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Physics

Physicist David Snoke: Living systems must obey the same rules as Maxwell’s demons

Snoke: I argue that information and entropy are objective physical quantities, defined for systems as a whole, which allow general arguments in terms of physical law. In particular, I argue that living systems obey the same rules as Maxwell’s demons. Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder tells us who’s killing physics

Hossenfelder: But this illusion of progress is the minor problem. Worse is that they seem resigned to the idea that foundational work in physics is detached from experiment and technological application. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Does information have mass? An experimental physicist weighs in

Rob Sheldon notes that the more real-world information we have, the less the bits weigh until, at very large amounts of information, they weigh almost nothing. Read More ›

Asked at Space.com: Could gravity itself be the origin of dark matter?

Paul Sutter: A new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started. Read More ›

Standard Model doubted at Inference Review

In the cosmic microwave background frame, the large-scale averaged distribution of matter is also assumed to be isotropic… These assumptions are no longer tenable. Several independent data sets now argue against the existence of a cosmic rest frame. Read More ›

Rob Sheldon: Maybe black holes don’t really exist. Consider the possibilities.

Sheldon: "What I sense is that false premises and bad assumptions have been coloring the entire field of Black Holes (and Big Bangs and quasars ) for decades now. Perhaps we should stop patching the creaking model and consider a new one. " News: "Some of us can’t help wondering if the sheer philosophical pizzazz of the black hole keeps it going in its present state. A glamorous theory is bound to have a long run." Read More ›

A new solution for Hawking’s black hole paradox? “Quantum hair”

Catchy, we gotta admit: In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them. That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed. In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features beyond their total mass, spin, and charge, coined the phrase “black holes have no hair”—known as the no-hair theorem. However, the newly discovered “quantum hair” provides a way for information to be preserved as a black hole collapses and, as such, resolves one of modern science’s most famous quandaries, experts say. Prof Calmet said: “Black holes have long been considered the perfect laboratory to study Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: John Horgan at Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will?

Horgan sides, somewhat tentatively, with free will. He notes that humans are more than just heaps of particles. Higher levels of complexity enable genuinely new qualities. What humans can do is not merely a more complex version of what amoebas can do — in turn, a more complex version of what electrons can do. Greater complexity can involve genuinely new qualities. A philosopher would say that he is not a reductionist. Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder: Did the early universe really inflate rapidly?

Hossenfelder: In the popular science media, inflation is sometimes presented as if it was established fact. It isn’t. Its status is similar to that of particle dark matter. They are both unconfirmed hypotheses. But while most physicists agree that particle dark matter has yet to be empirically confirmed, opinions about inflation are extremely polarized. Read More ›

Deepening crisis in particle physics — Rob Sheldon responds

But when theoretical physicists start messing with reductionism, they are messing with the core assumptions of the meaningless universe. Many attempts are in progress to revalidate those assumptions, of course but... Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder asks: Will the Big Bang repeat?

Hossenfelder: I am not sure that CCC actually solves the problem it was supposed to solve. Remember we are trying to explain the past hypothesis. But a scientific explanation shouldn’t be more difficult than the thing you’re trying to explain. And CCC requires some assumptions, about the conformal invariance and the erebons, that at least to me don’t seem any better than the past hypothesis. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Astrophysicists lock horns over whether multiverse must exist

Inflation is only one factor; other sources weigh in on issues around math, testability, reality-based thinking, and, inevitably, what God would do. Read More ›