MessageToEagle.com -
In Douglas Adams book the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. It is the most powerful computer ever built. Deep Thought is capable of answering questions concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).
Can a supercomputer really predict the future? There are researchers who believe it possible to construct a machine that can predict anything from next financial crisis to next social trends.
The Living Earth Simulator Project (LES) is estimated to cost £900 million and its goal is to create a computer system that can simulate everything on this planet.
Using data fed into the internet, trends can be spotted by analyzing information with 'the world's most powerful computers'.
The Living Earth Simulator is a supercomputer that will be able to predict anything that happens on our planet.
"The idea is to gather live information from a huge range of sources and then analyze it using the world's most powerful computers.
Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading are related to human behavior, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work, said Professor Dirk Helbing, one of the leaders of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Although the European Commission has also put the Living Earth Simulator at the top of its shortlist for £900m in funding, there are scientists who raise a critical voice pointing out that the project is too ambitious and unrealistic.
Iain Begg, professor of European Studies at the London School of Economics, told the Sunday Times: "The complexity of the world is simply too great.
We cannot even model the weather for more than a few days.
The social domain, people's behaviour, is even harder to analyse, because social trends are not just complex, they also change with time.
We have to be sceptical as to whether even the most powerful computers could cope with it."
The current economic crisis and eurozone meltdown was not foreseen by the financial models which most policy-makers use.
But the Living Earth Simulator Project would pre-empt such a disaster, which is why it has been given support by the European Commission.
Supporters of the supercomputer idea say the need to forecast another worldwide economic crisis is greater than ever.
Steven Bishop, professor of non-linear dynamics at UCL's mathematics department, who is a key figure in the Living Earth Simulator project, said:
"The modern banking system may have more disasters waiting to happen but they are buried in complexity, just as happened with the crisis of sub-prime mortgages.
We would hope to find the precursors of instability and disasters and maybe do that in time for politicians to stop them happening.
According to Professor Helbing, the Living Earth Simulator will be able to predict the spread of infectious disease such as Swine Flu,
identify methods for tackling climate change and even spot an impending financial crisis.
In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. Scientists hope the Living Earth Simulator will be a simialr machine.
The Living Earth Simulator may sounds like a machine taken straight from a science fiction book, but researchers involved in the project
are convinced it is possible to encapsulate human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.
Earth Is In The Middle Of A Space-Time Vortex
Earth sits in the middle of a space-time vortex.
Einstein predicted this almost 100 years ago and he was right.
Space-time around Earth seems to be distorted, just a general relativity predicts.
Alcubierre Warp Drive - A Doomsday Weapon?
Is the Alcubierre warp drive a doomsday weapon or our passport to the Universe?
The Alcubierre warp drive is a theoretical tool that would allow for spacecraft to travel long distances in space rapidly,
by deforming the space-time continuum in a bubble around the spaceship...
Powerful Jet Pointing Directly At Earth
They are among the most fascinating cosmic phenomena. Astronomers know them as blazars and each of them harbors a supermassive black hole and jets emanating
in opposite directions from near its poles. These sources are unique evidence of the most extreme speeds and energies known in the extreme Universe...
Does Elusive Higgs Boson "God Particle" Really Exist?
Probably the hottest topic on the energy frontier of particle physics is the search for the Higgs boson.
Several large experimental groups are hot on the trail of this elusive subatomic particle which is thought to explain the origins of particle mass.
Proof Of How The Universe Is Changing
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
Radio Emission From Ultracool Dwarf Detected By Arecibo Telescope
The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico has discovered sporadic bursts of polarized radio emission from the T6.5 brown J1047+21.
Because Arecibo is a single, fixed-dish telescope, it has a restricted practical sensitivity to weak, quiescent emission from radio sources...
Blueprint For Nuclear Clock Accurate Over Billions Of Years!
A clock accurate to within a tenth of a second over 14 billion years – the age of the universe – is an important goal for scientists.
A nuclear clock could be as much as one-hundred times more accurate
than current atomic clocks, which now serve as the basis for the global positioning system (GPS) and a broad range of important measurements.
New Quantum Discovery Sheds Light On Mysteries Of Cosmology
University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly
unrelated natural systems of vastly different scales, offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology.
Planck-Mass Mirrors Help To Probe Predictions Of Quantum Gravity
Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum physics are expected to merge at the Planck-scale of extremely high energies and on very short distances. At this scale, new phenomena could arise.
However, the Planck-scale is so remote from current experimental capabilities that tests of quantum gravity are widely believed to be nearly impossible.
MessageToEagle.com -
In Douglas Adams book the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. It is the most powerful computer ever built. Deep Thought is capable of answering questions concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).
Earth sits in the middle of a space-time vortex.
Einstein predicted this almost 100 years ago and he was right.
Space-time around Earth seems to be distorted, just a general relativity predicts.
Is the Alcubierre warp drive a doomsday weapon or our passport to the Universe?
The Alcubierre warp drive is a theoretical tool that would allow for spacecraft to travel long distances in space rapidly,
by deforming the space-time continuum in a bubble around the spaceship...
They are among the most fascinating cosmic phenomena. Astronomers know them as blazars and each of them harbors a supermassive black hole and jets emanating
in opposite directions from near its poles. These sources are unique evidence of the most extreme speeds and energies known in the extreme Universe...
Probably the hottest topic on the energy frontier of particle physics is the search for the Higgs boson.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico has discovered sporadic bursts of polarized radio emission from the T6.5 brown J1047+21.
A clock accurate to within a tenth of a second over 14 billion years – the age of the universe – is an important goal for scientists.
A nuclear clock could be as much as one-hundred times more accurate
than current atomic clocks, which now serve as the basis for the global positioning system (GPS) and a broad range of important measurements.
University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly
unrelated natural systems of vastly different scales, offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology.
Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum physics are expected to merge at the Planck-scale of extremely high energies and on very short distances. At this scale, new phenomena could arise.
However, the Planck-scale is so remote from current experimental capabilities that tests of quantum gravity are widely believed to be nearly impossible.