Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Physics

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 20, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Information, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Bill Dembski on what John Archibald Wheeler got right and wrong about “it from bit”

Denyse O'Leary
May 20, 2021
Cosmology, Information, Intelligent Design, Physics
Dembski agrees that the universe is, at bottom, information but proposes “informational realism” as a sounder approach to unpacking the idea. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 7, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Sabine Hossenfelder on the physics discoveries that make the headlines and then just disappear

Denyse O'Leary
May 7, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Exotic particles that don't survive a news cycle. She shows how they’re artifacts of the fact that very large numbers often show what appear to be patterns but are just noise. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 6, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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According to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, the universe has never truly been empty

Denyse O'Leary
May 6, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
But wait. If it was truly empty, it would not exist, right? What we mean by the “universe” is everything that exists. So, if it’s “empty,” nothing exists. Of course, it could always exist as an abstract idea but then it must be the abstract idea of a Being in another dimension. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 3, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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How Sabine Hossenfelder’s opinion of dark matter has changed over 20 years

Denyse O'Leary
May 3, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
She thinks the solution now is to combine dark matter with modified gravity. Now that will be a challenge. We kind of wish she would go back to denying free will and fine-tuning of the universe. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 29, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Do antimatter stars anti-twinkle?

Denyse O'Leary
April 29, 2021
Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics
Before we worry too much about the fate of the Standard Model of the universe, it’s worth noting that we are also told that it would be “extremely difficult” to prove that a star is really an anti-star. It’s mainly just an intriguing idea at this point. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 23, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
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Oxford theoretical physicist laments discipline’s stalemate

Denyse O'Leary
April 23, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Ferreira: We’re no closer to answering the big questions about dark matter, dark energy and the origins of the Universe than when I started out. This isn’t for lack of trying, and a titanic effort is now underway to try and figure out all these mysterious aspects of the Universe. But there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed, and we might end up never really grasping how the Universe works. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 22, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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“Ultra light bosons” explanation for dark matter doesn’t pan out either

Denyse O'Leary
April 22, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
At Universe Today: So once again, a search for dark matter has shown us not what dark matter is, but what it isn’t. It’s extremely frustrating, and potentially exciting because we are quickly running out of options for dark matter. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 21, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Physicist and philosopher Bruce Gordon asks, IS the moon there if no one looks?

Denyse O'Leary
April 21, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Gordon on one experiment: What did the experiment do? Well, it sent the position of neutrons along one path and their spins along a separate path. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 20, 2021
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics
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Bruce Gordon: In quantum physics, “reality” really IS what we choose to observe

Denyse O'Leary
April 20, 2021
Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics
Gordon: The very fact that we can make a causally disconnected choice of whether wave or particle phenomena are manifested in a quantum system essentially shows that there is no measurement-independent and causally connected, substantial material reality at the micro physical level. It is created by the measurement itself. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 19, 2021
Categorized
Books of interest, Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics
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String theory skeptic Peter Woit reflects on Stephen Hawking

Denyse O'Leary
April 19, 2021
Books of interest, Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics
Peter Woit on Hawking's 2010 The Grand Design, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow: " I wrote about this book in some detail here. Put bluntly, it was an atrocious rehash of the worst nonsense about M-theory and the string theory landscape, with an argument for atheism thrown in to get more public attention. This is the sort of thing that has done a huge amount of damage to both the public understanding of fundamental physics, and even to the field itself." Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 18, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Sabine Hossenfelder: Does the universe have higher dimensions?

Denyse O'Leary
April 18, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Hossenfelder: If one adds 7 dimensions of space to our normal three dimensions, then one can describe all of the fundamental forces of nature geometrically. And that sounds like a really promising idea for a unified theory of physics. Indeed, in the early 1980s, the string theorist Edward Witten thought it was intriguing that seven additional dimensions of space is also the maximum for supergravity. However, that numerical coincidence turned out to not lead anywhere. This geometric construction of fundamental forces which is called Kaluza-Klein theory, suffers from several problems that no one has managed to solved. Read More ›