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Physics

Rob Sheldon on lowering the standard for detecting gravitational waves

Sheldon: "So to summarize, the absence of triple coincidences is being withheld from the paper, when in fact, it delegitimizes the entire data analysis pipeline. Now we have 4 Gravity wave detectors, and soon one in space. At what point does the lack of a triple coincidence become fatal? What observation can they make that would disprove the existence of gravity waves?" Note: In media work, we say: It takes three to make a trend. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Philosopher: Panpsychism is not in conflict with physics at all

Remember Egnor ’s Principle: If your hypothesis is that your mind is an illusion, then you do not have a hypothesis. The panpsychists want to have a hypothesis. They want to include consciousness as a real fact in nature while avoiding dualism. Read More ›

Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser: The “Copernican Principle” isn’t science…

We’ve only begun to point huge telescopes at exoplanets. There are too many unknowns to be sure of our status, he thinks. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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." Read More ›

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... Read More ›