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How Stephen Wolfram Devised Interstellar Travel (And Code Samples) For 'Arrival' (backchannel.com)
The new movie "Arrival" depicts first contact with aliens, and its producers faced the question of how interstellar spacecraft would actually work. They turned to futurist Stephen Wolfram, who came up with an answer overnight, and also tasked his son with writing much of the computer code seen on displays in the movie. Slashdot reader mirandakatz brings us Wolfram's story:
Christopher was well aware that code shown in movies often doesn't make sense (a favorite, regardless of context, seems to be the source code for nmap.c in Linux). But he wanted to create code that would make sense, and would actually do the analyses that would be going on in the movie... For instance, there's a nice shot of rearranging alien "handwriting," in which one sees a Wolfram Language notebook with rather elegant Wolfram Language code in it. And, yes, those lines of code actually do the transformation that's in the notebook. It's real stuff, with real computations being done...
For the movie, I wanted to have a particular theory for interstellar travel. And who knows, maybe one day in the distant future it'll turn out to be correct. But as of now, we certainly don't know. In fact, for all we know, there's just some simple "hack" in existing physics that'll immediately make interstellar travel possible.
Wolfram's theory posited that space is just one of the attributes emerging from a low-level network of nodes, where long-range connections occasionally break out of three-dimensional space altogether. His 6,900-word essay (originally published on his blog) also suggests film-making has "some structural similarities" with software development -- and grapples with the question of how we'd actually communicate with aliens once they've arrived.
For the movie, I wanted to have a particular theory for interstellar travel. And who knows, maybe one day in the distant future it'll turn out to be correct. But as of now, we certainly don't know. In fact, for all we know, there's just some simple "hack" in existing physics that'll immediately make interstellar travel possible.
Wolfram's theory posited that space is just one of the attributes emerging from a low-level network of nodes, where long-range connections occasionally break out of three-dimensional space altogether. His 6,900-word essay (originally published on his blog) also suggests film-making has "some structural similarities" with software development -- and grapples with the question of how we'd actually communicate with aliens once they've arrived.
None of this was referenced in the movie. It was a lot of backstory to develop the boring nonsensical drama. The aliens could have been fairies or it's all a dream and the movie is the same.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Easy. He just asked Worlfram Alpha.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I remember when "Elysium" came out, there was a similar campaign of 'suddenly' random story topics on every blog site about that movie too...
Viral marketing and fake news.... blech!
He just asked Wolfram Alpha.
Doesn't that make it circular reasoning?
You mean failed scientist ("A new kind of science", anyone?)?? Or self-propelled huckster? Or delusional Space Nutter?
" In fact, for all we know, there's just some simple "hack" in existing physics that'll immediately make interstellar travel possible. "
"Fact"? "Know"? No. The fact is there's no such hack. We are here, they are there. End of story. To think otherwise is religion. (That's the "immediately" part.)
To programmers and other such mental wankers, they think that making patterns on a screen is the same as physical results.
Just like anything worthwhile is.
As the code is real the rest of the movie now also must be real..........
Please, anything about a current or even recent movie, tell me if it has - or does not have - SPOILERS at the start of of the damn article.
Sounds like he's been reading Greg Egan's "Schild's Ladder".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Okay, so CmdrTaco sometimes had weird stories, but after all this used to be his blog. But advertorials are so pre-millenial. If you are going to dress up advertising as news, have the common decency to be subtle about it, please.
I really don't know why slashdot is still in my daily bookmarks list. EurekaAlert has far more 'news for geeks' than this site ever did, and even the BBC tends to be a few days ahead nowadays.
a favorite, regardless of context, seems to be the source code for nmap.c in Linux
Or the uncredited Viralator.pl in One Point O (2004)
Weird. Nearly every story submitted was published. Never written a comment. Has only read slashdot two days in a row...
Who is this person?!
I also remember when they rebooted Elisium, how I was surprised that, in the future, that it ran on IDE drives. Also, I, like, commas.
Do we need to know anything about the film? I liked knowing NOTHING about Arrival. I've seen no trailers, I know nothing except "hey a proper hard scifi movie is out and it's pretty cool, it's called Arrival" that's ALL I knew...
I don't watch trailers, I go on recommendations from friends or online.
Is this necessary?
Posting anon to avoid the inevitable spoiler ridden replies.
Seriously though, don't do this shit huh? The movie is brand new.
I app if there's a Wolfram app because I don't think I can fully app the Wolfram without an appy Wolfram to app.
More seriously: Does Stephen Wolfram or ESR sound more pretentious and full of themselves when they switch into self-promotional blather mode (which, for either of them, seems to be at least a weekly event)? It's a tough call. "I wrote a book! I wrote this awesome code that everybody should use! Only I had the insights to address the problems of tomorrow, yesterday!"
Like Alderson points? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Spoilers: if you still want to watch this movie, don't read this.
Solid movie. The art was good, the dialogue felt alright, acting was fine, but then there's the thing of the plot.
A respected linguist achieves a once in a lifetime achievement, far beyond any researcher's dream and all this is used for is a plot where she chooses to live out her own heteronormative fantasies of getting married, being a mother and so on. Does the world around her change? Apparently not, as her husband was unaware of their daughter's condition, so I'm guessing he didn't learn this alien alphabet business (too busy being a stereotypical father?) and while she teaches a course on these symbols it seems like every single thing is the exact same as when the aliens have landed.
Basically, a deeply philosophical question means nothing more than one woman's boring dreams. And here's the thing: do you think that if the roles were reversed and the main character was a man, would the plot be about getting married and having kids? No, it would involve saving the world and "advancing humanity" or some such modernist nonsense. Hell, he ends up leaving his wife and child because apparently he has more important business.
Doesn't that make it circular reasoning?
Spherical reasoning. With cows and shit.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
For the record: nmap.c is not in linux
Never has been, and probably never will be.
Unless there is the "simple physics hack" space travel will be a royal pain in the ass when you take the planning that is involved. The energy problems, bio issues, logistics, all of it.
Even if we overcome all of that, you'll be flying into the unknown. Think about it: you want to go see the pillars of creation a thousand light years away. There was a discussion that an explosion may have occurred or was imminent that would destroy them... a thousand years ago. So even if you found the hack tomorrow (say toasting pop tarts still in the Mylar in an upside down toaster) that lets you arrive at the pillars, or anywhere else, instantaneously, then whatever you went to see would have changed or have been long gone over the millennia. This is something sci-fi never fully discloses: hey, see that in the telescope? Let's go! Wait, where the fuck is it??
So for an advanced civilization to find us and make contact, they'd have to have been watching for the past, what, 100 years to pick up on the noise we make or make on hell of a guess as to where we are.
Still sounds like an adventure.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
" its producers faced the question of how interstellar spacecraft would actually work."
This implies that NOBODY else has ever come up with any viable or otherwise ideas on how interstellar spacecraft would work --- the hubris of those....or sorry, the ignorance of those producers. There have been various ideas and concepts explored both scientifically and in science fiction for more than 60 years.
Like his political analog, Stephen Wolfram shows that it is possible to rise to the top by self-promotion and buzzwords rather than substance. Case in point: nmap.c is the source code for nmap. No programmer would ever refer to "the source code for nmap.c", which, if taken literally, would refer to whatever was in Gordon Lyon's head when he wrote the code.
http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/491...
I love when scientists describe intelligent alien communications as being difficult due to different "contexts". It really shows just how far scientists have travelled outside of their cities.
Communications-outside-of-context are done all the time. Humanity's historical cultures don't play any role in a Canadian adult speaking with a third-world african child. Yet it's done all the time.
Similarly, adopt a puppy. Learn to live with any intelligent animal. The first time that you catch your puppy in a lie, you'll know that you've learned to communicate across "contexts".
If you want to communicate with an alien species, intelligent or otherwise, it's as easy as it's always been. Your "context" is the one thing you share -- the environment around you. Lock yourself in a room, a cabin in the woods, an asteroid adrift, a mysteriously-locked laboratory, and any two individuals (now sharing a "context") will figure out how to communicate with each other very very very quickly, and pretty darn efficiently too, using whatever works (physical touch, verbal commands, emotional cues, mechanical blocking, et cetera).
In my life, I've trained two birds, four dogs, three cats, and a girl. I've been trained by one dog, two cats, and that very same girl.
But this requires a very simple comprehension of communication, that I worry most people simply do not have. It is this: communication (of thought), however lengthy and prolonged, is the means to an end. That end is always action (or inaction). Taking away any opportunity for communication to surround action, makes communication utterly meaningless. It simply must relate to something else. And obviously so, since the communication of thought requires thought first, and that thought must be of something -- most often of truth. And any truth, once again, comes down to an observable and testable action.
Train a puppy. Along the way, you'll discover that the puppy has trained you too. Sit back, and notice the new common language that's formed between you. It takes about a week -- most of which is about discovering the shared environment that now requires a common language -- you didn't need to talk to each other when you didn't share a house.
It was an enjoyable read and provided some movie-making insight from a unique perspective. We could definitely use more scientific realism and plausibility in our movies. Thanks for posting.
-Bob-
It's worth reading Ted Chiang's short story, "Story of Your Life," which the movie is based on. It addresses this point in an interesting, even if not fully satisfying way.
I have a dim understanding that modern physics believes that faster-than-light travel is not possible, full stop. I don't quite understand the equivalence, but FTL is the equivalent of time travel, and since we believe that time travel would violate causality, we believe that FTL is impossible no matter what mechanism you propose (teleportation, hyperspace, whatever).
Even with the pretty diagrams I'm not sure I get it.
http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html
I've also read that FTL shouldn't be impossible if the whole universe had a common frame of reference, but according to the theory of relativity, there is no such common frame of reference in the universe. But I've read a couple of discussions that say that maybe FTL would be possible if "hyperspace" or "subspace" travel imposes a common frame of reference. Again I don't really understand this.
http://www.calormen.com/star_trek/FAQs/warp-faq.htm
I'd love it if someone with physics understanding could explain it in a way that my poor grasp of physics can understand, using car analogies or whatever.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Aren't the aliens already here? I saw it on a documentary called "The South Park Movie". Everything on TV is true, right ?
This is logged under funny right? It's Sunday, a perfect day for a new comic. Sadly, the graphic itself is actually missing. There should have been a link to the now famously inaccurate Wolfram Bible explaining how his and his way alone to code the entire universe in python, with math. And there is confusing text in place of it. Obviously the writer forgot to flush the buffer from some PR for a movie(?) or an interactive marketing attempt from Wolfram Claims Copyright of Wikipedia Pages Corporation, dept of Corporate Overreach a sub-dept of Damned Fine Work with Amazing Hubris.
You do realize that the opposite of elite is dumbass moron, right?
I for one look forward to our new dumbass moron overlords.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?