Cat brain vs IBM
IBM have matched the brain power of a humble feline with pure computer power.
The Big Blue's kitty noggin simulation uses an amazing 147,456 processors, 143 terabytes of RAM, miles of cabling, a million watts of electricity, 6,675 tons of air conditioning equipment and an acre of floor space.
It's the biggest artificial brain of all time.
A cat on the other hand, just needs some water, food and fuss.
IBM are slowly moving up the food chain - first they simulated a mouse brain and then a cat, with the goal of one day replicating human grey matter.
The cat sim has to replicate 1.6 billion neurons and nine trillion synapses.
This is pretty impressive, but there's a long, long way to go.
Even with all that micro muscle in action, the supercomputer is just one-eighty-third the speed of a human brain.
When it comes to true artificial intelligence (and the resultant destruction of humanity), we're still babes in the woods.
Weird Science Factoid: Cold water weighs more than hot water. So heat those pales of water up before heading to the mill...
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
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