Category Archives: Singularity

In BriefA team of physicists from the Tata Institute of FundamentalResearch in India developed a way to spot and distinguish nakedsingularities from black holes. While still purely theoretical, themethod can facilitate a study of these cosmic events. Where Physics Doesnt Apply

At one point in time, the entire universe was a singularity. It was that moment where the entire fabric of space-time didnt exist, and physics in general (including Einsteins General Relativity Theory) didnt hold up. The crazy thing is, this singularity theoretically still exists at the center of every black hole, where the super density of matter lets the curvature of space-time become infinite. These singularities in a black hole, however, are contained by so-called event horizons.Click to View Full Infographic

But what if you could see this strange cosmic phenomenon? What if naked singularities exist? A naked singularity, for all intents and purposes, is an abrupt puncture in space-time. Theoretically, such a point in space-time where gravity is infinitely large cannot exist outside black holes. But if they did and general relativity says they could well, that would be a problem for physics and for the rest of the universe.

Physicists from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India believe that theres a way to detect these extreme phenomena in space, and they detail their theoretical study in a paper published in the journal Physical Review D.

Spotting a naked singularity and distinguishing it from one found in a black hole, according to the new study, can be done intwo (relatively) simple steps. The basic assumption is that singularities are rotating objects. Its this rotation that twists the fabric of space-time, based on Einsteins theory. This produces a gyroscopic spin that changes the rotational axis of the orbits of particles around this rotating objects.

If this changeshifts wildly between two points, then the object is a black hole. If the precession happens in a regular and well-behaved manner, then it could be a naked singularity. Observing these effects from Earth is also possible using X-ray wavelengths to measure the precession frequencies of matter sucked into these singularities.

This is because the orbital plane precession frequency increases as the matter approaches a rotating black hole, but this frequency can decrease and even become zero for a rotating naked singularity, according to the studys abstract. Of course, this is all assuming that naked singularities do exist and arent hidden from us by strange quantum effects.

At the very least, the prospect of being able to see one of the weirdest and wildest occurrences in the universe is exciting in and of itself. The dangers of a naked singularity notwithstanding, spotting these could be the first time scientist are able toreally study these events. Studying them could, then, help us understand the origin of the universe and how black holes could exist and what lies beyond them.

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Scientists May Finally Have a Way to Detect the Strangest Objects in Physics - Futurism

Tech in Asia

Startup builder Singularity U launches Singapore chapter Tech in Asia Technology and innovation builder Singularity University (SU) officially launched its Singapore chapter this week. The launch was accompanied by a global impact challenge, a pitching competition for promising individuals solving human problems ... Notes from the digital bunker: No country for middle-aged techiesFinancial Times all 2 news articles »

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Startup builder Singularity U launches Singapore chapter - Tech in Asia

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Scientists Created an Artificial Womb, and Also Maybe the Singularity Is Near - The Mary Sue

Nintendos new platform, the Nintendo Switch, wont really need support from third party developers according to the CEO of Ashes of the Singularity developer, Stardock.

Many have said that Nintendos new platform would need good third-party support if it wanted to succeed, but Stardocks CEO Brad Wardell doesnt think thats correct as Nintendo has enough great franchises of its own. This would be different if the Switch was a more expensive platform, but this isnt the case.

Nintendo doesnt arguablyneedthird party, Wardell said in a recent interview with website Gamingbolt. You think about theMariogames,Zelda,I mean, theres plenty there. I mean, if it was a $1000 game system, maybe Id care. But as it stands now, there is plenty to play with on the Switch, thats just fine.

At this point, the Nintendo Switch has way better third-party support than its predecessor, the Wii U, and the platform has been selling like hot-cakes. According to retailer GameStop, the Switch is selling out instantly and could possibly eclipse the original Wii.

The Nintendo Switch is off to a start right now that it could possibly eclipse the Wii, GameStops senior director of merchandising, Eric Bright, said during a recent interview with Game Rant. Initial sales on this have been phenomenal. I cant give straight numbers, but I can say were seeing one of the highest attach rates of software and accessories to a device that weve seen in a long time.

As covered last week, the Switch was the best-selling console in the US for the month of March and the platform became Nintendos best-selling platform the first month after its release. In addition, the Zelda franchise becamethe top-selling property of all time within the Adventure super genre, selling 54 percent more revenue than the next best-selling franchise, Resident Evil.

The Nintendo Switch is available globally now alongside 1-2-Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The new Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Switch will release on April 28.

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Ashes of the Singularity Dev: The Nintendo Switch Doesn't Need 3rd Party Support - Wccftech

Black holes are weird: insanely dense objects that are crammed into such a small space they cause space-time to distort and the laws of physics to break down into a singularity.

Fortunately, the Universe shields us from this weirdness by wrapping black holes in event horizons. But now, physicists say they've found a way we could detect something even more extreme - a naked singularity - and most likely bend the laws of physics in the process.

"A naked singularity, if such a thing exists, would be an abrupt hole in the fabric of reality - one that would not just distort space-time, but would also wreak havoc on the laws of physics wherever it goes and lead to a catastrophic loss of predictability," explains Avaneesh Pandey for IB Times.

If that sounds a little too confronting, don't worry, this whole study is purely theoretical, and is hinged on one very big assumption - that naked singularities actually exist in our Universe, something that scientists have never confirmed.

But according to Einstein's theory of general relativity at least, and our best computer models to date, naked singularitiesarepossible.

So, what are they?A singularity can form when huge stars collapse at the end of their lives into regions so small and dense, physics as we know it fails to explain what could happen there.

There are two general laws of physics that govern our understanding of reality: quantum mechanics, which explains all the small stuff, such as the behaviour of subatomic particles; and general relativity, which describes the stuff we can see, such as stars and galaxies.

When applied to singularities, both these schools of thought predict different and incompatible outcomes.

And we've never really had to deal with that conundrum, because all the singularities we know of are inside black holes, wrapped in an event horizon from which not even light can escape - or at the very birth of our Universe, shrouded by radiation we can't see past. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

But naked singularities are theoretical singularities that are exposed to the rest of the Universe for some reason.

Below you can see an illustration of a black hole wrapped in its event horizon (dotted line) on the left, and a naked singularity on the right. The arrows indicate light, which would be able to escape a naked singularity, but not a black hole.

Sudip Bhattacharyya/Pankaj Joshi

Assuming they do exist, the big question then is how would we be able to distinguish a naked singularity from a regular black hole, and this is where the new study comes in.

Researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Indiahave come up with a two-step plan based on the fact that singularities, as far as we know, are rotating objects, just like black holes.

According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, the fabric of space-time in the vicinity of any rotating objects gets 'twisted' due to this rotation. And this effect causes a gyroscopic spin and makes the orbits of particles around the rotating objects 'precess', or change their rotational axis.

You can watch the hypnotic precession of a gyroscope below to see what we mean - its axis is no longer straight:

LucasVB/WikimediaCommons

Based on this, the researchers say that we could figure out the nature of a rotating objects by measuring the rate at which a gyroscope precesses - its precession frequency - at two fixed points close to the object.

According to the new paper, there are two possibilities:

Obviously getting a gyroscope close enough to a black hole to perform these experiments isn't exactly easy.

But that's okay, because the team has also come up with a way to observe the same effect from here on Earth - measuring the precession frequencies of matter falling into either black holes or naked singularities using X-ray wavelengths.

"This is because the orbital plane precession frequency increases as the matter approaches a rotating black hole, but thisfrequencycan decrease and even become zero for a rotating naked singularity," the team's press release explains.

Again, we have to make it clear that all of this is wildly speculative at this time - we have never found any candidate naked singularities, and we're only just beginning to truly understand regular black holes.

It's also worth noting thatlast week, another team of researchers suggested that even if naked singluarities exist, strange quantum effects could keep them hidden from us.

So there's definitely no consensus right now on whether we'll ever get the chance to study naked singularities.

And that's not a terrible thing for now, because are we really ready to observe what goes on at the edge of our Universe?

Maybe, in our lifetime, we'll find out.

The research has been published in Physical Review D.

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Physicists Say They've Found a Way to Detect Naked Singularities... if They Exist - ScienceAlert

A team of scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India, have found new ways to detect a bare or naked singularity, the most extreme object in the universe.

When the fuel of a very massive star is spent, it collapses due to its own gravitational pull and eventually becomes a very small region of arbitrarily high matter density, that is a`Singularity', where the usual laws of physics may breakdown. If this singularity is hidden within an event horizon, which is an invisible closed surface from which nothing, not even light, can escape, then we call this object a black hole. In such a case, we cannot see the singularity and we do not need to bother about its effects. But what if the event horizon does not form? In fact, Einstein's theory of general relativity does predict such a possibility when massive stars collapse at the end of their life-cycles. In this case, we are left with the tantalizing option of observing a naked singularity.

An important question then is, how to observationally distinguish a naked singularity from a black hole. Einstein's theory predicts an interesting effect: the fabric of spacetime in the vicinity of any rotating object gets `twisted' due to this rotation. This effect causes a gyroscope spin and makes orbits of particles around these astrophysical objects precess. The TIFR team has recently argued that the rate at which a gyroscope precesses (the precession frequency), when placed around a rotating black hole or a naked singularity, could be used to identify this rotating object. Here is a simple way to describe their results. If an astronaut records a gyroscope's precession frequency at two fixed points close to the rotating object, then two possibilities can be seen: (1) the precession frequency of the gyroscope changes by an arbitrarily large amount, that is, there is a wild change in the behaviour of the gyroscope; and (2) the precession frequency changes by a small amount, in a regular well-behaved manner. For the case (1), the rotating object is a black hole, while for the case (2), it is a naked singularity.

The TIFR team, namely, Dr. Chandrachur Chakraborty, Mr. Prashant Kocherlakota, Prof. Sudip Bhattacharyya and Prof. Pankaj Joshi, in collaboration with a Polish team comprising Dr. Mandar Patil and Prof. Andrzej Krolak, has infact shown that the precession frequency of a gyroscope orbiting a black hole or a naked singularity is sensitive to the presence of an event horizon. A gyroscope circling and approaching the event horizon of a black hole from any direction behaves increasingly 'wildly,' that is, it precesses increasingly faster, without a bound. But, in the case of a naked singularity, the precession frequency becomes arbitrarily large only in the equatorial plane, but being regular in all other planes.

The TIFR team has also found that the precession of orbits of matter falling into a rotating black hole or a naked singularity can be used to distinguish these exotic objects. This is because the orbital plane precession frequency increases as the matter approaches a rotating black hole, but this frequency can decrease and even become zero for a rotating naked singularity. This finding could be used to distinguish a naked singularity from a black hole in reality, because the precession frequencies could be measured in X-ray wavelengths, as the infalling matter radiates X-rays.

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Can we see a singularity, the most extreme object in the universe ... - Science Daily

Chief Photographer Melanie Hodges

UNA sophomore Karlee Mauk performs in The Singularity. The original ballet, created by UNA senior Jeremy Smith, took place at the Zodiac Theater April 21 and 22.

Posted: Friday, April 21, 2017 11:45 pm | Updated: 10:54 pm, Sat Apr 22, 2017.

"The Singularity" is 'on point' by Associate Life Editor Hannah Zimmer The Flor-Ala |

The wooden panel floorscreaked as UNA sophomore and ballerina KarleeMaukmoved across the stage.

The dancerperformed a lyrical piece entitled The Singularity atZodiac Theater indowntown Florence April 21 and will do so again April 22.

Mauksaid the performance was not her first time performing onstage,but the event was special because many of her friends and family members attended.

Ive been performing since I was three years old,Mauksaid. But for this crowd, it feels so incredible to be onstage.

The Singularity is "an epic that draws parallel to familiar characters such as Herculesand Odysseus," according to theprogram.

The performance also featured music to whichMaukdanced to. Instruments such as the clarinet, flute, drums, electric keyboard and xylophone sounded behind a black curtain as the ballerina danced on the tips of her toes.

The composer of The Singularity was senior Jeremy Smith, who hopes to obtaina degree at UNA in music theory and composition with a minor in philosophy. After the performance, audience members flocked to Smith outside the theatre to take pictures and ask him questions.

Mauksaid she, Smith andthe musiciansprepared for the balletfor four months. She described Smiths composition as "genius."

Freshmen Olivia Martinez said the performance played out in asophisticated and precise manner.

Ive never been to anything like this,but(the performance)was a fantastic first experience, Martinez said.

Tickets to The Singularity are $15 and are availableat the ticket window outside Zodiac Theatre.

I definitely think everyone should come out tomorrow to see the performance,Mauksaid. Jeremy is incredibly talented,and the story is beautiful.

Posted in Life on Friday, April 21, 2017 11:45 pm. Updated: 10:54 pm. | Tags: Dance, Ballet, Zodiac Theater

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"The Singularity" is 'on point' - Flor-Ala (subscription)

Two basic types of encryption schemes are used on the internet today. One, known as symmetric-key cryptography, follows the same pattern that people have been using to send secret messages for thousands of years. If Alice wants to send Bob a secret message, they start by getting together somewhere they cant be overheard and agree on a secret key; later, when they are separated, they can use this key to send messages that Eve the eavesdropper cant understand even if she overhears them. This is the sort of encryption used when you set up an online account with your neighborhood bank; you and your bank already know private information about each other, and use that information to set up a secret password to protect your messages.

The second scheme is called public-key cryptography, and it was invented only in the 1970s. As the name suggests, these are systems where Alice and Bob agree on their key, or part of it, by exchanging only public information. This is incredibly useful in modern electronic commerce: if you want to send your credit card number safely over the internet to Amazon, for instance, you dont want to have to drive to their headquarters to have a secret meeting first. Public-key systems rely on the fact that some mathematical processes seem to be easy to do, but difficult to undo. For example, for Alice to take two large whole numbers and multiply them is relatively easy; for Eve to take the result and recover the original numbers seems much harder.

Public-key cryptography was invented by researchers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) the British equivalent (more or less) of the US National Security Agency (NSA) who wanted to protect communications between a large number of people in a security organization. Their work was classified, and the British government neither used it nor allowed it to be released to the public. The idea of electronic commerce apparently never occurred to them. A few years later, academic researchers at Stanford and MIT rediscovered public-key systems. This time they were thinking about the benefits that widespread cryptography could bring to everyday people, not least the ability to do business over computers.

Now cryptographers think that a new kind of computer based on quantum physics could make public-key cryptography insecure. Bits in a normal computer are either 0 or 1. Quantum physics allows bits to be in a superposition of 0 and 1, in the same way that Schrdingers cat can be in a superposition of alive and dead states. This sometimes lets quantum computers explore possibilities more quickly than normal computers. While no one has yet built a quantum computer capable of solving problems of nontrivial size (unless they kept it secret), over the past 20 years, researchers have started figuring out how to write programs for such computers and predict that, once built, quantum computers will quickly solve hidden subgroup problems. Since all public-key systems currently rely on variations of these problems, they could, in theory, be broken by a quantum computer.

Cryptographers arent just giving up, however. Theyre exploring replacements for the current systems, in two principal ways. One deploys quantum-resistant ciphers, which are ways to encrypt messages using current computers but without involving hidden subgroup problems. Thus they seem to be safe against code-breakers using quantum computers. The other idea is to make truly quantum ciphers. These would fight quantum with quantum, using the same quantum physics that could allow us to build quantum computers to protect against quantum-computational attacks. Progress is being made in both areas, but both require more research, which is currently being done at universities and other institutions around the world.

Yet some government agencies still want to restrict or control research into cryptographic security. They argue that if everyone in the world has strong cryptography, then terrorists, kidnappers and child pornographers will be able to make plans that law enforcement and national security personnel cant penetrate.

But thats not really true. What is true is that pretty much anyone can get hold of software that, when used properly, is secure against any publicly known attacks. The key here is when used properly. In reality, hardly any system is always used properly. And when terrorists or criminals use a system incorrectly even once, that can allow an experienced codebreaker working for the government to read all the messages sent with that system. Law enforcement and national security personnel can put those messages together with information gathered in other ways surveillance, confidential informants, analysis of metadata and transmission characteristics, etc and still have a potent tool against wrongdoers.

In his essay A Few Words on Secret Writing (1841), Edgar Allan Poe wrote: [I]t may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve. In theory, he has been proven wrong: when executed properly under the proper conditions, techniques such as quantum cryptography are secure against any possible attack by Eve. In real-life situations, however, Poe was undoubtedly right. Every time an unbreakable system has been put into actual use, some sort of unexpected mischance eventually has given Eve an opportunity to break it. Conversely, whenever it has seemed that Eve has irretrievably gained the upper hand, Alice and Bob have found a clever way to get back in the game. I am convinced of one thing: if society does not give human ingenuity as much room to flourish as we can manage, we will all be poorer for it.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Banner Image Credit: Brewbooks/US Navy/Flickr

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Quantum Cryptography Is Unbreakable. So Is Human Ingenuity - Singularity Hub

April 20, 2017 A black hole (on the left) and a naked singularity (on the right). The dashed line represents the event horizon of the black hole, which is absent in the case of a naked singularity, and the arrows represent the direction in which light rays travel. In the case of the black hole, because of the presence of an event horizon, all light rays inside it necessarily end up at the singularity. However, light rays may escape from the vicinity of a naked singularity to a far away observer rendering it visible. Credit: Sudip Bhattacharyya, Pankaj Joshi

A team of scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India, have found new ways to detect a bare or naked singularity, the most extreme object in the universe.

When the fuel of a very massive star is spent, it collapses due to its own gravitational pull and eventually becomes a very small region of arbitrarily high matter density, that is a 'Singularity', where the usual laws of physics may breakdown. If this singularity is hidden within an event horizon, which is an invisible closed surface from which nothing, not even light, can escape, then we call this object a black hole. In such a case, we cannot see the singularity and we do not need to bother about its effects. But what if the event horizon does not form? In fact, Einstein's theory of general relativity does predict such a possibility when massive stars collapse at the end of their life-cycles. In this case, we are left with the tantalizing option of observing a naked singularity.

An important question then is, how to observationally distinguish a naked singularity from a black hole. Einstein's theory predicts an interesting effect: the fabric of spacetime in the vicinity of any rotating object gets 'twisted' due to this rotation. This effect causes a gyroscope spin and makes orbits of particles around these astrophysical objects precess. The TIFR team has recently argued that the rate at which a gyroscope precesses (the precession frequency), when placed around a rotating black hole or a naked singularity, could be used to identify this rotating object. Here is a simple way to describe their results. If an astronaut records a gyroscope's precession frequency at two fixed points close to the rotating object, then two possibilities can be seen: (1) the precession frequency of the gyroscope changes by an arbitrarily large amount, that is, there is a wild change in the behaviour of the gyroscope; and (2) the precession frequency changes by a small amount, in a regular well-behaved manner. For the case (1), the rotating object is a black hole, while for the case (2), it is a naked singularity.

The TIFR team, namely, Dr. Chandrachur Chakraborty, Mr. Prashant Kocherlakota, Prof. Sudip Bhattacharyya and Prof. Pankaj Joshi, in collaboration with a Polish team comprising Dr. Mandar Patil and Prof. Andrzej Krolak, has in fact shown that the precession frequency of a gyroscope orbiting a black hole or a naked singularity is sensitive to the presence of an event horizon. A gyroscope circling and approaching the event horizon of a black hole from any direction behaves increasingly 'wildly,' that is, it precesses increasingly faster, without a bound. But, in the case of a naked singularity, the precession frequency becomes arbitrarily large only in the equatorial plane, but being regular in all other planes.

The TIFR team has also found that the precession of orbits of matter falling into a rotating black hole or a naked singularity can be used to distinguish these exotic objects. This is because the orbital plane precession frequency increases as the matter approaches a rotating black hole, but this frequency can decrease and even become zero for a rotating naked singularity. This finding could be used to distinguish a naked singularity from a black hole in reality, because the precession frequencies could be measured in X-ray wavelengths, as the infalling matter radiates X-rays.

Explore further: How fast do black holes spin?

More information: Chandrachur Chakraborty et al, Spin precession in a black hole and naked singularity spacetimes, Physical Review D (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.95.044006

Chandrachur Chakraborty et al. Distinguishing Kerr naked singularities and black holes using the spin precession of a test gyro in strong gravitational fields, Physical Review D (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.95.084024

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It is now obvious that any 'exercise' which relies on such unreal assumptions is doomed to nonsensical conclusions.

Only an analysis treating collapsed objects as REAL, having density/extent parameters and internal/surface structure/properties and effects, can ever get close to understanding the reality of what exists in BH objects (and what may become of such in certain circumstances due to future ambient conditions in the external universal process which produced them in the first place).

The herd-mentality 'peer review' process has 'passed' UN-real, Metaphysical, Big Bang (and other abstract/mathematical model 'myths'); 'graduated' whole generations in the art of myth-based 'thinking/exercises'.

If the singularity would be naked it would evaporate fast into radiation and we would see it quite clearly like bright object (quasar). IMO the black hole jets can be just the places with weakened event horizons. If they don't allow to see physical surface of black holes directly, they still allow lightweight particles (dark matter, neutrinos) to escape through it.

There are also indirect options, how to spot such a bursts, because the jets of escaping neutrinos would interact with microwave background into traces of X-rays, which would be detected outside the black hole at distance in the galactic halo. IMO Planck X-ray spaceprobe could detect the traces of such jets around MilkyWay already. Such a traces could be formed also by accretion - so that they cannot serve as a conclusive evidence of black hole "flashing" by itself.

Why is it that this is the first news we hear about these two putting a gyroscope in orbit around a BH? I would have thought the voyage of this probe to place this gyroscope in proximity to a BH would have made major headlines. Where was this BH located ?

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Can we see a singularity, the most extreme object in the universe? - Phys.Org

Singularity University, the famed think tank and tech education program in Silicon Valley, recently opened a Danish branch, marking the first major foreign expansion. SingularityU Denmark's founder and CEO Laila Pawlak sees a step-change in the regions tech and social impact on the horizon. Frankly a killer cocktail.

Shortly after announcing the world's first tech ambassadorship, Denmark landed another major milestone when, 1st of March, a new branch of Singularity University (SU) opened in the country.

SU's mission is to bridge the gap between global challenges and technological solutions.The Silicon Valley program has attracted tech executives and entrepreneurs from around the worldsome of them 150 from the Nordics.

One of them is entrepreneur Laila Pawlak, the Danish organisation's founder and CEO.Pawlak later worked as faculty in Silicon Valley before taking on the commitment to bring it to the Nordics, together with her partner,Kris Ostergaard, also a former SU faculty.

Pawlak likens the effect of the SU education with "eating the red pill" ( la Matrix), and seeing the opportunity of using technology in a whole new light.

Housed in a 5000 sqm campus, SingularityU Denmark will offer various educational and innovation programmes that combine the latest within exponential technology with future business areas.Key subjects are artificial intelligence, computing, biotech and robotics, as well as Global Grand Challenges which will be part of all programs.

While the Danish branchs intention according to Pawlak is to democratize access to the insights and activities that were previously only anchored in Silicon Valley, she points out its not going to be a copy paste of the original, with many original initiatives in the pipeline.

Pawlak, who drew on her experience founding innovation network DARE2mansion, adds that bringing SU to Denmark was an 18-month long, olympic process that wouldn't have been possible without local support in Denmark.

Theres been massive support from near and far - its really extraordinary.

So what is the true purpose of Singularity University?

We believe there are big global challenges that affect one billion people or more, and that these challenges can be solved, and provide huge opportunities for businesses.

What we focus on is these big problems that a lot of people suffer from, where business and technology can actually make an impact. We believe the best way to impact the world is leveraging exponential technologies. Thats the foundation of everything we do.

We encourage startups to think bigger, to think more impact. So that the technologies they are working with can be used in much bigger contexts.

And you are going to host startups in Copenhagen?

We already have about 200 people from a number of startups occupying our offices and more will be moving in. Weve had more than 100 startups reach out to us within the first week. And were already negotiating 2000 sqm more space.

Tell us what was your vision of bringing SU to the Nordics?

Even though we are going to be based out of Denmark, it is quite natural to think of us in terms of a Nordic SU branch. For one, weve just brought in the first eight mindblowingly awesome faculty, who have been recruited from all the Scandinavian countries.

From a Nordic perspective Im extremely excited, because weve been working on this in stealth mode for a year and a half, day and night. We played all the cards for Scandinavia that we have a lot of things going for us, the rising startup environment being one of them. Were stable countries that have come a long way to figure out a societal model that takes care of people, but at the same time is at the technological forefront; and takes care of the environment while also growing businesses.

So one of the reasons I made this my full-time commitment, and sat up night after night, is that I honestly truly believe that in the Nordics, we have the potential of showing the world how to do this in the right way. And I want to be part of making that happen.

We can show the world that we can foster prosperity and growth and happiness and positive impact, while at the same time doing it in a decent, right way. If we leverage all the strengths of our history, competences and education, and we add on top of that a strong technological insight and engagement, then were unbeatable. I genuinely believe this.

What I see in Silicon Valley is enthusiasm and optimism - hey lets try it out. And I really want to bridge that, and combine it with all of the strengths we have in the Nordics that they dont have in Silicon Valley. Then we have this killer cocktail to bring us to the next level. And we can truly be a role model to the rest of the world.

What are some of the challenges that Nordics have in doing this?

Weve kind of had an industrial way of looking at success. It is traditionally having a lot of employees in a company. But perhaps thats not the right way to measure success, maybe it should instead be how many people you positively impact.

For example, it could be a smartwatch for ADHD children to help them work from home and cope with their daily life. It might not be the best financial business ever, or have as many employees, but is that not at least equally - or an even more successful company?

The notion is that we can create companies that have a sustainable business and a lot of impact. Thats what were going to look at. I think we need to create new measures for what is a successful business.

What are some ideal outcomes from establishing SU in Denmark?

For me its all about impact. My dream scenario is startups being extremely successful impacting millions of people around the world. It is startups that met at the hub. Corporates that change their business model to positively impact people around the world. It is students being inspired to create a dream where they are technologically inspired to go out and start new businesses.

Impact is what we get measured on. Its all about that moment when people come back to you: the reason we are doing this, is because we met through this program and were inspired.

What was your own best experiences from SU?

I want to use a Matrix analogy. Participating in an SU program, its kind of taking the red pill. You see the world in a whole new light. And when you start seeing these possibilities, and understand what technology can do, then theres no going back.

I had moments when I discovered biotech. Suddenly, I had this feeling of a whole new world opening up to me. I think everybody, no matter what perspective or background they enter SU with, theres an area they dont know lot about, and suddenly all of these technologies converge. If Im in pharma, then I may be looking into AI. If Im in networks and computing I might look into biotech. I discovered all these new tech opportunities.

The second is the sense of community, of finding my tribe. I instantly felt like this is where I belong. A lot of people thought I had been crazy talking about purpose and profit, and scalable, positive impact. But when I came to SU, people just said yes, this is how we roll. Afterwards I felt committed to the responsibility of sharing that with more people.

Singularity hints at the point when robots will have surpassed human intelligence. Whats your personal view, are you afraid of robots?

I dont believe in the terminator scenario. For me its all about people.

How can we make a positive change for people? If we can leverage tech and robots to create a better life for people people that need help walking, lifting, whatever they need help with by all means, lets do it.

There are people that have an untapped potential that we dont see, because theyre doing things that robots are soon going to be able do. I dont think that potential has been fully tapped. If we play our cards right, in the Nordics and as a whole, I think we can set free that potential, and create a lot of entrepreneurships and creativity to create even more potential.

So we need to educate people to be enthusiastic about technology and understand it, so that people are not afraid of it.

So young entrepreneurs who want to get ready for the future might find something interesting at SU Denmark?

I would figure so! By the response weve had, it seems that a lot of people can strongly connect with our mission, and that makes me really proud.

And we want to make sure we target people in all levels of the organization. Many executives who have gone to SU in Silicon Valley, and try to bring their ideas home are met with resistance. We have high-level education executive level, but also at other levels.

Thank you!

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Q&A with the Danish dynamo who brought Singularity University to the Nordics: It's a killer cocktail - Business Insider Nordic