Reality

 

Thoughts

 

Old books

 

Extinctions

 

Some things about Space Life

The Beagle 5 spaceship takes its name from the HMS Beagle ship. The HMS Beagle on her second voyage hosted the then young naturalist Charles Darwin on board, whose work made the Beagle one of the most famous ships in history. Number 5 is a tribute to Eagle 5 (which also has a certain similarity with the name Beagle) spaceship of Spaceballs (A 1987 american science fiction comedy film co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks).

AL is a tribute to Alan Turing. Philosopher, mathematician and cryptographer. The test that bears his name is still considered today a valid tool to ascertain whether a machine is able to compete with human intelligence.

AL also remembers HAL 9000, the supercomputer aboard the spacecraft Discovery in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arthur C. Clarke's book of the same name. In 2003, the American Film Institute placed HAL 9000 in 13th place on its list of the 50 Best Movie Villains of All Time. What surprises will AL have in store for us?

The work break raises the question about the future of work and about human-machine interaction. For further information see Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

The game of chess proposed by Tom in "Origin" is a tribute to the great chess challenges between man and computer. Chess and computers have gone hand in hand since the dawn of information technology. Between the end of the 40s and the beginning of the 50s the first articles appeared (with signatures of illustrious scientists such as Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener and above all the aforementioned Alan Turing) that designed algorithms capable of playing. Memorable were the challenges between Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue.

In "Spoiler" Tom says he wants to start reading "War and Peace". The reference is to the Peanuts character Snoopy who loves War and Peace, but in order not to get tired he reads no more than one word a day.

After the Apollo 1 fire, Snoopy became the official mascot of the Apollo program's aerospace security, testing and rebuilding.

The Apollo 10 lunar module was named "Snoopy" and the command module "Charlie Brown". 

The Silver Snoopy award is a special NASA award in the form of a silver pin engraved with Snoopy with a space helmet. It is given to an astronaut who works in the space program who has gone above and beyond on the pursuit of quality and safety.

In "Cultural evolution" we refer to the cultural evolution in animals. In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. A meaning of "cultural evolution in animals" refers to these findings and I present an overview of the key findings. I will then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as "cumulative cultural evolution", have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the subject in non-human animals, other than claiming that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence, including controlled experiments and field observations, has begun to challenge this view and in some behavioral domains, particularly birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. The scifi reference is to "Planet of the Apes" and compared to the bears to the short story "Bears Discover Fire" by American science fiction author Terry Bisson.

"Time" is set in the vicinity of the black hole M87 . It's the central black hole of the giant elliptical galaxy Galaxy Virgo A, encoded as "M87" (the largest galaxy in the "near" universe, located 56 million light years from us , in the Cluster of the Virgin). It has a mass approximately 6.6 billion times that of the Sun. 

That the  time be one illusion is a mantra of many modern theoretical physicists. In the equations of the "loop quantum gravity model", with which Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin and others try to unify Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics, time disappears. What exists at the fundamental level are only "atoms of space". The universe and its history are nothing more than ways in which these "space atoms" are arranged. (Rovelli's Book)

Tom's answer - "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so"- is a quote from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

Have fun finding references and quotes in the next few episodes! feel free to write your ideas in the comments.

Have a good space explorer trip...

Time

 

Cultural evolution

 

Spoiler

 

Origins