AI_Interface

In order to explain certain phenomena physicists have postulated the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes that are all different from our universe. So in fact there are actually many version of Oct 2nd 1960 @ 10:30 am. If you were to go back in time you would be travelling to a different universe. That is why it would be possible for you to travel back in time, kill you father and still exist.

Science is about finding the best explanations for a problem. In the case of evolution vs. creationism, the problem is how did life become what it is today. Literalist 6-day creation has been refuted by numerous observations thus ruling it out as a viable solution. However many creationists have opted for a less literal form of creationism that can be simplified to "the theory of evolution + the guiding hand of god" (hereafter refeered to as creationism). This theory makes the same predictions as evolution and thus can't be refuted by observation. It is still false, though. The only difference between the theory of evolution and creationism is the "guiding hand of god" term. If both theories make identical predictions then the theory with the least terms (the least complex one) is the preferable theory. In this case the preferable theory is evolution since it has the least terms (it isn't unessecarily complex) and it therefore provides the best explanation.

I don't think we know enough about our climate to accuratly predict what will happen in the next 100 years. CO2 makes up less then 1 % of our atmosphere. Water vapour has a much larger effect on the global climate the CO2. Over the past couple decades CO2 has become a sort of buzz word that everyone blames for bad weather. Hydrogen isn't a fuel and will never replace oil. Hydrogen can only be used to store energy.

Wormholes are like black holes. They look identical from outside their event horizons and under normal circumstances the gravitational stresses inside the event horizon would kill a human being. However if a wormhole was stablized using exotic matter, it is theoretically possible to compress journeys of thousands of light-years to journeys of a few kilometers.

Space doesn't have any borders. If you were to fly in the same direction and keep flying you would eventually come back to were you began. Space does however have a finite volume, mass and energy.

Another possibility is to circle a rotating black hole following specific course. If you do it right you will arrive back at your point of departure at the same time you left.

I'm canadian so havn't seen much ID/evolution contoversy close to home, but I've been following what is happening in the states and it does worry me. I also thought the cartoon was good.

CPL.Luke is right, the one that fires it's missles first and has the best counter-measures. In this case the F-22 stealth capabilities give it the edge over the competition.

Mostly sci-fi and non-fiction books about science, computer science and a little philosophy. Occasionally fantasy. I love the Lord of The Rings and I've got Eldest around somewhere but I don't know if I'm going to read it because Eragon wasn't my favourite book in the world.

When performing experiments involving small particles like electrons and photons, physicist have observed that these particles are interfering with identical 'mirror' particles. These 'mirror' particles behave exactly like the electrons and photons we observe in our universe but they only interact through interference on the quantum level. This means that there are other universes existing in parallel with our own. These universes only interact through the effects of quantum interference and are hence undetectable on the macroscopic scale. Does this not qualify them as other universes? How are they apart of our universe if there is no exchange of matter/energy?

Personally i enjoyed the book a lot more than the movie but they were both good. I would have like the movie more if it had spent a little more time in the alien station but oh well.

My favourite genre is sci-fi because you can have funny sci-fi, dramatic sci-fi, romantic (unfortunatly) sci-fi. Add that to space battles and some really intriguing premises (except in star trek and babylon 5) and you've got a well rounded genre.

Does that mean that the information that you had was false? Where did the false information come from? Information can't come from nothing. I think you mean that there would now be two realities where there was one. The idea of multiple universes is an intriguing one and can lend support to both determinism and free will arguments (it also has a excellent track record for solving time travel paradoxes like the one I described). Take the lottery number paradox, using the theory that there are multiple universes with different paths through spacetime, we can infer that I won the lottery in a universe and in another, lost. In other words you could say that in a few universes it was 'determined' that I would win the lottery but in other that I would lose. Of course then you have to deal with the case of how the behavior of a person in another universe ('me' choosing to travel back in time to 'my' universe) would affect causality in another universe. The best explanation in my opinion is that the past, present and future are meaningless distinctions. When you seem to travel forward in time, you are merely travelling to another, extremely simillar universe. Thus instead of use 'moving' through time we 'move' through different universes. Very unfortunatly. I don't think that determinism is depressing since then I would know that the future isn't uncertain and that if something happens I don't have to regret it because it couldn't have happened any other way. I'm only interested in which theory is logically consitent and consistent with empirical evidence. I suggest you read "The Fabric of Reality" by David Deutsh and "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku. Both books have a lot about parallel universes and the nature of time. Same here.

Tomgwyther, you seem to be in the determinist camp when it comes to time. Here is a simple thought experiment: Let's say I've just completed a marvolous time machine that has the ability to travel into both the past and the future. I'am about to step through the time machine to find out the winning lottery number for next weeks draw when suddenly 'I' walk out the door of my time machine with a piece of paper that has the lottery number written on it. Sure enough the next week I win the jackpot and proceed to go back in time to give 'myself ' the lottery number but instead I decide to play a trick. Instead of writting the correct lottery number on the slip of paper I give to 'myself' i write the wrong one. I then proceed to the past and give the slip of paper to 'myself' using different wording then I remember 'myself' using. It would appear that I've quite effectivly changed the past.

in order of oldest to youngest: a,c,e,b,d,f,gus because a (low speed, low gravity) and gus is experiencing the most (due to his speed) however the affects on the planets would be negligable and amount to only fractions of a second where gus would be significantly younger.

AI is only limited by the hardware it is being run on. The faster the hardware, the faster the AI can learn and impliment new ideas. I can't think of a reason why AI wouldn't be able to grow beyond our knowledge if we simply kept upgrading its hardware and we wrote the appropriate algorithms to give it the ability to learn. The same goes for humans. The size of our brain is only limited by the size of the birth canal, so with the use of artificial wombs and genetic engineering we can make ourselves as intelligent as we want. As for the rate of natural evolution making use more intelligent, we havn't gotten any smarter than when our ancestors hunted for food. If an human from that time period were to be born today he would have the same chance at getting a PHd in astrophysics as any of us.

I like your idea JohnB. Maybe each letter could be preceeded by another letter that would help people to remeber what that letter is indicative of. Or have them organized into a chart. You could also use 0 to represent earth and the rest of the numbers to represent relative properties. That way new classes could be added easily in the case of newly discovered steller phenomena.

So far there are no know physical laws that contradict the possiblity of time travel either future, past or present oriented. Some physicist have sited paradoxes like the grandfather paradox as proof that time travel as possible (in my opinion the multiple-worlds interpetation of quantum mechanics solves this problem) however others have come up with some rather creative solutions. For instance, a carfully plotted course around the event horizon of a spinning black hole would bring you back to the moment you left. an important aspect of time travel is that you can't go farther back in time than the moment when the time travel decive was created.

I'm a candian in ontario and am currently a senior in high school. Right now i'm taking chemistry and computer engineering. I've read a lot of books about current theoretical models of the universe (string theory, m-theory) and am very interested in learning more about the world around me.