Lifeboat Foundation

Echopraxia is a book set in one of the most interesting sci-fi universes that I have covered on this channel. It is technically a sequel to Blindsight, but it is not necessary that you read Blindsight to understand Echopraxia is set in the late 21 century. About 14 years after man’s first contact with alien life.

This book brings up one of the most interesting concepts I’ve ever encountered in any sci-fi book ever. And that is the concept of the “Digital Universe” and God as a Virus. Now this is a concept that comes from the field of digital physics, which keep in mind is all theoretical. It is based on the premise that the universe is pure mathematics at its base, every event that occurs can be thought of as a kind of computation. This could mean that the universe is a simulation, but that is not necessary for the idea to work.

Continue reading “Is God A Virus? | Echopraxia” »

The story of modern physics has been one of reductionism. We do not need a vast encyclopedia to understand the inner workings of Nature. Rather, we can describe a near-limitless range of natural phenomena, from the interior of a proton to the creation of galaxies, with apparently unreasonable efficiency using the language of mathematics. In the words of theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner, ‘The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it.’

The mathematics of the twentieth century described a Universe populated by a limited number of different types of fundamental particles interacting with each other in an arena known as spacetime according to a collection of rules that can be written down on the back of an envelope. If the Universe was designed, it seemed, the designer was a mathematician.

Today, the study of black holes appears to be edging us in a new direction, towards a language more often used by quantum computer scientists. The language of information. Space and time may be emergent entities that do not exist in the deepest description of Nature. Instead, they are synthesized out of entangled quantum bits of information in a way that resembles a cleverly constructed computer code. If the Universe is designed, it seems, the designer is a programmer.

For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.

Getty Images Two US high schoolers believe they have cracked a mathematical mystery left unproven for centuries. Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson looked at the Pythagorean theorem, foundational to trigonometry. The American Mathematical Society said the teenagers should submit their findings to a journal. Two high school seniors from New Orleans think they have managed to prove a 2,000-year-old theorem that has stumped mathematicians for centuries.

Neurosity’s headset uses electroencephalogram technology, or EEG, to measure brain activity by placing small metal electrodes on a person’s scalp. If the electrodes detect decreased electrical activity in the brain, the Crown plays music and sounds, or pulses vibrations, hoping those actions will help the user focus.

But some developers, it seems, have taken Neurosity’s tech a step further, turning the Crown into a more traditional brain computer interface that can allow users to control a computer using only their mind.

One owner of the gadget claimed they’ve used it to drive a Tesla, moving the electric car short distances by doing some mental math, which signals to the device that the person wearing it is exerting a lot of cognitive effort.

Continue reading “Grimes said she got a brain gadget for her birthday from a company competing with Elon Musk’s Neuralink” »

After half a century, mathematicians succeed in finding an ‘einstein,’ a shape that forms a tiled pattern that never repeats.

A quantum computer in the next decade could crack the encryption our society relies on using Shor’s Algorithm. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial, and the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

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A huge thank you to those who helped us understand this complex field and ensure we told this story accurately — Dr. Lorenz Panny, Prof. Serge Fehr, Dr. Dustin Moody, Prof. Benne de Weger, Prof. Tanja Lange, PhD candidate Jelle Vos, Gorjan Alagic, and Jack Hidary.

Continue reading “How Quantum Computers Break The Internet… Starting Now” »

Philosophy and theology are filled with far more questions than universally compelling answers and evidence.

Just a couple of years earlier, in 1963, New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equation for a rotating black hole. This was a “game changer for black holes,” Giorgi noted in a public lecture given at the virtual 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. Rotating black holes were much more realistic astrophysical objects than the non-spinning black holes that Karl Schwarzschild had solved the equations for.

“Physicists really had believed for decades that the black hole region was an artifact of symmetry that was appearing in the mathematical construction of this object but not in the real world,” Giorgi said in the talk. Kerr’s solution helped establish the existence of black holes.

In a nearly 1,000-page paper, Giorgi and colleagues used a type of “proof by contradiction” to show that Kerr black holes that rotate slowly (meaning they have a small angular momentum relative to their mass) are mathematically stable. The technique entails assuming the opposite of the statement to be proved, then discovering an inconsistency. That shows that the assumption is false. The work is currently undergoing peer review. “It’s a long paper, so it’s going to take some time,” Giorgi says.