science

Consider the power of self-replication. Biological systems are all products of self-replication, from the very first bit of self-replicating DNA, down through billions of years, entwined in every branch of the tree of life and our own DNA.

It is believed that supercomputers will achieve the computational power of human brains by about 2020, personal computers just a few years later, so figuring out the details of the brain's structure and functioning needs to keep pace. A major challenge in this has been the limits of MRI resolution, which is why the news of a major breakthrough has such significance.

Understandably upset by the idea that reality does not exist without an observer, many physicists have postulated the existence of "hidden variables" that could explain the mathematical and experimental data that give rise to these bizarre conclusions. But recently, as an article in PhysicsWeb describes, an experiment run in Austria appears to dash the hopes of the hidden variables crowd.

I was a bit disappointed when I learned that the PBS documentary Nanotechnology Takes Off was not going to be aired in my neck of the woods back in March. OK, I was more than a bit disappointed. This was something I was deeply interested in, and I couldn't watch it. Well, it turns out I shouldn't have been so faithless, because it's now available for viewing online.

The Price of Rice!

Billed as "the thinnest of all possible materials in the universe," graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that looks like "molecular chicken wire."

Thanks go to my friend Louie Savva from Everything is Pointless for pointing me to Aubrey de Grey and Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).

For whatever reason, from whatever strange motive, scientists have speculated on the question of how our universe will end. It matters not to them that this denouement exists so far into the future that the numbers are incomprehensible in any meaningful way. They simply want to know. They surmise that the universe will end either in a big crunch or a big freeze.

Great introduction to emergence, including several simulations you can play with.  Simulations include the classic "Life," Brian's brain, and one that tends towards chaotic patterns. 

Anyone who po