Sheldon: the “Hubble Tension” has increased as the numbers didn’t budge, but the error bars kept getting smaller. We are now some 8 sigma apart.
Tag: Rob Sheldon
Rob Sheldon on life from the lab: “Information first” is essential
Information first means it can never be random, just as OOL in the lab is not random. But that doesn’t mean that info-first cannot produce OOL. I’ve written a paper on the info-first OOL problem.
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.
Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon on CNN’s “problem” with the Big Bang Theory
Sheldon: Just to clarify, Big Bang theory is doing just fine, the Inflationary addition which is NOT part of the Standard Model, isn’t.
Rob Sheldon on the current trend to non-theist intelligent design (ID) theory
When some people wrote privately to protest that this ET>Big Bang stuff is all just one space bunny too far down the cosmic path, I (O’Leary for News) pointed out in response that Neil deGrasse Tyson (here), Martin Rees (here), and Elon Musk (here) have also suggested that very thing. Well, now theoretical physicist Rob Sheldon writes to offer some thoughts on the new-found popularity.
Sabine Hossenfelder: No way to tell if the universe was fine-tuned for us — Rob Sheldon partially agrees
Sheldon: Even though I agree with Sabine about the fine tuning argument, I disagree strongly with her about the significance of the design we see in the world. “It just is” is not an explanation.
Rob Sheldon: Migrating birds’ mysterious quantum sense is “spooky”
Sheldon: “Since this sensing is happening at the level of electron spins and excitation, it is an inherently QM [quantum mechanical] effect, hence the title of the article.” The spooky part is how finely tuned the bird’s sensitivity is: “Packing a $10,000 lock-in amplifier into a 2 micron cell.”
Will it ever be possible to recapture ancient speech?
Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon says that, if we look carefully at the nature of sound, we will be able to see why we probably can’t somehow capture sound waves still reechoing in the world.
Cosmologist George Ellis on the philosophical problems of cosmology — and a note from Rob Sheldon
Ellis: Humans have demonstrably contemplated purpose and meaning and ethics for millennia and their existence is data on how things are. The existence of these possibility spaces is part of the deep structure of the cosmos, in the way that I have proposed above. In that sense, meaning is built into the foundations of existence.
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.
Rob Sheldon on the new evidence against the Standard Model in cosmology: “The party’s over.”
Sheldon: “… dark matter and dark energy (aka Λ) have become science fantasy with no shortage of storytellers. It’s time to tell everybody the party’s over.”
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…
Sabine Hossenfelder despairs over vacuum energy. Rob Sheldon responds
These specialty controversies are an interesting backdrop to the current war on math. Sabine Hossenfelder and Rob Sheldon would likely agree that 2 + 2 = 4. But survey the vast degreed hordes for whom such a statement is an instance of white supremacy and colonialism and we will see the real problem facing our civilization: Far too many people have degrees (and grievances!) but no insight into what knowledge is.
Rob Sheldon offers some comments on Karsten Pultz’s “Bicycle” ID thesis
Sheldon: “… in computer science, it is very difficult to make a random number generator. Successive runs of the code should not produce the same numbers. But most generators do.”
Rob Sheldon on the secret to design detection
Sheldon: Why should I be able to understand the universe? What characteristics do the designer and I share? Love of math? Love of order? Love of intricacy? When I feel like the designer is someone I could meet at an icebreaker and have a great conversation with, that’s when I know I’m on the right track.