Category: Cosmology
Reader asks physicist: Is there a universe in every particle?
| August 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
The physicist who answers is Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018) and she responds, saying (among other things) If you want every elementary particle to each have a universe inside, you need to explain why we only know 25 different elementary particles. Why aren’t there billions of them? An […]
Researchers: Either dark energy or string theory is wrong. Or both are.
| August 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Dark energy. Even the name is intriguing. Isn’t it a line of cosmetics already? But the evidence base is getting murkier all the time. The conjecture, if true, would mean the density of dark energy in our universe cannot be constant, but must instead take a form called “quintessence” — an energy source that will […]
Philosopher wants to free “emergent” universe from the clutches of mystics
| August 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
f course, once he uses the term “emergent,” it’s game over. Philosopher Paul Humphreys explains, While atomism is all about burrowing down to basic building blocks, emergence looks upward and outward, to ask whether strange new phenomena might pop out when things get sufficiently large or complex. … Emergence was popular in philosophy of science more than […]
Rob Sheldon on the claimed need for new physics
| August 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Why do computers mean we never have to be humble again? We asked our physics color commentator, Rob Sheldon, about the recent deflation of the “expanding blueberry muffin” picture of the universe. That is, as one astrophysicist puts it “Just as cosmological measurements have became so precise that the value of the Hubble constant was […]
“Expanding blueberry muffin” picture of the universe collapses
| August 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics |
And cosmologists race to win a “great cosmic bake-off” to produce a new one, says astrophysicist: Just as cosmological measurements have became so precise that the value of the Hubble constant was expected to be known once and for all, it has been found instead that things don’t make sense. Instead of one we now […]
Astrobiologist: Why time travel can’t really work
| August 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Recently, cosmologist Carlo Rovelli, author of The Order of Time, argued that time travel, especially into the future, can work. However, astrobiologist Caleb A. Scarf sees an insurmountable barrier, which he calls the “spatial problem”: Let’s take the Earth’s motion around the Sun. A month of orbit corresponds to moving in an arc of approximately […]
Rob Sheldon’s thoughts on physicists’ “warped” view of time
| August 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
Further to Carlo Rovelli’s views on time travel (only a technological problem, not a scientific one) and the order of time in general, views, as set out in The Order of Time, our color commentator Rob Sheldon offers, — If I can speculate about what goes on in physicist’s heads, this issue about time is an attempt […]
Cosmologist Carlo Rovelli: Future time travel only a technological problem
| August 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
Not a scientific one. Dan Falk interviews physicist Carlo Rovelli about “about the nature of time, whether it has a beginning and if humans might one day master time travel:” Could time travel ever be possible? Well, “time traveling” is what we do all our lives, isn’t it? But you mean, can we jump quickly […]
About the universe, the ID guys were right all along?
| August 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From science fiction writer Vox Day at Vox Popoli, responding to Fred Reed, Fred has landed on precisely the aspect of evolutionary theory that made me into a strong TE(p)NSBMGDaGF skeptic. What many people who have not thought seriously about the issue don’t realize is that biologists are literally so stupid, and so innumerate, and […]
When research collides: Modified gravity vs. dark matter
| July 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Modified gravity is a hypothesis (1983) that attempts to account for the gravitational pull that is otherwise attributed to dark matter (which has never been identified). From Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at : Which one is right? We still don’t know, though astrophysicists have been on the case […]
Quantum physicist David Bohm on why there cannot be a Theory of Everything
| July 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
At Scientific American, John Horgan reprints his profile of Bohm (1917-1992) shortly before his death, in which Bohm explains his view: Although he tried to make the world more sensible with his pilot-wave model, he also argued that complete clarity is impossible. He reached this conclusion after seeing an experiment on television, in which a drop […]
Researchers: The symmetrons needed to explain dark energy were not found
| July 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From ScienceDaily: One of the candidates for ‘dark energy’ is the symmetron field. Researchers have developed an experiment capable of measuring extremely small forces with the help of neutrons. The measurements could have provided pointers to the mysterious symmetrons, but the particles didn’t show up. This excludes the possibility of symmetrons in a broad parameter […]
If we are alone in the universe, shouldn’t that make us feel more special?
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Design inference, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
Instead of meaningless? How exactly did we get from “Alone” to “Meaningless” via eloquence from tenured pundits? Where do we buy return tickets? A blogging neurologist asks this obvious question. From Steven Novella at The Ness: Until, however, we detect actual aliens or their signals, the rest of the factors in the equation are likely […]
Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias”
| July 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From science writer Bruce Dorminey at Forbes: Time may be running out on the search for the cosmos’ exotic dark matter. Decades after the first searches for dark matter’s hypothetical exotic particle counterparts, researchers are mostly at a loss to explain why there still has been no direct detection. That is, one that could explain […]
Octonions: Do eight-dimensional numbers underlie the universe?
| July 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Physics |
From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D “quaternions,” discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin’s Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton’s, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an […]
At the BBC: Still working on that ol’ time machine…
| July 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
From the BBC: Albert Einstein thought the three dimensions of space were linked to time – which serves as a fourth dimension. He called this system space-time, and it’s the model of the Universe that we use today. But Einstein also thought it was possible to fold space-time, creating a shortcut between two distant locations. […]
Gravitational waves: Scientific revolutions can take decades, science editor says
| July 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From John Timmer at Ars Technica: LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves came almost exactly a century after Einstein had formulated his general theory of relativity and an ensuing paper mathematically describing the possibility of gravitational waves. Or at least that’s the story as it was presented to the public (including by yours truly). And in […]
Can there really be a Theory of Everything? Wouldn’t it really be a theology of everything?
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion |
From John Saxbee at Church Times, reviewing Keith Eyeons’ The Theology of Everything: Renaissance Man joins the 21st century: … Yet scientists continue to pursue a theory of everything, and this irony is not lost on Eyeons, who sets out to reclaim this territory for theologians in general, and for Christian theology in particular. The […]
All the aliens in one place at one time…
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Cosmology, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Plus a bunch of useful stuff. In a month when we have been heard hearing about all things alien, from everything from it’s good news that they probably don’t exist through to they might be hoarding stars… here is a book that has it all in one place: From Sophia Centre press: An anthology of […]
Experimental physicists devise test to find out if dark matter really exists
| June 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From the University of Bonn: A new study found a way to determine whether the mysterious “star putty” really exists Researchers at the University of Bonn and the University of California at Irvine used sophisticated computer simulations to devise a test that could answer a burning question in astrophysics: is there really dark matter? Or […]
