Via Hero Complex come these ingenious public service announcements and travel posters from a near future in which time travel is possible and robots are self-cleaning. Designed by artist Amy Martin, the posters are $20 each and proceeds benefit 826LA, a non-profit writing center for kids 6 to 18.
For those of you who couldn’t make it to San Diego last week, Discovermagazine.com and the National Academy of Sciences’ Science & Entertainment Exchange present our panel discussion on “Mad Science,” featuring Jaime Paglia (co-Executive Producer of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Battlestar Galactica and Eureka science adviser), Jane Espenson (Dollhouse, Battlestar, Caprica, and lots more), Ricardo Gil da Costa (science adviser for Fringe), and Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman (writers for Fringe).
If you don’t have time to watch the video you can read recaps and quotes from the panel here, here, here, here and here.
Big thanks to Jennifer at SEE, to all of our panelists, and to the Bad Astronomer, who found time to moderate our panel while he wasn’t partying with Hollywood starlets (Phil – we kid because we love).
Put two stars of Battlestar Galactica on stage with an artificial intelligence expert and two leading robotics professors…and you suck the sci-fi out of the room and replace it with reality (sort of). The World Science Festival event “Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon” drew a large crowd at the 92nd Street Y on Friday night, for a discussion of how human brains might soon fuse with computer chips to create real cyborgs.
Moderator Faith Salie introduced the panelists: Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University; Michael Hogan, also known as Colonel Saul Tigh; Hod Lipson, director of the Computational Synthesis group at Cornell University; Mary McDonnell, a.k.a. President Laura Roslin; and Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England.
Salie asked each panelist to define what a cyborg is. Everyone had different answers: Warwick said it’s something that is part human, Lipson said it’s a moving target or a physical device that takes on biological life, and Bostrom said it’s the essence of human intelligence.
Superheroes, they’re just like us! [via Hero Complex]
Meta-conspiracy: Does the government want you to believe in UFO’s? [via Futurismic]
Real-life Terminator robots here, here and here. [via Technovelgy]
Video of low-altitude flight over the lunar surface by the Japanese KAGUYA explorer [via Pink Tentacle]
Recently released scenes of the upcoming remake of V combine two of our favorite things: creepy aliens and Party of Five! [via thrfeed]
The Codex Futurius project, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the timeless scientific questions raised by science fiction, is back—and this time we have reinforcements. The NAS’ Science and Entertainment Exchange (SEEx), a group dedicated to bringing real science into entertainment, has agreed to help us find experts who can tackle these ineffable sci-fi questions.
Our first expert-answered Codex question goes to J Storrs Hall, an independent scientist and author who’s also president of the Foresight Institute, a nanotech-oriented think tank. Thanks especially to Jennifer Ouellette, a science writer and the director of SEEx, for connecting us with Hall. Without further ado, here’s the question of the day, asked by an (imagined) big-time Hollywood director/producer who thinks getting the science right might help nail down that elusive Oscar:
“How could nanotechnology transform the world? Most importantly, how could I stop a plague of nanorobots from eating my spaceship/research facility/planet?”
Earlier this week in New York, Battlestar Galactica’s co-creators David Eick and Ron Moore, along with cast members Mary McDonnell (President Roslin) and Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), sat down with the press for a Q&A session following a screening of the last episode. We were just as brimming with questions as you are about the finale, and here are some of the answers we got. Needless to say, what follows below the jump contains MASSIVE SPOILERS if you haven’t already seen tonight’s show, so don’t say you weren’t warned!
One of the best things about the final season of BSG has been that much of the annoying mysticism of previous seasons has now been explained by science. I’ll admit it was convoluted TV show science, but at least it wasn’t people seeing ghosts or having divine inspirations.
The Chief being mysteriously pulled toward the Temple of Five? Turns out he was one of the aforementioned five and had been there before (my apologies if that’s a spoiler for you, but really, catch up already).
BSG is best when it revolves around people and politics, as opposed to the god(s) and the lost tribes of whoever. Desperate people, dirty spaceships and ragtag resistance movements? Gripping and relevant TV. President Roslin’s visions and imaginary shamans? Not so much.
When I saw Galactica’s hull break open and the Six shoot into space, I was reminded of BSG science adviser Kevin Grazier explaining what happens when you fall out of a spaceship. We’re hoping for a post from Kevin on the potential explanations for artificial gravity, but we appreciate that the show has a solid science adviser and appears to listen to him occasionally (no aliens, no time travel, real constellations).
With all that in mind here are non-supernatural solutions for my five favorite Battlestar mysteries (note that these are suggestions not spoilers): (more…)
It must be nice to have a car like KITT that can, amongst his many other handy abilities, transform. Sure it’s handy for crime fighting and all, but being able to turn into a van or a truck means Michael Knight never needs to rent a moving truck or worry about delivery when there’s a big Ikea sale. But since KITT’s ability to rearrange himself at the molecular level means that he can transform himself into any number of car-like shapes, even ones he’s never experienced before. And that means that he — and his deceased creator Dr. Graiman — has solved the problem of getting an artificial intelligence to use newly added parts. Typically a robot has to have a whole new set of code to be able to handle a new tool or sensor. Sure, most computers can handle plug-and-play attachments these days, but they still require a set of pre-written code to drive the newly added part. Artificial intelligence designers want the robot to be able to design that code itself.
When I was but a wee nerd, when Star Wars was driving people to buy VCRs the way The Matrix would make them buy DVD players years later, a friend introduced me to the wonders of anime by playing a bootleg VHS tape in which two robots, piloted by people, battled for supremacy in outer space. (Describing an anime film like that is like trying to identify a specific Tom Cruise film by explaining that he plays the cocky young guy, but I digress).
What made this movie stand out for me was how the robot was controlled. The pilot stood in a cokpit in the robots torso. He was attached to the robot by a series of straps that connected directly to the robot through the walls and ceiling. When he moved, the robot moved. Since he was some kind of martial arts super star, his robot was about as fine a defender of the universe as one could hope for, as long as the hero could overcome his psychological issues and fully self-actualize (If you recall the name of this anime, please oh please, comment and let me know what it is).
So, obviously, we still haven’t gotten around to inventing battle bots that can fight our wars for us, but if we did, we’d have a much better system for controlling the robot than silly straps. (more…)
Monday night was the last new episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles until February. The subplot featured Agent Ellison’s hesitant attempts to tutor a nascent artificial intelligence that may or may not grow up to become Skynet, the computer system that attempts to destroy humanity in the future. To speed the process, Ellison’s boss has hooked the A.I. up to the recovered body of a previously-dispatched terminator, explaining to the horrified Ellison that “Many believe that tactile experience is integral to A.I. development.” This was a spot on statement, directly echoing the work of people like Rodney Brooks and his colleagues at the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
On Friday night’s episode of Stargate Atlantis, the Atlantis expedition discover a small pod. The pod contains biological material that can be used to replicate a sentient life-form from scratch, should the pod find a planet with the right chemical makeup to provide the raw ingredients. It also contains a cultural and technical database to educate the “Children of the Pod,” and an advanced Artificial Intelligence responsible for guiding the pod to a suitable destination and “birthing” the first generation life-forms. In the real world, with its apparently iron-clad restriction on faster than light travel, this kind of approach is actually one of the leading contenders for how human beings might colonize the galaxy.
The writers of Knight Rider love us. Better yet, they are us. In last night’s Halloween episode, Zoe showed up in a Claire Bennet costume (Heroes‘ famed cheerleader), and Billy comes dressed as Capt. Jack Harkness of Dr. Who and Torchwood fame. We also got some love from the producers with the initiation of a multi-episode story arc (perhaps a product of the fact that Knight Rider has been picked up for the full season).
Around half way through the episode we learn that KITT has been programmed with a self-destruct mechanism by his creator, Dr. Charles Graiman, so there would be a failsafe against KITT going bad. Graiman is familiar with cyborgs gone wild, because he made a KITT prototype named KARR (who is not, as it happens, a car) with the capability to self-program. KARR’s evolution as a learning machine apparently led him to cause the deaths of seven people, though we don’t know how, exactly.
On Friday’s episode of Sanctuary, Magnus and her team were faced with tracking down a thief with the ability to squeeze into the narrowest of spaces. Suspicious of a pipe that may have been used to make a getaway, our intrepid heroes break out a ROV — remotely operated vehicle — to peer where they can not.
Sculptor Christopher Conte combines his artwork and his experience making prosthetics to create mechanical, science fiction–inspired work with a touch of the dark side.
Seeing Science in Sci-Fi 
A Study in Decay 
Creating Life 
Machine Evolution 
Speeding Up Time 
Metal Manipulation 
Starting Small 
Creep Factor
In last night’s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron accepts the invitation (and wager) of a couple of security guards to play a game of pool. Having gotten close enough to scan their security badges, Cameron then proceeds to smoke them at the game, thanks to a little known pool mode in her Point-Of-View display, which, thus far, has tended to show more in the way of helpful information about the caliber of weapon she is using or instructions like TERMINATE.
In the real world, enter Deep Green. (more…)
