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: Are we close to making face recognition a ubiquitous replacement for passwords in electronic systems that require a login, negating the need to remember and constantly change multiple passwords? - Can you describe the correlations among qubits, how they differ from ordinary bits and the potential advantage of them? - So perhaps a conscious observer is in fact the result of the underlying physical system building a model that averages out all the parallel threads into a coherent story? - What I don't really understand is destructive interference between threads of history. I understand how probabilities can add, but how can they interfere destructively? - Could our brains be a quantum computer? - It is, of a sort! A distinctive feature is it being inside your body and firing neurons in 3D spatial patterns. - What Wolfram Language functions would be most improved if they could utilize 20 million logical qubits on a quantum computer?

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: Can you give some insight into automata theory, its history and its applications up until today? - How did scientists figure out the source of the cosmic microwave radiation? - Why didn't containers become popular until Docker around 2013? It seems like they would have been very useful long before that. What did people do instead? - The idea of containers was there, but it was virtualization plus a heavy load of scripts to manage servers and configurations, which was just another iteration of mirroring machines. - Apple also had a Motorola-to-PPC emulator for their PPC Macs.

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: There was a study where they saw helices in superconducting materials. What properties make helices common in nature, from DNA to whirlpools to EMR? - Can you tell us why electrons in the atoms of the Sun do not burn due to the heat? - How does superconducting magnet levitation work? - Fermions and bosons... Are hadrons the intersection between them? - Is there much use for superconductivity in space where the temp is already close to 0 K? - Especially in places without an insulating atmosphere around, superconductors should be a serious option. Much easier to dissipate heat! - Aren't there Japanese maglev trains on which there are cooling systems? - I believe these flux tubes also show up in gravity, leading to dark matter and dark energy effects. - What do you think has the most potential for changing the energy crisis, and what field do you think we need to focus on to get there? - As long as the nuke plant isn't dual-use for producing plutonium, then I think it's safe. - Thermovoltaic cells are a new thing that seem interesting for the efficiency of steam turbines.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: As a British native, do you participate in Thanksgiving festivities? - Do you ever use spreadsheets or any other type of specialist app to manage information? Or is your main tool Mathematica? - Do you go through periods of low motivation? If so, what do you do to get over that? - Should I travel? - Pi Day at SXSW was pretty special! - I've been to one of your talks. The first time was around 1990 at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Wolfram is the reason why I purchased a NeXTSTEP computer, because it included a copy of Mathematica. - I think a lot of people are deep in mainstream university discourse and it is good to have talks to open up and stimulate curious people to break out of the stream if they want. - Well, "they" say nothing beats person-to-person contact, as opposed to video conferencing. Then again, maybe "they" just like to travel to exotic places (disclaimer: I hate travel)! - If you have to think about it (doing more in-person talks/traveling)... the answer is no. Unless you absolutely love it, there is no value in it. - How about meeting people that don't go to universities but are really engaged in and doing hobby projects in computer and mathy stuff? - Have you ever been to Idaho? - Doesn't have to be a big and public place. Just talking back and forth, having a conversation. Big talks are not needed. - What's the goal? To interact and make friends or lay the seeds of the Wolfram universe? - Have you thought about making a video streaming and conferencing platform that integrates with your notebooks and computational language? Or do Google and Zoom do that well enough? - You could periodically host "Wolfcon." Only folks interested would be likely to show up. - As far as virtual interaction, I like Q&A streams, but also CA and physics streams. - If I were you, I would make appearances conditional with a personal request based on your curiosity. Example: "I'll come to Paris, and in return I want you to pre-arrange a three-hour private tour with a senior curator at the Louvre for me and my wife." - Wouldn't a conference on the Physics Project, in collaboration with a major university, help further disseminate it within the academic community? - You should do a talk with Gerard 't Hooft. - How come you were not on the Apple keynote when the Intel-based Macs were announced during the Mathematica demo?

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: Does gravity's strength cause a fundamental limit for the size a planet? What about a star? What about a black hole? What about a galaxy? What about the universe? - Internal gas pressure and gravity are two main forces for star formation from nebulas. - What was the pressure of the early universe vs. today? Just as a thought experiment. - Can one stretch a vacuum beyond a "breaking point" similar to how matter can be compressed beyond a "breaking point" that leads to black holes? - In both quantum field theory and general relativity, the zero-point energy seems to be arbitrary: you can add a constant to the equations and it will still be a valid solution. But in general relativity there seems to be a notion of absolute energy because of its gravitational effects. This zero point seems to be associated with flat space. Why is flat space non-gravitational, i.e. why is flat space the lowest possible energy state? - Any ideas about "hacking nature" to gain powers (get infinite energy, travel faster than light, etc.). Do you think all these are possible at all? Can we really "hack" or "alter" the rules of nature? - You can travel faster than light if the space between you and your destination changes; this happens quite frequently as the universe expands, and it's why we get measurements faster than the speed of light in space. It's just a fabrication. - This brings up a related question. You cannot distinguish the geometry of empty space from that which has matter that is uniformly distributed. So it is perhaps uniformity that determines the geometry (without dark energy). But this assumes matter can be spread out like a fluid, instead of being discrete. So perhaps flat space is indeed the lowest-energy state. Uniform matter cannot exist because of the discreteness of matter, which leads inevitably to inhomogeneities. - It's almost like you need to solve the puzzle of constructing the space you want to travel through before you can travel through it. - Why is the refractive index for x-rays into matter smaller than 1? Does that mean that the speed of light for x-rays is faster in matter than in a vacuum?

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: Did Einstein ever attempt to quantize spacetime, as opposed to treating it as a continuous medium? - We are ultra-interested to hear about this future history of science! - What was the most fantastic experience you had as a physicist? - What is the history behind migrating the entropy term to information theory? - What is the process like making computations for the thermodynamics project? - What do you think about engineering efforts that help in discovering science (building tools and experiments)? I've met many scientist who dismiss engineering as "less intellectual." - Computational language design is basically like being a modern-day wizard. - Technology, science and social relations co-evolve.

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 sand form near the sea? - Is grammar invented or discovered? - ​I believe there exists a 13 letter language from a pacific island. Do you think a 10 letter language would be useful since every word would also be a base 10 number? - ​How can a natural programming language replace older concrete programming languages, would it be fuzzy or like a predictor language? since often natural language can be interpreted differently? - What would be your thoughts on Languages from the perspective of the category theory? It seems like Category theory encompasses all of Math. - What limitations does Wolfram Alpha have currently, and what methods are you exploring to address those limitations?

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: How do you prepare for your keynote talks about new technologies and Wolfram Language features? - What barriers currently still exist that keep AR/VR from being widely useful in the workplace? - One thing I genuinely appreciate about Stephen is his obvious incredible delight when explaining concepts, particularly related to science. Does he ever have to force it? - Do you take part in clinical trials? - Diagnosing is definitely a potential job for AI. - Can Wolfram Language screen for diseases or illnesses? - ​Is it possible to change human DNA by intention, I mean eating foods or taking medicine? - Do you try to convince your children to go to specific universities/schools, or do they decide by themself without any impact from you? - Multiple screens are nice but I feel it's less productive sometimes. Sort of the same thing as multitasking being a myth. - I feel like I am someone who has a lot of interests. I did my engineering degree a decade ago but I want to study mathematics, physics, philosophy and neuroscience too. Have you also been someone with diverse interests? If so, how do you manage them? I feel like I struggle with wanting to learn so much more—I feel like its a lot better to be focused and simple minded. - Any tips for fixing a chaotic filesystem? My files are scattered everywhere. - What do you do when you feel like you're stuck in the mud and can't get out? - How do you write? - How much do you use the mouse while writing in a notebook? - Do you have any preferences in reading hard copy vs digital? - You should have an automatic email word cloud generator. - Does UV hurt the paper? - Physical books are heavy and bulky, while ebooks are never bigger than your favorite tablet! - What is the oldest book you own? - Do you think storage devices like tapes and punch-cards might come back sometime?

Stephen reads a recent blog from https://writings.stephenwolfram.com and then answers questions live from his viewers. Read the blog along with Stephen: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/07/generative-ai-space-and-the-mental-imagery-of-alien-minds/ Watch the original livestream on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X8DQuazATdM

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: Are all pixels squares/rectangles, or have other shapes (which can tile the plane) been used? - Why hasn't all the cosmic background radiation escaped out into the universe by now? How is it still around to be detected billions of years later? - It's weird to talk about time experienced by a photon. It experiences (this is what's possible to be noticed) only two moments, those of detachment and attachment. Between this, nothing is observable now. - Do you need mass to store information? Can you have an organism made purely out of photons or other particles moving at the speed of light? - ​Does time move faster for hot objects? - But doesn't a black hole have a temperature? What happens to a black hole's entropy? - Why doesn't the black hole further collapse on itself? - Do the updates to maintain the structure of space help explain the absurd vacuum energy? - How much more complex are the dynamics of the human brain than the dynamics of a galaxy? - Does a black hole inherit the dimensionality of the spacetime it is forming in? - Interestingly, the number of atoms in a bacterium is also about 100 billion. - Interestingly, the distance to the Sun (1 AU) is about 100 billion meters. - As gravity increases and/or speed increases, time is constant to the participant, but on the outside, space/distance could be greater or lesser. If you had a light year cube of space and shrunk it into a meter, light would take the same amount of time to go through it.