tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229733572026-11-02T11:00:00.120-05:00Can we understand the universe? Read my blog to find out what we know, may one day know, and will probably never know.Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comBlogger2954125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-76804083539153339982026-11-02T11:00:00.000-05:002026-11-02T11:00:00.115-05:00

After mathematics, AI is now coming for physics, writing papers on new particles, dark matter and the fine structure constant. OpenAI claims progress on a major physics problem, but physicists say it doesn’t matter. Maybe the real problem isn’t the AI. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-90202350293867155992026-11-01T11:00:00.000-05:002026-11-01T11:00:00.114-05:00

A few years ago, headlines around the world called Erwin Schrödinger a paedophile. Universities renamed lecture halls and took his portrait off the walls. Now historians have read diaries that were locked away for decades, and they tell a rather different story. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-60186935065712195032026-10-28T12:00:00.000-04:002026-10-28T12:00:00.148-04:00

Two physicists in France say they have spotted something odd in data from the Large Hadron Collider: heavy particles that could only exist if space has an extra dimension. If they’re right, it would be one of the biggest discoveries in physics in decades. But there are some problems with their story. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-4853534118043362892026-10-26T12:30:00.000-04:002026-10-26T12:30:00.117-04:00

We’ve been told for decades that a plastic bottle lasts 450 years, or even that plastic never goes away. But how would anyone know, given that plastic has only been widely used for about a century? Recent research tells a different story, and it’s both better and worse. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-48527701088993207072026-10-24T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-24T11:00:00.110-04:00

Climate sceptics are calling it “organised crime,” a “coup d’état,” and “worse than Climategate.” Their target is a new report from the US National Academies of Sciences about extreme weather attribution. I had a look at it, and I understand why they’re unhappy.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-38977192880613114542026-10-21T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-21T11:00:00.172-04:00

Small modular nuclear reactors were supposed to make nuclear power cheaper and faster to build. Governments from the US to the UK are now pouring billions into them. At the same time, one startup after another is going bankrupt. What’s going on? Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-13746232671481716252026-10-20T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-20T11:00:00.117-04:00

A 14-year-old from Canada just won a prize for a new theory of dark energy. I had a look at what he submitted, and it ticks all the boxes of a typical journal paper. That’s more remarkable than it sounds. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-24400853492521122622026-10-19T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-19T11:00:00.120-04:00

Astronomers have found a green star. That’s not supposed to be possible, because stars hot enough to be green also mix all colours together and end up looking white. But some dying stars have atmospheres so dense that they filter out entire parts of the spectrum, which can make them look pink, purple or turquoise. Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-85570006071018850322026-10-17T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-17T11:00:00.111-04:00

For a decade, two ways of measuring how fast the universe expands have given different answers, a problem known as the “Hubble tension”. Now a group of physicists says the problem isn’t the supernovae but how we read the cosmic microwave background. The culprit, they say, is something we’ve ignored: magnetic fields from the birth of the universe. Crisis averted? Let’s take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-9019761258949725902026-10-15T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-15T11:00:00.108-04:00

This year's hurricane season has been unusually quiet, and a new study suggests this might become the norm. According to researchers at Princeton, the warmer the climate gets, the fewer tropical cyclones form. But fewer doesn't necessarily mean better. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-84091787777874180742026-10-14T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-14T11:00:00.163-04:00

Oil companies have found a way to keep using fossil fuels: capture the carbon dioxide and bury it underground. Governments around the world are now pouring billions into it. But does it actually work? Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-82476765093453998192026-10-10T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-10T11:00:00.108-04:00

One of the biggest debates in tech at the moment is the question of whether current AI models can become conscious. Whatever “conscious” means. According to a group of biologists, current AI models are far from it – but it’s not because consciousness can only appear in biological systems. They identify which key properties an artificial system would have to fulfill to become more like the human

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-53951833359279108442026-10-09T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-09T11:00:00.163-04:00

For decades, astrophysicists have told us that the Milky Way sits inside a huge halo of dark matter. But new measurements of how the outer stars of our galaxy move don't seem to fit that picture, nor the main alternative, modified gravity. So what's going on? Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-84102985695097136122026-10-07T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-07T11:00:00.165-04:00

For years, experts have tried to predict how fast artificial intelligence would progress, and they've been wrong again and again. Benchmarks they expected in a decade fell in a year. But in some areas, they got it wrong in the opposite direction. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-14944972572253297132026-10-04T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-04T11:00:00.166-04:00

Nearly everything published about quantum physics in the brain is nonsense. This time a physicist in Istanbul has come up with something different, and the key move is that quantum effects don't need to last long to leave a permanent mark. No exotic new physics required, and there's a concrete way to test it. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-42580605027857009682026-10-03T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-03T11:00:00.112-04:00

In October 2022, a detector in Russia caught a single photon with an energy far beyond anything our particle colliders can produce. According to physics as we know it, it should never have made it to Earth. Now a team of physicists says it might be the first evidence for quantum gravity. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-49987655126451387362026-10-02T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-02T11:00:00.206-04:00

AI is getting more capable and more dangerous by the day, and nobody knows how to keep it on our side. One computer scientist has an answer as creative as simple: give AI a religion. Specifically, tell it that we're all living inside a computer simulation run by an omniscient programmer-god. Ingenious or stupid? Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-78936184994287536252026-10-01T11:00:00.000-04:002026-10-01T11:00:00.256-04:00

A billionaire investor has put up a million dollars a year for scientists who stuck with unpopular results and turned out to be right. I think it's a timely idea and a good one. I also have a list of people who might deserve it, and one name on that list comes with a complication you have to hear to believe. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-31339793714266898422026-09-30T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-30T11:00:00.118-04:00

Fusion startups keep postponing their dates, but it's becoming clear who is doing well and who isn't. Helion is valued at fifteen billion dollars, and three groups have now said their machine cannot work, one of them the researcher whose work it is based on. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-40369476902532899222026-09-27T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-27T11:00:00.130-04:00

There's a new candidate for a room temperature superconductor, and it isn't some exotic compound, it's graphite, just ground up and baked. A team in Russia says they have found one of the key signatures of superconductivity that survives well above room temperature. The good news is that anyone can try to reproduce this. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-70993908408462433142026-09-24T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-24T11:00:00.122-04:00

Eighty years ago Richard Feynman said that a quantum particle takes every possible path at the same time. A team of physicists in China now says they have experimentally shown this is not just an interpretation but physical reality, and the headlines duly followed. I had a look at what they actually measured.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-46177780140252444732026-09-22T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-22T12:22:29.883-04:00

There are new rumours that today's AI might be conscious, and this time it's not just talk. Anthropic says it found a hidden part of Claude that works like an internal notepad, one it can use to reason without revealing it. Not everyone's convinced. And I think most of these papers are asking the wrong question entirely. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-36998087425600409462026-09-21T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-21T11:00:00.166-04:00

The Guardian recently ran a piece by a group of economists, one of them a Nobel laureate, arguing that economic growth is a doomed strategy. I went and looked at what this movement actually publishes, and I fell into a rabbit hole I did not expect. I think these people are dangerous. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-11042685075864267322026-09-15T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-15T11:00:00.116-04:00

A physicist proposes that quantum uncertainty affects the entire universe: we cannot both know how large the universe is and how fast it is expanding.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-65371119758138661122026-09-10T11:00:00.000-04:002026-09-10T11:00:00.112-04:00

In 1983 Benjamin Libet found that brain activity predicts your movements before you are aware of deciding to move. The result has been reproduced many times, and it has been used ever since to argue that free will is an illusion. Three new papers say the measurements were fine but the interpretation was not. Let's take a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0