Which says that if there are more holes than pigeons, some pigeons must share.
Cosmology
Are black holes partly a philosophy question?
The black hole has always occupied a sort of space in the middle, between science and philosophy. It’s good to see that acknowledged. From ScienceDaily: Erik Curiel studied Philosophy as well as Theoretical Physics at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and the primary aim of his current DFG-funded research project is to develop […]
A flat earth is popular among iGen – kids who grew up with the internet
Most of Novella’s piece has to do with people who seriously espouse a flat earth as opposed to people who check the box and go back to their Twitter feed, surely the vast majority. It won’t be fun when those people have responsible positions, imparting their knowledge of the world.
Inference Review did NOT set out to make a fool of cosmologist Adam Becker
It’s not a job that needs doing, the editors say.
Theoretical Physicist weary of people telling her 2+2 = 5
No, Sabine, you’re not crazy. But you live in crazymaking times. Cosmology has degenerated into the pursuit of cool nonsense like the multiverse via string theory. So much now seems to revolve around whether findings help or hurt the nonsense. Not about learning more about what is really happening here now.
We actually don’t know the precise value of the Hubble Constant
Thank goodness we were never in any danger of running out of end-of-the-universe/world/world-as-we-know-it scenarios anyway.
Raining carrots: Falsifiability does not, by itself, make for good science
In short, she is saying, the universe wasn’t supposed to be like this and that’s the basis for the current crisis in cosmology. One can always invent “falsifiable” theories but their falsifiability is not in itself a virtue; it is simply the basis for them being theories in science at all. The question of whether they should be pursued or funded is a quite different one.
Are we reaching fundamental limits on building large particle colliders?
Peter Woit doesn’t want to give up but he makes it clear that the options are narrow and expensive. Perhaps we are entering a period of decline when cosmology is about the multiverse rather than the Higgs boson.
Researchers: The Moon made life on Earth possible
From ScienceDaily: Earth most likely received the bulk of its carbon, nitrogen and other life-essential volatile elements from the planetary collision that created the moon more than 4.4 billion years ago, according to a new study by Rice University petrologists in the journal Science Advances. “From the study of primitive meteorites, scientists have long known […]
Particle physicist: Please quit calling the Higgs boson “the God particle”!
As a matter of fact, we don’t often hear the Higgs called the “God particle” now that it’s been clearly identified and given Peter Higgs’s name. That was more common before. It’s almost like something else is bothering Dorigo but we won’t speculate.
Bill Nye’s “Christianity vs. the Big Universe” myth
“The big universe is a problem for Christianity” is a claim something like “They’re out there” (meaning ET). It has nothing to do with facts; it is pure social positioning (or posturing). As with the Cosmos’s series’s “artistic license to lie,” it is a way of indicating that their social position is so powerful that they can misrepresent people.
Rob Sheldon responds to cosmologist Sean Carroll’s 19 True Facts of Cosmology
Sean Carroll, an avowed atheist in the “scientism” camp of Bill Nye and Jerry Coyne, has made a list of apologia for the Big Bang (hereafter BB). You might wonder why there needs to be any apology at all if, as he himself says, “We have overwhelming evidence that it is true.”
Sabine Hossenfelder: Physics problems that lead to breakthroughs arise from inconsistencies in data, not beautiful math
And afterwards, we find the math works. Sabine Hossenfelder author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, asks us to consider what distinguishes a good problem in physics, hence in cosmology, from a trip through some interesting weeds.
Physicists: A mirror universe might explain dark matter
Says a team of three Canadian physicists.
The multiverse has become a talking point on Capitol Hill
You can’t ground a discussion in basic reality, says one commentator, “without somebody, sooner rather than later, confidently pronouncing something like “our universe is just one of many universes that are constantly evolving and forever changing.” He offers a response, courtesy Regis Nicoll: Everett imagined that each split created a parallel universe in which particles […]