The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

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Stephen Wolfram Q&A, For Kids (and others) [February 26, 2021] Sep 10, 2021

Show notes

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: Why is there a size limit for a planetary body in the universe? Is the size of Jupiter the largest that is possible? - What happens to the electrons before the sun fusion occurs? - Why does it take up to 100,000 years for a photon to go from the core to the surface of the sun while only 8 minutes to reach earth? - How does one solve more-than-one electron systems? - When an atom absorbs a photon and then the same atom emit a photon... is that the same photon? - Is it true that the speed of light as we know it is an accepted assumption and the "one way" speed of light could not be calculated because the time measuring instruments can never be synced due to relativity? so we can only measure the speed of light beaming and returning from an object and assuming that the speed in both ways is the same? - So what happen to materials as metals if you cool them down in cooling fluids, for example we have Helium in a container with the metal and we cool it down to a fluid. - Dirac talk a lot about the constants of nature and our inability to explain them. Have we come any further in explaining them since his passing? - What about the triple/critical point? (i forget the name, but its the temp and pressure where a substance exists as gas & liquid & solid) - How would you suggest getting a child interested in diving deep into science and tech? Not just web programming but something real. What if the kid's parents aren't very interested themselves? Can the kid be 'saved' so to speak?

History of Science and Technology Q&A for Kids and Others (February 24, 2021) Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

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: I am interested in the evolution of mechanics from Newton through d'Alembert to Lagrange. Could you elaborate on this? Why was it the Europeans that created the modern mathematical framework and not the Chinese? They obviously had a head start. Why don't we use Chinese characters instead use the Latin alphabet? Pascal's Triangle was known in China before Europe—Sounds a little bit like computer graphics programming competitions in the early 90s (was quite popular in Scandinavia). Math competitions in logic might have been a similar thing—for example in Poland, but who knows. There's an obvious problem with peer reviewed academic research. Is there anything in the way science was developed in the past that we can learn from? Were we better at peer reviewing science?

Stephen Wolfram Q&A, For Kids (and others) [February 19, 2021] Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

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: Is sociology a real science? Can it predict something? - Should we use Inductive reasoning in science? - What is a number? - Would computer processing speed increase if we had a compendium of mathematical proofs? - What's the worst computer bug you have ever had? What was the simplest computer bug that you couldn't figure out? - How quickly is technology advancing at the moment? Is science reliable in the grand scheme of things? - How is it possible to overcome this sort of self doubt?

Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (February 17, 2021) Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business and innovation as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: Why did you choose to partner up with Ethereum and Cardano? What do you think of Cryptocurrencies in general? - Have you ever meet Stephen Wozniak? - How do Wolfram Research determine the prices of its products? Any tips for pricing products? - Cryptocurrency is living a top of the demand that ransomeware generates - What are the biggest obstacles to using smart contracts in day-to-day transactions? - Who taught you first about how to run a software company? Did your family taught you this, or some professor from your university? What they taught you? Who was the first person to buy your software? - Is it more difficult to start a new company and make it big or to enter a big company and climb the hierarchy? - If I may ask, how important do you think advanced education (i.e. a PhD) is in starting a company? Do you think it is necessary if you're interested in a high-tech industry (quantum computers, synthetic biology, etc.)? - Did you write your first piece of software in assembly language on a 386? - How do you organize your ideas, projects, notes, etc.? Pen & paper, or electronic-based? - When is it the right time to put the books down, bite the bullet and start a company around your idea? It always seems like we don't know enough to start. - How much knowledge/ understanding of economics and finance is needed to start a company, in particular in tech/ science? - Couldn't they fork off an experimental company, to try the experimental billion dollar making way, without risking much of the millions of income? - How did you find the best partners for your company? Did you find it among your friends from university?

Stephen Wolfram Q&A, For Kids (and others) [February 12, 2021] Aug 13, 2021

Show notes

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: If you couldn't be a human, what animal would you want to be and why? - What technology is necessary for us humans to be able to provide an evolutionary "update" to any of our sensory organs? - Are there any implication of standardizing the identification of chemical signatures of odours? - Is the fact that L-glucose and D-glucose taste the same mean that taste is not sensitive to chirality? - Can the spectrometry for smell and taste be based on a saline scale? - Do the neurons in the brain form a spatial manifold? Are the connections mostly local or non local? - What happens with people with diabetes?

Wolfram Summer School 2021: Opening Keynote Aug 05, 2021

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram presents the opening keynote for the 2021 Wolfram Summer School live to this years students across the globe! Get a taste of what it's like to engage in our annual summer programs, to find out more see the full list of our Education programs: https://education.wolfram.com/programs/

History of Science and Technology Q&A for Kids and Others (February 10, 2021) Jul 26, 2021

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Any stories about your work for Thinking Machines? - c/c++ have # omp parallel for loop parallelization, but there's nothing quite for distributed variable storage - Have you seen those Combinator Graph reduction Machines? - Have you read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", "What Do Care What Other People Think?" and/or "Tuva or Bust!"? - nowadays every modern computer has a connection machine, in the form of a GPU - f course Stephen knows the person who started the internet archive haha! - Were there applications for the connection machine which used the interconnections? I think e.g. fluid dynamic is easy to implement with the vector computation of GPUs, only local neighbors

Stephen Wolfram Q&A, For Kids (and others) [February 5, 2021] Jul 16, 2021

Show notes

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: How does the Bloomberg Terminal work? - Did that guy find his satellite by the way? or did it just float off into space or lose power? - What are Feynman Diagrams? - How do holograms work and why don't we have more holographic technology? - Have you read "The Deep Learning Revolution:" (2018, MIT Press) by Terrence J. Sejnowski? - How closely do you follow the field of AI? - Is it possible, with quantum tunnelling, that eventually, long in the future, the universe will have mostly, or even a large proportion of, 'iron stars'? How would iron stars affect planets with iron cores orbiting these stars?

Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (February 3, 2021) Jul 16, 2021

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business and innovation as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: What's your hottake on the gamestop saga? - What's the most innovative prototype you've been shown that you're surprised didn't make it to market [or failed]...and do you know why? - What business concerns does the R&D process entail? What is the process of inventing your own algorithm from scratch? How many algorithms in Mathematica were just created in house by wolfram research? - Hi Dr. Wolfram, why does wealth inequality exist and is it necessary for a society to work well? Also will all this matter if we become immortal - Do you think your brain worked better when you were 20 or when you were 50? - Jason Fried always talks about getting good at the individual skill of making money. Can you tell us what you've learned about the skill of making money over the years? - What advice can you provide an entrepreneur who has lost their high tech business of 15 years due to bankruptcy. How can one overcome the emotional baggage of such a loss. - Hi Stephen! You are obviously a man who has created a way to dive into a specific subject with great depth. How do you recommend that people keep their focus when it's easy to be distracted? - I rarely finishes my projects. pls help me. Business sounds boring. I just want to do innovation and research. I think maybe business could be a consequence of a new innovative idea and successful project or something. Of course I could be a business person in the real world, since my projects/innovations are hobby and personal based. - Is the fact that a lot of companies are pre-revenue (and some large companies don't even have a viable revenue stream) indicate a tech bubble? - How did you deal with issues regarding scaling your systems as Wolfram grew? - What's your take on the emerging space industry? Would you encourage/advise enterprises in that field? - How to make someone fund for any company at ideation level? - I have heard silicon valley investor's opinion that the best businesses begin operations in areas in which they are the only ones or part of a few, but with an horizon of big growth. Do you think math is in this horizon of growth, or is commited to a limit that paces the rate of growth in math and numerical analysis tools and solutions? - You wrote on computational contracts some time ago. Is that on hold due to the physics project?

Stephen Wolfram Q&A, For Kids (and others) [January 29, 2021] Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

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: What's that nested circular artifact on the shelf behind you (next to the spikey)? what math concept could it be used to teach? - Does the pattern of shell formation have a mathematical 'scheme'? - Do you think lifeforms have a baseline program that is informed and "coded" by our environment and experiences? if so is that baseline program evolving over generations or is it hard wired? - Epigenetics if you don't chew on hard food for hundreds of years your jaws will get small your teeth will be crooked you'll have trouble breathing at night Etc - How did butterflies with their 4-stage life cycle evolve, where only the last stage is capable of reproducing? - How do bean plants find their poles to climb up? - How would you recommend developing a work ethic to get into science and technology as someone who is younger and a beginner? - Why don't trees or plants resonate and break in high winds like tall buildings or towers?

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