Rob Sheldon: What is really recycling is not the universe, but this theory.
Cosmology
Caution! Knowing the universe is a simulation will end it…? Wow, magic.
At least the crackpot cosmologist is mostly scaring himself. The rest of us are wondering whether water bears could survive on the moon. That’s all the “space aliens” we can be sure of.
Dark matter is older than the Big Bang?
The media release refers to “time before the Big Bang.” The idea that time did not begin, for our purposes, with the Big Bang would be contested by some. That raises arrow-of-time issues.
Muons, alas, vindicate Einstein’s special relativity
Apparently, time dilation that we can observe is to blame. The only reason for the “alas” is that the conflict between major theories that are all well-supported must leave some wishing that at least some of the contenders could be less well-supported. 😉
Physicists need courage to confront the Collider dilemma, says boson pioneer
Could the great age of particle physics be coming to an end? That is, not so much a crisis as the beginning of a long, slow decline? That happened to science in many former civilizations. There were high points and then somehow things slowed down. How would we know?
Has a recent find brought us closer to understanding why time goes only one way?
Wolchover: The researchers have discovered simple, so-called “universal” laws governing the initial stages of change in a variety of systems consisting of many particles that are far from thermal equilibrium.
Extreme black hole shows Einstein was right
Of course, there is so much talk these days of a crisis in physics that one is tempted to wonder if vindicating Einstein is regarded as just as positive an event as it would have been decades ago. Good stuff anyway.
Will the debate over the expansion of the universe “unravel” physics?
Well, they do seem to be taking it seriously.
Sabine Hossenfelder dusts off “superdeterminism”
Hossenfelder: “Now, a lot of people discard superdeterminism simply because they prefer to believe in free will, which is where I think the biggest resistance to superdeterminism comes from.”
We are told that quantum Darwinism has passed its first test
Wait a minute! Wasn’t there cosmic Darwinism a decade ago? Yes, here. And quantum Darwinism whistled through in 2016 too.
New Scientist welcomes us to the fifth dimension
In pop science media, the End of All Things is the heat death of the universe, but some opt for stranger fates instead.
Rob Sheldon: What to do now in particle physics
Forget “new physics”. Forget the Nobel Prize. Get some humility, especially us physicists, and realize that everything we possess is a gift. Show some gratitude by filling in one of the many textbook gaps.
Rob Sheldon on celeb physicists Sabine Hossenfelder, Ethan Siegel, and Chad Orzel
My own view is that we need to go back to 1950 and revisit the alternatives. Because solving today’s impasse doesn’t require any new physics, but old physics done differently.
Particle physics is a mess but Hossenfelder should chill, fellow physicist says
Hmmm. He’s not giving fellow physicists much of an incentive to sort out the mess. On the other hand, civilized theoretical physicists fight so politely that you can learn a lot just by listening.
Ethan Siegel: Don’t trust experiments that claim there are parallel universes
This sounds so sensible, we thought theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder would say it. But astrophysicist Ethan Siegel said it. A sober position for him.