Jsalt's Let's Talk Science

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound? This is a fairly popular phrase and I think there is more to it than what you get at first glance. Practically speaking, why wouldn't it make noise? Physics doesn't happen when we are watching, it happens all the time. That's why we call them the Laws of Physics. They are always true. But, how can we be sure? We can't observe something we don't see, so how can we pass judgment on it? If we think about what sound is, it is what our ears hear after some physical event. So if our ears aren't there to hear the sound, is it still sound? Or is it just a vibration of air that may or may not be heard, depending on if there is someone or something there to hear it? Kind of a mind numbing thought, but the fact is we can't really prove it, can we? If I placed a recording device in a forest that had unlimited memory and waited until a tree fell down, or maybe helped a tree begi...

Yes, AI, as in Artificial Intelligence. Is it or can it be as bad as we think? Or are our negative thoughts toward it simply biased from science fiction? I mean, the ability for a computer to accept 1's and 0's in the form of programming code and turn that into a self-learning, better yet, a self-thinking machine is fantastic to me. But are we wrong in assuming it's potential? Great minds like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have publically said that we need to be particularly careful with AI. But have we even achieved true AI yet? To answer that, let's look at what we have right now, at least as public information. I'll focus on the biggies, the first being Google's DeepMind. They were in the news recently because of a software they call AlphaGo, which was tasked with playing the world's greatest Go player in a series to see if machine can beat man. And crazily enough, it did! It did lose as well, to be fair. If you don't know what Go is, it's an ...

I had a friend ask me about concept cars, along the lines of why make a concept? Do they even drive? I want to explore the many reasons why concepts are great things, even if they never come to light. First, what is a concept? Let's use the example of cars. BMW just showed off their new concept car, the Vision Next 100, at a show in Europe, maybe Geneva? It doesn't matter, but it was pretty fantastic. The steering was re-imagined completely. The materials used for the car body were unseen before.  Here's a GIF of the car . So assuming you watched the GIF in the link, it's impressive. The body of the car adjusts itself as the wheel is turned. The steering wheel (thing?) retracts itself after you pet it (I assume turn it off) but all of this still begs the question, why? The point isn't to see this car driving on the road in a few years. It's fairly likely this car will never see the inside of your average person's, or local millionaire's garage. T...

Hello fellow humans! I have decided to keep my brain segregated into my two trains of thought for these blog posts. Let's face it, you're going to read both because I'm an excellent writer (note the exuding of confidence through the computer) but for those who don't care about what I have to say on day to day topics, and only enjoy my magnificent opinions on science-related topics, this page is for you! I even have a cool new URL.. I think. I'm no pro at this (ask the $0.05 I've earned from these posts). I realize one of you probably accidentally clicked on the ad and BAM, I earned half a penny (which only exists in the meta-world now a days, at least in Canada). So thanks for helping feed a starving student kind patron! Unfortunately, it's way too much work to transfer the science posts from "NOT A JOURNAL", my other fantastic blog, to this one, so, guess I'm starting fresh. If you'd like any explanations of specific topics in science-re...