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The software Stephen Hawking uses to talk to the world is now free
For almost 20 years, Intel has been building technology to help Stephen Hawking communicate with the world -- and now the company is making the same software the world renowned physicist uses to write books, give speeches and talk available to everybody. For free.
Hawking, Musk and others call for a ban on autonomous weapons
If you don't like the thought of autonomous robots brandishing weapons, you're far from alone. A slew of researchers and tech dignitaries (including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Steve Wozniak) have backed an open letter calling for a ban on any robotic weapon where there's no human input involved. They're concerned that there could be an "AI arms race" which makes it all too easy to not only build robotic armies, but conduct particularly heinous acts like assassinations, authoritarian oppression, terrorism and genocide. Moreover, these killing machines could give artificial intelligence a bad name. You don't want people to dismiss the potentially life-saving benefits of robotic technology just because it's associated with death and destruction, after all.
Stephen Hawking is hosting a week-long Q&A on Reddit next week
Have a question for one of the smartest men on the planet? Mark your calendar: on Monday July 27th at 8am ET, Stephen Hawking will be taking questions from the public in his first ever Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). If you can't make it Monday, don't worry about it, he'll be answering questions for over a week -- a first for the forum's Q&A community.
Stephen Hawking now uses SwiftKey suggestions to communicate faster
Stephen Hawking created some of the most revolutionary ideas in science, but he's very conservative with his communication tech -- right down to the "copyrighted" electronic American accent. He has worked with Intel since 1997 on the assistive computer system he relies on to speak and create documents, since motor neuron disease took his real voice decades ago. Hawking isn't interested in new tech like eye-tracking, but he and Intel recently decided to bring his current text and voice system up-to-date. They ended up getting an assist from a company more familiar to smartphone users -- SwiftKey.
The Higgs boson could destroy the universe in the wrong conditions
That Higgs boson that everyone was so eager to find last year? As it turns out, it could be the end of everything -- in the wrong circumstances, anyway. In his upcoming book Starmus, Stephen Hawking notes that the once-elusive particle could become less than perfectly stable at energy levels of 100 billion giga-electronvolts or higher. If it gets to that state, it could trigger a vacuum bubble that would expand at the speed of light, eventually collapsing all space and time; you wouldn't even know the disaster was coming if the event happened on Earth.
Stephen Hawking's first official app teaches the basics of the universe
Stephen Hawking has gone to great lengths to promote science through books and videos, but he has been conspicuously absent in the software world -- until now, that is. The astrophysicist has just teamed up with Random House on Snapshots of the Universe, his first official app. The $5 iPad title teaches the fundamentals of space through mini games: players learn about G-force with Einstein, put planets into orbit and come to grips with the theory of relativity. Particularly curious users can go deeper with both video explanations from Hawking as well as old-fashioned text. Snapshots is no substitute for reading A Brief History of Time, but it may inspire young scientists to learn more.
Stephen Hawking unveils the most morbid, amazing $1.8m clock you'll ever see
We'll warn you in advance, this is only for those who dig the weird, all things Stephen Hawking or clock-making in general. This £1 million ($1.83 million) timepiece took seven years to completely construct, and the initiative was led by inventor John Taylor who designed it in tribute to John Harrison (only the world's greatest clockmaker, it's said). The bizarre Corpus Clock visually explains that it relies on grasshopper escapement to function, and to let you know that time can never be regained once lost, that beast on top actually gobbles down time every 60th second. Oh, and every hour, on the hour, the sound of a "chain dropping into a wooden coffin" is played to really pound home the "time is a destroyer" concept. Thanks for the reminder, Dr. Grim.[Via Switched]
Stephen Hawking holds it together in zero-g vomit comet
We tip our hats to you, Sir Hawking. You said you were gonna do it, and you surely did, hopping in a tricked out 727 to experience the weightlessness of space. During his eight successive 30 second stints of zero gravity, Hawking did a coupla spins and was even photographed with an apple of Newtonian symbolism. Not surprisingly, Stephen was totally stoked about his trip, saying afterward, "space, here I come." before totally popping a rocking wheelie in his robo wheelchair. Ok, maybe we made up that last bit, but we'd just like to say to Stephen: way to go, broham. We're looking forward to all the rad theoretical physics you'll come up with after this inspiring trip to pseudo-space.
Stephen Hawking's going Zero-G on April 16th
It's not quite a ride on Branson's Virgin Galactic but Stephen Hawking is finally getting his chance to leave terra firma. The world famous theoretical physicist has hitched a ride with Zero-G on April 16th. The specially modified 727-200 will take off from the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The craft will perform a number of parabolic maneuvers in flight to create a Mars-like, moon-like, and zero-g gravity experience -- a flight lasting 90 minutes in total. A brief history of time, indeed. [Warning: PDF link][Via The Inquirer]
Stephen Hawking in space (space... space...)
Well-known theoretical physicist and all-around geek hero Stephen Hawking has told the press he plans to undertake a zero-gravity flight this year in preparation for a hopeful berth on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourist service when it launches in 2009. Hawking, who has the neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, communicates via a blink-controlled computer and uses a high-tech wheelchair for mobility, making space flight somewhat challenging -- but Virgin Galactic spokesperson Stephen Attenborough said in a statement Monday that Branson is committed to working through the issues that need to be addressed in order to accomodate people with disabilities on his company's trips into suborbit. Cost of a two-hour suborbital spaceflight? $200,000. The look on the most famous cosmologist's face upon actually making it into space? Priceless.
