Ray Kurzweil, Futurist: 10 Questions About What’s Coming Next

in Science, Video - Science | April 26th, 2011

The 2009 doc­u­men­tary Tran­scen­dent Man: The Life and Ideas of Ray Kurzweil is cur­rent­ly screen­ing both online and in select venues, and pro­vok­ing exact­ly the wide range of respons­es one would expect from a film about a futur­ist who has claimed, among oth­er things, that man would soon learn how to extend his life “indef­i­nite­ly.” The New York Times recent­ly com­pared his the­o­ries with 2nd and 3rd cen­tu­ry gnos­ti­cism, and since this film was made by an avowed believ­er in Kurzweil’s phi­los­o­phy and the­o­ries, it’s no sur­prise that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can faults the movie for its rev­er­ence, and Vari­ety wish­es “It were not so trans­par­ent­ly on [Kurzweil’s side].”

Mean­while, the “high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed crack­pot,” as you see him described in the movie’s trail­er, has been proven right more often than wrong. His fans are legion, and often wealthy. Lar­ry Page, the founder and CEO of Google, helped estab­lish Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty with Kurzweil in 2008, and there many entre­pre­neurs and investors take 10 week cours­es to the tune of $25,000.

If you’re not inter­est­ed in shelling out $5 to rent the movie online (scroll down to the bot­tom of the page), then Kurzweil’s 10 answers to Time Mag­a­zine’s 10 ques­tions will give you a taste of what the fuss has been all about.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

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The Soundtrack of the Universe

in Astronomy, Music, Science, Video - Science | April 25th, 2011

We think of space as a silent movie, some­thing we see but nev­er hear. Yet space cre­ates a sound­track of sorts (even if sound waves can’t real­ly trav­el through the cos­mos), and now sci­en­tists and musi­cians want to play that sound­track for you.

Ear­li­er this year, Jan­na Levin, Pro­fes­sor of Physics and Astron­o­my at Barnard College/Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty, described how we can math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mod­el the sounds made by black holes. Fast for­ward to the 10:27 mark of her TED Talk above, and you will hear what it sounds like when a lighter black hole falls into a heav­ier black hole. The lit­tle guy bangs against space, kind of like a drumb play­ing faster and faster … which brings us to Mick­ey Hart, a for­mer drum­mer for The Grate­ful Dead.

In 2010, Hart teamed up with George Smoot, a Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, to repro­duce the sound of The Big Bang and super­novas. (Berke­ley Labs post­ed this super­no­va clip above.) You can read more about the unlike­ly pair­ing and the “Rhythms of the Uni­verse” project here, then expe­ri­ence more celes­tial sounds recre­at­ed by Hart here.

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Astrophysics Goes Extreme

in Physics, Video - Science | April 22nd, 2011

You would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly guess it, but astro­physics comes with occu­pa­tion­al risks. Try­ing to unrav­el the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse, some physi­cists jour­ney to inhos­pitable parts of the world (Siberia, the Antarc­tic, deep mine shafts, etc.), search­ing for ide­al con­di­tions to per­form exper­i­ments into dark ener­gy, dark mat­ter, and beyond. This all gets detailed by Anil Anan­thaswamy, a soft­ware writer turned sci­ence writer, who recent­ly pub­lished a new book The Edge of Physics: A Jour­ney to Earth­’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Uni­verse. The talk above was pre­sent­ed at the INK Con­fer­ence last Decem­ber. You can also watch him give a fuller 50 minute talk at Google here.

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Eagles Hatch, Millions Watch

in Video - Science | April 21st, 2011

The Iowa-based Rap­tor Resource Project works to fos­ter pop­u­la­tion growth among threat­ened bird pop­u­la­tions through­out the mid­west. They man­age 23 nests, edu­cate oth­ers in nest-site man­age­ment, and — best of all for those liv­ing far from the wilder­ness — main­tain sev­er­al web­cams at their sites. You can fol­low sev­er­al fam­i­lies online, includ­ing fal­cons, owls and osprey.

But the most pop­u­lar live stream keeps track of these bald eagles in Dec­o­rah, Iowa. While we were typ­ing up this post, we had the stream up in anoth­er win­dow: Along with about 90,000 oth­er view­ers, we watched one of the eagles shel­ter­ing three eaglets from a strong wind, 80 feet high in the snow-cov­ered nest. The oth­er was pre­sum­ably out hunt­ing. (The RRP’s blog has a nice expla­na­tion of how the par­ents pro­tect their young from cold and snow, both in the moment and through smart nest design.) The video above shows the 24-hour hatch­ing of their first egg, on April 1st and April 2nd, edit­ed down to just 10 min­utes.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Symmetry of Life

in Radio, Video - Science | April 20th, 2011

Last year, film­mak­ers Will Hoff­man, Daniel Mer­cadante, and Julius Metoy­er III pro­duced their first con­cep­tu­al video based on a Radi­o­Lab episode called “Words.” Now the trio is back, play­ing on ideas explored in a new Radi­o­Lab episode, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Sym­me­try, which med­i­tates on how “sym­me­try shapes our very existence–from the ori­gins of the uni­verse, to what we see when we look in the mir­ror.” You can watch their lat­est video above, and stream below the radio episode upon which it is based. And if you’re not famil­iar with Radi­o­Lab, a pro­gram that’s chang­ing the medi­um, then def­i­nite­ly check out this pro­file in The New York Times.

via Brain­Pick­ings

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El Teide in Time Lapse

in Art, Video - Science | April 16th, 2011

It’s the sec­ond time we have Spain in time lapse video this week. First, the his­tor­i­cal land­scape of Cen­tral Spain. Now El Tei­de, Spain’s high­est moun­tain, and the home to one of the world’s best obser­va­to­ries. This drop-dead gor­geous footage (click here to watch expand­ed ver­sion) was cap­tured just days ago by Ter­je Sorgjerd, whose work can be fol­lowed on Face­book here. And, don’t miss our Face­book page, where you can get our dai­ly posts and share intel­li­gent media with fam­i­ly and friends…

via Metafil­ter

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Inventing the Digital Camera: A Short Portrait of Steven Sasson

in Technology, Video - Science | April 14th, 2011

Work­ing for East­man Kodak back in 1975, Steven Sas­son, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer by train­ing, was tasked with build­ing a cam­era that used sol­id state elec­tron­ics and sol­id state imagers to cap­ture opti­cal infor­ma­tion. Or, put very sim­ply, he was asked to build the first dig­i­tal cam­era. And he did just that.

In the lat­est of a series of short doc­u­men­taries on con­tem­po­rary inven­tors, pho­tog­ra­ph­er David Fried­man sat down with Sas­son at Kodak’s head­quar­ters in Rochester, NY and revis­it­ed the tech­ni­cal and cul­tur­al chal­lenges faced by the inven­tor. So far, Fried­man has pro­duced 32 por­traits of inven­tors, and, for the most part, you’ll rec­og­nize the inven­tors’ cre­ations soon­er than their names. You can access the full col­lec­tion of por­traits here.

via Fast Co Design and Brain­Pick­ings

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“First Orbit”: Celebrating 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

in History, Video - Science | April 12th, 2011

To cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of manned space trav­el, Attic Room Pro­duc­tions has released First Orbit, a 99-minute free film that recre­ates Yuri Gagar­in’s his­toric launch into space on April 12, 1961 — in real time. We watched the whole film, which was shot entire­ly in space from on board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. And it’s breath­tak­ing. We were espe­cial­ly blown away by the re-entry sequence, start­ing at about 1:10:00.

A few oth­er links you may enjoy:

Google’s April 12, 2011 home page

The mak­ing of First Orbit

Video from 1961, com­plete with syn­the­siz­ers

Gagar­in’s Life in Pic­tures, from the Russ­ian Archives

Gagar­in’s 1961 inter­view with the BBC

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin is tweet­ing the Yuri Gagarin gala from the Krem­lin

Final­ly, and for pure­ly per­son­al and sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons, here’s Ray Brad­bury’s heart­break­ing 1951 short sto­ry “The Rock­et Man,” the first thing we ever read that filled us with long­ing for space trav­el.

via Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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