tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229733572024-02-22T11:00:33.426-05:00Can 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.comBlogger2297125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-37794279255896558542024-02-22T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-22T11:00:00.145-05:00

Sometimes people ask me why I’m now doing science news. It’s so that you can fully appreciate the drama of scientific discovery, in which one result contradicts a previous one and the next one finds a flaw in this other one. I think the entertainment-value of science is greatly underappreciated. And quantum computing is without doubt one of the most dramatic areas at the moment. One the one

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-38381063582474325832024-02-21T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-21T11:00:00.137-05:00

News from China say the Chinese have broken their own, and the global, speed record for magnetically levitating trains, which you might know under the name hyperloop. Let’s have a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-75241991649447128092024-02-20T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-20T12:48:39.534-05:00

Phasing out nuclear power is the dumbest thing the Germans have ever done. Each time I say this on twitter, people come and tell me that Hitler did a few things that were even dumber. I disagree. Hitler wasn’t dumb, he was evil, he knew full well what he was doing. I’m not at all sure the current German government knows what it’s doing, and that isn’t a good thing either. The German

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-26823162906318467742024-02-19T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-19T11:00:00.130-05:00

A group of researchers had artificial intelligence play wargames, and that gives us a good idea for how we could all die. They tested five different large language models and asked them to make decisions in war situations. They told the AIs that this is a real-world situation and not a simulation! Nevertheless, for all models they found a risk that a nuclear war would develop without provocation

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-81304099433994493132024-02-18T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-18T11:00:00.137-05:00

Science has a big problem and it’s been getting rapidly worse in the past two years or so, to no small part because of recent advances in artificial intelligence. Fraudulent papers are getting published more than ever, and the fraudsters are getting increasingly aggressive. In this episode I want to give you an update on the recent developments.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-82881543144593168322024-02-17T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-17T11:00:00.130-05:00

Time Crystals sounds like something from Hogwarts, but it’s actually solid-state physics. Maybe not quite as mysterious as the name suggests, but nonetheless interesting. A team of physicists has now built the most robust time crystal ever and even figured out what these things could be good for. Let’s have a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-61891628087394292512024-02-16T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-16T11:00:00.151-05:00

A lot of climate targets are lip confessions. But some of those confessions get written into law, and that can create some, hmm, interesting tensions between what governments and companies say they’re doing and what the data say they’re doing. In the past weeks we have seen examples of this tension between words and reality in Japan, the EU, and the USA. In Japan, Toyota has to answer a lot of

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-57911597347106007292024-02-15T12:00:00.001-05:002024-02-15T12:00:00.530-05:00

Today I have very interesting results from a survey among 3000 AI experts. The most interesting result is that they now think AI is going to change the world even faster than they said just a year ago. Both human level machine intelligence and full automation of labour could happen this century.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-76315740879538805492024-02-14T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-14T11:00:00.135-05:00

I am fascinated by science deniers. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, it’s just amazing to see how badly the human brain can malfunction. Of course, it’s not just a brain problem, it’s also a social problem. In particular, the fraction of climate change deniers differs strongly by country, and it’s especially high in the United States. It turns out I’m not the only German who

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-52237803923789407602024-02-13T10:00:00.001-05:002024-02-13T10:00:00.151-05:00

According to the fundamental laws of physics, every process is reversible, in principle. In the past years, we have seen several experiments in which physicists study whether this is really the case or if not irreversibility creeps back in somewhere. In this new experiment they found to their own surprise that ageing in glass seems to be reversible.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-40753988473968123832024-02-12T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-12T11:00:00.352-05:00

Ok, I have seen a lot of weird ideas for what dark matter could be, but this one surprised even me. A team of researchers proposes that the universe might be filled with singularities, or more precisely "primordial naked singularities," and those could make up what we call dark matter. I had a look at the paper, because if nothing else, it's a fun idea.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-57704276473433322782024-02-11T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-11T11:00:00.296-05:00

Some people have called me a doomer. Others call me a pessimist. Personally, I think I’m a realist. If I look at the plans that most nations have made to limit their contribution to climate change, I think it just isn’t going to happen. The people making these plans are either ill-informed, delusional, or lying, or maybe all of the above. Now there’s a new publication just out of the

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-71793182249098404442024-02-10T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-10T11:00:00.413-05:00

We have seen a few new headlines this week about the plans of particle physicists to build a huge new collider at CERN in Geneva. Particle physicists have called their new dream machine the “future circular collider”, FCC for short. The FCC is supposed to be a ring collider like the Large Hadron Collider, which is currently the biggest collider in the world. There is no good motivation to build

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-84057229908761109932024-02-09T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-09T11:00:00.375-05:00

Nuclear fusion is a great idea, in principle. In principle, it could solve the energy worries of the world beautifully. The problem is that whenever we’ve tried, getting nuclear fusion to work takes up more energy than it creates. But a team from Japan and the United States just got us a bit closer to our dream of clean energy. They recently succeeded in controlling nuclear plasma in a

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-60777363985251972292024-02-08T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-08T11:00:00.145-05:00

Electric vehicles are great, but let’s be honest, it’s more convenient to fill up a fuel tank with gasoline than sit around and wait until the battery is full. Well, this new battery from researchers at Cornell might solve the problem. They have found a way to produce a battery anode that allows the battery to fully charge within less than 5 minutes, and it does this reliably over at least 1000

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-6013434434828593262024-02-07T12:00:00.000-05:002024-02-07T12:00:00.157-05:00

I got a lot of questions last week about an article in Quanta Magazine about Dark Dimensions. it's about an idea motivated by string theory that combines large extra dimensions with dark matter. I had a look at the paper.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-29313474240563773302024-02-06T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-06T11:00:00.158-05:00

Last week, the US senate had a hearing on the dangers of social media in preparation of a legislation to improve child safety online. In this hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg [[image of the guy with name]] claimed that it has not been scientifically proved that social media causes mental health problems in adolescents. This upset a lot of people who think that the link is obvious. But I am

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-68113309459191386442024-02-05T11:00:00.003-05:002024-02-05T11:00:00.413-05:00

This is a rare case in which I talk about some of my own work. It’s about the biggest current controversy in astrophysics, does dark matter exist or do we instead need to change the law of gravity. If you’ve followed me for some while, then you’ll know that my opinion on this has switched back and forth a few times. In this most recent iteration, it’s flipped back to it’s probably dark matter.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-724193147678701222024-02-04T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-04T11:00:00.162-05:00

We’ve seen a lot of headlines in the past year about how dangerous AI is and how overblown these fears are . I’ve found it hard to make sense of this discussion. If only someone could systematically interview experts and figure out what they’re worried about. Well, a group of researchers from the UK has done exactly that and just published their results. What they have found is, not very

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-7793801509005256402024-02-03T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-03T11:00:00.329-05:00

I was recently trying to figure out just how X-rays were discovered. The first 3 explanations didn't make any sense to me and before I knew it, I had 12 books about Wilhelm Röntgen on my desk because my brain is a wild place. I eventually figured out what must have happened, I believe, and thought you might find it interesting, too. Oh, and the reason the shoe-box has the word "Ostern" (German

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-48044128222938093832024-02-02T11:00:00.001-05:002024-02-02T11:00:00.131-05:00

Do you still write by hand? Anything besides shopping lists? A new study looked at what happens in our brain when we write by hand or type on the keyboard, and it makes a really strong case for handwriting. I personally quite like handwriting and I am totally convinced it’s good for, well, something, so I should be extra sceptical of this finding. But let’s have a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-20429973495358879662024-02-01T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-01T11:00:00.128-05:00

A new study by a group of British geologists suggests that a huge tsunami devastated the populations of Stone Age Britain, about 8200 years ago. This new research is about a fantastically destructive series of disasters known as the three Storegga slides. Sounds like a ride at an amusement park, but it was far from that. Could it happen again? Let’s have a look.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-82343017940149192872024-01-31T11:00:00.001-05:002024-01-31T11:00:00.409-05:00

One of the most disturbing ideas in physics, or maybe *the most disturbing idea, is that space can fall apart. That’s because it could be what’s called “false” vacuum. A false vacuum can remain in this innocent reliable looking form for billions of years, but eventually a quantum fluctuation could be enough to cause it to decay. This would release enormous amounts of energy and kill all of us.

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-69450124853208046812024-01-30T11:00:00.000-05:002024-01-30T11:00:00.144-05:00

Google has unveiled a new artificially intelligent system, AlphaGeometry, that can solve problems of mathematical geometry. It’s the first computer program to surpass the average performance of participants at the International Mathematical Olympiad. That might sound like an incremental improvement, just one more thing that AI is really good at, but mathematics isn’t just one more thing, it’s

Sabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-49000018825685350722024-01-29T11:30:00.000-05:002024-01-29T11:30:00.127-05:00

I was rather surprised when I recently learned that the British science communicator and ex-particle physicist Brian Cox supposedly debunked the Big Bang with a creation story, no less than in a BBC documentary. I had a look at the clip and I think I know what happened.

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