Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [August 12, 2022]
Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How is computation in nature different than the computation that a computer does? - Why do cars get much hotter than the outside air temperature? In Austin this week, my car's internal air temperature was 130° F, while it was 100° F outside. - Why haven't we discovered a cure for baldness? Compared to the other great apes, we have lost most of our body hair, so I wonder if baldness is not just our further evolutionary progression of losing all body hair. - Think about things in nature as having autonomous rules. For example, a flower is one rule, but different shapes, colors, etc. of flowers have different initial conditions. Is this too crazy an idea? - To what extent are plant cells Voronoi meshes? How about animal cells? To what extent could one build a simulation of a tree using something like a "Voronoi mesh automaton"? - Do you believe there is a concrete description of evolution waiting to be fleshed out in the multicomputational paradigm? If so, does its basic rule relate to the expansion of the hypergraph? - If mammals have a common ancestor, then how did they get divided into carnivores and herbivores? - What do you think of the notion of chemical interspecies communications? - Can we think of some fungi species that could reach some kind of intelligence like the human one in the future? - Are bubbles round because of gravity?