Writer predicts moon space lab
Man will explore and colonize space, utilize the sea, and design machines whose intelligence will surpass his own, in a possible future described last night by Arthur Clarke, British science fiction writer.
Speaking in the Inter-Century Seminar, Clarke said exploration of the moon will be a step toward further space exploration.
The far side of the moon is the ideal site for astronomical observatories, he said, and the moon is an ideal testing place for space technology. It is here that man must learn to make food from rocks, he said.
FURTHER, SINCE less energy is required to escape from the moon than from earth, spaceships will begin long journeys from the moon.
He added, "I'm sure we'll have permanent bases, perhaps large colonies, on Mars within a century."
He speculated on the possibility of intelligent life on other planets, citing the large numbers of such bodies as evidence that life may exist somewhere.
"This raises the question, 'Where is everybody; why hasn't anybody come here?'" he said. "I think we should keep our eyes open for historic evidence of visits in the past."
CLARKE WAS INTRIGUED by the discovery in a Chinese tomb of the second century A.D. of a corroded buckle that was 75 per cent aluminum. Aluminum, he pointed out, cannot be produced without advanced electrotechnology.
He also said we should listen for intelligent signals from space.
Clarke described a second area of exploration—"inner space," or the oceans.
"In the sea, we are still primitive hunters," he said. "We are still in the stone age."
HE DESCRIBED POSSIBLE "sea farms" of plankton and "whale ranches" feeding on them.
ROME—(UPI)—Actress Elizabeth Taylor went to the hospital today.
Liz Taylor to hospital
Not only do the world's oceans have great agricultural potential, but "the mineral wealth of the ocean is almost inexhaustible and almost untapped," he said.
He further described the sea as "the greatest untouched museum" of the world. "Our history is there waiting to be discovered," he said. As an example, he told of a Greek computer dating from 100 B.C. found on a sunken ship.
"FOR THE NEAR future," he concluded, "exploration of the sea is more important than exploration of space."
"Once you make a machine that can learn, there's no end to the process," he said. "Tools improve tools and brains can improve brains without limit."
A third type of exploration, he said, was exploration of mind—the creation of ultra-intelligent machines. Such machines could in turn design even better machines until they far surpass the intellectual capacity of man.
"Maybe the next phase in evolution is this sort of thing," he said.
He suggested that such machines might be the result of "evolution through the organic phase."
FUTURE VISITORS FROM space may take the form of such machines, Clarke said. They "won't come in spaceships; they will be spaceships," he said.
A studio spokesman said, "she is having a routine physical checkup prior to beginning shooting on Monday." The spokesman denied a report circulating in the European film capital that the 33-year-old star was having a minor operation.
And he concluded, "When the next centennial comes, I wonder how many of the participants will be human; for that matter, how many of the audience?"
Daily Kansan Thursday, April 14, 1966
1912 GRADUATE
those used in electric utility power plants and oil refineries.
Forney gives KU $100,000
Ross H. Forney, a 1912 graduate of the KU School of Engineering, has given the Kansas University Endowment Association a fund of more than $100,000 to establish the Ross H. Forney Endowed Professorship and Ross H. Forney Scholarships in the School of Engineering and Architecture.
The announcement of the endowment was made at a meeting today of the Council for Progress. The gift increases the number of endowed professorships at the University to thirteen.
THE RETIRED DALLAS, Tex., industrialist has specified that income from the fund be used to add to the regular University salary for a gifted professor in engineering. "Through the professorship," he said, "it is my hope that the University can attract and keep distinguished teachers and
scholars in the field of engineering"
Forney has directed that the scholarships go to engineering students based upon scholastic record and indicated academic potential, financial need, and qualities of good citizenship, with preference to go to applicants who are graduates of an Allen County high school. He has stated that this gift stems from his appreciation of the sacrifices some deserving students must make to finance a college education.
The gift was in the form of stock of the Forney Engineering Company of Dallas, Tex., which Forney sold recently. The company was founded by Forney in 1927 for the manufacture and sale of gas and oil burners for large steam generating units, such as
FORNEY WAS BORN in a sod house on the plains of Western Kansas where his father, a shoe-maker from Fairfield. Ill., had migrated to start a farm and cattle operation.
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In 1909, after Ross Forney had graduated from LaHarpe High School, the family moved to Lawrence, where the father opened a shoe repair shop.
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Forney intended to enroll at the University of Kansas only for a two-year course in engineering, but Dean Frank O. Marvin convinced him that he should take the full four-year course.
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