Q2C - Day 6

Big day. I attended two different Q2C events.

The first one was a talk from 4:00-5:00, entitled "Sense from Chaos: Controlling the Dynamic Networks of the Brain" by Larry Abbott of Columbia University. The talk was excellent. Once again, I asked a question; what's the function of sleep? His answer... "We have no idea". I don't think that's quite true, but I was happy to hear that there is so much yet to be discovered in cognitive neuroscience.



The second event I went to was the Science in the Pub panel discussion "Who Am I?" They talked about memory, consciousness, identity, illusions, and all sorts of interesting neurological phenomena. I was especially pleased when Prof. Abbott referred to my earlier question about sleep; the panel discussed sleep and dreaming for quite some time.



(download mp3)

Q2C - Day 4

I took my mom to a talk entitled "Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species", by Sean B. Carroll. He's an evo-devo expert (evolutionary developmental biology) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He's also a good speaker.

(The talk was filmed, but is not yet available online. I'll update this post when it appears.)

Prof. Carroll talked about some of the details leading up to the discovery of the theory of evolution, outlining the contributions of Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, and - of course - Charles Darwin. In particular, Darwin seems to have known about the theory in the 1830s, but took his time publishing because he thought the theory would be repugnant to his colleagues and family. However, Wallace independently discovered the theory, and started to publish it. That pushed Darwin to finally publish his own version in 1859, in a book entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. After that, Bates chimed in with an exquisite example of natural selection: mimicry.

Do NOT be confused by the new edition of On the Origin of Species. The ludicrous creationist Ray Comfort is remarketing the book, but with his own warped introduction.

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The video is online now. My mom and I appear about 18 minutes into the video.

Q2C - Day 2

Last night, I attended Science in the Pub. The topic for the panel was "Living in a Quantum World". They talked about quantum computers, and the feasibility of producing them. It was somewhat interesting. The second half of the evening was questions from the audience. Some of the questions were very technical and boring. But some were good, like mine.

Q2C - Day 1

I started the day by taking my two daughers, Heather and Addie, to the Physica Phantastica exhibit, part of the Quantum to Cosmos Festival put on by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The hour passed really quickly. We watched an 8-minutes 3D movie about cosmology and scientific visualization, we saw a miniature traincar hover over a track, we looked at a replica of the Mars rover, we played with polarized lenses, and we formed our own scientific hypotheses that we tested.

After that, I went to a talk entitled "Does Reality Have A Genetic Basis?" by S. James Gates, Jr. I was intrigued by the title, since I've hypothesized that the physical laws, as we know them, are actually the result of an evolutionary process acting on a deep and fundamental substrate, perhaps a handful of truly universal axioms that interact and evolve, and the stable (and self-replicating?) laws persist and make up our universe (and others). Though I learned a lot during the talk, he did not actually address what he meant by the word "genetic" in the title. In fact, I asked about it during the question period, but he didn't answer the question I asked. He did bring up the anthropic principle, and the multiverse hypothesis. I wonder if he thought I was a creationist.

My question appears 60.5 minutes into the video.