A long-ish stretch of time, but I was basically offline for a bunch of that because I needed to finish a chapter I was asked to contribute to an academic book. So there are only four physics posts from Forbes to promote this time: — ‘The Expanse’ Is A Rare Sci-Fi Show That Gets Simulated… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Gravity, Pigeonholes, Groundhogs, and Weirdness
Category: Theory
Me in the Media: Two New Interviews
I’ve been slacking in my obligation to use this blog for self-promotion, but every now and then I remember, so here are two recent things where I was interviewed by other people: — I spoke on the phone to a reporter from Popular Mechanics who was writing a story about “radionics” and “wishing boxes,” a… Continue reading Me in the Media: Two New Interviews
Back-of-the-Envelope Gravitational Which-Way
There’s a new Science Express paper on interfering clocks today, which is written up in Physics World, with comments from yours truly. The quote is from a much longer message I sent– with no expectation that it would end up as anything other than a pull quote, I might add, but I thought the background… Continue reading Back-of-the-Envelope Gravitational Which-Way
My Week in Waterloo
I spent the last few days in Ontario, attending the Convergence meeting at the Perimeter Institute. This brought a bunch of Perimeter alumni and other big names together for a series of talks and discussions about the current state and future course of physics. My role at this was basically to impersonate a journalist, and… Continue reading My Week in Waterloo
Amazing Blackbody Radiation and LHC Basics
I was proctoring an exam yesterday in two different sections of the same class, so I had a lot of quite time. Which means I wrote not one but two new posts for Forbes… The first continues a loose series of posts about the exotic physics behind everyday objects (something I’m toying with as a… Continue reading Amazing Blackbody Radiation and LHC Basics
Philosophy and Pictures of Physics
I’ve been sort of falling down on my obligation to promote myself– I’ve written two blog posts for Forbes this week, and forgotten to post about them here. The first is a thing about philosophy in physics, and how Einstein illustrates both the good and bad aspects of a philosophical approach. The second is a… Continue reading Philosophy and Pictures of Physics
Colliders, Observatories, and Precision Measurements, Oh My!
The editor at Forbes suggested I should write something about the re-start of the Large Hadron Collider, so I did. But being me, I couldn’t just do an “LHC, yay!” post, but talk about it in a larger context, as one of three major approaches to filling the gaps in the Standard Model: The big… Continue reading Colliders, Observatories, and Precision Measurements, Oh My!
Both Roads Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And caused me no small amount of panic For traveling both of them would be good But there simply was no way I could Until I remembered quantum mechanics. So half my wavefunction I sent left And rightward steered the other half Both pieces of me with equal… Continue reading Both Roads Taken
Many Worlds Are Never Exhausted
There have been some good comments on last week’s post about the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which I find a little surprising, as it was thrown together very quickly and kind of rant-y on my part, because I was annoyed by the tone of the original Phillip Ball article. (His follow-up hasn’t helped that…) But then maybe… Continue reading Many Worlds Are Never Exhausted
The Philosophical Incoherence of “Too Many Worlds”
Phillip Ball has a long aggrieved essay about the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which is, as Sean Carroll notes, pretty bad. Ball declares that Many-Worlds is “incoherent, both philosophically and logically,” but in fact, he’s got this exactly backwards: Many-Worlds is, in fact, a marvel of logical and philosophical coherence, while Ball’s objections are incoherent and illogical.… Continue reading The Philosophical Incoherence of “Too Many Worlds”