“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Cosmology
Do Natural Explanations Rule Out the Universe’s Fine-Tuning?
Astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink writes some thoughts on cosmological fine-tuning.
Here’s the European Space Agency’s 3-D map of over a billion stars
ZME Science: The catalog features multiple types of data, which means it can be used by astronomers working in different fields to understand the evolution of stars in our galaxy (and stars in general).
Nautilus: Gravitational Waves Continue to Astound
Professor Perkowitz: “Seven years after their discovery, the ripples in spacetime have opened new windows on the universe’s deepest secrets.”
Sabine Hossenfelder: The big problem with quantum theory is chaos
Hossenfelder: “… the chaotic motion of Hyperion tells us that we need the measurement collapse to actually be a physical process. Without it, quantum mechanics just doesn’t correctly describe our observations. But then what is this process? No one knows. And that’s the problem with quantum mechanics.”
Ghostly ‘mirror world’ might be cause of cosmic controversy
University of New Mexico: New research suggests an unseen ‘mirror world’ of particles that interacts with our world only via gravity that might be the key to solving a major puzzle in cosmology today – the Hubble constant problem.
Sabine Hossenfelder on the closest we have to a theory of everything
She argues that the principle of least action is the closest we have to a theory of everything but, of course, along comes quantum mechanics and… Quantum mechanics keeps the world interesting and reminds us that this is not a deterministic world after all.
First images of the black hole thought to be at the center of our galaxy released
Researchers: The image gives greater insight into the mysteries of black holes and further confirms Einstein’s long-standing theory of relativity.
Pancomputationalism: Everything is a computation?
Hugh Ross: Pancomputationalism is the claim that all physical systems—galaxies, stars, rocks, dust, gas, molecules, atoms, protons, a pair of scissors—either continually or intermittently perform computations.
Could cosmic expansion be coming to an end?
Researchers: In the team’s model, dark energy is not a constant force of nature, but an entity called quintessence, which can decay over time.
Sabine Hossenfelder asks, did the W-boson break the Standard Model?
Hossenfelder: Is it correct? I don’t know. It could be. But in all honesty, I am very skeptical that this result will hold up. More likely, they have underestimated the error and their result is actually compatible with the other measurements.
The universe is fundamentally off kilter?
Why isn’t “kilter” whatever the universe is?
Theoretical physicist on why she stopped working on black hole information loss
Hossenfelder: …. no one can tell which solution is correct in the sense that it actually describes nature, and physicists will not agree on one anyway. Because if they did, they’d have to stop writing papers about it.
Would you believe? Time doesn’t really exist?
Philosopher Sam Baron: So unless we can come up with a good account of how time emerges, it is not clear we can simply assume time exists.
A search for the most complex thing in the universe?
At IAI.TV: “This synthesis of biology and cosmology required a shift away from reductionism and the belief that all systems can be understood by breaking them down into their constituent elements. Instead, the new way of thinking makes sense of complex systems and their evolution by considering the number of possible future states those systems could take.”