For those interested in that new Discovery series, you might want to also pick up Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality for a good introduction to modern theoretical physics. You don't get the dramatic music, though, but I guess you could play some while you read it. A highly recommended read.
Its sitting in my bookshelf with another 12 books' I've got in queue to read
I need to stop looking at amazon until I'm down to 2 books left.
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Its sitting in my bookshelf with another 12 books' I've got in queue to read
I need to stop looking at amazon until I'm down to 2 books left.
Brian Greene is amazing. The guy just has a way of explaining complex theoretical physics in a way that is completely understandable but never misses the point. The section in the Fabric of the Cosmos about symmetry as fundamental to science, and from there into the Higgs field, the electroweak force, and the universe's "phase transition" into a state where the Higgs field becomes influential on the origins of mass SHOULD be astoundingly confusing (to me, anyway), but he makes it sound elementary. It's easily one of my top 5 books. I can't wait to start his book on superstring theory, the Elegant Universe. I think that's the one they're talking about in that video.
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Last edited by HPLovecraft; 08-16-2011 at 01:11 PM.
Ok, found a MUST get documentary from BBC Horizon, called "Seeing Stars" 2011.
Get a hold of this asap, its about modern telescopes and in HD, the images and quality of this doc are top notch and utterly fascinating for us space geeks.
I'm sure you guys can find it easy enough, if not let me know via PM.
The system is capable of "rewiring" its connections as it encounters new information, similar to the way biological synapses work.
Researchers believe that that by replicating that feature, the technology could start to learn.
as much as we joke about the end of the world via our own technology killing us, is there anyway to be sure that doesn't happen if we give a robot sentience? creating something that's as smart as a human and can learn like we do, but doesn't require sleep, food, air, etc seems like an extremely slippery slope
of course i'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we can actually talk about stuff like this outside of science fiction
I think the problem is people forget the possibility we will ourselves slowly turn ourselves into machines as well. Robots will become less metal/wires and will eventually look just like us, so it seems inevitable we'll be able to live on forever and not have to deal with human limitations like aging, eating, not being able to see the full light spectrum, radiation, oxygen, etc.. Dammit now I feel like reading some Issac Asimov books.
But yeah it seems likely AI will happen, not sure why but I feel like we'll be able to still program a fail safe to keep them from turning on us. All I know is I want to be around to see all this, lets hurry up science I need eternal life, or at least let me stick around for a few hundred years more
But yeah it seems likely AI will happen, not sure why but I feel like we'll be able to still program a fail safe to keep them from turning on us. All I know is I want to be around to see all this, lets hurry up science I need eternal life, or at least let me stick around for a few hundred years more
I find it hard to believe that we'd be able to program a reliable fail safe into a being that would very quickly exceed the intelligence level of our top minds. However, I also look forward to our upcoming war against the robots.
I think the problem is people forget the possibility we will ourselves slowly turn ourselves into machines as well. Robots will become less metal/wires and will eventually look just like us, so it seems inevitable we'll be able to live on forever and not have to deal with human limitations like aging, eating, not being able to see the full light spectrum, radiation, oxygen, etc.. Dammit now I feel like reading some Issac Asimov books.
But yeah it seems likely AI will happen, not sure why but I feel like we'll be able to still program a fail safe to keep them from turning on us. All I know is I want to be around to see all this, lets hurry up science I need eternal life, or at least let me stick around for a few hundred years more
Some of them already look pretty close to us now. It doesn't seem like it would be too far off when they perfect some of the mechanics like walking for example. Pop some AI into one of these then and there you go, by that time they will likely look and act even more realistic. Here's a couple from Japan and Europe that look amazingly real.
Ok, found a MUST get documentary from BBC Horizon, called "Seeing Stars" 2011.
Get a hold of this asap, its about modern telescopes and in HD, the images and quality of this doc are top notch and utterly fascinating for us space geeks.
I'm sure you guys can find it easy enough, if not let me know via PM.
Did you guys watch this yet, this documentary is NOT OPTIONAL for you science friends, get on it.
