The notion of entropy grew out of an attempt at perfecting machinery during the industrial revolution. A 28-year-old French military engineer named Sadi Carnot set out to calculate the ultimate efficiency of the steam-powered engine. In 1824, he published a 118-page book(opens a new tab) titled Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, which he sold on the banks of the Seine for 3 francs. Carnot’s book was largely disregarded by the scientific community, and he died several years later of cholera. His body was burned, as were many of his papers. But some copies of his book survived, and in them lay the embers of a new science of thermodynamics — the motive power of fire.

Carnot realized that the steam engine is, at its core, a machine that exploits the tendency for heat to flow from hot objects to cold ones. He drew up the most efficient engine conceivable, instituting a bound on the fraction of heat that can be converted to work, a result now known as Carnot’s theorem. His most consequential statement comes as a caveat on the last page of the book: “We should not expect ever to utilize in practice all the motive power of combustibles.” Some energy will always be dissipated through friction, vibration, or another unwanted form of motion. Perfection is unattainable.

Reading through Carnot’s book a few decades later, in 1865, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius coined a term for the proportion of energy that’s locked up in futility. He called it “entropy,” after the Greek word for transformation. He then laid out what became known as the second law of thermodynamics: “The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.”

Physicists of the era erroneously believed that heat was a fluid (called “caloric”). Over the following decades, they realized heat was rather a byproduct of individual molecules bumping around. This shift in perspective allowed the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann to reframe and sharpen the idea of entropy using probabilities.

Boltzmann distinguished the microscopic properties of molecules, such as their individual locations and velocities, from bulk macroscopic properties of a gas like temperature and pressure…

Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world than a reflection of our growing ignorance. Embracing that truth is leading to a rethink of everything from rational decision-making to the limits of machines.

The notion of entropy grew out of an attempt at perfecting machinery during the industrial revolution. A 28-year-old French military engineer named Sadi Carnot set out to calculate the ultimate efficiency of the steam-powered engine. In 1824, he published a 118-page book(opens a new tab) titled Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, which he sold on the banks of the Seine for 3 francs. Carnot’s book was largely disregarded by the scientific community, and he died several years later of cholera. His body was burned, as were many of his papers. But some copies of his book survived, and in them lay the embers of a new science of thermodynamics — the motive power of fire.

Carnot realized that the steam engine is, at its core, a machine that exploits the tendency for heat to flow from hot objects to cold ones. He drew up the most efficient engine conceivable, instituting a bound on the fraction of heat that can be converted to work, a result now known as Carnot’s theorem. His most consequential statement comes as a caveat on the last page of the book: “We should not expect ever to utilize in practice all the motive power of combustibles.” Some energy will always be dissipated through friction, vibration, or another unwanted form of motion. Perfection is unattainable.

Reading through Carnot’s book a few decades later, in 1865, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius coined a term for the proportion of energy that’s locked up in futility. He called it “entropy,” after the Greek word for transformation. He then laid out what became known as the second law of thermodynamics: “The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.”

Physicists of the era erroneously believed that heat was a fluid (called “caloric”). Over the following decades, they realized heat was rather a byproduct of individual molecules bumping around. This shift in perspective allowed the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann to reframe and sharpen the idea of entropy using probabilities.

Boltzmann distinguished the microscopic properties of molecules, such as their individual locations and velocities, from bulk macroscopic properties of a gas like temperature and pressure…

Google DeepMind, Google’s flagship AI research lab, wants to beat OpenAI at the video-generation game — and it might just, at least for a little while.

After the successful completion of Phase 1 of the next-generation electronics program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has provided BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development organization a $5 million contract for Phase 2 of the Technologies for Mixed-mode Ultra Scaled Integrated Circuits (T-MUSIC) program.

T-MUSIC is designed to enable disruptive radio frequency (RF) mixed-mode technologies by developing high performance RF analog electronics integrated with advanced digital electronics on the same wafer. This technology supports critical communications, radar, and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, and is widely used to support commercial telecommunications.

“Building on the success of Phase 1, in Phase 2 we’ll continue to develop the advanced electronics capabilities that could serve as the foundation for greatly enhanced Department of Defense capabilities in advanced RF sensors and high capacity communications,” said Chris Rappa, product line director for Radio Frequency, Electronic Warfare, and Advanced Electronics at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs. “Phase 2 of the program will move the industry closer to the eventual fielding of this disruptive technology to protect our warfighters.”

Many of the technologies that will define the future of space warfare are already in development. The problem facing the U.S. is that China is spearheading most of it.

Imagine this: a round, plump robot, like a giant bowling ball, that can roll on land, swim in water, and perform all sorts of high-tech operations. On October 9th, a team of scientists from Zhejiang University unveiled something called the RT-G spherical robot, claiming it’s a \.

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Episode 476; December 5, 2024
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I had wondered if AI could just learn and advance from it s users.

During your first driving class, the instructor probably sat next to you, offering immediate advice on every turn, stop and minor adjustment. If it was a parent, they might have even grabbed the wheel a few times and shouted “Brake!” Over time, those corrections and insights developed experience and intuition, turning you into an independent, capable driver.

Although advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have made self-driving cars a reality, the teaching methods used to train them remain a far cry from even the most nervous side-seat driver. Rather than nuance and real-time instruction, AI learns primarily through massive datasets and extensive simulations, regardless of the application.

Now, researchers from Duke University and the Army Research Laboratory have developed a platform to help AI learn to perform complex tasks more like humans. Nicknamed GUIDE for short, the AI framework will be showcased at the upcoming Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024), taking place Dec. 9–5 in Vancouver, Canada. The work is also available on the arXiv preprint server.

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A pair of researchers, one with the Carnegie Institution for Science, the other with California Institute of Technology, has developed a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Michael Wong and Stuart Bartlett suggest that the reason that no aliens from other planets have visited us is because of superlinear scaling, which, they contend, leads to a singularity. (How do “Predator Civilizations” solve the Fermi Paradox?)

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WASHINGTON — Varda Space Industries secured a $48 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to test military payloads on the company’s reentry capsules.

A California-based startup focused on in-space manufacturing, Varda Space developed a factory-in-orbit spacecraft — a compact, 120-kilogram satellite engineered to produce high-value materials such as pharmaceuticals in zero-gravity conditions. The materials are returned to Earth in a capsule built with advanced thermal protection materials developed by NASA to withstand reentry.

The four-year deal with AFRL, announced on Nov. 26, leverages Varda’s W-Series reentry capsules as platforms to test payloads at hypersonic speeds. The spacecraft are built on Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus.

Former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, joins ‘Fox News Sunday’ for a one-on-one discussing the state of A.I. and its implications.

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