Cosmology

In a comparatively nonsense-free book review, we read, Schrödinger and Einstein both spent far longer on the hunt for a unification of quantum physics and relativity than they had on the breakthroughs for which they are known. This quixotic quest forms the major part of Halpern’s book, and it makes for a tragic tale. instein revised and rejigged his work, to the increasing ennui of his peers and the increasing adulation of the world. Schrödinger, never as famous, overstepped the mark, trying so hard to be taken seriously that he offended Einstein with public pronouncements about the superiority of his own work. For three years, Einstein didn’t return Schrödinger’s letters. Their fellow physicists became more bewildered and irritated by the Read More ›

From John Leslie’s review of Nobelist Steven Weinberg’s new book, To Explain the World: Experience has shown that seeking goodness, purpose, signs of a divine plan, is totally unprofitable Despite fine tuning of the universe? All the same, Weinberg gives a rule for what scientists should avoid. Experience has, he thinks, shown that seeking goodness, purpose, signs of a divine plan, is totally unprofitable. It doesn’t mean that he rejects such statements as “Hearts exist so that blood can be pumped”. They are useful if understood in the way Darwin suggested. God didn’t design hearts benevolently, or give living things “an inherent tendency to improve” that would have “ruled out any unification of biology with physical science”. What Darwin instead Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The discovery of a ‘left-handed’ magnetic field that pervades the universe could help explain a long standing mystery — the absence of cosmic antimatter. A group of scientists, led by Prof Tanmay Vachaspati from Arizona State University in the United States, with collaborators at Washington University and Nagoya University, announce their result in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Readers? Follow UD News at Twitter!

Well take it any way you want, but from Engadget: According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which is tasked with promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space, space law is the “body of law applicable to and governing space-related activities.” UNOOSA states that the “primary goals of space law are to ensure a rational, responsible approach to the exploration and use of outer space for the benefit and in the interests of all humankind.” And space law “addresses a variety of diverse matters such as … [the] preservation of the space and Earth environment, liability for damages caused by space objects, settlement of disputes, protection of national interests, rescue of astronauts, sharing Read More ›

Friend Kirk Durston offers a five-part series on the corruption of 21st century science here: Part I: Should you have blind faith in what science has become today? This post will be the first in a series dealing with the corruption of 21st century science. As a scientist, I am increasingly appalled and even, just this past week, shocked at what is passing as 21st century science. It has become a mix of good science, bad science, creative story-telling, science fiction, scientism (atheism dressed up as science), citation-bias, huge media announcements followed by quiet retractions, massaging the data, exaggeration for funding purposes, and outright fraud all rolled up into what I refer to as 21st century science. In some disciplines, Read More ›

Here: Before we start, let’s invent two things: self-repairing AI supervisors that can direct projects lasting many millennia; and vehicles that can reach close to the speed of light, maybe riding on laser beams or driven by miniature black holes – which according to recent calculations by physicists at Kansas State University may be possible. When we reach the Singularity or the Omega Point or whatever flim flam destination is on offer, we might pause to wonder this: Why do people likely to credit every a-crock-alypse from nuclear winter to human-caused global warming also wonder if we can engineer the universe? Especially when they think it all just happened randomly anyway. See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe Read More ›

A reader thinks so, and submits the YouTube below as evidence, noting: The man is not as compelling a speaker as he is a writer, nevertheless he as a materialist is questioning an aspect of materialism. And as thoughtful materialists question aspects of materialism, I think it good that we take note and understand what they are saying. Thomas Nagel‘s (2012) Mind & Cosmos : Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False was well worth reading, as also was Rupert Sheldrake‘s (2013) Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery. Lee Smolin, like Sheldrake, proposes a kind of cosmic natural selection whereby the laws of physics evolve, and thus he eschews what he calls “timeless truths.” Read More ›

Changed sociologically, that is. Here: These days, things have changed. If you’re at Perimeter, prominent activities include: This week’s conference on a very technical issue in string theory, superstring perturbation theory. This month’s course of lectures on Explorations in String Theory. The next public lecture will feature Amanda Peet promoting string theory. Peet has been one of the more ferocious partisans of the string wars. The text advertising her public talk a few years back at the Center for Inquiry in Toronto warned attendees who might consider “parrotting of critical views by outsiders like Lee Smolin.” Numerous events mentioned, including For a more balanced view of quantum gravity issues, you might want to spend your time in France, where the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “If quantum gravity in a flat space allows for a holographic description by a standard quantum theory, then there must by physical quantities, which can be calculated in both theories — and the results must agree,” says Grumiller. Especially one key feature of quantum mechanics -quantum entanglement — has to appear in the gravitational theory. When quantum particles are entangled, they cannot be described individually. They form a single quantum object, even if they are located far apart. There is a measure for the amount of entanglement in a quantum system, called “entropy of entanglement.” Together with Arjun Bagchi, Rudranil Basu and Max Riegler, Daniel Grumiller managed to show that this entropy of entanglement takes the same value Read More ›

… that it is knowable and mathematically based. That was said better by Eugene Wigner. The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. – “The Unreasonable Effectiveness “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 1960 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. – Nobel Laureate physicist Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) See also: At PBS: Puzzle of mathematics is more complex than we sometimes think Astrophysicist Mario Livio: There are actually two facets to the “unreasonable effectiveness,” one that I Read More ›

Saves time. Here: As a physics professor working in a secular university in Australia, and publishing in scientific journals, and knowing the importance of communicating one’s science to the wider community, I have had many opportunities to see how the system works. Outside of the experts in your field the details do not matter, but a good story does. As an illustration of this let me relate a story from early 2013. At that time I published a cosmology paper,3 which included an interesting concept. I found that using an alternative cosmology in a finite bounded expanding universe, with a unique centre and an edge, one could get the same physical description of the large-scale structure of the universe, which Read More ›

Not Even Wrong wonders, and he’s generally credible: There are rumors going around tonight that there’s been a hoax perpetrated on the arXiv, something like the Sokal hoax. This has to do with an hep-th posting entitled Riding Gravity Away from Doomsday, which has appeared under the name of a very prominent string theorist, Ashoke Sen, winner of the $3 million Milner Fundamental Physics Prize. What I’m hearing is that no one can believe that Sen could possibly have seriously written something this silly, so it must be some sort of hoax. Speculation is that the hoax could have been carried out to make the hep-th moderators look bad, by showing that they’ll agree to anything, no matter how absurd, Read More ›

Here. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that black holes were capable of radiating particles, and that the energy lost through this process would cause the black holes to shrink and eventually disappear. Hawking further concluded that the particles emitted by a black hole would provide no clues about what lay inside, meaning that any information held within a black hole would be completely lost once the entity evaporated. Though Hawking later said he was wrong and that information could escape from black holes, the subject of whether and how it’s possible to recover information from a black hole has remained a topic of debate. Stojkovic and Saini’s new paper helps to clarify the story. Instead of looking only at the Read More ›

So they say: Dark matter’s presence is known only by its interactions with normal matter through gravity. It does not, however, interact via the electromagnetic force, which is why we cannot directly see it — it does not emit, scatter or reflect light — it is more “invisible” than “dark.” In this new research, Harvey and his team realized just how invisible this stuff is, even to itself. As two galactic clusters collide, the stars, gas and dark matter interact in different ways. The clouds of gas suffer drag, slow down and often stop, whereas the stars zip past one another, unless they collide — which is rare. On studying what happens to dark matter during these collisions, the researchers Read More ›

Hey, not much religion news today, as the new atheists must be on vacay or something. But our old fave Peter Woit is back, and offers this re discovering the parallel universe: The plan has been to inject a beam into the LHC this week, leading to a news item in the UK Daily Express about how Scientists at Large Hadron Collider hope to make contact with PARALLEL UNIVERSE in days. This nonsense comes to us courtesy ofthis paper published in Physics Letters B. Unfortunately the machine checkout going on at the LHC has identified a problem that may delay contact with the PARALLEL UNIVERSE for a little while. Looks like no beam this week, for details see this from Read More ›