FallenKingdomReads’ list of 7 Hard Science Fiction Books That Will Make You Smarter.
Hard science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that prioritizes scientific accuracy and explores scientific concepts in depth. These books often require a solid understanding of scientific principles and can be a great way to learn about complex scientific concepts in an engaging and accessible way.
Here are seven hard science fiction books that will make you smarter.
Reverse the aging process and live decades longer? Transfer your brain onto a database and achieve digital immortality? Humans one day may have such options.
Scientists have discovered a new material that could be set to change the entire world. Researchers say they have created a superconducting material that works at both a temperature and a pressure low enough to actually use it in practical situations. It reaches a breakthrough that scientists have been chasing for more than a century, in making a material that is able to transmit electricity without resistance, and pass magnetic fields around the material.
Researchers challenge their own assumptions to improve sea-level rise predictions.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.
Microsoft revealed an AI-powered Bing chatbot in February, dubbing it “the new Bing.” But what can you actually do with the new Bing, and where does it fall short?
The new Bing is impressive for an automated tool, as it can not only answer questions in full sentences (or longer paragraphs), but it can also draw information from recent web results. The web features give it an edge over ChatGPT, which has limited knowledge of current events and facts, but it still has problems providing factual answers or helpful responses. That significantly affects its usefulness as a tool, though Bing’s ability to cite sources can help you double-check its responses.
Machine intelligence is helping astronomers analyse vast datasets from radio telescopes — and finding previously unseen signals of interest.
Robots are all around us, from drones filming videos in the sky to serving food in restaurants and diffusing bombs in emergencies. Slowly but surely, robots are improving the quality of human life by augmenting our abilities, freeing up time, and enhancing our personal safety and well-being. While existing robots are becoming more proficient with simple tasks, handling more complex requests will require more development in both mobility and intelligence.
Columbia Engineering and Toyota Research Institute computer scientists are delving into psychology, physics, and geometry to create algorithms so that robots can adapt to their surroundings and learn how to do things independently. This work is vital to enabling robots to address new challenges stemming from an aging society and provide better support, especially for seniors and people with disabilities.
A longstanding challenge in computer vision is object permanence, a well-known concept in psychology that involves understanding that the existence of an object is separate from whether it is visible at any moment. It is fundamental for robots to understand our ever-changing, dynamic world. But most applications in computer vision ignore occlusions entirely and tend to lose track of objects that become temporarily hidden from view.
Artificial intelligence can create images based on text prompts, but scientists unveiled a gallery of pictures the technology produces by reading brain activity. The new AI-powered algorithm reconstructed around 1,000 images, including a teddy bear and an airplane, from these brain scans with 80 percent accuracy.
Delta is a backyard wilderness listening device to bring you the sounds of nature we usually miss in cities.
The founder of Rainforest Connection whose listening devices capture jungle sounds, comes Delta, a device for hearing nature in the city.
Stranded with no obvious way out, the man came up with a plan on how to alert rescuers to his situation. He attached his cellphone to a drone he had in his vehicle. He typed out a text on his phone to a friend describing what had happened and his exact location. Then he hit send on the text and launched the drone several hundred feet into the air. That high up, the phone was able to connect to service and send the text.
The man’s friend received the text, reached out to authorities and rescue crews were able to locate the man and rescue him. During the rescue trip, crews also found and rescued another driver who’d been stranded nearby in the snow for multiple days.
