“To the untrained ear, deep into your blog, it begins to sound like fiction. I trust it is all solid science, but I could swear you are making some of those things up from whole cloth.” – an old friend, reading my most recent posts in Out There.
Illustration of a black hole pulling gas from a nearby star--the kind of science that pushes against the limits of human reason. Image (Credit: NASA E/PO, Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet) There is a notion in robotics and computer animation known as the “Uncanny Valley.” It describes the unsettling feeling that people get when they look at a simulated person who looks almost—yet not quite fully—real. (The term originated with a Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori, who described that sensation in a classic 1970 essay.) The classic pop-culture example is the 2004 movie version of The Polar Express, in which the characters ...
