carbon-based life Concepts

Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System

by Natalie Starkey · 29 Sep 2021 · 309pp · 97,320 words

(660°F) might not sound very habitable to us, for many organisms they are bearable for short periods, even if the upper limit that any carbon-based life can survive permanently is said to be 123°C (253°F) – the temperature limit for maintaining stable carbon bonds. The biochemical reactions that fuel the

Scratch Monkey

by Stross, Charles · 1 Jan 2011

use them?" she snapped, finally giving rein to her anger at being taken by surprise. "Item! An Ultrabright attacker zaps every unshielded Expansion processor and carbon-based lifeform in the system. Item: Ultrabrights are worse than Superbrights for hogging dataflow. They need input or they go insane, like Anubis. So there's no

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil · 14 Jul 2005 · 761pp · 231,902 words

(parallel multiverses or "bubbles"). Different physical constants and forces apply in the different bubbles; conditions in some (or at least one) of these bubbles support carbon-based life. See Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes," Scientific American (May 2003): 41–53; Martin Rees, "Exploring Our Universe and Others," Scientific American (December 1999): 78–83; Andrei

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber · 29 Oct 2024 · 292pp · 106,826 words

often coupled with a belief in the singularity, which—because it designates the historical moment at which machine intelligence transcends human intelligence and silicon and carbon-based life forms merge—marks, for believers, the inevitable historical end state toward which technological progress teleologically converges. 387 Revealing a deep similarity with the Judeo-Christian

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

by Benjamin H. Bratton · 19 Feb 2016 · 903pp · 235,753 words

there a person behind this machine, and if so how much? In time, the answer will matter less, and the postulation of human (or even carbon-based life) as the threshold measure of intelligence and as the qualifying gauge of a political ethics may seem like tasteless vestigial racism, replaced by less anthropocentric

Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang · 27 Feb 2012 · 476pp · 118,381 words

life on Earth is oxygen. Carbon comes next in the universe; carbon comes next in life. It’s a hugely fertile element. We ourselves are carbon-based life. Next in the universe? Nitrogen. Next in life on Earth? Nitrogen. It all matches one for one. If we were made of an isotope of

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari · 9 Sep 2024 · 566pp · 169,013 words

part of the book—“Computer Politics”—examines how different kinds of societies might deal with the threats and promises of the inorganic information network. Will carbon-based life-forms like us have a chance of understanding and controlling the new information network? As noted above, history isn’t deterministic, and for at least

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again, they might become far more intelligent than us, but never develop any kind of feelings. Since we don’t understand how consciousness emerges in carbon-based life-forms, we cannot foretell whether it could emerge in nonorganic entities. Perhaps consciousness has no essential link to organic biochemistry, in which case conscious computers

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere

by Kevin Carey · 3 Mar 2015 · 319pp · 90,965 words

a lot. But they’re both wrong. The right answer is air, because that’s where the carbon comes from, and trees, like people, are carbon-based life-forms. We’re mostly made up of the little carbon hexagons that the people in the MIT chemistry department scribble on their chalkboards. Because people

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

by Aja Raden · 10 May 2021 · 291pp · 85,822 words

in everything, because rapid oxidization turns it into CO2, which is absorbed into the global carbon cycle. As a result, radiocarbon is present in all carbon-based life-forms, and any materials made from those life-forms, and any thing made from them: this paper, wooden floorboards, your lunch, your death shroud … When

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those carbon-based life-forms die, their unstable radiocarbon content begins to “decay” at a specific rate, called a half-life. Radiocarbon dating measures residual radioactivity—in other words

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, how much radiocarbon is left in a thing—to determine approximately how long ago the carbon-based life-form (say, a flax plant used to make linen for a shroud) died and began its radioactive decay. Radiocarbon is in everything organic, and all

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence

by George Zarkadakis · 7 Mar 2016 · 405pp · 117,219 words

Platonic perspective and place blind faith in universal forms that exist outside a material universe. Unless we believe that there is a mathematical blueprint for carbon-based life in the metaphysical archives of universal forms. However, if, like me, you are not quite content with Platonic metaphysics, then we must consider another explanation