Hossenfelder: But this illusion of progress is the minor problem. Worse is that they seem resigned to the idea that foundational work in physics is detached from experiment and technological application.
Cosmology
At Mind Matters News: Does information have mass? An experimental physicist weighs in
Rob Sheldon notes that the more real-world information we have, the less the bits weigh until, at very large amounts of information, they weigh almost nothing.
Asked at Space.com: Could gravity itself be the origin of dark matter?
Paul Sutter: A new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started.
New find might “upend the Standard Model” in physics? Really? Rob Sheldon has the story
Sheldon: What this paper and journo piece reveals is the desperation felt in the particle physics community. They so desperately need the Standard Model to fail.
Kirk Durston on Sabine Hossenfelder and God
Biophysicist Kirk Durston offers some feedback to theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. Lots of comments, including “You are dead on that she avoids talking about how space, time, matter, and energy came into existence.”
At Mind Matters News: What do Hindus think about the Big Bang? The cyclic universe?
Takehome: In the Hindu view, the material universe is meant to enable living consciousnesses to have sensory experiences that ultimately bring them back to God. That’s hardly a materialist view.
Steve Meyer on why a supposed multiverse is no answer to the extreme fine-tuning of our universe
Meyer on multiverse cosmologists: “The speculative cosmologies (such as inflationary cosmology and string theory) they propose for generating alternative universes invariably invoke mechanisms that themselves require fine-tuning, thus begging the question as to the origin of that prior fine-tuning.”
Standard Model doubted at Inference Review
In the cosmic microwave background frame, the large-scale averaged distribution of matter is also assumed to be isotropic… These assumptions are no longer tenable. Several independent data sets now argue against the existence of a cosmic rest frame.
At Mind Matters News: Unexplained — maybe unexplainable — numbers control the universe
Nobelist Wolfgang Pauli (1945) is said to have remarked, “When I die, my first question to the devil will be: What is the meaning of the fine structure constant?” At any rate, he thought about it a great deal during his life.
Rob Sheldon: Maybe black holes don’t really exist. Consider the possibilities.
Sheldon: “What I sense is that false premises and bad assumptions have been coloring the entire field of Black Holes (and Big Bangs and quasars ) for decades now. Perhaps we should stop patching the creaking model and consider a new one. ” News: “Some of us can’t help wondering if the sheer philosophical pizzazz of the black hole keeps it going in its present state. A glamorous theory is bound to have a long run.”
A new solution for Hawking’s black hole paradox? “Quantum hair”
Catchy, we gotta admit: In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them. That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed. In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features Read More…
Why physicists adhere to quantum theory despite bafflement
At Symmetry Magazine: Quantum field theory is rife with something mathematicians can’t stand: unresolved infinities. In a 1977 essay, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg wrote that “[Quantum field theory’s] reputation among physicists suffered frequent fluctuations… at times dropping so low that quantum field theory came close to be[ing] abandoned altogether.” (But it was kept because it works. And what might that point to?)
Sabine Hossenfelder: Did the early universe really inflate rapidly?
Hossenfelder: In the popular science media, inflation is sometimes presented as if it was established fact. It isn’t. Its status is similar to that of particle dark matter. They are both unconfirmed hypotheses. But while most physicists agree that particle dark matter has yet to be empirically confirmed, opinions about inflation are extremely polarized.
Deepening crisis in particle physics — Rob Sheldon responds
But when theoretical physicists start messing with reductionism, they are messing with the core assumptions of the meaningless universe. Many attempts are in progress to revalidate those assumptions, of course but…
Sabine Hossenfelder asks: Will the Big Bang repeat?
Hossenfelder: I am not sure that CCC actually solves the problem it was supposed to solve. Remember we are trying to explain the past hypothesis. But a scientific explanation shouldn’t be more difficult than the thing you’re trying to explain. And CCC requires some assumptions, about the conformal invariance and the erebons, that at least to me don’t seem any better than the past hypothesis.