Anyone having some familiarity with Einstein’s general relativity theory knows that what is called “empty space” is not nothing.
Tag: Rob Sheldon
At Evolution News: How Do We Know the Age of the Universe?
Physicist Rob Sheldon writes: A correspondent asked me recently how we know the age of the universe. The answer is calculated from the inverse of the Hubble constant. That is, if the galaxies are moving away from us at 72 km/s /Mpc, that has units of 1/time, the inverse is the age of the universe (more 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.
New find might “upend the Standard Model” in physics? Really? Rob Sheldon has the story
Sheldon: What this paper and journo piece reveals is the desperation felt in the particle physics community. They so desperately need the Standard Model to fail.
Rob Sheldon: ID types are unfair to panspermia (the hypothesis that life came from space)
Sheldon: The answer to critics of panspermia, is that it is not intended as an origin of life (OOL) theory; rather, it answers the question “Where did life on Earth come from?” So indeed, it is erroneous to accuse panspermia advocates of “kicking the can down the road.”
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.”
Rob Sheldon on the problems with the peptide origin of life hypothesis
Sheldon: It is unlikely life can start with one or a few amino acids, because the full suite is needed to build nano-machines. Although your car has lots of bolts, one cannot build a car out of nothing but bolts.
The million to one statistical fluke that creates our universe
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.
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.