Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others (156 videos)

Weekly ask-me-anything about science & technology

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New episode streaming Friday, April 4, 2025 at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 156] »

1 hour 22 minutes

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Can you talk about lambda calculus? Any thoughts on numerology? My current favorite approximation to a constant (e, in this case) is (1 + 9^-4^(7*6))^3^2^85, which uses each of the digits 1–9 only once and is accurate to 18 septillion digits. Atmospheric noise is about as random as we can get, I think. How does IBM Watson AI stand against modern LLMs? Would the LLM have the same reaction time to compete and press the buzzer as humans? Is it possible someday we may predict the weather years in advance? Well then, is weather a good random sequence? How do you calculate wind speed if wind is just a pressure difference? If the Earth started rotating in reverse, would that have an effect on weather? What would it take to stabilize the weather (like using wind farms in reverse or controlling ground albedo or atmosphere composition) so that we know it exactly? Can the Earth's tilt ever be affected? What kind of changes would this cause? There is a rather large difference between what the ideal climate would be and what changes will mean trouble for us, given our current infrastructure. Even the weather can't agree on what the weather should be. View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 155] »

1 hour 31 minutes

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​​​​How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? ​​Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? Are there any materials that slow light down enough so that we can actually see it traveling without technology helping out? How would you describe science? And how are you staying a scientist? Can you talk about scientific paradigms? Interesting parallel to current research in LLMs that have so many variables and so much variability that reproducibility is extremely hard—even if it is "just" computers. Do you think science has a problem with trying to tell nature how to behave rather than reporting on what nature is telling us? What if you start the prompt with a script for the tech demo and ask the LLM to not go off script? I've often been amazed at how LLMs sometimes reproduce realistic human behavior. We have seen them sometimes "lie" or try to "cover" a mistake. What's your intuition now for what makes the best prompter? ​​​​Do you have any suggestions on coming up with ways to test hypotheses, especially ones that are more theoretical and difficult to test in the real world? How do you know when you have a good test? How are diamonds made? How can fermions adopt a condensate configuration, or can they? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 154] »

1 hour 16 minutes

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My question is, When we transfer an electric charge to a conducting sphere, does this charge cause some metal atoms to become ions? If they do not become ions, where do the electrons go? If they become ions, then their chemical properties must also change. Which answer is correct? In the recent LA fires, I've seen buildings burned but plants and trees next to them just fine. Is there some physical or chemical reason why the plants are fine and buildings not? Do photons collide? The light coming to us and the light going back to the source? I have a question about antimatter. What do we use to contain antimatter? How would you think about photons as a 10-year-old? What's an easy explanation? What is antimatter anyway? Is it supposed to be something that pairs up with matter to maintain some kind of conservation law? Are we unintentionally leaving behind a time capsule with light waves? Will scientists of the future be able to look back in time through light? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 153] »

1 hour 27 minutes

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What is computation? How does matter go from randomly moving particles to something that starts "computing"? My son watched The Matrix for the first time the other night. He asked me, "Are we living in the matrix?" How can we know one way or another? ​​Is binary the most effective form of computation? Do you think we will ever be able to observe a graviton? Is it possible a "universe" exists that has no equivalent of "mass," which could be in the same place and time as we are but is not observable by us? Any thoughts on the developing situation with dark matter? Why do all objects take a spherical shape in space, but the solar systems and galaxies take a disc-like shape? Please share some more insights while you and Christopher were working on the movie Arrival as science consultants. Tell us more about the ideas from the movie and how they are currently being developed. If there's antimatter, is there antimass? Can we build a massage chair based on gravitational waves? Could the differences in time perception between ourselves and aliens affect our abilities to interact and be a contributing factor or solution to the Fermi paradox? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 152] »

1 hour 22 minutes

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In class, we learned that light behaves like both a wave and a particle. How is that even possible? My teacher said there's no "up" or "down" in space. Why is that, and how do astronauts navigate? Is the universe as small as it is big? When will we reach the physical computer chip size limit? I heard in two, three years. I also heard that quantum computer chips are still far away. Is this true? Can you elaborate on it? How do you expect propagation of light in your model to work out? Will you get frequency-dependent propagation like in a normal elastic solid or independent propagation? If light has no mass, how can gravity, like from a black hole, pull it in? Doesn't that break the rules? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 151] »

1 hour 20 minutes

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​​​​As a computer scientist and now physics student, I would love to ask you what makes you think that our universe is an automata, and how does it run if the medium is itself? Does the universe have a halting probability or the ruliad? Aren't we just describing our perception of the universe instead of the actual universe? What would Kant say about the ruliad? What is your view on atoms being able of cognition and self-awareness in the human brain by just assembling themselves? The ruliad contains its own encoding function and it is instantiated. The simpler the function, the better. Can we look at free will as probability distributions in the ruliad? What happens in the ruliad during overlap of two free wills? What "runs" the ruliad? Computers run computer programs. Mathematicians do thinking and write on paper to prove theories. In every case I can think of, for information to be "processed," there has to be some sort of processor intelligence doing the work. What is it the equivalent for the ruliad? If there isn't an intelligence running it, why does it follow rules? ​​​​What if the observer is a computational system? Maybe each species of observer conflates all their threads into a different identity mapping of the ruliad. Each species' encoding function is a distinct identity mapping, speciation's blueprint. Perhaps we should replace school grades with "extent to which you have captured the ruliad." Could you explain what infinity is? View Less »
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