In a comment to Stephen’s last Battlestar Galactica post, Bionic Man asked: “Is there a real-world equivalent to the Cylon bio-metal? How far along is research into self-repairing materials?”
At this stage, the research into self-repair could best be described as promising — certainly promising enough to motivate several of the top materials research teams in the world to work on the project, and promising enough to inspire significant investment by major corporations like Airbus. Plus, anyone who solves the myriad problems behind self-repair is sure to be richer than Midas, maybe even richer than Bill Gates.
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The new season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles kicked off into high gear last night, promising some great TV to come. The episode picked up seconds after the last season left off, when Cameron–a terminator reprogrammed and sent back from the future to protect John Connor, leader-of-the-human-race-in-waiting–became the victim of a car bomb.
A damaged Cameron finds herself in need of some significant hardware and software repairs: unfortunately, it’ll be years before any terminator technical support facilities are built. Cameron must fix herself. In the real world, it’s exactly this problem that researchers are actively struggling with–how to create computers that can realize they’re malfunctioning and restore themselves to working order.
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