As mentioned in my previous post, we were gone for the weekend. Went to Chicago, for a rehearsal of the North American Welsh Choir prior to our Patagonia trip in about 6 weeks. No, I wasn’t singing – I leave that to my wife. If you heard me sing, you’d understand why.
Anyway, since she was going to be busy all day Saturday with the rehearsal, I decided to pop out and spend a bit of time in Chicago. That’s always easy for me to do, since Chicago is one of the great cities of the world and I know it reasonably well. This time I opted to take the public transportation down to the Museum of Science & Industry, which I haven’t visited in at least 30 years.
The choice of taking public transport was probably not the most efficient one, in terms of maximizing my time at the museum. But I did so for a fairly simple reason: I had never done so in Chicago, and I wanted to exercise my skill at navigating an unknown system “cold”, so to speak, prior to going to Argentina next month. I’m usually pretty good at using such systems, but it has been a couple of years since I had to do so, and I thought a brief refresher would be a good idea. It went fine.
So I eventually got to the Museum, waited in line for my ticket, went in to the exhibits. There’s a lot to see there, and I may write about a couple of things in the next few days. But the one exhibit I particularly enjoyed seeing up close was their reproduction of the Wright Flyer.
No doubt you know the story of this small biplane, and the history that Orville and Wilbur Wright made with the original 105 years ago. You may have even seen the original or one of the reproductions on TV or on display somewhere. But have you ever been up close to it? It’s fascinating to see how simple it is in construction and design. Wandering around, looking at it on my own (the display was basically ignored by the mass of kids with parents in tow, who were more interested in the more ‘high tech’ displays in the museum), for the first time it sunk in that if I wanted to, I could build such a thing. Oh, I would probably outsource the engine (as did the Wrights), but all the rest of it I could easily make. It would just take some time, some space, and a bit of money to do so.
Think about that. You, in all likelihood, could build one too, if you have some basic mechanical skills and wanted to take the time. It wouldn’t meet current safety standards, of course, but it would be flyable.
This is in no way meant to belittle the breakthroughs of the Wright brothers, or, for that matter, the accomplishments of the AIAA Wright Flyer Project. But I think that it is important for us to not lose sight of the fact that there was no magic involved, just a lot of good hard work, testing, and innovation, by real people using simple materials and tools. I think we forget that, sometimes.
Jim Downey
Got two hours to spare? It could open up a whole new dimension in your life.
No, this is not some Amway scam, new-age Woo, or political revival. It’s a series of brilliant videos (along with explanatory text) put together by a French mathematician which explore the existence of a fourth spatial dimension. And it is *very* cool. From ScienceNews:
So can any of these techniques help us visualize Schläfli’s 600-sided, four-dimensional shape? Using a computer, Ghys first passes Schläfli’s regular, four-dimensional shapes through three-dimensional space and looks at the three-dimensional “slices” created. This helps a bit, but just as in two dimensions, it’s not easy to assemble an image of the higher-dimensional shape this way.
Next, he draws the three-dimensional “shadows” of the four-dimensional objects. This turns out to be much better: Rotating the objects around to see different facets of them can give a pretty good feeling for their shapes.
Finally, he uses stereographic projection. The idea is the same as projecting from three to two: You blow the four-dimensional shape up into a ball, and then you place a light at the “north pole” and project the image down into three dimensions. That process is all-but-impossible for us to visualize, just as the process of projecting a three-dimensional ball would be impossible for the lizards to imagine. The results, though, are gloriously easy to make sense of.
OK, for this old dog it is still a bit tough – my imagination is not as supple as it once was. But even I could start to get glimpses, on the first viewing. I plan on taking the time to make at least one more pass at the series. For someone such as myself who lacks the mathematics background to really understand what is going on, this is a very helpful tool. Seriously – give it a try. It could open up a whole new dimension for you.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Charlie Stross, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Travel, Wired
Bit over a year ago, I wrote about Charlie Stross’s pessimistic views on space colonization. Pointing out that Stross was correct in terms of the current technology curve, I said that the bigger issue was a failure to understand that forecasting breakthrough technologies is almost impossible. From my post:
The thing is, it is difficult in the extreme to make solid predictions more than a couple of decades out. In my own lifetime I have seen surprise wonders come on the scene, and expectations thwarted. Technology develops in ways that don’t always make sense, except perhaps in hindsight. 100 years ago, many people thought that commercial flight would never become a reality. 40 years ago, people thought that we’d have permanent bases on the Moon by now. You get my drift.
Everything that Charlie Stross says in his post makes sense. You can’t get to that future from here. But “here” is going to change in ways which are unpredictable, and then the future becomes more in flux than what we expect at present. For Communion of Dreams, I set forth a possible future history which leads to permanent settlements on the Moon, Mars, and Europa, with functional space stations at several other locations outside of Earth orbit. Will it happen? I dunno. I doubt that exactly my scenario would come about. But it is plausible.
And I have pretty much the exact same reaction to this item from Wired:
Rocket Scientists Say We’ll Never Reach the Stars
Many believe that humanity’s destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.
At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity’s interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.
Well, yeah. And if you asked medieval blacksmiths about about building a weapon that could kill a million people instantly, they’d also say it was impossible. For them, it was. For us, it’s technology which is 63 years old as of last month.
I’m sure everyone attending that conference (professionally, anyway) knows more about rocket science than I do. And probably about any exotic propulsion technologies on the horizon as well.
But that doesn’t mean they’re right. In fact, even if they aren’t elderly, they’re very probably wrong.
And even they know it. From that same article in Wired, after saying this:
The major problem is that propulsion — shooting mass backwards to go forwards — requires large amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system’s nearest neighbor. Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri, according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Frisbee says this:
As for interstellar travel, even the realists are far from giving up. All it takes is one breakthrough to make the calculations work, Frisbee said.
“It’s always science fiction until someone goes out and does it,” he said.
Perzactly.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
One of the difficulties facing computer engineers/scientists with developing expert systems and true Artificial Intelligence is the paradigm they use. Simply, working from structures analogous to the human brain, there has been a tendency to isolate functions and have them work independently. Even in modern computer science such things as adaptive neural networks are understood to analogous to biological neural networks in the brain, which serve a specific function:
Biological neural networks are made up of real biological neurons that are connected or functionally-related in the peripheral nervous system or the central nervous system. In the field of neuroscience, they are often identified as groups of neurons that perform a specific physiological function in laboratory analysis.
But what if the neuroscience on which these theories are based has been wrong?
Here’s the basics of what was Neuroscience 101: The auditory system records sound, while the visual system focuses, well, on the visuals, and never do they meet. Instead, a “higher cognitive” producer, like the brain’s superior colliculus, uses these separate inputs to create our cinematic experiences.
The textbook rewrite: The brain can, if it must, directly use sound to see and light to hear.
* * *
Researchers trained monkeys to locate a light flashed on a screen. When the light was very bright, they easily found it; when it was dim, it took a long time. But if a dim light made a brief sound, the monkeys found it in no time – too quickly, in fact, than can be explained by the old theories.
Recordings from 49 neurons responsible for the earliest stages of visual processing, researchers found activation that mirrored the behavior. That is, when the sound was played, the neurons reacted as if there had been a stronger light, at a speed that can only be explained by a direct connection between the ear and eye brain regions, said researcher Ye Wang of the University of Texas in Houston.
The implication is that there is a great deal more flexibility – or ‘plasticity’ – in the structure of the brain than had been previously understood.
Well, yeah. Just consider how someone who has been blind since birth will have heightened awareness of other senses. Some have argued that this is simply a matter of such a person learning to make the greatest use of the senses they have. But others have suspected that they actually learn to use those structures in the brain normally associated with visual processing to boost the ability to process other sensory data. And that’s what the above research shows.
OK, two things. One, this is why I have speculated in Communion of Dreams that synesthesia is more than just the confusion of sensory input – it is using our existing senses to construct not a simple linear view of the world, but a matrix in three dimensions (with the five senses on each axis of such a ‘cube’ structure). In other words, synesthesia is more akin to a meta-cognitive function. That is why (as I mentioned a few days ago) the use of accelerator drugs in the novel allows users to take a step-up in cognition and creativity, though at the cost of burning up the brain’s available store of neurotransmitters.
And two, this is also why I created the ‘tholin gel’ found on Titan to be a superior material as the basis of computers, and even specify that the threshold limit for a gel burr in such use is about the size of the human brain. Why? Well, because such a superconducting superfluid would not function as a simple neural network – rather, the entire burr of gel would function as a single structure, with enormous flexibility and plasticity. In other words, much more like the way the human brain functions as is now coming to be understood.
So, perhaps in letting go of the inaccurate model for the way the brain works, we’ll take a big step closer to creating true artificial intelligence. Like in my book. It pays to be flexible, in our theories, in our thinking, and in how we see the world.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to ML for the news link.
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, Humor, MetaFilter, Science, Space, tech
OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I’m the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.
It’s actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here’s the description from the site:
Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets’ paths. The Sun’s pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don’t leave the screen or collide!
I’m sure that they have established some fairly basic approximations for your computer to manipulate, but it still addresses one of the classic problems of physics: how to calculate the orbital dynamics for two or more bodies in motion. Even if you restrict the interactions to one orbital plane, this is a surprisingly difficult problem for more than two bodies, and has been for centuries. From ScienceWorld:
The three-body problem considers three mutually interacting masses
,
, and
. In the restricted three-body problem,
The efforts of many famous mathematicians have been devoted to this difficult problem, including Euler
and Lagrange
And Wikipedia has a very good entry (beyond my math level) about the broader n-body problem:
General considerations: solving the n-body problem
In the physical literature about the n-body problem (n ≥ 3), sometimes reference is made to the impossibility of solving the n-body problem. However one has to be careful here, as this applies to the method of first integrals (compare the theorems by Abel and Galois about the impossibility of solving algebraic equations of degree five or higher by means of formulas only involving roots).
The n-body problem contains 6n variables, since each point particle is represented by three space (displacement) and three velocity components. First integrals (for ordinary differential equations) are functions that remain constant along any given solution of the system, the constant depending on the solution. In other words, integrals provide relations between the variables of the system, so each scalar integral would normally allow the reduction of the system’s dimension by one unit. Of course, this reduction can take place only if the integral is an algebraic function not very complicated with respect to its variables. If the integral is transcendent the reduction cannot be performed.
Well, have fun with it. And be amused about that all that phenomenal computing power at your fingertips making a simple little game. Such is the future.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Genetic Testing, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, Titan, Writing stuff
I’ve written previously about the emergence of consciousness and the role that the biochemical stew in our heads plays in awareness and cognition. But let’s get a little more basic in our analysis. Let’s consider fire. No, not the slow fire of chemical reactions in our bodies, but actual burning of wood, and the role that it may have played in the development of human intelligence.
* * * * * * *
The Greek myth of Prometheus bringing the holy fire of Zeus to mankind, and thereby enabling civilization, has usually been understood as being an explanation of the role which technology plays in human development. After all, fire allows humans to control our environment, from living in colder climates to clearing land for farming to metallurgy. And, of course, to cook food, making a wider range of nutrients available.
But what if fire made human thought itself possible?
Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart
After two tremendous growth spurts — one in size, followed by an even more important one in cognitive ability — the human brain is now a lot like a teenage boy.
It consumes huge amounts of calories, is rather temperamental and, when harnessed just right, exhibits incredible prowess. The brain’s roaring metabolism, possibly stimulated by early man’s invention of cooking, may be the main factor behind our most critical cognitive leap, new research suggests.
OK, that article is a little light on actual information. So I went to check the research paper. It’s a bit thick, but the basic idea was to study the rise of human cognition via two methods:
In this study, we attempted to identify molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of human-specific cognitive abilities by combining biological data from two research directions: evolutionary and medical. Firstly, we identify the molecular changes that took place on the human evolutionary lineage, presumably due to positive selection. Secondly, we consider molecular changes observed in schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder believed to affect such human cognitive functions as the capacity for complex social relations and language [6–12]. Combining the two datasets, we test the following prediction: if a cognitive disorder, such as schizophrenia, affects recently evolved biological processes underlying human-specific cognitive abilities, we anticipate finding a significant overlap between the recent evolutionary and the pathological changes. Furthermore, if such significant overlap is observed, the overlapping biological processes may provide insights into molecular changes important for the evolution and maintenance of human-specific cognitive abilities.
Got that? First, you determine the differences due to evolution (specifically as seen in DNA/mRNA divergence between us and chimpanzees), then you see where the brains of people who have schizophrenia are different from ‘normal’ brains. That can give you some indications of how cognition works, since schizophrenia is known to primarily impact cognition.
What did the researchers find?
In order to select human-specific evolutionary changes, we used the published list of 22 biological processes showing evidence of positive selection in terms of their mRNA expression levels in brain during recent human evolution [13]. Next, we tested whether expression of genes contained in these functional categories is altered in schizophrenia to a greater extent than expected by chance. To do this, we ranked 16,815 genes expressed in brain in order of probability of differential expression in schizophrenia, using data from a meta-analysis of 105 individuals profiled on 4 different microarray platforms in 6 independent studies [14]. We found that 6 of the 22 positively selected biological processes are significantly enriched in genes differentially expressed in schizophrenia (Wilcoxon rank sum test, p < 0.03, false discovery rate (FDR) = 11%), while only 0.7 would be expected to show such an enrichment by chance (Figure 1; Table S2 in Additional data file 1; Materials and methods). Strikingly, all six of these biological processes are related to energy metabolism. This is highly unexpected, given that there were only 7 biological processes containing genes involved in energy metabolism among the 22 positively selected categories (Figure 1; Table S2 in Additional data file 1). The mRNA expression changes observed in schizophrenia appear to be distributed approximately equally in respect to the direction of change, pointing towards a general dysregulation of these processes in the disease rather than a coordinated change (Table S3 in Additional data file 1).
Simply put: it’s metabolism. The brain eats up a lot of energy, about 20% of all the energy you take in as food. That’s a lot – for chimps the number is about 13%, and for other vertebrates it runs 2 – 8%. The conclusion:
In this study we find a disproportionately large overlap between processes that have changed during human evolution and biological processes affected in schizophrenia. Genes relating to energy metabolism are particularly implicated for both the evolution and maintenance of human-specific cognitive abilities.
Using 1H NMR spectroscopy, we find evidence that metabolites significantly altered in schizophrenia have changed more on the human lineage than those that are unaltered. Furthermore, genes related to the significantly altered metabolites show greater sequence and mRNA expression divergence between humans and chimpanzees, as well as indications of positive selection in humans, compared to genes related to the unaltered metabolites.
Taken together, these findings indicate that changes in human brain metabolism may have been an important step in the evolution of human cognitive abilities. Our results are consistent with the theory that schizophrenia is a costly by-product of human brain evolution [11,37].
When did this take place? From the LiveScience article first cited:
The extra calories may not have come from more food, but rather from the emergence of pre-historic “Iron Chefs;” the first hearths also arose about 200,000 years ago.
In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, Khaitovich explained, thereby freeing up calories for our brains.
* * * * * * *
In Communion of Dreams, I posit the use of “auggies” – drugs designed to maximize the utilization of neurotransmitters in the brain. When combined with increased sensory information thanks to technology, an artificial kind of synesthesia occures, allowing for insights (artistic, cognitive) otherwise beyond human ability. But it is a cheat – you ‘burn up’ the available neurotransmitters quickly, accelerating brain function, but are left then less capable for a period of days after as the body replenishes. This is by and large a metabolic function – the same way an athlete can burn up energy stored in muscles in one brief period, but then needs time to recover.
I wrote this with an instinctive understanding of the mechanism involved – we’ve all experienced something akin to this phenomenon of pushing ourselves mentally for a short period, being tired and less able to think clearly afterwards. It’s a bit surprising to find that it may have literally been the same mechanism which lead to the rise of human intelligence to begin with.
And as for the alien artifact on Titan, which causes a similar phenomenon? Just coincidence that Prometheus was one of the Titans in Greek mythology.
No, really – just coincidence.
Jim Downey
*and yes, I realize that this isn’t quite what The Doors meant.
Jon walked to the edge of the pool. He heard a noise behind him, turned slowly to look at it.
From beside a large bush a pile of boulders shifted. The air shimmied, light danced, and a crouching figure emerged, covered in a fabric drape that tried to keep up with the changing surroundings. One hand pulled the drape to the side. Another was holding a very large sidearm.
Excerpt from Chapter 18 (page 258 of the .pdf) of Communion of Dreams. That’s my description of a military ‘stealth suit’ being used by one of the characters. Why do I mention it? Because:
WASHINGTON – Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.
The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.
The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.
Wow. Another prediction coming true in my lifetime.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Daily Kos, Mars, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Press, Science, Space, Universe Today
You undoubtedly heard that the Phoenix Mars Lander this week confirmed the existence of water ice at the location of the lander. News, yes, but as others have noted, scientists have had little doubt that there was water ice on Mars for quite some time.
However . . .
. . . what if there’s something else going on that will be much more interesting news?
The White House is Briefed: Phoenix About to Announce “Potential For Life” on Mars
It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday. Whilst NASA scientists are not claiming that life once existed on the Red Planet’s surface, new data appears to indicate the “potential for life” more conclusively than the TEGA water results. Apparently these new results are being kept under wraps until further, more detailed analysis can be carried out, but we are assured that this announcement will be huge…
So why is there all this secrecy? According to scientists in communication with Aviation Week & Space Technology, the next big discovery will need to be mulled over for a while before it is announced to the world. In fact, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory science team for the MECA wet-chemistry instrument that made these undisclosed findings were kept out of the July 31st news conference (confirming water) so additional analysis could be carried out, avoiding any questions that may have revealed their preliminary results. They have also made the decision to discuss the results with the Bush Administration’s Presidential Science Advisor’s office before a press conference between mid-August and early September.
And from the Aviation Week article:
White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life
The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the “potential for life” on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability–the “potential” for Mars to support life–at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.
The data are much more complex than results related NASA’s July 31 announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at the site.
I can understand the desire to be much more certain of their results before making an official announcement. Remember the debacle of the Martian Meteorite which purportedly contained evidence of fossilized bacteria? That debate is *still* going on, in large part because there are legitimate questions of how to understand the data. No one at NASA, or JPL, or anywhere else is going to want to overstate the results this time around.
So, is there life on Mars? Maybe. I’d guess likely, given all that we know about the planet. But it costs me nothing to make such a statement – scientists with reputations on the line are understandably going to be much more careful in making that case. So, let’s wait and see what the evidence shows.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Comics, General Musings, movies, NYT, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Travel
. . . but the announcement that there is a functional personal flying device to be revealed today is still pretty cool.
Why do I call it a ‘personal flying device’? Because it isn’t really a classic ‘jetpack‘ as we’ve seen in plenty of cartoons and movies. It is a large beast, weighing about 250 pounds, with twin fans each the size of a garbage can cut about in half. And for safety purposes, there is a support frame which allows the pilot to climb under the thing and strap himself to it. Hardly the ‘engine’ of The Rocketeer. But all in all, not a bad start – this is functional, will fly for about 30 minutes (the longest classic jetpack such as James Bond flew could go for about 30 seconds), and is fairly stable. From here significant improvements will be made. And Glenn Martin, the inventor of the device, understands this:
Only 12 people have flown the jetpack, and no one has gained more than three hours of experience in the air. Mr. Martin plans to take it up to 500 feet within six months. This time, he said with a smile, he will be the first.
Mr. Martin said he had no idea how his invention might ultimately be used, but he is not a man of small hopes. He repeated the story of Benjamin Franklin, on first seeing a hot-air balloon, being asked, “What good is it?” He answered, “What good is a newborn baby?”
Exactly.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 