Wait a minute! Wasn’t there cosmic Darwinism a decade ago? Yes, here. And quantum Darwinism whistled through in 2016 too.
Physics
New Scientist welcomes us to the fifth dimension
In pop science media, the End of All Things is the heat death of the universe, but some opt for stranger fates instead.
Rob Sheldon: What to do now in particle physics
Forget “new physics”. Forget the Nobel Prize. Get some humility, especially us physicists, and realize that everything we possess is a gift. Show some gratitude by filling in one of the many textbook gaps.
Rob Sheldon on celeb physicists Sabine Hossenfelder, Ethan Siegel, and Chad Orzel
My own view is that we need to go back to 1950 and revisit the alternatives. Because solving today’s impasse doesn’t require any new physics, but old physics done differently.
Particle physics is a mess but Hossenfelder should chill, fellow physicist says
Hmmm. He’s not giving fellow physicists much of an incentive to sort out the mess. On the other hand, civilized theoretical physicists fight so politely that you can learn a lot just by listening.
Ethan Siegel: Don’t trust experiments that claim there are parallel universes
This sounds so sensible, we thought theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder would say it. But astrophysicist Ethan Siegel said it. A sober position for him.
A black hole that just shouldn’t exist
Researcher: “We cannot understand the data unless we include the theories of relativity.” …
Could “quasiparticles” reveal dark matter?
One group of physicists proposes an experiment to try to trick dark matter into revealing itself, involving a unit of energy called a “magnon.”
Is spacetime granular on the smallest of scales?
At Physics Central: “a recent Physical Review Letter hints that granular spacetime could—just maybe—solve two of the most pressing problems in astronomy today.”
We are invited to consider a simpler perspective on the laws of physics
Kowacs: In other words, the book explains how electromagnetic fields comprise the electron mass.
Why scientists tend to dismiss well-supported ideas that lie outside the paradigm
The problem is that people can come to think of approved stagnation as a duty and stagnating as a virtue. If a genius comes along, with new ideas, they have lost the habit of listening with expectation.
Cosmic cold spots now “even weirder”
Researching the distribution of light following the Big Bang shows no evidence of these anomalies. Either they are flukes of statistics or evidence of new physics, the researchers say.
Rob Sheldon: What that hot new quantum experiment really showed
His view: What this recent paper with a qutrit experiment shows, is that it is possible to do QM communication or QM computing at high volume and high speed. No need to wear headphones. Our view of the universe has not changed.
Theoretical physicist: Recent claim about big quantum mechanics find is “silly”
Maybe the main thing to see here is that lots of people would love to falsify or tame quantum mechanics, the way they would like to falsify the Big Bang or fine-tuning and it won’t be their fault for lack of trying.
Astrophysicist: Nothingness” may be the answer to our cosmic questions; Rob Sheldon responds
Rob Sheldon: This article illustrates the reason why the scientific method is going extinct, not just in Darwin’s circular logic, but also in physics and cosmology.