But on the question of whether the robots will eventually take over, he {} says that this will probably not happen, for a variety of reasons. First, no one is going to accidentally build a robot that...
To make Harry Potter invisible, one would have to liquefy him, boil him to create steam, crystallize him, heat him again, and the cool him, all of which would be quite difficult to accomplish, even fo...
We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work fo...
[On the practical applications of particle physics research with the Large Hadron Collider.]Sometimes the public says, 'What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I...
Recent brain scans have shed light on how the brain simulates the future. These simulation are done mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, using memories of the past. On o...
Inflation is continuous and eternal, with big bangs happening all the time, with universes sprouting from other universes. In this picture, universes can bud off into other universes, creating a multi...
One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the n...
Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel , where a society of ants declares, 'Everything not forbidden is compulsory.' In other words, if there isn't a basic principle of physics forbiddin...
In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.
Riemann concluded that electricity, magnetism, and gravity are caused by the crumpling of our three-dimensional universe in the unseen fourth dimension. Thus a force has no independent life of its own...
Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable.
The universe is a symphony of strings. And the "Mind of God," which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.
If I wasn't a professional scientist, I'd be an amateur scientist. But plan B was to go into computers.
In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle is it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel...
To me, it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.
To a physicist, beauty means symmetry and simplicity. If a theory is beautiful, this means it has a powerful symmetry that can explain a large body of data in the most compact, economical manner. More...
These computer simulations try only to duplicate the interactions between the cortex and the thalamus. Huge chunks of the brain are therefore missing. Dr. [Dharmendra] Modha understands the enormity o...
Something as superfluous as play is also an essential feature of our consciousness. If you ask children why they like to play, they will say, Because it's fun. But that invites the next question: What...
Science fiction without the science just becomes, you know, sword and sorcery, basically stories about heroism and not much more.
Our Sun is not Earth’s true mother. Although many peoples of Earth have worshipped the Sun as a god that gave birth to Earth, this is only partially correct. Although Earth was originally created from...