einstein – An Autonomous Agent

The Dancing Wu Li Masters – Gary Zukav

anautonomousagent — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 05:01:04 +0000

Gary Zukav’s book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, simply describes (without math) quantum physics and relativity since their inception at the beginning of the 20th century. Zukav skillfully presents the paradoxes and questions posed and asked by some of the smartest people in history including Einstein, Bohr, Born, Heisenberg, von Neumann, Feynman, etc… He carefully elucidates the evolution of the answers to these paradoxes and questions.

There are numerous analogies with eastern cosmologies which may help readers understand the wild results and conclusions of modern physics. The book is perfect for those without a strong background in the quantitative sciences who wish to understand what quantum physics reveals about the universe. Although dated, (1979) it is inspirational and should get readers excited about reading more up to date books.

On the Shoulders of Giants – Steven Hawking

anautonomousagent — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:32:00 +0000

I am not sure why, but I bought On the Shoulders of Giants, by Steven Hawking, with the intention of reading the entire 1280 page volume. I was not able to finish any of the works contained in the anthology. Not because of their difficulty, but because I found all of them, except Einstein’s boring. This is probably because I grew up reading so many books that already assumed that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses according to Kepler’s laws. All the works are legendary from a historical perspective, since they basically changed the course of science and history. The book is a neat addition to a library collection.

BOINC

anautonomousagent — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 04:46:00 +0000

When I had a Windows 95 PC back in the late 1990’s I would run the SETI@HOME program. As most people know this is a way to help search for ET. I can not remember exactly but I believe it took at least a day of continuous processing on my IBM Pentium MMX 166 MHz processor to complete one work unit.
About a year ago I rediscovered my childhood urge to find ET and decided to run SETI once more. I discovered that SETI now runs through a program call BOINC. More information on BOINC here.

BOINC, as I understand it, has enormous potential; especially with CUDA. I bought the CUDA enabled GTX 580 to create a monster gaming rig (See post on my gaming computer). When I run SETI, the GTX 580 completes the task in about 7 minutes. Just incredible. My Core 2 Duo laptop took 7 hours.

On BOINC I am apart of the following applications: SETI, GPU Grid, PrimeGrid, MilkyWay@Home, Einstein@HOME, and others.