| |
EVENTS
|
|
 |
|
|
Topic - Biology, Physics, and Computer Science
Artificial Life: Life NOT As We Know It
Presented by Dr. Chris Adami
JPL Principal Scientist, JPL Quantum Computing Technologies Group
Click here the archived webcast. 
If you don't have RealPlayer,
you can download the free RealPlayer 8 Basic.
| Thursday, February
19 |
The von
Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
For directions, click here. |
| Friday, February 20 |
The Vosloh Forum at
Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
For directions, click here. |
Both lectures begin at 7 p.m. PST and run for approximately an hour.
Admission is free. Seating is limited.
For more information, call (818) 354-0112.
Within the last ten years, remarkable developments have led to the emergence of an artificial life form that lives within desktop and laptop computers. There, it reproduces and competes for available resources, and it evolves and adapts to its environment. This form of life is not biochemical, but rather computational in nature, in the sense that it uses slices of computer time to reproduce its computer code (the genome). We can think of these "creatures" as computer viruses that have been tamed, quarantined, and raised for experimental purposes. In the past, digital life forms have been useful for the study of fundamental aspects of the evolutionary process. Recently, they have caught our interest because they represent an alien form of life, one not related to terrestrial forms. Thus, they can be used to study the universality of life-detection protocols, or biomarkers in general. If this form of life can be detected, we can be hopeful that current scientific methods are not unduly biased in favor of life that we already know.
To learn more about quantum computing click here. |
|
|
