Sheldon: “This article explains precisely why thousands of theoretical physicists have not made any progress in 40 years. One hopelessly ad hoc and unsupported theory (inflation) conflicts with another hopelessly unphysical theory (string theory) and then others purport to resolve the difficulty by resorting to highly questionable phenomena (gravity waves).
Tag: Rob Sheldon
Are we living in a vast bubble? Rob Sheldon explains
So now a French cosmologist is supporting the Oxford cosmologist Subir Sarkar in refuting the US-dominated 2011 Nobel prize consensus.
Rob Sheldon on dark energy: Does it exist?
Sheldon, our physics color commentator, writes to say, “I’ve mentioned before that Subir Sarkar at Oxford has questioned the existence of “dark energy” and by implication, the award of the 2011 Nobel prize. Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog links to a 7 minute summary of the Nobel prize and Sarkar’s work: But even more compelling is her Read More…
Rob Sheldon on whether information can be the missing dark matter
Rob Sheldon: The location of the mass has to be “outside” the galaxy in order to account for the dark matter attraction. How does information occupy empty space? Landauer would have said it couldn’t.
French administration tries to subject scientists to “Darwinism”; revolt follows
Rob Sheldon: On the whole, Darwinism looks like it makes short-term gains at the cost of long-term stagnation. It clearly sacrifices the group for the sake of a few aggressive individuals.
Ethan Siegel’s claim at Forbes: Why we’ll never exactly solve general relativity. Rob Sheldon responds
Not only is Ethan’s profession about to get a major readjustment, but his attitude needs a readjustment as well. No longer can he and his colleagues hide in their ivory tower telling the world that we must leave the hard thinking to them. As many have already commented, the woke mobs are already at the gates.
Rob Sheldon on a claim that the Big Bang did not happen
We need to go back to Philip Johnson’s insight 30 years ago. At that time the creationists were all attacking each other over local/global flood, the meaning of “yom”, the historicity of Adam, etc, whereas the Darwinists had a united front–Darwin was a genius. What Johnson discovered, was that the Darwinists had a huge internal battle over nearly every assumption of their model, but politically were unified in their opposition to Creation. By putting his finger on their critical assumption of Methodological Naturalism, which was contrary to nature and to nature’s laws, Johnson was able to unite the creationists behind this cause and turn the tables.
Physics color commentator Rob Sheldon disputes UD News’s view of Neanderthals
Sheldon: “[i]t is not likely that Neanderthals possessed language, a sense of self, or an artistic bent.”
New Scientist: Dark matter’s no-show casts doubt on Big Bang; Rob Sheldon replies
Sheldon: The recent publication of the Italians+Silk paper has now voiced the unspeakable: there is something wrong with the Lambda-CDM Big Bang model, and by inference, the 2011 Nobel Prize. Neither “dark matter” nor “dark energy” seem to exist in a form that makes the model work.
Rob Sheldon on whether Quanta mag’s universe is closed or flat
The result [of overspecialization], as everyone here knows, is that all biologists know that Evolution doesn’t work in their specialty, but they believe it works generally for the other specialties. Every astronomer knows about the problems of Lambda-CDM model in their specialty but believes it works in the other specialties.
Peering into the origin of time
Via a curious universal pattern of correlated pairs of objects.
Rob Sheldon dumps cold water on the “planetary autopsy” that says ET life is common
Sheldon: I would argue that this is a very weak argument, mostly trying to jazz up a very boring data set or at least distract the audience from remembering the “standard candle” Nobel Prize assumed that all white dwarfs were identical. Either way, its a preposterous story attempting to distract from its most distressing results.
Rob Sheldon on the end of the internet Golden Age
The questions raised by a recent Analysis feature at Mind Matters News, by a long-time tech maven, affect everyone who gets most of their information from the internet. Sheldon responds: If you are a millennial, or a parent/friend to a millennial, this article captures the depression/frustration of millennials perfectly.
Rob Sheldon on whether true religion and correct science can contradict each other
Sheldon: It was Chesterton who said, “He who marries the culture will soon be a widower.”
At Scientific American: We did find life on Mars in the ‘70s. Rob Sheldon weighs in
Levin: When the Viking Molecular Analysis Experiment failed to detect organic matter, the essence of life, however, NASA concluded that the LR had found a substance mimicking life, but not life. Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results.