Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [January 27, 2023]

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: Do you think it's possible to sustain life on Mars? How far into the future do you see this happening? - Maybe biological switches would change everything for a biological machine. - Could you explain the fundamental principles of biology? - Aren't neurons the biological analog of switches? - Can machine learning help solve inverse scattering problems where the forward scattering problem is highly nonlinear? - How do x-rays work to see only the bones and ignore skin? - I think bone opacity also comes down to water contents (there is just more water in tissue). - Can those x-rays be used for automatic detection of changes within the molecule structure of crystallized solids as well? - Do you think ecology will play an important role in understanding molecular computation? - Ecology is a complex system. Physics is easy: just analyze a single particle's or body's motion. Ecology has vast interconnections and mechanisms.

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.