination to fall asleep and wake up at certain times is known as our chronotype, and it changes among individuals, Jamie Zeitzer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at Stanford University and a circadian psychologist, tells Inverse.

Sponsored

Audi

New holiday tradition: plug into a better future

Ah, holiday tech traditions: connecting to grandma’s ethernet port, going on an early-morning replacement phone charger run, and helping dad set up the smart TV (again). This time, ring in the new year with technology that brings a sense of optimism. With over 100 years of experience on the cutting edge, Audi has been manufacturing vehicles for premium mobility since day one. Fully electric motors housed in an elegant design rivals any family heirloom: That’s what makes Audi instantly recognizable.

This year, combine the automotive name you know and trust with the premium features you dream of finding under the tree.

Explore Audi today

Inverse Interview

Gaming

Geoff Keighley reveals the tech innovation that could change gaming forever

Geoff Keighley hosted the very first The Game Awards in 2014, and in the eight years since the show has grown by leaps and bounds.

The show has woven a delicate balance between awards and world premieres, which is entirely intentional.

“World premieres are what get people through the front door to watch the show,” Keighley tells Inverse. “That makes the award seen by tens of millions of people, which we think is really exciting for the teams that get recognized. They get seen in front of a lot of people.”

Keighley may be synonymous with The Game Awards, but his role in the industry goes back much further. He’s an industry veteran with decades of experience as a presenter, writer, and host, with a unique perspective on how games are made and how they manage to stand the test of time. So what kinds of innovation does he hope to see 10 years from now?

Power Glove

Innovation

30 years later, Nintendo's weirdest hardware flop could finally catch on

The year was 1989, and Nintendo had just released a groundbreaking game controller that could throw players into the action as no accessory had before. The now-infamous Power Glove looked a bit like the kind of protective equipment worn to handle hazardous materials, but it was revolutionary at the time: The device allowed players to control games using the movement of their bodies without the need for a hand-powered controller.

While the Power Glove may be dead, the dream of bringing users into virtual environments with easy-to-integrate accessories like gloves lives on, says Ben O’Brien, CEO of the motion-capture technology company StretchSense.

“Being able to reach out and simply touch and manipulate virtual environments significantly lowers the learning curve and makes virtual worlds as accessible as possible,” O’Brien says. “This accessibility is essential as more and more of how we work, play, create, learn, and socialize goes online.”

LOOK UP

Science

Astronomers find a pristine meteorite from the dawn of the Solar System

On February 28, 2021, England was amid the Covid-19 lockdowns when a fireball appeared for eight seconds in the clear night sky. The blazing bolide appeared on 16 dedicated meteor cameras and produced more than a thousand eyewitness accounts.

As astronomers would later find out from its flight path and composition, the meteor evaded metamorphosis during the early Solar System’s evolution over millions of years.

The rapid communal search and recovery of the meteorite ensured it was a rather pristine specimen for Ashley King and his colleagues to study, whose conclusions appear in a new paper published this month in the journal Science Advances.

X-RAY VISION

Science

Black holes continue to be equal parts terrifying and fascinating

We think of black holes as dark voids — and technically, that’s true, but their effect on the space around them produces some of the brightest light in the universe. And physicists just got a step closer to understanding why.

The supermassive black hole called Markarian 501 lies at the heart of a galaxy 457 million light years away, and it blasts jets of charged particles into space at nearly the speed of light. In the process, those particles emit powerful X-rays, and because the jets happen to be pointed toward Earth, astronomers have an excellent view.

Recently, data from a fairly new space telescope helped a team of astrophysicists work out the mechanics that make those jets shine brighter than 100 billion Suns. A University of Turku-led team who observed the galaxy published their work in the journal Nature.

Meanwhile...

The best Cyber Monday deals on Amazon right now

Firefly swarms may have finally solved a 20-year-old scientific mystery

Massive new study disproves a common assumption about human mating habits

23 years ago, Nintendo released the best video game sequel ever

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