Learn about the Turing machine, an imaginary device that’s the basis for all computers. Plus: what can Godzilla tell us about our collective anxiety? We’ll also discuss a listener question about exoplanets with a special guest, Ralph Crewe from the podcast Science, News, and Qs. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: A Turing Machine Is the Imaginary Device That's the Basis for All Computers — https://curiosity.im/2K3hyKW Godzilla Has Grown Like Crazy, and Two Scientists Think They Know Why — https://curiosity.im/2Rhe7RX More from Ralph Crewe: Science News and Qs (SNaQ), a Carnegie Science Center Podcast — http://snaq.podbean.com/ Getting Curious with Ashley and Cody of Curiosity on SNaQ — https://snaq.podbean.com/e/getting-curious-with-ashley-and-cody-of-curiosity/ Learn more about the Carnegie Science Center — http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/ Follow @CarnegieSciCtr on Twitter — https://twitter.com/carnegiescictr Follow @RalphCrewe on Twitter — https://twitter.com/RalphCrewe If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the Turing machine, an imaginary device that’s the basis for all computers. Plus: what can Godzilla tell us about our collective anxiety? We’ll also discuss a listener question about exoplanets with a special guest, Ralph Crewe from the podcast Science, News, and Qs.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
More from Ralph Crewe:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/godzillas-deeper-meaning-exoplanets-w-ralph-crewe-from-snaq-and-turing-machines
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the imaginary device that’s the basis for all computers; and, what Godzilla can tell us about our collective anxiety. We’ll also answer a listener question about exoplanets with a special guest, Ralph Crewe from the podcast Science, News, and Q’s.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
A Turing Machine Is the Imaginary Device That's the Basis for All Computers — https://curiosity.im/2K3hyKW (Turing’s birthday / Pride month) (Ashley)
Today would be Alan Turing’s 107th birthday. You may have never heard of Alan Turing, but you are definitely familiar with his work. He’s the namesake behind the Turing machine, which is a theoretical device that’s the basis for all computers. Pretty big deal. It’s also Pride Month, so let’s celebrate by learning about one of history’s underappreciated LGBT scientists. Around the time when he was born after the turn of the 20th century on June 23, 1912, a "computer" referred not to an electronic device, but to a person. From tax documents to scientific calculations, all the math performed up until that point happened with pencil and paper. Even when they were broken down into their smallest parts, some math problems were too hard for the sharpest minds in math. And that’s what led the English mathematician to ponder the question of what it even means for a task to be “computable.” On its face, a task is considered “computable” if you can lay out the instructions, or the algorithm, someone or something should use to solve the problem. Now ask yourself what would happen if you could create — or at least, imagine — a perfect machine, that never runs out of resources or time, that can always compute the computable? You'd know beyond a shadow of a doubt what was non-computable. And that was the inspiration for the Turing machine, which Turing first wrote about in 1937. A Turing machine, at its simplest, is made up of a read/write head with a paper "tape" of unlimited length that passes through it. That tape acts as the machine's data storage, just like your computer's hard drive. The head contains a sort of indicator that can be set to a particular position, or "state," which can change based on how you program it. The tape is divided into squares, and each square is either blank or bears one symbol: 0 or 1. For each square it lands on, the read/write head can take one of six different actions, from reading and writing the symbol to moving the tape. And you could program the machine to take a different action depending on which symbol it encountered. Zeroes and ones: sound familiar? The brilliance of this hypothetical device wasn’t just that it could compute things for us; it was that it showed us what we could not compute. If something can be computed, it can be computed on a Turing machine. Not bad for an idea that’s nearly a hundred years old. Happy birthday, Alan Turing!
Listener Question — Ralph Crewe, Spiral Arms Milky Way Galaxy (Both)
CODY: We got a listener question about exoplanets, and we invited our friend Ralph Crewe to help us answer it. He’s the creator and co-host of Science, News, and Qs, also known as SNaQ, a Carnegie Science Center podcast. And he’s ALSO the Program Development Coordinator for Buhl Planetarium and Observatory at Carnegie Science Center. You heard from Ralph on this podcast a few months ago, and we decided to hit him up again to help us satisfy some curiosity. Here’s what he told us.
[CLIP 1:40]
ASHLEY: Once again, that was Ralph Crewe, Program Development Coordinator for Buhl Planetarium and Observatory at Carnegie Science Center. You can hear more from Ralph on his podcast, Science News, and Qs — also known as SNaQ. That’s S-N-A-Q. We’ll put a link to that in today’s show notes. And thanks for your question, Julian!
[ARM & HAMMER]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Arm & Hammer, and their new Cloud Control Cat Litter.
ASHLEY: You know what I love? My cat Aglet. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: You know what I DON’T love? Cleaning up Aglet’s litter box. Which is why Arm & Hammer created new Cloud Control litter. There's no cloud of nasties when I scoop ... it is 100% dust-free, free of heavy perfumes, and helps reduce airborne dander from scooping: So what happens in the litter box STAYS in the litter box. New Cloud Control Cat Litter by Arm & Hammer. More Power to You.
Godzilla Has Grown Like Crazy, and Two Scientists Think They Know Why — https://curiosity.im/2Rhe7RX (Cody)
You know who probably doesn’t use a litter box? Godzilla. You know who scientists think could be a symbol of growing collective anxiety in the world? Godzilla. Yes, that’s right: we’re wrapping up today with research on Godzilla. And before you delete this episode forever, you should know that there are, in fact, plenty of lessons we can take away from the fictional king of the monsters. The Turing Machine was imaginary, too, so let’s be a little fair to the giant lizard. This research comes from a team of scientists at Dartmouth, who looked at Godzilla’s size over the years. When the original film Gojira came out in 1954, Godzilla was a 50-meter tall embodiment of impending nuclear threats to Japan. The movie was a direct response to Castle Bravo, which was the largest nuclear weapon test ever conducted by the United States. The test resulted in a 15 megaton explosion, which is more than a thousand times the scope of the Hiroshima bomb. And it spread nuclear fallout hundreds of miles beyond the test site in the Marshall Islands. The Castle Bravo fallout had grave consequences for the Japanese population, including poisoning their tuna supply and leaving the crew of a Japanese tuna trawler with acute radiation sickness. Seven months after the incident, Godzilla was born: a fictional product of a very real fear of nuclear testing. The gargantuan, radioactive lizard was imagined to be a victim of an American hydrogen bomb test that destroyed the creature's deep-sea ecosystem. In the action that follows, Godzilla takes revenge by wreaking havoc on Tokyo, in a clear reference to the bombing of Japanese cities during World War II. Dozens of movies later, the star monster of the 2019 film “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” stands at DOUBLE his original size, and powerful enough to take down a league of god-sized monsters unleashed to destroy the world. That’s… not natural. The Dartmouth researchers propose that just like it was in the beginning, Godzilla is still a symbol of our fears. They used U.S. military spending as a quantifiable representation of national anxiety, and found a strong positive correlation between Godzilla’s growth and military development. Fortunately, there is a silver lining to this story, and that’s that the Godzilla franchise contains a call to action amid the wreckage. At some point in the Godzilla films, humanity almost always realizes they need to work together to defeat Godzilla's near invincibility. Somehow, a giant lizard's ability to destroy has repeatedly led us to discover our own responsibility to band together and rebuild — and this message is vital now more than ever.
CODY: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout-out to Muhammad Shifaz and Dr. Mary Yancy, who are executive producers for today’s episode thanks to their generous support on Patreon. Thank you SO. MUCH.
ASHLEY: If you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!