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Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How was it determined that light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum? - Could you speak about the history of the hard sphere model in statistical mechanics? In many textbooks, it is mentioned rather briefly for something so fundamental. - How did the study of nonlinear dynamics come about? I'd imagine it would be a known thing after Newton's work. - How important are complex numbers in the history of science and tech? Would the current state be possible without them? - Solving equations of that form led negative and complex numbers to be taken more seriously, but people did not see the utility of these types of numbers. A lot of facts that are true about real numbers are also true about complex numbers. They're not necessary to solve many problems, but they're convenient for packaging. - Have you ever seen CA-like objects produced by a Jacquard loom? - Just curious on your thoughts on technological singularity.
By Wolfram Research4.5
6161 ratings
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How was it determined that light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum? - Could you speak about the history of the hard sphere model in statistical mechanics? In many textbooks, it is mentioned rather briefly for something so fundamental. - How did the study of nonlinear dynamics come about? I'd imagine it would be a known thing after Newton's work. - How important are complex numbers in the history of science and tech? Would the current state be possible without them? - Solving equations of that form led negative and complex numbers to be taken more seriously, but people did not see the utility of these types of numbers. A lot of facts that are true about real numbers are also true about complex numbers. They're not necessary to solve many problems, but they're convenient for packaging. - Have you ever seen CA-like objects produced by a Jacquard loom? - Just curious on your thoughts on technological singularity.

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