Radio emerges from the electronic soup

The New Scientist ^ | 16:00 31 August 02 | Duncan Graham-Rowe

[VadeRetro]

Exclusive from New Scientist

A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver.

What should have been an oscillator became a radio

This accidental reinvention of the radio followed an experiment to see if an automated design process, that uses an evolutionary computer program, could be used to "breed" an electronic circuit called an oscillator. An oscillator produces a repetitive electronic signal, usually in the form of a sine wave.

Paul Layzell and Jon Bird at the University of Sussex in Brighton applied the program to a simple arrangement of transistors and found that an oscillating output did indeed evolve.

But when they looked more closely they found that, despite producing an oscillating signal, the circuit itself was not actually an oscillator. Instead, it was behaving more like a radio receiver, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output.

In essence, the evolving circuit had cheated, relaying oscillations generated elsewhere, rather than generating its own.

Gene mixing

Layzell and Bird were using the software to control the connections between 10 transistors plugged into a circuit board that was fitted with programmable switches. The switches made it possible to connect the transistors differently.

Treating each switch as analogous to a gene allowed new circuits to evolve. Those that oscillated best were allowed to survive to a next generation. These "fittest" candidates were then mated by mixing their genes together, or mutated by making random changes to them.

After several thousand generations you end up with a clear winner, says Layzell. But precisely why the winner was a radio still mystifies them.

To pick up a radio signal you need other elements such as an antenna. After exhaustive testing they found that a long track in the circuit board had functioned as the antenna. But how the circuit "figured out" that this would work is not known.

"There's probably one sudden key mutation that enabled radio frequencies to be picked up," says Bird.

Duncan Graham-Rowe

[VadeRetro]

Credit for this find has to go to lexcorp, whom I would ping except that he tells me he's been a bit too vociferous in his anti-creationism and he can't be pinged.

[VadeRetro]

Ping!

[LiteKeeper]

re-post from 1 Sep? Still funny!

[js1138]

bump

[VadeRetro]

re-post from 1 Sep?

Waaah! (I swear I searched all over on "radio.")

[general_re]

Heh. Try searching for "soup".

Too funny ;)

[f.Christian]

To: Tired of Taxes

BTW, our "beliefs" aren't the ones that are "illogical".

Really? So, if you happen to find a pocket watch on top of a fencepost, is the logical belief that the watch was formed randomly out of the elements of the universe and that it just happened to form there on the fence post? Or is the logical belief to believe that the watch was made by a watchmaker and that someone placed the watch on the fence post?

Believing that the Earth just happened to be positioned perfectly to sustain life, and that advanced intelligent life - like humans - could evolve from some primordial goop requires many orders of magnitude more blind faith than believing the watch just randomly assembled itself right on the fence post. The faith exhibited by you evangelistic atheists puts the faith of most believers in God to shame.


195 posted on 8/30/02 11:52 AM Pacific by Spiff

[general_re]

Hey, look at it this way - your comment on the first iteration of this article was less than illuminating, so now you get a do-over ;)

[VadeRetro]

Couldn't find my favorite brand, Primordial^TM.

[Dead Corpse]

Blllthhpppp!

Yeah, whatever.

[general_re]

It's been in short supply around here too...

[f.Christian]

To: Dimensio
As I see it, evolution is an ideological doctrine. If it were only a "scientific theory", it would have died a natural death 50 - 70 years ago; the evidence against it is too overwhelming and has been all along. The people defending it are doing so because they do not like the alternatives to an atheistic basis for science and do not like the logical implications of abandoning their atheistic paradigm and, in conducting themselves that way, they have achieved a degree of immunity to what most people call logic.

488 posted on 7/29/02 5:18 AM Pacific by medved

Main Entry: log·ic

Pronunciation: 'lä-jik
Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English logik, from Middle French logique, from Latin logica, from Greek logikE, from feminine of logikos of reason, from logos reason -- more at LEGEND

Date: 12th century

1 a

(1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning

(2) : a branch or variety of logic

(3) : a branch of semiotic; especially : SYNTACTICS

(4) : the formal principles of a branch of knowledge

b (1) : a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty

(2) : RELEVANCE, PROPRIETY

c : interrelation or sequence of facts or events when seen as inevitable or predictable

d : the arrangement of circuit elements (as in a computer) needed for computation; also : the circuits themselves

2 : something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason < the logic of war >

- lo·gi·cian /lO-'ji-sh&n/ noun

[VadeRetro]

It looks like my search on "radio" produced enough chaff to camouflage the previous thread. Yes, I should have searched on "soup."

[longshadow]

This experiment illustrates the reality that random variation can open the door to solutions that would not be forseen in a normal dedicated design process.

It also illustrates the potential for iterative random variation/preferential selection to sometimes produce "solutions" that do MORE than what was minimally required.

Very interesting.....

[VadeRetro]

This experiment illustrates the reality that random variation can open the door to solutions that would not be forseen in a normal dedicated design process.

"Can," but where's the evidence? </ID_mode>

[robertpaulsen]

They're lucky the circuit didn't produce this:

[Dead Corpse]

Alright! Give yourself a Gold Star! You figured out how to use Websters.

Now try these two:

Main Entry: sci·ence
Pronunciation: 'sI-&n(t)s
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin scientia, from scient-, sciens having knowledge, from present participle of scire to know; probably akin to Sanskrit chyati he cuts off, Latin scindere to split -- more at SHED
Date: 14th century
1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2 a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study
b : something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge
3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : NATURAL SCIENCE
4 : a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws

Main Entry: scientific method
Function: noun
Date: 1854
: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

Take your time going over those. We will help you with the big words if you need it.

[f.Christian]

Main Entry: fraud
Pronunciation: 'frod
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fraude, from Middle French, from Latin fraud-, fraus
Date: 14th century
1 a : DECEIT, TRICKERY; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : TRICK
2 a : a person who is not what he or she pretends to be : IMPOSTOR; also : one who defrauds : CHEAT b : one that is not what it seems or is represented to be
synonym see DECEPTION, IMPOSTURE

[VadeRetro]

It's alive!

[longshadow]

They're lucky the circuit didn't produce this:

Very scary; but does he produce an oscillatory output?