Existence
| Use attributes for filter ! | |
| Google books | books.google.com |
|---|---|
| Originally published | 2012 |
| Authors | David Brin |
| Genres | Science Fiction |
| Date of Reg. | |
| Date of Upd. | |
| ID | 2976013 |
About Existence
Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence. Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. . . .
Can sci-fi films teach us anything about an AI threat?
...In an apocalyptic warning this week, big-name researchers cited the plot of a major movie among a series of AI " disaster scenarios" they said could threaten humanity s Existence...
Everything Everywhere All At Once: A guide to the references, Easter eggs and meanings
... An alternative universe version of Waymond suddenly appears, informing Evelyn that all of Existence is being threatened by an agent of chaos known as Jobu Tupaki - who also happens to be her daughter...
Pentaquarks: scientists find new " exotic" configurations of quarks
... Some of these may have a less fleeting Existence - perhaps a hundred billionth of a second...
Companies must help cut living costs, says new cost of living tsar
... " I wasn t born into any kind of charmed Existence - I grew up in South Wales in the 1980s and early 90s in a single parent family with three brothers...
Ukraine war: 'Almost every family has lost someone close to them'
... " The reality of life - or rather Existence - under Russian occupation is at jarring odds with the propaganda on prominent display in Mariupol...
Pakistan's Imran Khan is fighting for his political life
... Analyst Arifa Noor believes that while in Pakistan conflict is " inherent" in the relationship between civilians and the military - which has directly ruled the country for almost half of its Existence - the issue of replacing intelligence chief General Faiz Hameed caused a rift...
Rapping burglar who boasted about Leeds car thefts sentenced
... " But I can t lie, " he continues, and goes on to opine that " graft life" - his criminal Existence - is " hard"...
Life could exist on planet orbiting 'white dwarf' star
... The research team do not have direct evidence of the planet s Existence - but the movements of 65 Moon-sized structures orbiting the white dwarf s habitable zone, suggest it is there...
Pentaquarks: scientists find new " exotic" configurations of quarks
Scientists have found New Ways in which quarks, the tiniest particles known to humankind, group Together .
The new structures exist for just a hundred thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second but may explain how our Universe is formed.
Atoms contain smaller particles called neutrons and protons, which are made up of three quarks each.
" Exotic" matter discovered in recent years is made up of four and five quarks - tetraquarks and pentaquarks.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have discovered one new pentaquark and two tetraquarks. This takes the total number discovered there to 21. Each is unique, but researchers are excited about the qualities of the three new finds.
The new pentaquark decays into particles that none of The Others produce, while the two tetraquarks have the same mass, suggesting they may be The First known pair of exotic structures.
Perhaps even more importantly, though, the latest finds mean that there are now enough of these particles to begin grouping them Together , like the Chemical Elements in the Periodic Table . That is an essential first step towards creating a theory and set of rules governing exotic mass.
In light of the new discoveries, physicists are discussing this very issue at a special seminar on Tuesday at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which houses the Large Hadron Collider.
Working out miniscule differences between the tiniest things we know about may seem arcane, but the interaction of quarks creates the so-called " strong force" that holds the insides of atoms - and by extension our entire Universe - Together .
" The strong force is extremely difficult to calculate, and we don't have firm predictions of how the exotic pentaquarks and tetraquarks are built, " says Prof Chris Parkes of Manchester University . " But we hope that by finding out about them we can develop theories that enable us to understand them better. "
What are quarks?A Greek philosopher, Democritus, put forward the idea in the fifth century that The World was made up of indivisible particles which he called atoms.
By The End of the 19th and early 20Th Century , experimental results showed that atoms were made up of smaller particles: electrons, neutrons and protons.
And in the 1960s, it became clear that neutrons and protons themselves were made from smaller particles still, called quarks; and that the interaction of quarks was tied to one of the fundamental forces of nature called the strong force.
The Force not only holds the insides of atoms Together , but is important in the interactions of other sub-atomic particles that make The Universe tick.
The Large Hadron Collider has undergone a major upgrade and the researchers involved believe that they will discover many more such exotic particles, some of which may have six quarks Bound Together .
Some of these may have a less fleeting Existence - perhaps a hundred billionth of a second. That is brief by human standards, but because these particles travel at the speed of light, they would leave trails a few millimetres long, which would be a treasured footprint for physicist sleuths to Follow .
Source of news: bbc.com