We’ve only begun to point huge telescopes at exoplanets. There are too many unknowns to be sure of our status, he thinks.
Physics
If dark energy is “neither particle nor field,” what is it?
Siegel: “It is time to take seriously the idea that dark energy might simply be a property inherent to the very fabric of space. Until we learn how to calculate the zero-point energy of empty space itself, or gain some bizarre, surprising, and unanticipated evidence, this will remain one of the biggest existential questions in all the universe.” So this is existentialism for physicists, right? Even Sabine Hossenfelder sounds sort of existential on this one.
At Quanta: New find re strong force in physics involves “impossible” particle
Charlie Wood: The tetraquark now presents theorists with a solid target against which to test their mathematical machinery for approximating the strong force.
Sabine Hossenfelder asks, what’s up with neutrinos?
Hossenfelder has stumbled on a telling fact about science journalism. Often, the genuinely puzzling problem is ignored in favour of some a big whoop de do about an incidental find that doesn’t amount to much and may prove an artifact of data collection.
Rob Sheldon: “It from bit” is winning the cosmology wars
Sheldon: Translating, Ethan is saying that the old 20th century materialism that says “entropy” or “information” emerges from the particles is being replaced by a 21st century view that “entropy” or “information” is fundamental and the material particles emerge from the immaterial field.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: The universe simulated itself into existence
The paper, which appeared in Entropy in 2020, is open access. The most significant element of this new theory is surely that it is explicitly a theory of “panconsciousness” and non-materialism.
What Steven Weinberg’s “pointless universe” really meant
What it really meant was permission to ignore the significance of the fine-tuning of the universe and of Earth for life. It really amounts to saying that evidence does not matter any more.
Rob Sheldon on the new evidence against the Standard Model in cosmology: “The party’s over.”
Sheldon: “… dark matter and dark energy (aka Λ) have become science fantasy with no shortage of storytellers. It’s time to tell everybody the party’s over.”
Sabine Hossenfelder: New evidence against the Standard Model of cosmology
Hossenfelder: “… the evidence is mounting that the cosmological principle is a bad assumption to develop a model for the entire universe and it probably has to go. It increasingly looks like we live in a region in the universe that happens to have a significantly lower density than the average in the visible universe.”
Dark matter as Fermi balls? Rob Sheldon offers a question
Sheldon: Quite surprisingly, such a theory is readily available for testing. Remember, dark matter avoids the center of galaxies, but neither does it condense into stellar-sized black holes (we looked). So if it is little balls created in the Big Bang, then it is indistinguishable from Primordial Black Holes that have been proposed for decades…
Is dark matter the Fermi balls forged in the Big Bang?
Physicist: Dark matter — the mysterious substance that exerts gravity but doesn’t interact with light — might be made of tiny black holes permeating the universe.
Why do they need Einstein to be wrong?
It’s been a while though. What would replace Einstein’s theories? The war on math?
At Fermilab, Wokeness now beats out work
Let’s keep an eye on Fermilab and see if Wokeness beating out work results in more genuine physics discoveries or fewer.
Sabine Hossenfelder asks, “Is dark matter real?”
Part of a physics seminar series called “Golden Webinars.”
At Forbes: Could dark energy be a misinterpretation of the data?
Siegel: In the near future, observatories like the ESA’s Euclid, the NSF’s Vera Rubin Observatory, and NASA’s Nancy Roman Observatory will improve that uncertainty so that if dark energy departs from a constant by as little as ~1-2%, we’ll be able to detect it. If it strengthens or weakens over time, or varies in different directions, it would be a revolutionary new indicator that dark energy is even more exotic than we currently think.