Here are some excerpts from the current issue of Popular Science. It is interesting how scientists talk when they forget about Darwinian orthodoxy and start talking about reality:
It seems ludicrous to think of an F-16 fighter jet as crude. But spend a few hours at the beach watching the lowly, scavenging seagull as it swoops over the sand, eyes a leftover french fry, pauses a moment, drops earthward, lands, grabs the morsel, and takes wing again. Not an aircraft in the world can match that performance.
"How does it change its direction? We don't know. In all my study I've found nothing that tells me how birds maneuver without their tails."
"We're talking about technology that's extremely high risk. There's no book on how to do it, and we've got no confidence that it'll work," she says. "But if it does, it's huge."
"I want a biologically inspired self-organizing central control system that will work like the synapses of the brain," Motter says, "with each sensor responding to different inputs and globally ordering the data, just like your brain responds to, say, a different color or sound." It's a mind-boggling undertaking"
"You could never do it with trial and error."
"It takes a long time to get research out," Lazos says. "I'd say 10 years before we even see this stuff on UAVs for the military, and 20 to 50 years before it hits commercial aviation. These are," he says, running his fingers along the curling, graceful edges of the little plastic wing, "concepts to investigate."
