127 Years of The War of the Worlds

In October 30, 1988, the Sunday supplement of La Vanguardia (a major Spanish newspaper) published an article I had written, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the publication as a book of Herbert George Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds. (It had been published in instalments the previous year). That year also marked a half-century after Orson Welles’s radio adaptation of that novel, which caused panic in part of the United States, because many people didn’t realize it was an adaptation of a novel and thought that the Martians were invading Earth.

This year marks the 127th anniversary of the publication of this novel, perhaps the best-known of works of H.G. Wells. A generation after Jules Verne, Wells is the second great precursor of a literary genre (science fiction) that enjoyed enormous expansion in the 20th century. In light of this anniversary, I wonder: Why do these celebrations always take place when the number of years is a multiple of 25? Why can't the 127th anniversary be celebrated? 

William Crookes, Unorthodox Scientist

William Crookes

One of the most surprising scientific figures of the second half of the 19th century in England was William Crookes (1832-1919), whose scientific career was spectacular, although his activities related to spiritualism, which was then in vogue in England, were also widely known.

Here's a list of Crookes's scientific achievements:

·         An expert in spectroscopy, in 1861 he discovered a new chemical element, thallium, number 81 on the periodic table, located in the same column as boron, aluminum, gallium, and indium, whose chemical properties it resembles. Thallium was discovered simultaneously and independently by the French chemist Claude-Auguste Lamy, who is considered a co-discoverer, although it was Crookes who named it, from the Greek word θαλλός, meaning green twig, in reference to the green line in its spectrum that helped him discover it. This discovery led to his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863.

Do people with Down Syndrome have a right to life?

A post I published in this blog in 2017 ended with this paragraph:

Why are human beings conceived with trisomy of chromosome 21 (Down syndrome) denied the right to life, to the point that, in many Western countries, in practice they are not allowed to be born?

In another post, published in 2015, during the first year of this blog's existence, I calculated the probability that the triple and quadruple screening tests, then in use to detect trisomy of chromosome 21 (the cause of Down syndrome), would produce false positives. The conclusion was this:

Science fiction and the multiverse

In several previous posts (see one here), I have argued that multiverse theories are not science, as they cannot be proven false, but rather science fiction, purely imaginative creations. Further proof of this is that the idea of the multiverse did not originally arise from science, but from science fiction. Some of my reading this summer has helped me complete the proofs for this assertion.

The most common form of the multiverse, the M-theory multiverse, appeared for the first time in science fiction literature in a short story by Clifford Simak, published in 1939, which the author later developed into a novel, Cosmic Engineers, published in 1950. In this novel, the protagonists must confront the invasion of our universe by malevolent intelligent beings from another universe, who want to destroy us. To defend themselves, Earthlings establish an alliance with a civilization made up of artificial intelligences created by long-gone extraterrestrial beings, who warn them of the threat from the other universe.

Humanoid robots at home?

Technological companies are investing huge amounts of money to develop humanoid robots for use in the home. One such company, Figure AI, claims that the introduction of humanoid robots into the home will revolutionize elder care and the performance of routine household tasks. Goldman Sachs predicts that the humanoid robot market could be worth $38 billion by 2035.

In an article published in IEEE Spectrum, Maya Cakmak of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington describes a study conducted with students on the acceptance of the introduction of humanoid robots in the home. Their survey concluded that people generally prefer special purpose robots over humanoids. They see special-purpose robots as safer, more private, and ultimately more comfortable to have in their homes… a Roomba for cleaning, a medication dispenser for pills, a stairlift for stairs… Humanoids were described as bulky and unnecessary, while specialized robots were seen as less intrusive and more discreet.