If we leave physical constraints behind, we are certainly not operating in the only universe we know. But thanks to Ethan for an entertaining close to the evening.
Tag: Ethan Siegel
At Forbes: Hawking’s black hole paradox is NOT solved
Ethan Siegel looks at the limitations: But we’re still a long way away from determining exactly where that information goes, and how it gets out of a black hole. Theorists disagree over the validity and soundness of many of the methods that are currently being employed to do these calculations, and no one has even a theoretical prediction for how this information should be encoded by an evaporating black hole, much less how to measure it.
Physicist Rob Sheldon checks out astrophysicist Ethan Siegel for ridiculing Nobelist Roger Penrose
Sheldon: The politicization of science evidently started before Ethan’s graduate schooling, as Hoyle and his post-doc Chandra Wickramasinghe tell in their biographical writings.
Ethan Siegel at Forbes on “finally” making the United States a “scientific nation”
Siegel: “It is a fundamentally misinformative act to present multiple sides of a controversial issue equally when the scientific consensus overwhelmingly favors one perspective.” Actually, consensus is achieved in many ways, including some that contribute to the likelihood that the consensus will be wrong, no matter how many experts believe it. In fact, the surest way to often be wrong is to adopt the very attitude Siegel displays here.
From Ethan Siegel: What if the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe?
Make no mistake, the Big Bang is unpopular in many quarters and an exterminator has long been sought. Here’s the problem: The explanation for an event may be outside the event. In that case, one can’t derive an explanation from within the event.
Ethan Siegel enumerates what we might find, re life on Mars
Siegel: It’s the ultimate nightmare of astrobiologists: that there’s a fascinating history of life to uncover on another world, but we’ll contaminate it with our own organisms before we ever learn the true history of life on that world.
Claim: Physics erases the beginning of the universe
We don’t doubt that 2 + 2 = 4 can be dissolved in like manner, as long as the needed incentive is present. And it’s no secret that a great many cosmologists hate the Big Bang for philosophical reasons.
The ultimate confidence trick in science
As played by astrophysicist and Forbes columnist Ethan Siegel here and dissected at The Stream.
Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel offers to explain how the universe made us
The proponents of chance origins tend to make it look less likely all the time.
At Forbes: Claim that Stephen Hawking “lied” about black holes
Can’t help but make one wonder how much else in popular science literature is wrong but sells books.
At Forbes: Alien civilizations get a hearing
Science is about discoveries, not speculative games. Forbes’s Siegel seems to agree. Hey, deal, guys: Find us fossil bacteria on Mars and we’ll think it’s science. Talk about space aliens and …
At Forbes: Is there now evidence for a parallel universe?
Some scientists are claiming so, based on an odd finding from Antarctica. Ethan Siegel isn’t isn’t taking the bait.
At Forbes: The Universe is not purely mathematical
Maybe a universe that was completely explainable and provable couldn’t exist.
At Forbes: Wolfram’s new theory “isn’t even science” yet. But wait…
We can tell what’s wrong with science today when we try to take Siegel’s dead-serious explanation of what he thinks a theory in science is and apply it to: Darwinian evolution theory
A symmetry the universe “must never violate”?
Sounds like a designed system all right. Too bad that’s a problem for many physicists.