Word: jastrow
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Robert Jastrow's Essay, "Toward an Intelligence Beyond Man's," is based on the claim that "in the 1990s ... the reasoning power of computers ... will begin to match that of the human brain." At no research laboratory that I know is there evidence for such a projection. Twenty years ago, computer conversion of spoken words to typed text was "around the corner." Today we are still unable to duplicate this simple human function, let alone reasoning. We cannot say that such things will never happen. We can say, however, that we have no scientific basis for forecasting...
...Robert Jastrow is director of NASA 's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and author of Until the Sun Dies. Computers play a daily role in his work and influence his vision of the future. Here, for TIME, he looks ahead to a new relationship between computers and people...
...talk about Jesus Christ because science had pretty well told us that it was impossible to believe in God and the Bible." An increasing number of scientists would now appear to agree with the almost Pascalian argument of Astronomer Robert Jastrow, founder and director of NASA'S Goddard Institute. Since it is impossible to prove whether life on earth was created by the will of some supreme £ creative being, or evolved spontaneously, says Jastrow, the choice either way is "an act of faith." Even among highly secular folk there is a general disposition to assume, as never before, that...
...third experiment was designed to measure the conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide into organic matter. The results suggested that this process, which is carried out on earth in living cells, might also be taking place on Mars. In Jastrow's view, the experiment undermined the argument that peroxides might have been responsible for the results of the other tests. If peroxides were involved in this activity, certain catalysts had to be present and the reaction more complex...
...mass spectrometer designed to look for them. The picture is complicated by the biology tests run at the second Mars landing site. In the gas exchange test, the soil released substantially less oxygen than the sample at the first site, but showed a higher level of possible microbial activity. Jastrow and several other scientists feel that this weakens the argument that peroxides were responsible for the results of the first gas exchange experiment and leaves biology as the logical alternative...