Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
SMBC on how to get access to the secrets of reality. Click through for source and red button caption: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/secrets-2 I guess this is philosophical comic sharing week for me. Somewhat related, I've been slowly working my way through Sean Carroll's The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: space, time, and motion. I know a lot … Continue reading How to study reality
Cosmic voids may cause dark energy, or at least provide an explanation for the Hubble tension. A team of Iranian scientists have proposed that dark energy may not be something inherent to space itself, but the result of cosmic voids, vast regions of the universe between galactic superclusters and filaments with relatively little matter.  Paul … Continue reading Cosmic voids and dark energy
The Everett theory of quantum mechanics is testable in ways most people don't realize. Before getting into how or why, I think it's important to deal with a long standing issue. Everettian theory is more commonly known as the "many worlds interpretation", a name I use myself all the time. But what's often lost in the discussion … Continue reading Testing Everettian quantum mechanics
Are quantum states and the overall wave function real? Or merely a useful prediction tool? The mystery of quantum mechanics is that quantum objects, like electrons and photons, seem to move like waves, until they're measured, then appear as localized particles. This is known as the measurement problem. The wave function is a mathematical tool for modeling, … Continue reading Those inconvenient quantum interference patterns
Scientific breakthroughs often begin with someone saying, "Don't panic. This crazy sounding assumption is just to make the math work." Nicholaus Copernicus, when he developed his theory of heliocentrism (the earth orbits the sun), was operating from a scientific realist view. In other words, he thought his system reflected actual reality, or at least reflected it … Continue reading Is it just the math?
A new approach for reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics proposes adding some randomness in general relativity, making it less deterministic on small scales. For several decades, physicists have been trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories, despite each having been empirically validated to several decimal places, contradict each other. The problem … Continue reading What would randomness in general relativity mean?
In this video, Matt O'Dowd tackles the issue of probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. A quick reminder. The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that quantum particles move like waves of possible outcomes that interfere with each other, until a measurement happens, when they appear to collapse to one localized outcome, the … Continue reading Many-worlds, probabilities, and world stacks
It's been a while, but I've occasionally mentioned on the blog that Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (the 1950s color version) is one of my favorite movies. And this has remained true even as I've come to see it as straight fantasy. An interesting fact from when I first saw it as a very … Continue reading Are many-worlds and pilot-wave the same theory?
Matt O'Dowd is starting to look at a question I find extremely interesting. What is the ontology of spacetime? A lot of physicists have begun to wonder whether its fundamental, or emergent from something else. Quantum entanglement is the one I'm familiar with, but I understand there are other possibilities. (This video is 26 minutes … Continue reading Is the question whether spacetime is real, or whether it’s fundamental?
As noted in the previous post, quantum mechanics is weird. If we try to have a realist understanding of what's happening, it forces bizarre choices about which aspects of common sense reality we throw under the buss. The central mystery is the wave function collapse. Quantum particles move like waves, mathematically described by the wave … Continue reading It’s not looking good for objective collapse theories
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