Geometry Of The Big Bang
The deeper we look into the universe, the deeper we look back in time. When in the night sky you see planets like Jupiter and Saturn, you look about an hour back in time. Look at the stars, and you are...
View ArticleFinally, Schrodinger's Cat Hits A Nobel!
Well, kind of. David Wineland and Serge Haroche have not endangered any living beings. That is to say: probably not in their physics experiments. Yet, although they stayed at a safe distance from...
View ArticleNobel By Chocolate
Winston Churchill liked his chocolate and he liked it rich and dark. At least that is what Hitler must have been convinced of as he decided to lure the British prime minister not with cigars but with...
View ArticleQuantum Casino - Less Than Zero Chance
Human thought has led to a variety of remarkable and profound insights. Many of these insights are well established and have been embraced by a significant portion of the global population. The earth...
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Black Hole In Our Backyard?
Scaling down the observable universe to make it fit within our moon's orbit, the Milky Way gets reduced to a village. We live close to the edge of this village, at a comfortable distance from the...
View ArticleStatistical Physics Attacks St. Petersburg: Paradox Resolved
In the history of statistics, economy and decision theory, the St. Petersburg paradox plays a key role. This lottery problem goes back a full three centuries to the mathematician Nicolas Bernoulli who...
View ArticleQuantum Galaxy: NGC 1277
Black holes are again hitting the headlines. Another record super massive black hole has been unveiled. This time it is galaxy NGC 1277 at the center of which a true monster is discovered to be...
View ArticleHow To Split Black Holes
Ask a physicist how to split a black hole, and you will receive the reply "That's impossible". Ask for further clarification, and you will get a lecture on black hole thermodynamics.read more
View ArticleSplitting Black Holes - Take 2
So, is it or is it not possible? Can black holes be split? In my last blog I demonstrated that the laws of thermodynamics forbid the splitting of a single black hole. However, I also demonstrated the...
View ArticleBeam Me The Farthest, Scotty!
What is the farthest we can theoretically go? Would we ever be able to visit the galaxies shown in Hubble's Extreme Deep Field? Could we even travel beyond these and reach the edge of the observable...
View ArticleRational Suckers
Why do people skip the queue, obstruct, cause traffic jams, and create delays for everyone? Who are these anonymous creatures lacking cooperation skills? And more importantly: are you sure others don't...
View ArticleWhat's Wrong With Superrationality?
Regulars to this blog know I am partial to game theory. The very idea that mathematical reasoning can teach us a thing or two about the strategies we deploy in social interactions, is most intriguing....
View ArticleYou, Andromeda, And The Largest Structure In The Universe
Gravity is an amazing force. It can grow enormous structures in the universe. If you ever find yourself under a dark night sky at a spot far away from city light, have a look at the constellation...
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In The Beginning...
1:1 In the beginning Newton declared space and time. 1:2 And space was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. 1:3 And Newton said, Let there be force: and there was force....
View ArticleShooting Star Brighter Than The Sun
A shooting star brighter than the sun on the very day an asteroid flyby is predicted. A most remarkable coincidence. And to add to our amazement, the rock whizzing through the skies didn't illuminate a...
View ArticlePhysics: Places To Be, Places To Avoid
You have decided to start a graduate study in physics. Where should you apply? And how to decide which offer to take? A diarrhea of lists attempt to rank "the world’s best universities". Mostly these...
View ArticleIs The Universe Expanding, Or Are We Shrinking?
In 1937, Dirac made the bold conjecture that since the big bang, gravity has been weakening. The cold reception that greeted his highly speculative and numerology-based cosmology paper didn't seem to...
View ArticleTaming Infinity: The Sum Of All Powers Of Two
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first mathematician orders a beer. The second orders two beers. The next orders four. Followed by the next who orders eight. The bartender...
View ArticleImmortal Unbounded Universe
Our universe is eternal, expanding indefinitely, and not threatened by any form of 'heath death'. All evidence points into this direction. In fact, at the end of the nineteenth century Ludwig Boltzmann...
View ArticleFalsifiability And The Integrity Of Physics
Science is what scientist do. And the scientific method is the method scientists follow. A tautology you say? Not according to George Ellis and Joe Silk. In an opinion paper in Nature under the title...
View ArticleHolographic Big Bang
Leonard: "The holographic principle suggests that what we all experience every day in three dimensions may really just be information on a surface located at the farthest reaches of our cosmos. So it's...
View ArticleRenewable Energy Footprints
We power humanity mostly by burning fossil fuels, thereby turning chemical energy into heat that ultimately gets radiated into space. In doing so we achieve some results deemed useful: we cook food, we...
View Article2016 Presidential Elections - Math Behind The Mess
In a world where individuals have ranked preferences, it is not possible to create a voting procedure that is guaranteed to yield a fair selection between more than two alternatives. This is a...
View ArticleHow To Stomach A Black Hole
--- repost due to previous version not surviving server maintenance ---Black holes are hot. Well, thermodynamically these suckers are freaking cold, but they do attract more attention than hot...
View ArticleVerlinde's Dark Universe
Lots of people have asked me for my views on Erik Verlinde’s latest paper “Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe“. This fifty-one pages long preprint has attracted a fair bit of media attention....
View ArticleZee's Nutshell Trilogy
Today I took delivery of my copy of Tony Zee’s third contribution to the Princeton University Press In a Nutshell series: “read more
View ArticleTriple Or Bust: Paradox Resolved
A few days ago I discussed the coin toss game ‘triple or bust‘. The game is between Alice and Bob. Alice start the game by writing a $ 1.00 IOU to Bob. Alice then makes at least six subsequent tosses...
View ArticleRational Suckers
Why do people skip queues, cause traffic jams, and create delays for everyone? Who are these misbehaving creatures lacking basic cooperation skills? Are they really all that different from you? Are you...
View ArticleWhy SpaceX Won't Turn Us Into A Multi-planetary Species
Anyone announcing the successful sale of tourist trips around the moon would attract ridicule and laughter. Unless your name is Elon Musk. In that case the announcement amounts to nothing more than a...
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