Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [January 21, 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: ​If traceroute was disabled, or if all servers refused to send TTL expirations, would there be a way to trace internet traffic? Or would the internet be untraceable, kind of analogous to a TOR network? - ​Can you describe how packets get dropped? Is there a decision made, a timeout, or some physically-mediated loss? Are there different implementations for routers / servers? - ​Would love to hear about the limitations of Moore's law. Is Moore's law still relevant to set corporate targets as companies like Intel use it as a benchmark of progress? - If an alien civilization would sent a spaceship from Proxima Centauri to earth with a speed of light, can we detect it before it arrives? - If we did have a "transporter" to send ourselves to another galaxy as a signal, would packet loss be a severe danger for those intergalactic signals?

Om Podcasten

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.