The past causes the future. The future is undetermined, and cannot reach back to have an effect on the past. Call this the “principle of causality”. It is so ingrained in our thinking that we don’t know how to make sense of the world without it. And yet, quantum mechanics subtly defies the principle. A … Read more
Bioweapons research was responsible for global devastation on the scale of a world war. This is an important and delightfully readable new book. I’m going to argue that it is actually understated. Seeded by imported Nazi scientists after WW2, the US military has conducted extensive research into bioweapons research, which mushroomed as it went underground … Read more
The problem of combining General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics in a self-consistent theory is so difficult that it has defied the best minds in physics for 75 years. But this may not be necessary. We don’t actually know that General Relativity is correct. You have probably heard that the greatest problem confronting theoretical physics is … Read more
Richard Dolan was first to use the phrase, though I first heard it from Jason Jorjani. The idea is that there are whole communities built on technology far advanced from what is in the public domain. They are somewhere on this planet — perhaps in underground cities, perhaps under the ocean or Antarctica. It is the … Read more
The near future of humanity looks precarious, not to say bleak, due to what Schmachtenberger calls the Meta Crisis. The biggest wild card in our future is one that Schmachtenberger and most financial analysts, eschatologists, and even transhumanists never consider: UFOs and the ET presence. Will we be rescued from human folly by non-human beings from … Read more
I’ve been writing for ScienceBlog almost since its inception, and I feel grateful for the platform it has given me, and identified with the values and culture of ScienceBlog. Today, there appeared on this site the article, Study Helps Explain Post-COVID Exercise Intolerance. This article is typical of the perversion of science by corporate and government interests, exposure … Read more
The Enlightenment was a three-century European movement to tame the world under the reign of Reason. It began with René Descartes and Isaac Newton in the 17th century, expanding the domain of science; in the 18th century, Emmanuel Kant sought to rationalize faith itself, with his monograph, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. In … Read more
If a star is big enough to explode at the end of its natural life, but not big enough to form a black hole, it will explode on the outside, while collapsing on the inside from gravity. Collapse is halted when all the electrons and protons merge to form neutrons, and all the neutrons come … Read more
For 85 years, astronomers have noted that there is more gravity than they can account for in the galaxies that they see, in clusters of galaxies, and in the dynamics of the whole universe. What is the invisible source of that extra attraction? Last week there was striking new evidence for a dark horse theory — … Read more
Listen to the author reading this essay. Last week, Nobel physicist John Clauser came out of the Clausit to speak his own inconvenient truth about global warming and CO2 . No good deed goes unpunished. Another physicist who was a personal hero of mine has expressed similar views. This is a big subject, and I don’t feel engaged enough with … Read more