Researcher: “We cannot understand the data unless we include the theories of relativity.” …
Physics
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.
Hope springs eternal: Are new particles hiding “in plain sight?”
The Large Hadron Collider just keeps confirming the Standard Model, almost as if there was some basis for believing it to be correct. Rob Sheldon thinks the current mood is desperation: If you don’t know where you are going, you will certainly arrive. Information is finite, ignorance infinite.
What does it mean to say, in physics, that something like the Higgs boson “exists”?
Sabine Hossenfelder’s view: Realism is a philosophy. It’s a belief system, and science does not tell you whether it is correct.
Universe a billion years younger! Scientists scrambling!! Oh, wait…
Rob Sheldon’s alternative headline for the same story: The expansion rate from Planck (68 km/s/Mpc) doesn’t match the expansion rate from Hubble Easy to account for. (There are enough real mysteries in the universe without this nonsense.)
Rob Sheldon offers a physics perspective on free will
Sheldon: My objection, which I will develop in two streams, is that both reductionism and emergence are just wrong, as is the philosophical denial of free will based on them.
Sabine Hossenfelder: Black holes vs. quantum mechanics = something has to give
Her view: Most physicists believe that the solution is that the Hawking radiation somehow must contain information after all.
When particle physicists collide, some are transformed into children
My, my. A commenter formed the correct impression and suggests, “Could you please answer the very valid questions raised by Sabine [Hossenfelder] instead of smearing her like this?”