A Physicist Defends Imperfection in Our Universe: It’s Essential
Philosopher and physicist Marcelo Gleiser, author of A tear at the edge of creation (2013), sees lack of symmetry — lopsidedness — as essential to the nature of our universe: We left-handed people are...
View ArticleStudy: Science Fiction Not As Strange As Quantum Physics Fact
According to prominent science writer John Horgan, a “radical quantum hypothesis” is creating doubt about objective reality: The author of Mind-Body Problems explains that, while quantum mechanics has...
View ArticleWhat If Quantum Physics Were Applied To Economics?
Applied mathematician David Orrell offers a look at the difference quantum mechanical thinking would make to economics. The author of Money, Magic, and How to Dismantle a Financial Bomb: Quantum...
View ArticleWhy a Science Fiction View of the Universe Makes Sense
Theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) (2020) lists, in an essay based on her book, a number of facts about our universe that make it hard for...
View ArticleSome Elements of Our Universe Do Not Make Scientific Sense
Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder offers a look at a burgeoning genuine mystery in physics that involves the “outsider” particle, the neutrino. According to Fermi National Accelerator Lab, the...
View ArticleTheoretical Physicist: Quantum Theory Must Be Replaced
Recently, we ran a piece featuring the views of well-known science writer John Horgan who talked about a truly strange element of quantum physics confirmed by recent experiments — that it seems as if...
View ArticleAstrophysicists Lock Horns Over Whether Multiverse Must Exist
Recently, online magazine Big Think challenged two astrophysicists, Ethan Siegel (Yes) and Adam Frank (No) to debate the question. From Ethan Siegel’s argument for the multiverse: If cosmic inflation...
View ArticleEven If a Time Machine Didn’t Kill You, It Wouldn’t Change Much
Cartoonist and science fan David B. Clear explains why it’s not as simple as in the sci-fi films: Let’s assume you’d travel back 1,000 years into the past. Where exactly in the universe was our Earth...
View Article“Nothing But… ” Is Now Creating a Crisis in Science
In a recent article in Quanta, science writer Natalie Wolchover discusses a little-advertised fact, that the much ballyhooed Large Hadron Collider supports the idea that our universe is fine-tuned — by...
View ArticleAt Scientific American: Does Quantum Mechanics Kill Free Will?
One of the most interesting science writers of our era is John Horgan, who has managed to infuriate so many of the right people (to infuriate, that is) while giving the rest of us something to ponder....
View ArticleWhat Would Surviving a Nuclear Explosion Be Like?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to renewed concerns about the use of nuclear weapons. We hear a variety of responses ranging from “real but not immediate danger” through “a wake-up call for the...
View ArticleUnexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe
In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure...
View ArticleWhat Do Hindus Think About the Big Bang? The Cyclic Universe?
In last week’s Mind Matters News podcast, “Hinduism and the beginning of the universe,” neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviewed Arjuna Gallagher, a Hindu in New Zealand. The first podcast looked at what...
View ArticleNew Scientist Offers a Sympathetic Account of Panpsychism
Panpsychism, the view that all nature participates in consciousness, has been growing under the radar for some time in science. But it is now coming into plainer view. New Scientist is one of the last...
View ArticleNASA Develops a Scale for Assessing the Chances of ET Life
Geoscientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, co-author with William Bains of The Cosmic Zoo (2017) and a number of other books on planetary habitability, thinks science needs standardized scales for assessing...
View ArticleCan We Teleport? Find a Wormhole? Survive the Universe’s Death?
If anyone thinks that, by definition, none of this stuff could possibly happen, it’s worth remembering that many people would have said that decades ago about invisibility or the bionic hand. But here...
View ArticleA British Philosopher Looks For a Way to Redefine Free Will
British philosopher Julian Baggini, author of The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well (2021) argues against the idea of free will, as commonly understood...
View ArticleAmong 5000 Known Exoplanets, There Are Some Really Strange Ones
PBS tells us that Hoth, the frozen planet in Star Wars, is not just imagination. It has a real-life counterpart among the exoplanets. Granted, astronomers call it OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb but even they...
View ArticleWhat Would Happen If We Traveled at 2x the Speed of Light?
Recently, a 13-year-old in Mumbai asked philosopher of mathematics Sam Baron what would happen if someone were to move — hypothetically — at twice the speed of light. Baron replied, As far as we know,...
View ArticleWorld’s Fastest Computer Breaks Into the Exascale
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee announced earlier this week that its Frontier Supercomputer, having broken the exascale barrier, is the world’s fastest. It can do...
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