Wouldn’t making free, legal pot available accomplish the same intellectual goal?
Physics
New Scientist: Dark matter’s no-show casts doubt on Big Bang; Rob Sheldon replies
Sheldon: The recent publication of the Italians+Silk paper has now voiced the unspeakable: there is something wrong with the Lambda-CDM Big Bang model, and by inference, the 2011 Nobel Prize. Neither “dark matter” nor “dark energy” seem to exist in a form that makes the model work.
Natural biomolecule measured while acting like a quantum wave
From the Abstract: The successful realization of quantum optics with this polypeptide as a prototypical biomolecule paves the way for quantum-assisted molecule metrology and in particular the optical spectroscopy of a large class of biologically relevant molecules.
Sabine Hossenfelder asks, How can we test a theory of everything?
Hossenfelder: But there is no reason to think that the forces of the standard model have to be unified, or that all the forces ultimately derive from one common explanation. It would be nice, but maybe that’s just not how the universe works.
In case you wondered why dark energy is “the biggest unsolved problem in the universe”
Ethan Siegel: Why does empty space have the properties that it does? Why is the zero-point energy of the fabric of the Universe a positive, non-zero value? And why does dark energy have the behavior we observe it to have, rather than any other?
Rob Sheldon on whether Quanta mag’s universe is closed or flat
The result [of overspecialization], as everyone here knows, is that all biologists know that Evolution doesn’t work in their specialty, but they believe it works generally for the other specialties. Every astronomer knows about the problems of Lambda-CDM model in their specialty but believes it works in the other specialties.
Slapping Sabine Hossenfelder isn’t going to solve physics’s problems
But the frustration some feel about the situation they are in re gravitational waves tells us a lot.
Well, if the Washington Post agrees that the universe is out of whack…
Johns Hopkins astronomer Adam Riess cautions us against trying to understand what is going on: “We are wired to use our intuition to understand things around us,” Riess said. “Most of the universe is made out of stuff that’s completely different than us.”
Do we need to think beyond current physics to understand nature?
Have we run out of rungs on our current ladder?
Astrophysicist Adam Frank: Materialism is on shaky ground
Frank is an expert on the final stages of evolution of stars like the sun. His computational research group has developed advanced supercomputer tools in order to study how stars form and die. So he would incline to a materialist view, surely? But no, he says, quantum physics blew all that away. And some neuroscientists just haven’t caught up.
Sabine Hossenfelder: There is a crisis in physics and it may spread to other sciences
Many science writers probably like the current state of affairs because nonsense about the multiverse and space aliens is easy to write. Artists might like it because it is easy to illustrate. Only if you cared about physics would you want to spoil the party.
Hossenfelder, did you know that, for some, the search for dark matter is an act of faith?
At Nautilus: “My sense,” I say to Christopher, “is that the search for dark matter has produced an elaborate, delicate edifice of presuppositions, and a network of worship sites, also known as laboratories, all dedicated to the search for an invisible universal entity which refuses to reveal itself. It seems to resemble what we call religion rather more than what we call science.”
Hossenfelder: Could the problem with dark matter come down to using wrong equations?
Sabine Hossenfelder: Given how much brain-power physicists have spent on trying to figure out what dark matter and dark energy is, I think it would be a good idea to definitely settle the question whether it is anything at all. At the very least, I would sleep better.
Giant molecules show quantum effects: Appear in two places at once
Demonstrated with a molecule of 2000 atoms.
Physicist loses bet with science writer: No Nobel for string theory by 2020
The interesting thing is that the science writer portrayed string theory as a religion, a sort of “mathematical theology.” And he is right. But what follows now?