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March 07, 2005

New Finding: Brain Computes in Trinary not Binary

MIT neuroscientist, Guosong Liu, has found that human neurons compute in trinary, using signals that are the equivalents of -1, 0 and 1. By contrast, all computers compute in binary, using just 0 and 1. Because the units of trinary computation can in some cases be additive (e.g. 1+1=2) or can "cancel out" (e.g. -1 + 1 = 0), the human brain is able to ignore information during computation, says Liu, something which present computers cannot do. Liu believes the ability for trinary computations to cancel out in some cases will enable next-generation computers to ignore information, and this will fundamentally change computing as we know it.

Posted on March 07, 2005 at 09:15 AM in Biology, Cognitive Science, Consciousness, Science, Technology, The Future |

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Nova's Trip to Edge of Space

  • Stepsedgestratosphere
    In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

Nova & Friends, Training For Space...

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    In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

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