Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [January 24, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: ​​How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - ​​Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so that we can actually see it traveling without technology helping out? - How would you describe science? And how are you staying a scientist? - Can you talk about scientific paradigms? - Interesting parallel to current research in LLMs that have so many variables and so much variability that reproducibility is extremely hard—even if it is "just" computers. - Do you think science has a problem with trying to tell nature how to behave rather than reporting on what nature is telling us? - What if you start the prompt with a script for the tech demo and ask the LLM to not go off script? - I've often been amazed at how LLMs sometimes reproduce realistic human behavior. We have seen them sometimes "lie" or try to "cover" a mistake. - What's your intuition now for what makes the best prompter? - ​​Do you have any suggestions on coming up with ways to test hypotheses, especially ones that are more theoretical and difficult to test in the real world? How do you know when you have a good test? - How are diamonds made? - How can fermions adopt a condensate configuration, or can they?