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Headlights That See Through Rain and Snow
wisebabo writes "I think it was Newton who said if you knew the position and velocity of every particle in the universe, you could predict the future down to the effect the flutter of a sparrow's wing would have on the weather. Aside from quantum indeterminacy (which, of course, he knew nothing about) and questions of free will, it is clear we are a long long way from getting even close to the theoretical limits of prediction. Still, here's something that, to me, is very impressive. Some researchers manage to track raindrops (or snowflakes) in front of a light and, in real time, change the beam so that they are not illuminated! This drastically reduces glare. The obvious application is for driving cars in inclement weather. I'm hoping we're entering a new age where computers (and cheap sensors) have become so powerful as to make possible a whole host of 'magical' (like Arthur C. Clarke predicted) applications."
Here is another possible idea: LCD screen on windows. Track driver eye position. Create opaque circles exactly positioned on the lines between eyes and sun. Far better than those flip-down sunshields. Added bonus, someone will be able to hack it to obscure billboards too.
Can we adapt this tech to my TV for when my wife casually walks between me and the screen while I'm playing Call of Duty?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Or you could just reduce speed according to road conditions. Get off my lawn! This and the back up cam will clearly make it easier to see the expressions on the faces of pedestrians as you run them down. And that's something I can get behind.
'Free will' (read: your brain) is special and sits outside the sphere of the physical realm?
Besides the fact that according to recent advances in the cognitive sciences free will is increasingly overrated.
Very clever idea, yes, but I wouldn't call it impressive. It's all very simple technology we've had for a while now. Just one of those "Why hadn't anyone thought of that?" ideas.
"I think it was Newton who said if you knew the position and velocity of every particle in the universe, you could predict the future down to the effect the flutter of a sparrow's wing would have on the weather."
Doesn't sound much like the kind of thing Newton wrote, have you got a citation for it?
-wb-
Driving with sunglasses at night? Must admit I've never tried it, but doesn't sound like a particularly good idea. There are things you need to see out there that aren't exactly well lit.
He didn't predict that at some arbitrary point in the future technology would have the appearance of being magical, he didn't make a prediction at all in this regard. His statement "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (presumably) means "Any sufficiently advanced technology relative to the observer's baseline is indistinguishable from magic.", but that isn't as catchy.
If you could show someone from the 1700's an iPhone it would be "indistinguishable from magic" to them. If an alien race were to zip into orbit tomorrow at faster than light speed it would be "indistinguishable from magic" to us as we don't have any idea how that can be achieved, or even if it is possible. The technology described in the article is impressive but clearly distinguishable from magic, the article describes how it works.
and questions of free will
Free will has NOTHING to do with determinism. Free will has no meaning except from the point of view of whoever exercises it, and he can not predict his own behavior without predicting deciding to predict his behavior ad infinitum, what makes no sense. For everyone else, the question is absolutely irrelevant, so ability or inability to predict anyone else's actions is completely meaningless.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I know this is a different and potentially interesting system, but I had a crazy physics professor decades ago who added an infrared lamp to his headlights and he would drive in the fog with IR goggles (IR is less diffused than normal light). What was scary is that he would turn off the normal lights to avoid glare, so nobody could see him come...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."
— Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace
Ok, I didn't get the quote exactly right but I think I captured the gist of it.
Of course it's a good idea:
Very clever idea, yes, but I wouldn't call it impressive. It's all very simple technology we've had for a while now. Just one of those "Why hadn't anyone thought of that?" ideas.
Isn't that the very definition of a clever idea?
Big misunderstanding about Quantum Physics: It is not because our interpretation of quantum states is probabilistic that quantum physics are NOT deterministic. There may perfectly well be a deterministic behavior of quantum physics, it's just that so far we can only describe is with non-deterministic mathematics. See the Copenhagen Interpretation
http://www.transparency.org
"I think it was Newton..."
...but checking up before posting would be too much trouble, right?
Did Isaac Newton even know the universe was made of particles?
No sig today...
Yes. I like my statements the way I like my power supplies: Redundant. Which is the way I like my statements.
Use the tracking of the individual snowflakes to steer a MW laser installed on the hood of the car, that blasts all the nearby snowflakes, reducing glare.
Now it's cool.
Yes. I like my statements the way I like my power supplies: Redundant; which is the way I like my statements.
I like my statements like I like my statements: Tautological.
Laplace's Demon
Rock Us, Dukakis.
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." - Frank Zappa
--
BMO
well he was wrong, this kind of idea doesnt allow for emergance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
Actually, Laplace's idea does allow for emergence (you just need to know enough about the laws of physics and how they combine). Where it runs into problems is when faced with non-linearity (i.e., mathematical chaos and extreme sensitivity to initial conditions) and quantum physics (you can't ever know the initial state and there's no hidden variable theory that you can deduce by observation). In other words, Laplace was wrong but for excellent and interesting reasons.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
using actual water propagated in front of the projector
(Yes, they could've made it clearer... This is just a camera and a projector sitting together.)
An experienced driver knows how to see through the snow, and what the appropriate speed is to drive when snow is falling. Give technology like this to an inexperienced driver and you could end up with drivers who are not driving appropriately for the conditions - at which point bad things happen. And unfortunately driver errors often have consequences for people beyond just the driver of one car...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yeah. Impressive to spend years and $$$ to achieve an overly complex version of something that can be achieved by wearing your (polarised) sunglasses. Added bonus: you don't need to buy a new car.
How is this at all similar to wearing polarized sunglasses?
Polarized sunglasses reduce horizontally polarized glare, such as when sunlight reflects off the flat road. However, this doesn't help reduce the glare reflected back from a spherical raindrop. This technology prevents light from your headlamp from illuminating the rain drop in the first place. And it does this while reducing the overall headlamp light level by a few percent, as opposed to the much greater reduction you'd see with sunglasses.
There ya go, injecting facts into a perfectly distorted planted meme. You anti-trolls just suck the venom right out of stuff, ya know?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No, I do not. The solution you find on a wall calendar is for the Earth-Moon-Sun system. If you download Celestia you will find solutions to problems involving nearby stars. Galactic cluster and collision studies often provide solutions (to a desired precision) to multi-galaxy systems.
There is no general solution to the N-body problem. That has no bearing on whether the problem is solvable, particularly given the assumptions Laplace (the actual person who said what the summary attributed to Newton) made.
Laplace assumed classical mechanics (because that was what was known at the time), arbitrarily precise measurements of initial conditions and infinite computing power. Under those conditions, the N body problem is solvable to any desired precision.
Laplace may have been wrong because quantum mechanics may forbid arbitrarily precise measurements and might specify a non-deterministic universe, and sufficient computing power may not be available, but NOT because the N-body problem has no general closed form solution.