Seth

Seth (Hebrew: שֵׁת, Standard Šet, Tiberian Šēṯ; Arabic: شِيث‎ (Sheeth); placed; appointed"), in Judaism, Christianity, Mandaeism, and Islam, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, who were the only other of their children mentioned by name in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). According to Genesis 4:25, Seth was born after Abel's murder, and Eve believed God had appointed him as a replacement for Abel.

Genesis

According to Genesis, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old "a son in his likeness and image." The genealogy is repeated at 1 Chronicles 1:1–3. Genesis 5:4–5 states that Adam fathered "sons and daughters" before his death, aged 930 years. According to the Bible, Seth lived to the age of 912.

Jewish tradition

Seth figures in the Life of Adam and Eve, also known in its Greek version as the Apocalypse of Moses, a Jewish pseudepigraphical group of writings. It recounts the lives of Adam and Eve from after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden to their deaths. The surviving versions were composed from the early 3rd to the 5th century, the literary units in the work are considered to be older and predominantly of Jewish origin. There is wide agreement that the original was composed in a Semitic language in the 1st century AD/CE. In the Greek versions Seth and Eve travel to the doors of the Garden to beg for some oil of the tree of mercy (i.e. the Tree of Life). On the way Seth is attacked and bitten by a wild beast, which goes away when ordered by Seth. Michael refuses to give them the oil at that time, but promises to give it at the end of time, when all flesh will be raised up, the delights of paradise will be given to the holy people and God will be in their midst. On their return, Adam says to Eve: "What hast thou done? Thou hast brought upon us great wrath which is death." (chapters 5-14) Later only Seth can witness the taking-up of Adam at his funeral in a divine chariot, which deposits him in the Garden of Eden.

Seth Shostak

Seth Shostak (born July 20, 1943) is an American astronomer, currently Senior Astronomer and Director, Center for SETI research.

Biography

Shostak grew up in Arlington, VA and earned his B.S. in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology. Since 2001, he has been Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to “explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe”. SETI Institute, located in Mountain View, California, employs over 50 researchers that study all aspects of the search for life, its origins, the environment in which life develops, and its ultimate fate. Dr Shostak is an active participant in the Institute’s observation programs and has been hosting SETI's weekly radio show Big Picture Science since 2002. Each week, Shostak interviews guests about the latest scientific research on a variety of topics: cosmology, physics, genetics, paleontology, evolutionary biology and astrobiology. Big Picture Science is distributed on the Public Radio Satellite System and the Public Radio Exchange and is available for download at the SETI Institute's website and through podcasts.

Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku (/ˈmiːtʃioʊ ˈkɑːkuː/; born January 24, 1947) is a Japanese-American futurist, theoretical physicist and popularizer of science. Kaku is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York. He has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and writes online blogs and articles. He has written three New York Times Best Sellers: Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), and The Future of the Mind (2014). Kaku has hosted several TV specials for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Science Channel.

Early life and education

Kaku was born in San Jose, California, to Japanese American parents. His father, born in California and educated in both Japan and the United States, was fluent in Japanese and English. Both his parents were interned in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center during World War II, where they met and where his older brother was born.

Ray Kurzweil

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜːrzwaɪl/ KURZ-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first charge-coupled device flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first commercial text-to-speech synthesizer, the Kurzweil K250 music synthesizer capable of simulating the sound of the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.