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As computer scientists tackle a greater range of problems, their work has grown increasingly interdisciplinary. This year, many of the most significant computer science results also involved other scientists and mathematicians. Perhaps the most practical involved the cryptographic questions underlying the security of the internet, which tend to be complicated mathematical problems. One such problem — the product of two elliptic curves and their relation to an abelian surface — ended up bringing down a promising new cryptography scheme that was thought to be strong enough to withstand an attack from a quantum computer. And a different set of mathematical relationships, in the form of one-way functions, will tell cryptographers if truly secure codes are even possible.

Computer science, and quantum computing in particular, also heavily overlaps with physics. In one of the biggest developments in theoretical computer science this year, researchers posted a proof of the NLTS conjecture, which (among other things) states that a ghostly connection between particles known as quantum entanglement is not as delicate as physicists once imagined. This has implications not just for our understanding of the physical world, but also for the myriad cryptographic possibilities that entanglement makes possible.

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists.

As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place?

It’s a monumental head-scratcher known as the ‘grandfather paradox’, but a few years ago physics student Germain Tobar, from the University of Queensland in Australia, worked out how to “square the numbers” to make time travel viable without the paradoxes.

This video explores the timelapse of artificial intelligence from 2030 to 10,000A.D.+. Watch this next video about Super Intelligent AI and why it will be unstoppable: https://youtu.be/xPvo9YYHTjE
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The laws of physics do not exist, a theoretical physicist named Sankar Das Sarma argues in a new column published by New Scientist. While we define the laws as the “ultimate laws” of our universe, Sarma says they are merely working descriptions, and that they are nothing more than mathematical equations that match with parts of nature.

Using a chain of atoms in single-file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation – particles born from disturbances in the quantum fluctuations caused by the black hole’s break in spacetime.

This, they say, could help resolve the tension between two currently irreconcilable frameworks for describing the Universe: the general theory of relativity, which describes the behavior of gravity as a continuous field known as spacetime; and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of discrete particles using the mathematics of probability.

For a unified theory of quantum gravity that can be applied universally, these two immiscible theories need to find a way to somehow get along.

According to a recent paper by a math professor at the University of Arkansas, the existence of life on Earth provides proof that abiogenesis is relatively easy on planets similar to Earth, refuting the “Carter argument” conclusion.

Does the presence of life on Earth provide any insight into the likelihood that abiogenesis—the process by which life first emerges from inorganic substances—occurs elsewhere? That is a question that has baffled scientists for a while, as well as everyone else inclined to think about it.

When the paradise tree snake flies from one tall branch to another, its body ripples with waves like green cursive on a blank pad of blue sky. That movement, aerial undulation, happens in each glide made by members of the Chrysopelea family, the only known limbless vertebrates capable of flight. Scientists have known this, but have yet to fully explain it.

For more than 20 years, Jake Socha, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, has sought to measure and model the biomechanics of snake flight and answer questions about them, like that of aerial undulation’s functional role. For a study published by Nature Physics, Socha assembled an interdisciplinary team to develop the first continuous, anatomically-accurate 3D mathematical model of Chrysopelea paradisi in flight.

The team, which included Shane Ross, a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, and Isaac Yeaton, a recent mechanical engineering doctoral graduate and the paper’s lead author, developed the 3D model after measuring more than 100 live snake glides. The model factors in frequencies of undulating waves, their direction, forces acting on the body, and mass distribution. With it, the researchers have run virtual experiments to investigate aerial undulation.

“It’s very impressive, the performance they’re able to achieve on some pretty challenging problems,” said Dr. Armando Solar-Lezama at MIT, who was not involved in the research.

The problems AlphaCode tackled are far from everyday applications—think of it more as a sophisticated math tournament in school. It’s also unlikely the AI will take over programming completely, as its code is riddled with errors. But it could take over mundane tasks or offer out-of-the-box solutions that evade human programmers.

Perhaps more importantly, AlphaCode paves the road for a novel way to design AI coders: forget past experience and just listen to the data.

Interview with Hugo in Melbourne after the Singularity Summit Australia 2010, conducted by Adam A. Ford.

Terrans, Cyborgs and Cosmists — Varieties of human groups. Species dominance.

Bio: Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis, 63, has lived in 7 countries. He recently retired from his role of Director of the Artificial Brain Lab (ABL) at Xiamen University, China, where he was building China’s first artificial brain. He and his friend Prof. Dr. Ben Goertzel have just finished guest editing a special issue on artificial brains for Neurocomputing journal (December 2010), the first of its kind on the planet.

He continues to live in China, where his U.S. savings go 7 times further, given China’s much lower cost of living. He spends his afternoons in his favorite (beautiful) park, and his nights in his apartment, intensively studying PhD-level pure math and mathematical physics to be able to write books on topics such as femtometer scale technology (“femtotech”), topological quantum computing (TQC), as well as other technical and sociopolitical themes.

We swat bees to avoid painful stings, but do they feel the pain we inflict? A new study suggests they do, a possible clue that they and other insects have sentience—the ability to be aware of their feelings.

“It’s an impressive piece of work” with important implications, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher and expert on animal sentience at the London School of Economics who was not involved with the paper. If the study holds up, he says, “the world contains far more sentient beings than we ever realized.”

Previous research has shown honey bees and bumble bees are intelligent, innovative, creatures. They understand the concept of zero, can do simple math, and distinguish among human faces (and probably bee faces, too). They’re usually optimistic when successfully foraging, but can become depressed if momentarily trapped by a predatory spider. Even when a bee escapes a spider, “her demeanor changes; for days after, she’s scared of every flower,” says Lars Chittka, a cognitive scientist at Queen Mary University of London whose lab carried out that study as well as the new research. “They were experiencing an emotional state.”