FQX Boo(x)shelf
30 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 24, 2013 @ 02:17 GMT
"Diving into Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" (subtitle: "Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False"), I experienced a vague but mounting sense of..."

Essay Contest 2013: It From Bit, or Bit From It?
313 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Mar. 25, 2013 @ 19:12 GMT
"Without further ado, I am happy to announce the start of FQXi's 2013 Essay Contest! Our new topic: It From Bit or Bit From It? The past century in fundamental physics has shown a steady progression..."

A Quick Tip of the Pen
15 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Feb. 20, 2013 @ 03:54 GMT
"Just a quick comment to say happy birthday to the great Nicolaus Copernicus, a hero of mine, and of many. Here's a post I did on him a while back."

How often should we expect destructive impacts from the skies?
8 posts  •  created by Fred Adams   •  Feb. 15, 2013 @ 21:12 GMT
"The big news of the day--actually last night--is that a large meteor has apparently fallen on the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia. The event caused serious damage and resulted in injuries to..."

How often should we expect destructive impacts from the skies?
0 posts  •  created by Fred Adams   •  Feb. 15, 2013 @ 21:08 GMT

Quantum Biology: Flight and Sniffery
7 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Feb. 5, 2013 @ 14:05 GMT
"Another discussion thread for January’s podcast, this time on quantum biology. This item also deserves a thread of its own because its been in the news quite a bit over the past few weeks. To recap,..."

God, Parallel Worlds, Cats and Cosmology
69 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Feb. 5, 2013 @ 13:54 GMT
"It’s February, which means I’m a bit late in posting about the January 2013 podcast edition. (Listen and (hopefully) enjoy here.) This has been one of most popular editions yet -- so thank you to..."

The Quasar Cluster that Kills the Cosmological Principle?
32 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jan. 23, 2013 @ 15:08 GMT
"Thanks to John Merryman for suggesting the topic of this post. Earlier this month, a team of astronomers led by Roger G. Clowes at the University of Central Lancashire reported the discovery of the..."

Looking Forward: FQXi Endorsement
251 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Jan. 22, 2013 @ 19:07 GMT
"On behalf of Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, FQXi Directorate --- In a previous post, we wrote about our plans for maintaining helpful, useful and interesting scientific discussion in our online..."

Looking Forward: FQXi Forum Discussions
19 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Jan. 18, 2013 @ 22:16 GMT
"On behalf of Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, FQXi Directorate --- As we start the new year of 2013, we at FQXi have been looking over the past year and evaluating our plans for the future. As part..."

Another World
4 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jan. 6, 2013 @ 01:17 GMT
"Here's a vacation photo from this past summer. It's taken on Mars; I went there, along with thousands of fascinated others, on the vehicle of the Curiosity rover and the vehicle of my imagination. I,..."

Questioning the Foundations: Results
119 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Nov. 30, 2012 @ 17:23 GMT
"And now! I am happy to announce the winners of our 2012 Essay Contest, "Questioning the Foundations: Which of Our Assumptions Are Wrong?" Without further ado, here are the winners: First prize of..."

Questioning the Foundations: Countdown and Thanks
30 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Nov. 28, 2012 @ 18:12 GMT
"This Friday, November 30, we will announce the winners of the 2012 Essay Contest, "Questioning the Foundations". We'd like to start the countdown to the big event now with some thanks and brief..."

Bad News for Supersymmetry?
3 posts  •  created by Ben Still   •  Nov. 21, 2012 @ 21:11 GMT
"The LHCb experiment at CERN recently announced results that put the theory of Supersymmetry into ever growing doubt. Our current picture of the Universe at the smallest scale is wrapped up in the..."

Jiggling Atoms: The Art of Physics
24 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Oct. 15, 2012 @ 21:33 GMT
"Particle physicists may often feel like their lives are part of a game of chance: A roll of the dice determines whether they will find the data they need to discover the Higgs particle--or whether..."

Losing Neil Armstrong
9 posts  •  created by Katie Mack   •  Sep. 3, 2012 @ 17:50 GMT
"I took Neil Armstrong's death personally. I was surprised to find myself so upset, honestly, since I knew so little about him: I had never seen him speak, never read his biography, and the Moon..."

Why Does the World Exist?
153 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Sep. 1, 2012 @ 19:40 GMT
"For those looking for some late-summer reading of a Foundational sort, I want to recommend Jim Holt's *Why Does the World Exist?* It's a simplified romp through several approaches toward what might..."

The Eagle Has Flown
6 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 27, 2012 @ 14:29 GMT
"Here's to Neil Armstrong, a hero not just for America, but for humanity. The next person to walk on the moon will no doubt be Chinese, but no matter; even though space travel was born in the Cold..."

Critical Revolutions
26 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 20, 2012 @ 20:36 GMT
"I'm posting this month from Italy, home-base of one of the most influential metaphysical systems in history--Roman Catholicism--and home to one of the most important names in physics: Galileo..."

Quantum Discord & The Power of Knowing Quantum Mechanically
5 posts  •  created by Mile Gu   •  Aug. 6, 2012 @ 13:37 GMT
"The 1962 James bond movie 'Dr. No' taught children around the world a valuable lesson in how to detect whether nosy siblings are snooping into their rooms. You stick a small piece hair across the door..."

Congratulating the Milner Prize Recipients!
27 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 31, 2012 @ 14:27 GMT
"July’s turning out to be a pretty good month for physics. FQXi is all abuzz at news that two of our members, inflation supremos Alan Guth (pictured right, with Alex Vilenkin) and Andrei Linde..."

From Time to Shape
194 posts  •  created by Julian Barbour   •  Jul. 18, 2012 @ 14:44 GMT
"(FQXi Member Julian Barbour has launched a project to create a series of short, public outreach films that present his approach to time and shape in foundational physics. He has allowed us at FQXi to..."

Thanks, Mom! Finding the Quantum of Ubiquitous Resistance
35 posts  •  created by Frank Wilczek   •  Jul. 4, 2012 @ 15:25 GMT
"This is a cross-post from FQXi’s partner: NOVA’s Nature of Reality Blog. CERN’s July 4 declaration of victory in the quest to find the Higgs particle (or something very much like it) is a..."

Born on the Fourth of July?
6 posts  •  created by Gerald Guralnik   •  Jul. 3, 2012 @ 18:36 GMT
"(In anticipation of tomorrow’s possible Higgs announcement, we’re reposting Gerry Guralnik’s comments from December 2011 on the much anticipated status of the ATLAS and CMS searches for THE INFAMOUS..."

Higgs and Pieces
11 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 3, 2012 @ 16:24 GMT
"We’re a little behind in setting up a thread about tomorrow’s Higgs announcement by CERN, and yesterday’s announcement by Fermilab. (But then, I think the Higgs is receiving enough attention elsewhere..."

Searching for Cosmic Textures
3 posts  •  created by Matthew Johnson   •  Jun. 28, 2012 @ 16:01 GMT
"What types of phases could the universe have inhabited in the distant past? We know that the universe was hot and dense in its youth, and has subsequently been cooling as it expands. Just like H2O can..."

A Table-Top Test for Quantum Gravity
2 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jun. 25, 2012 @ 15:42 GMT
"A short post to highlight a discussion around one of our recent podcasts. In the April edition of the podcast, I chatted with FQXi’s Markus Aspelmeyer about a proposal for a table-top test for quantum..."

New Podcast: Cosmic Beginnings & Quantum Domination
86 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  May. 31, 2012 @ 20:50 GMT
"Just to let you know a new edition of the podcast is now up: www.fqxi.org/community/podcast. It’s a bit longer than usual because we’ve given some time over to discussing the essay contest launch...."

Essay Contest 2012: Questioning the Foundations
692 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  May. 24, 2012 @ 16:02 GMT
"It is time once again for the FQXi Essay Contest! Past years, we have asked you to debate the nature of time, what is ultimately possible in physics, and whether reality is ultimately digital or..."

Launching the FQXi Podcast!
59 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 30, 2012 @ 19:00 GMT
"Eagle-eyed visitors to the community homepage may have noticed that we have added a link to the shiny new FQXi podcast, available here: www.fqxi.org/community/podcast Two editions are up and available..."

Exploding the Supernova Paradigm
37 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 24, 2012 @ 15:13 GMT
"What makes a supernova go boom? I’ve just been at a meeting on ways to observe such stellar explosions at the Royal Society in London, where there was a session discussing this question. Type Ia..."

The Astronaut's Tale: Physics Meets Opera
36 posts  •  created by Matthew Roberts   •  Mar. 31, 2012 @ 18:43 GMT
"When I was asked to review The Astronaut's Tale (music by Charles Fussell, libretto by Jack Larson), I will admit that I had no idea what to expect. The blurb describes the opera as being about the..."

If God were to simulate reality, would he prefer it quantum?
289 posts  •  created by Mile Gu   •  Mar. 27, 2012 @ 16:45 GMT
"--or How Quantum Theory May Sharpen the Blade of Occam’s Razor&8232;. The 1999 movie ‘The Matrix’ explored a world where humans are plugged into a virtual reality. They go about their daily lives,..."

Disproofs of disproofs of disproofs of disproofs...
1995 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 19, 2012 @ 16:15 GMT
"It has been brought to my attention that the discussion threads for Parts 1, 2 and 3 of "To Be or Not to Be (a Local Realist)" and "On the Origins of Quantum Correlations" are getting increasingly..."

Two predictions for the Post-Quantum World
128 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Mar. 9, 2012 @ 18:37 GMT
"Every time physicists face experiments that cannot be explained with the existing theories they have to decide which aspects of these theories to keep and which to throw away. Planck, when faced with..."

Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews
185 posts  •  created by Maximilian Schlosshauer   •  Jan. 11, 2012 @ 15:39 GMT
"To say that quantum theory is about describing how atoms behave would be like saying that all Hemingway ever did was show us how to write terse prose. Quantum theory, more than any other physical..."

Hanny's Voorwerp, and Other Year-End Goodies
309 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Dec. 30, 2011 @ 17:05 GMT
"The new year is upon us: first step—according to the Gregorian calendar, anyway—of our next long loop around the sun. Time to look back over some of the most interesting Foundational stories from the..."

Proving You Are Where You Say You Are: Position-Based Quantum Cryptography (Part II)
114 posts  •  created by George Musser   •  Dec. 20, 2011 @ 22:11 GMT
"This is the second part of a post on garden hoses, quantum cryptography, and schemes to verify position. The first part, which details the first proposed scheme to verify your position--and exactly..."

Proving You Are Where You Say You Are: Position-Based Quantum Cryptography (Part I)
7 posts  •  created by George Musser   •  Dec. 20, 2011 @ 22:06 GMT
"When a speaker brings a tangle of garden hoses, a bottle of water, and a towel to the podium, you know it’s going to be a fun talk. Computer scientist Harry Buhrman of the Centrum Wiksunde &..."

Greetings from Goa
57 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Dec. 17, 2011 @ 14:57 GMT
"Greetings from Goa, India, on the shores of the Arabian Sea. I am here at the International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, hosted by the Indian Association for General Relativity and..."

The Secret History of that Infamous Boson
145 posts  •  created by Gerald Guralnik   •  Dec. 12, 2011 @ 22:07 GMT
"- Comments on the much anticipated December 13 CERN seminar on the status of the ATLAS and CMS searches for THE BOSON. Headlines have been buzzing for the past week or so about a possible glimpse of a..."

Are we getting closer to nailing down what the wavefunction is?
109 posts  •  created by Oscar Dahlsten   •  Dec. 2, 2011 @ 13:52 GMT
"-Comment on recent preprint by Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph. A quantum system is said to have a state, also known as a wavefunction. The minimal interpretation of the state is that it encodes our..."

The Whole and Nothing But
287 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Nov. 15, 2011 @ 20:48 GMT
"More videos from the Setting Time Aright meeting, this time from the session on Truth. The talks covered both the philosophical question of what scientific “truth” is -- Is science as objective as we..."

On the Origins of Quantum Correlations
1923 posts  •  created by Joy Christian   •  Nov. 1, 2011 @ 15:59 GMT
"John Stewart Bell is undoubtedly one of the icons of contemporary physics. His name has become inseparable from the notion of quantum non-locality, however, Bell himself always stressed that it was..."

How Quantum Entanglement Transcends Space and Time
106 posts  •  created by George Musser   •  Oct. 25, 2011 @ 18:32 GMT
"Quantum entanglement is the great soap opera of modern physics. The human spectacle—Einstein discovers entanglement, his colleagues mostly ignore him—was bad enough. But the particles themselves are..."

Some-When
296 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 22, 2011 @ 01:54 GMT
"It’s Halloween. The nights are lengthening, the shadows deepening (if you’re reading this in North America, anyway). The air has a chill sharpness, at once apple-sweet and faintly frightful, with that..."

It's About Time
209 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Oct. 21, 2011 @ 14:10 GMT
"We’ve had a few posts about the sessions at the Setting Time Aright meeting covering questions about memory, choice, free will and the end of civilization, entropy, and...electric fish. But as yet we..."

Entropy and complexity: themes from the FQXi conference Setting Time Aright
551 posts  •  created by Ian Durham   •  Oct. 8, 2011 @ 03:15 GMT
"The aim of the recent FQXi conference on the nature of time was to explore time from a multidisciplinary, multifaceted viewpoint. As such the conference brought together psychologists,..."

Neutrino Black Magic
380 posts  •  created by Stephon Alexander   •  Sep. 26, 2011 @ 13:10 GMT
"While the recent measurement of superluminal propagation of muon neutrinos by the OPERA experiment needs independent confirmation, it is still enticing to imagine if it is at all possible to cook up a..."

Setting Time Aright: The Public Panel Video
377 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 25, 2011 @ 15:56 GMT
"Those who weren’t at the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen for the Setting Time Aright meeting last month can now watch the video of public panel discussion on “Understanding How Time Works, From..."

Faster Than Light Neutrinos?
258 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 23, 2011 @ 16:02 GMT
"I’ve been asked for my thoughts on news from the Gran Sasso Laboratory that subatomic particles have broken the speed of light. From Nature: Researchers at the Opera Collaboration "claim to have..."

Do Scientists (Choose to) Dream of Electric Fish?
177 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 23, 2011 @ 15:22 GMT
"Thank you everyone for your patience -- videos of talks from the FQXi conference on Time are now trickling through. The first videos are from the session on Choice ("Our experience of the future is..."

Thanks for the Memories
17 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 8, 2011 @ 18:38 GMT
"To set up this post, which covers the “Memory” session of the FQXi meeting from Bergen to Copenhagen (I’m still playing catch-up on covering the sessions), take a look at the image to the right,..."

Part 3 of To Be on Not to Be (a Local Realist)
635 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Sep. 5, 2011 @ 10:13 GMT
"Hey everyone, I really enjoyed debating here Joy Christian’s challenge to Bell’s theorem, and this led me to take a more in-depth look at his results in an attempt to construct a computer simulation..."

A Turing Test for Free Will and the Rhythm of Life
109 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 31, 2011 @ 23:08 GMT
"First off, I want to alert you to some of the other bloggers covering the Nature of Time meeting. Over at Cosmic Variance, conference co-organizer Sean Carroll describes how the the meeting was..."

Greetings from FQXi’s "Setting Time Aright" Meeting
370 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 29, 2011 @ 14:39 GMT
"This year’s FQXi conference, incorporating a cruise from Bergen, Norway, around the Scandinavian coastline to Copenhagen, Denmark, is now firmly underway. (At about 2am last night, I began to..."

Higgs Almighty
365 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 12, 2011 @ 14:05 GMT
"A gentle plea: will all science journalists please cease and desist from referring to the Higgs boson as “the God particle”? Nothing that emerges from a particle accelerator is going to be “the God”..."

Is the Second Law a Meta-Theorem?
119 posts  •  created by Oscar Dahlsten   •  Aug. 11, 2011 @ 15:44 GMT
"When Planck paved the way for quantum theory by discretising energy in 1900, he ingeniously assumed the persistence of entropy and the second law to guide him through the unchartered territory of new..."

Part 2 of To Be or Not To Be (a Local Realist)
158 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Aug. 2, 2011 @ 13:11 GMT
"This follows on from my post last week, “To Be or Not To Be (a Local Realist),” which discusses Joy Christian’s “Disproof of Bell’s Theorem.” Joy’s response to my post is here. As I was stating at the..."

Quantum Music from a Classical Sphere
464 posts  •  created by Joy Christian   •  Jul. 24, 2011 @ 18:02 GMT
"“ ... what is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination.”--John S. Bell This post is in response to Florin Moldoveanu’s, “To Be Or Not To Be (a Local Realist),” which discusses my..."

To Be or Not To Be (a Local Realist)
120 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Jul. 24, 2011 @ 17:35 GMT
"I’ve been pondering realism for the past few months. In particular I’ve been thinking about Bell’s theorem, and FQXi member Joy Christian’s claimed disproof of it. I recently posted a paper on this..."

Digital v Analog: Winners Announced!
466 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Jun. 6, 2011 @ 12:21 GMT
"We are pleased to announce the winners in the 2010/2011 Essay Contest, "Is Reality Digital or Analog?" [youtube: AXtmnYVW2JY, 560, 340] Top prize of $10,000 and FQXi Membership goes to ... Jarmo..."

Color Me Surprised: Quantum Mechanics and Graph Theory are a Match Made in Heaven:
255 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  May. 4, 2011 @ 12:47 GMT
"Recently I attended the “New Directions in the Foundations of Physics” organized under the guidance of FQXi member Jeffrey Bub. In a series of blog posts I will present the main new ideas, and today I..."

Art and Science: A Slice of Time
355 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 28, 2011 @ 20:09 GMT
"This is a work of art by artist Shinichi Maruyama. His pieces exist for only a specific, minute fragment of time: in some cases, as little as one 20,000th of a second. The art, in other words, is..."

Source Code? I've Seen It All Before...
15 posts  •  created by Matty Hoban   •  Apr. 4, 2011 @ 22:47 GMT
"6am "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher plays on the radio, interrupted by a DJ. D.J.: Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today... And another day..."

Clothes for the Standard Model Beggar
671 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Apr. 4, 2011 @ 13:06 GMT
"WARNING: If algebra and geometry caused you headaches in school, this post could bring back suppressed memories. According to neuroscience, the left brain is responsible for understanding algebra..."

Return of the Arsenic Eaters
99 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Mar. 11, 2011 @ 00:49 GMT
"What an excellent couple of months it’s been for the science blogs. It seems like every few weeks we are being treated to another shiny new pebble, to borrow Newton’s analogy, from the endless beach..."

Five Reasons Thinking Computers Won't Destroy Humanity, Probably
138 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Feb. 13, 2011 @ 00:37 GMT
"Here’s a section from a fun news article that ran recently on NPR. (“Fun,” I suppose, only because I find it implausible; if you buy the premise—that within a few decades self-redesigning computer..."

Most Courageous Postdoc Winner: Daniel Bedingham!
10 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jan. 28, 2011 @ 11:08 GMT
"Last September, FQXi put out a call for nominations for a new award honoring the Most Courageous Postdoc conducting research on foundational physics or cosmology. An external panel of experts reviewed..."

Time & Foundations: Awardees Announced
78 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Jan. 18, 2011 @ 21:57 GMT
"On behalf of FQXi, I am pleased to announce the future grantees of our latest grant competition on "Time and Foundations". Aided by a rigorous, two-step process involving multiple, dedicated expert..."

New Year, New Universe?
113 posts  •  created by Matthew Johnson   •  Dec. 31, 2010 @ 19:26 GMT
"Hello! This is Matt Johnson, and I was recently asked to write a brief guest post for FQXi about some of my recent work with Stephen Feeney, Daniel Mortlock, and Hiranya Peiris on observational tests..."

Uncertainty Principle Determines Nonlocality
677 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Nov. 26, 2010 @ 00:33 GMT
"I’ve blogged in the past about how quantum mechanics isn’t as weird as it could be (See “Spookier than Quantum Mechanics?). Now there is new chapter to add to this story. In 1935, Einstein, Podolski,..."

Should We Believe the Dark Matter Rumors?
376 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Nov. 5, 2010 @ 20:44 GMT
"Over the past couple of weeks, news sites and science blogs have been buzzing about a(nother) possible sighting of dark matter, based on a paper by Fermilab’s Dan Hooper and NYU’s Lisa Goodenough...."

Digital V. Analog: Essay Contest 2010/2011!
1215 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Nov. 1, 2010 @ 18:23 GMT
"After many months of careful preparation, we are now pleased to announce the beginning of the next Essay Contest! We want to thank our contest partners The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and ..."

Is the Stock Market a Quantum Phenomenon?
29 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 26, 2010 @ 15:09 GMT
"There is something in the deep structure of nature that prevents, or possibly cancels out, quantum effects in macroscopic objects. We don’t know what that thing is: some suppose gravitation to be the..."

Courageous PostDocs!
928 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Sep. 9, 2010 @ 15:07 GMT
"FQXi is now offering a new award, for Most Courageous Postdoc! The $1,000 award was developed with the help of Sabine Hossenfelder, Assistant Professor at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical..."

Should SONY help foundational physics?
75 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 31, 2010 @ 15:41 GMT
"Just a quick post to point you to the BBC’s coverage of FQXi large-grant-winner Gaurav Khanna’s work, using a Playstation supercomputer to test loop quantum cosmology, find out what happened before..."

GRW vs Free Will
597 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Aug. 20, 2010 @ 17:19 GMT
"This is my last post on key results that were presented during the New Directions in the Foundations of Physics conference in Washington DC. (You can see my other posts about building a black hole in..."

Parallel Universe on your iPhone
18 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 16, 2010 @ 21:37 GMT
"Got a tough decision to make and just don't know which option to choose? Well, why not choose both options––but perform each in a different parallel universes? Yes, in what must be one of the boldest..."

Philosophy vs. Physics
920 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 3, 2010 @ 13:46 GMT
"It’s not quite timeless, but Steven Weinberg’s *Dreams of a Final Theory* is a classic of the popular science genre. In it, he notes that he was an enthusiastic student of philosophy as an..."

The Planck Scale: Gravity’s Ultimate Limit?
64 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Aug. 1, 2010 @ 21:05 GMT
"Scientific researchers, especially younger ones dreaming of glory and fame, are generally averse to setting boundaries and claiming absolute limits. This stems both from a hopefulness that Nature will..."

Time Travel by Teleportation
736 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Aug. 1, 2010 @ 20:02 GMT
"Time travel is a fascinating subject. Can we really go back in time and maybe change it? Suppose I can go back in time, would I be able to kill my own grandfather thus preventing my own birth? Here..."

The Massive Gravity Revolution of 2010?
456 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Jul. 18, 2010 @ 20:00 GMT
"Theoretical physicists love to ask “what if” questions, to explore the limits of mathematical self-consistency, even--perhaps especially--when the questions they are asking fly in the face of..."

Turing Machines, Quantum Effects and Time Travel
145 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  Jul. 18, 2010 @ 18:25 GMT
"Last time I talked about information causality. Today I want to call attention to two other interesting talks at the New Directions in the Foundations of Physics conference in Washington DC. The..."

Old Light, New Tricks
54 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Jul. 14, 2010 @ 16:02 GMT
"One of the fastest moving fields in contemporary astronomy involves getting some new tricks out of the oldest light in the Universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation, or CMB for short, is the..."

Definition: Energy
633 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jun. 15, 2010 @ 15:08 GMT
"I was nineteen; I had probably been out partying with friends the night before; those were different days. However it came about, I slept through class that morning. It was “Quantum Mechanics for the..."

Spookier than Quantum Mechanics?
40 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  May. 28, 2010 @ 12:16 GMT
"Continuing about the New Directions in the Foundations of Physics conference in Washington DC, the bulk of the quantum mechanics presentations were in the information approach. (You can check my..."

Black Holes in a Tub and the Church of Unitarity
154 posts  •  created by Florin Moldoveanu   •  May. 24, 2010 @ 14:49 GMT
"Recently I attended the New Directions in the Foundations of Physics conference in Washington DC organized by the Foundations of Physics Group (University of Maryland - College Park, Johns Hopkins..."

Experimental Tests for String Theory? Guest post by Anil Ananthaswamy
39 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  May. 10, 2010 @ 12:52 GMT
"From Anil Ananthaswamy: One of the joys of writing a book on modern physics, especially cosmology, is that you get to tackle some mind-expanding concepts, such as string theory and the multiverse. But..."

Cosmic Consciousness
298 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  May. 9, 2010 @ 23:14 GMT
"I was having dinner with a friend the other day when our discussion turned to the problem of consciousness. Intrigued by the general host of deep science questions, he didn’t see why this famous..."

The Edge of Physics
459 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 19, 2010 @ 16:17 GMT
"On a recent trip to the LHC, I met with CERN’s research director, Sergio Bertolucci, who urged me to visit the underground heart of the accelerator before the detectors were finally closed off for..."

Time and Foundations: 2010 Large Grant Round
384 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Apr. 6, 2010 @ 18:49 GMT
"I hereby announce the beginning of the 2010 round of FQXi's Large Grants Program! We now invite proposals for research on foundational questions in physics and cosmology. The focus for this round..."

Survival in Many Worlds
50 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 3, 2010 @ 22:23 GMT
"I was recently in danger of my life (really). Out of nowhere last fall I found myself thrust into a serious medical situation requiring immediate surgery, followed by an arduous period of recovery...."

E8 theory disproved?
310 posts  •  created by A. Garrett Lisi   •  Mar. 29, 2010 @ 18:51 GMT
"Here's a note to describe, for those interested, what is going on in the "refutation" of E8 theory by Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi. In a paper I posted to the arxiv in 2007, I proposed that the..."

Decoding Entropic Gravity
78 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Mar. 26, 2010 @ 13:09 GMT
"I recently wrote a popular science book called “Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information.” The point I was trying to make is that the fundamental building blocks out of which everything..."

Essay Contest 2010: What to Ask?
578 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Mar. 23, 2010 @ 14:08 GMT
"We at FQXi are on a mission to build a community of people who support research on fundamental physics questions. We are always looking for creative ways to build connections between researchers in..."

Quantum Dating Market
12 posts  •  created by Daniel Doro Ferrante   •  Mar. 9, 2010 @ 18:22 GMT
"It’s too late for Valentine’s Day, and too early for April Fool’s Day, so when I first saw the paper a paper titled “Quantum Dating Market, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But in the spirit of..."

Free Radical
645 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Feb. 15, 2010 @ 04:00 GMT
"An appreciative farewell is due this month to a true scientific radical. While he wasn’t a member of FQXi, his enthusiasm for deep cosmological questions, coupled with an absolute willingness to..."

Bowling with the CMB
11 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Feb. 7, 2010 @ 19:52 GMT
"A new WMAP data and paper release is always a little Christmas for cosmologists. Among the latest set of papers based on seven years of operation, released last month, one concerning whether there are..."

Astrotheology: Do Aliens Have Their Own Jesus? Are Aliens Sinless?
366 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jan. 27, 2010 @ 15:35 GMT
"Yesterday I attended a meeting at the Royal Society in London about how the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would affect people and society, and was introduced to a whole new discipline:..."

What is Ultimately Possible in Physics: Contest Results Announced!
252 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Jan. 19, 2010 @ 19:00 GMT
"FQXi is pleased to announce the winners in our Essay Competition, "What Is Ultimately Possible In Physics?" The Review Panel worked hard through the holidays debating the finalists. After lengthy..."

Witten meets Wagner? A Review of a Physics Opera
31 posts  •  created by Rob Morris   •  Jan. 3, 2010 @ 17:20 GMT
"Before I begin, I should say that “The Theory of Everything” by Encompass New Opera Theater hasn’t opened yet. It’s in the final stages of reviews and workshops, and I had the chance to attend one of..."

How? And Why?
197 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jan. 1, 2010 @ 23:48 GMT
"Not infrequently I witness a basic conceptual divide between those in the natural sciences and those in the humanities, including non-professional people whose personalities simply tend in one or..."

Dark matter found! Or is it all just hype?
247 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Dec. 18, 2009 @ 14:55 GMT
"Yesterday, there was a widely hyped (though not, at least publicly, by the experimental team itself) announcement of the results of one of the premier dark matter direct detection experiments, the..."

What's U.P.P.? (Contest Feedback)
71 posts  •  created by Brendan Foster   •  Dec. 11, 2009 @ 17:21 GMT
"Right now, our Panel of Experts is reviewing the 42 finalists in the 2009 essay contest, on 'What Is Ultimately Possible In Physics?'. When their ratings are in, we will combine them with the..."

The Connected Climate: Guest Post by Gareth Mitchell
60 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Dec. 7, 2009 @ 17:17 GMT
"It’s not quite as “foundational” as our usual topics (well it's a "Copenhagen interpretation" of sorts), but with climate issues dominating the news thanks to the start of the Copenhagen summit, it..."

The Beautiful Truth
495 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Nov. 20, 2009 @ 01:44 GMT
"My taste in painting runs toward the abstract. Not everyone’s first choice, I understand, but one that never had to be “sold” to me; I seem to have been born with an intuitive appreciation of..."

The Art of Combining Degrees-of-Freedom
91 posts  •  created by Daniel Doro Ferrante   •  Nov. 11, 2009 @ 17:26 GMT
"What do physicists do? I have been thinking a bit about what I do and what the true job of a physicist is and I think I can state it as finding the fundamental variables that most appropriately..."

Sub-Zero
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 2, 2009 @ 19:51 GMT
"Winter is icumen in, as Ezra Pound quipped, and it’s all about the ice. Fall is already making the trees crisp and soon enough the streets around Boston will resemble the dirty hearts of comets—one..."

Entanglement from a Local Deterministic Model?
73 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Sep. 10, 2009 @ 15:39 GMT
"Entanglement is a quantum effect that exhibits the clearest departure of quantum theory from the previous classical physics. This is easiest seen through the Bell inequalities which are satisfied by..."

The Great Dome of the Sky
15 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Sep. 7, 2009 @ 14:52 GMT
"I am posting this month from the Holy Land, in an area known locally as the “Galile” but more famous to westerners as the region surrounding the Sea of Galilee. The “sea” is, in fact, a large..."

The Un-LHC
15 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 31, 2009 @ 16:18 GMT
"I’ve just come back from a trip to the LHC (more popularly known as “the black-hole machine,” of course). I arrived quite soon after the official announcement that the collider will re-start in..."

A Lunar Month
6 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jul. 22, 2009 @ 20:13 GMT
"It’s a summer for celebrating the moon. As anyone interested in our space-faring future knows, we’re commemorating this month the 40th anniversary of humanity’s first stroll on one of the heavenly..."

String Theory: A Theory of Condensed Matter
94 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 22, 2009 @ 12:42 GMT
"While the bulk of FQXi’s physicists were clambering over volcanoes in the Azores earlier in the month, FQXi’s Subir Sachdev organized a workshop of his own at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical..."

What is Ultimately (or at least newly) Possible in Physics (essay contests)?
51 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Jul. 17, 2009 @ 22:47 GMT
"What is Ultimately Possible in Physics? That, of course, is the subject of FQXi's current essay contest. FQXi has now approved the first 10 essays, so you should feel free to go to the essay..."

Quantum of Love
11 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jul. 15, 2009 @ 18:01 GMT
"Earlier this summer I heard a piece on NPR – generally known for fine science reportage -- that suggested two people in love may be in a state of macroscopic quantum entanglement. Through this..."

Talks, talks and more talks from the Azores
51 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 14, 2009 @ 20:01 GMT
"Now that the Azores conference is officially over, I will try and quickly catch you up on (some of) the more serious sessions and the 46 odd talks that were given. I also recommend visiting..."

Why We Should Nuke Mars and/or Commit Quantum Suicide
24 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 12, 2009 @ 09:42 GMT
"Yes, you read the title of this post correctly. Yesterday at the FQXi conference, Paul Davies gave an argument for why we should detonate a nuclear bomb on Mars--in an effort to _find_ life. The..."

Physicists + Volcano = The Future of the Universe?
8 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 10, 2009 @ 09:43 GMT
"Day three of the FQXi Azores conference (I’ll catch you up on day two later). I was reminded of the tale of the first “absent-minded professor,” the ancient philosopher Thales of Miletus. Plato..."

Ethics in the Many World's Scenario
28 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 8, 2009 @ 00:35 GMT
"Back when I was in grad school and I had to teach astronomy labs, my colleagues and I would compile collections of songs that had vague references to physics to amuse the undergrads during the..."

You'll Read This Post If I Mention Michael Jackson
19 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jun. 28, 2009 @ 14:48 GMT
"See, I knew you would. The late King of Pop is dominating the blogosphere this week, and probably well into the remaining summer. Radio, television, tweets, he’s all that. The Gloved One rules in..."

Entanglement with Irony: Spooks cut funding for spooky physics
14 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Jun. 10, 2009 @ 12:03 GMT
"Every human endeavor has a bittersweet taste. “A cup of honey no one has yet drunk, without mixing it with a cup of gall”, said a Montenegrin nineteenth century bishop, warrior and poet in one of his..."

Angels and Demons...
9 posts  •  created by Kevin Black   •  May. 25, 2009 @ 11:40 GMT
"...or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pseudo-Science. Spaceships inexplicably whizzing by in space with mysterious 'anti-gravity' forces keeping everything nicely in place. Ordinary people..."

Does God Know He Is God?
274 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  May. 22, 2009 @ 18:42 GMT
"A philosophical diversion (that connects to T.O.E.): Let’s assume, for the purposes of argument, that there are such things as gods. In fact, let’s assume there is only one God, and that He has the..."

We Have Lift-Off (Planck & FQXi)
2 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  May. 22, 2009 @ 13:52 GMT
"You might be wondering why nobody at FQXi was following last week’s successful launch of the Ariane 5 rocket carrying two new observatories: The Planck mission, which will scan the cosmic microwave..."

What is Ultimately Possible in Physics?
180 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  May. 16, 2009 @ 02:02 GMT
"On the subject of warp drives and the like, we're please to finally announce the second FQXi essay contest, on "What is ultimately possible in physics?" (Go here for details.) More specifically, to..."

2180: The Year of the Warp Drive?
533 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  May. 12, 2009 @ 18:35 GMT
"The first thing I should say is that I have not yet seen the new Star Trek movie, though I do intend to. (Is it any good?) But I have seen a raft of articles about the science of Star Trek (what..."

The Dark or the Light?
5 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  May. 5, 2009 @ 18:34 GMT
"Earlier this year, FQXi bloggers (and Perimeter Institute cosmologists) Niayesh Afshordi and Mark Wyman reviewed our current understanding (or confusion) over the nature of dark matter (Niayesh..."

Black Holes and the Edge of Reason
12 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 30, 2009 @ 13:23 GMT
"FQXi researchers pride themselves on pushing the boundaries of what’s known—positing theories at the edge of what we can conceive. Unfortunately, this almost inevitably involves hypothesizing things..."

Erasing the Quantum Past to Avoid Future Catastrophe
23 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 21, 2009 @ 12:34 GMT
"Well done to Nature of Time contestant Saibal Mitra. His essay “Can we change the past by forgetting?” which you can download here (pdf) has hit the headlines, appearing in New Scientist. The article..."

Our Not-So-Special Universe
18 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Apr. 14, 2009 @ 13:30 GMT
"Last year we briefly noted that a paper by FQXi grant winner Fred Adams was getting a lot of attention on science websites. The paper caused a stir because it called into question whether some of the..."

Ancient Magnetism
106 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Mar. 23, 2009 @ 20:26 GMT
"For me, there’s nothing quite so thrilling as a new and unexplained observation. This is doubly exciting if the people announcing it are themselves baffled by what they’ve found. A perfect example of..."

Dark Chemistry
3 posts  •  created by Mark Wyman   •  Mar. 16, 2009 @ 17:08 GMT
"Particle physicists, waiting around for new experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider, have become as fad-driven as teenaged girls. All it takes to get them going is a soupcon of a new idea,..."

Universe of Possibilities: The FQX Song
2 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 13, 2009 @ 19:43 GMT
"Now that FQXi’s mini-meeting is over, I’ve been looking for a witty way to sum up everything that happened. But I can’t do better than MIT’s Seth Lloyd, who wrote and performed a song to celebrate the..."

Universe of Possibilities: Quick Quantum
1 post  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 9, 2009 @ 06:47 GMT
"Before I leave Grand Cayman, I’ll write a quick post to cover the final session of the FQXi meeting on Sunday evening, “Possibility at the Foundation: Quantum Reality.” Wojciech Zurek, of the Los..."

Universe of Possibilities: Backing-Up Your Brain
3 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 9, 2009 @ 06:15 GMT
"Given the chance, would you back-up your “mind-files” on a computer, to keep your memories in pristine condition? Or agree to become a computer hybrid to enhance your experience of life? Those were..."

Universe of Possibilities: Is a Theory of Everything Possible?
4 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 9, 2009 @ 04:23 GMT
"When I saw that the line up for Saturday's session on whether we have any serious chance of finding a “theory of everything” (TOE) included a mix of string theorists and a loop quantum gravity..."

Judgment Day at the End of Time (the Essay Contest)
297 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Mar. 9, 2009 @ 03:05 GMT
"At last, the results of the essay contest are in! Let's start with the prizes first, then I'll add a bit more about the judging process etc., below. First Juried Prize: Julian Barbour on "The Nature..."

Universe of Possibilities: Floating Brains in the Multiverse
1 post  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 8, 2009 @ 18:09 GMT
"The first session on Saturday was given over to MIT’s Alan Guth and Stanford’s Andrei Linde, two inflationary behemoths. They both spoke about the development of inflation--the notion that the early..."

Universe of Possibilities: What is (Im)possible?
1 post  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 7, 2009 @ 05:16 GMT
"Following a heavy discussion about ways to improve the funding of foundational research, participants at the FQXi March meeting turned their attention to a somewhat “lighter” question: Just what is..."

Universe of Possibilities: A Paradigm Shift in Funding Physics? *
3 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 7, 2009 @ 05:02 GMT
"Much of Friday was spent discussing the direction in which FQXi should move in the future. FQXi directors Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre described some of the successes of FQXi and set up..."

Universe of Possibilities: What Foundational Questions Remain?
2 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Mar. 7, 2009 @ 04:52 GMT
"I don’t know if Nobel Laureate physicist Frank Wilczek often reminds people of British comedian John Cleese but, for me at least, he did today as he opened FQXi’s “Exploring the Universe of..."

Where Does the Time Go?
33 posts  •  created by Graeme Stemp-Morlock   •  Mar. 4, 2009 @ 22:31 GMT
"While we’re waiting for the results of the Nature of Time essay contest, I thought I’d tell you about my own efforts to get a better grip on the slippery sands of time, by chatting to Dan Falk, a..."

The End (of Cosmology) is Nigh
31 posts  •  created by Graeme Stemp-Morlock   •  Feb. 23, 2009 @ 17:10 GMT
"Scientific American has a podcast up (part 1 and part 2) of a AAAS press conference that I attended last week on the state of cosmology. I encourage you to listen to it, though I warn you that..."

Is Higgs Competition Healthy?
2 posts  •  created by Graeme Stemp-Morlock   •  Feb. 19, 2009 @ 18:54 GMT
"I’m now back home having spent the last week in Chicago at the AAAS meeting, and I’ve had a chance to catch up on the news reports that came out the meeting. One of the biggest news stories was the..."

The Simulated Universe
16 posts  •  created by Graeme Stemp-Morlock   •  Feb. 13, 2009 @ 18:53 GMT
"Well, it's the first real day of the AAAS meeting in Chicago and I’ve found myself in a little session reviewing how supercomputers are improving astrophysics simulations. The simulations are just..."

Where's the NKS at FQX?
13 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Feb. 6, 2009 @ 16:03 GMT
"There’s a nicely done article in the recent issue of Skeptic that would be of interest to those with an interest in all things foundational. Sensibly titled “Whatever Happened to Stephen Wolfram?”,..."

Greetings from Aspen! Let’s understand the dark sector
3 posts  •  created by Niayesh Afshordi   •  Jan. 29, 2009 @ 14:28 GMT
"I promised the editor to blog about the cosmology workshop that I am attending this week, here at the Aspen center for physics. Now, it turns out that I’m much less reliable than I thought I was, and..."

Pushing the Quantum Limits
23 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Jan. 17, 2009 @ 19:12 GMT
"The discovery of quantum mechanics in the mid-twenties was followed by a fierce debate about its meaning and implications. This debate still rages, but there have been many twists and turns since the..."

Breaking the Law
50 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jan. 14, 2009 @ 16:32 GMT
"It’s a commonplace in popular science to note that at the moment of the Big Bang the “laws of physics break down.” By this is generally meant the inability of GR to model what happens in a cosmos so..."

The End of Time (The Essay Contest)
110 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Jan. 2, 2009 @ 15:43 GMT
"Happy New Year! With the end of 2008 comes also the end of the FQXi essay contest on The Nature of Time. Judging will be taking place over the next month or so, after which winners can be announced...."

Has Superluminal Tunneling Been Observed?
44 posts  •  created by Dieter Zeh   •  Dec. 27, 2008 @ 16:58 GMT
"Earlier this month, in Science (Vol. 322, p. 1525), P. Eckle et al. reported an experiment from which they conclude that an electron can tunnel through the potential barrier of an He atom in..."

Cosmology for Kids, FQXi-style
9 posts  •  created by Graeme Stemp-Morlock   •  Dec. 23, 2008 @ 21:25 GMT
"It’s that gift-giving time of year and, as a father of two, I’m always on the lookout for books that will amuse my kids. So I jumped at the chance to chat to FQXi’s Brian Greene, who recently..."

Impact, Part Two
2 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Dec. 22, 2008 @ 21:08 GMT
"In keeping with the subject of Earth-shaking historical impacts -- the last resting place of Copernicus has now been positively identified. From Science News: "Polish archaeologist Jerzy..."

Impact
4 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Dec. 11, 2008 @ 22:33 GMT
"Remember my radical idea from last August? This was the suggestion that microbial life might be lying dormant in the centers of some craters on the moon, having been transferred there,..."

More is Better, a reply to Dieter Zeh
40 posts  •  created by Vlatko Vedral   •  Dec. 1, 2008 @ 18:03 GMT
"I am very happy that my recent posts have attracted attention and provoked response. There is certainly no point in wasting ink (in this case, computer memory) unless it stimulates a lively debate and..."

Nonlocality versus nonreality, by H. Dieter Zeh
65 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Nov. 28, 2008 @ 12:02 GMT
"One of our new bloggers, Vlatko Vedral, has been posting a lot on the subject of “reality”—raising the hackles of FQXi’s Dieter Zeh in the process. In a guest post, Zeh responds to Vlatko and defends..."

Is reality really real? asks Vlatko Vedral
27 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Nov. 11, 2008 @ 14:51 GMT
"Is there such a thing as objective reality? Vlatko Vedral looks into an experiment to test how far quantum indeterminism persists in the everyday world. From Vlatko Vedral: I seem to be writing..."

The Speed of Spookiness, by Vlatko Vedral
72 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Oct. 31, 2008 @ 11:44 GMT
"While William Orem has been celebrating Halloween by quantum ghost hunting, quantum physicist Vlatko Vedral is fearlessly tackling the controversy over the speed of Einstein’s..."

Quantum Ghost Hunting
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 25, 2008 @ 21:42 GMT
"It’s Halloween time, and the blogosphere is thick with ghosts. (Not those ghosts.) They seem to be staging a comeback as well in popular media, perhaps as a sign of the general anti-science trend..."

Antimatter Universe
6 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 10, 2008 @ 18:53 GMT
"Congratulations all around this week to Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, who share in the Nobel Prize for their paradigm-shattering work into such foundational issues..."

The Parallel Universe Experiment, by Vlatko Vedral
52 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Oct. 7, 2008 @ 13:03 GMT
"Can we detect the existence of parallel worlds in the lab? Quantum physicist Vlatko Vedral checks out the suggestion that a new—and surprisingly simple—experiment could tell us if alternate universes..."

From Cosmic Lighthouses to Dark Flow, by Niayesh Afshordi
5 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 30, 2008 @ 19:16 GMT
"Everybody’s been talking about the new and mysterious “dark flow” that’s supposedly tugging on galaxies from beyond the edge of the observable universe. Cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi wonders if it..."

Our Human-Shaped Universe, by Mark Wyman
96 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Sep. 11, 2008 @ 16:43 GMT
"What “shape” is the universe? Cosmologist Mark Wyman ponders whether the cosmos is smaller than we might imagine and “shaped” like a human. And how we may never know for sure. From Mark Wyman: If I..."

Life Before Earth
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 28, 2008 @ 13:16 GMT
"Because this is FQXi, I want to post another radical suggestion – this time related to the possibility of life on the moon. Before I do, though, one reader has asked a reasonable follow-up question..."

Is the Moon Alive?
2 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 18, 2008 @ 18:02 GMT
"Fascinating late-summer reading for FQXi-fans can be found here, in a Time magazine article from December . . . 1967. The article outlines the various precautions that our boys in the Apollo space..."

Foundational Physics Apartheid?
3 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 12, 2008 @ 15:33 GMT
"I recently read the hugely enjoyable novel “Final Theory”, a physics thriller in which the hero chases after Einstein’s long-lost Theory of Everything. It seemed like harmless summer reading, but a..."

Shutdown of the LHC, by Kevin Black
432 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 5, 2008 @ 16:19 GMT
"As the LHC supposedly gears up, Harvard physicist Kevin Black, based at CERN, investigates rumors that the particle accelerator may, in fact, soon be shut down—by ripples from the future. From Kevin..."

The Nature of Time? You tell us.
34 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Aug. 4, 2008 @ 17:52 GMT
"I believe that Henri Bergson, one of my favorite philosophers, once said that "Time is what prevents everything from happening at once." I've also heard it remarked that this clearly is not working..."

A Close Encounter
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 4, 2008 @ 17:41 GMT
"What a great way to wrap up the summer. Cassini finds liquid hydrocarbons on Titan, making it the only other place we know of with natural lakes and charging up the search for life outside Earth...."

The LHC rap!
9 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Aug. 2, 2008 @ 16:05 GMT
"Yes, you read the title correctly. It’s a rap. And it’s about the LHC. I’ve often thought that physicists should rap more. OK, that’s a lie, I’ve never thought that. But after seeing the brilliant..."

What if string theory is wrong? asks Moataz Emam
80 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 29, 2008 @ 15:39 GMT
"As physicists wrangle over whether string theory truly represents reality, FQXi invited Moataz Emam of Clark University to ponder over the fate of string theorists like himself, if string theory..."

Do we really have free will?
11 posts  •  created by Zeeya Merali   •  Jul. 24, 2008 @ 19:31 GMT
"I may have been predestined to write this. There is a new paper this week by John Conway and Simon Kochen that reconsiders what physics has to tell us about free will. I’ve written about an earlier..."

The Big Bang, and Before
5 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jun. 18, 2008 @ 00:06 GMT
"There’s good work coming out of Caltech this month supporting the idea – familiar to readers of FQXi Community – that the universe in which we live is the result of a spontaneous quantum..."

Constructive Suggestions for Improving the FQXi Community Page
8 posts  •  created by Kirsten A. Hubbard   •  May. 30, 2008 @ 14:25 GMT
"FQXi welcomes your constructive suggestions for how we may improve our Community website. Thank you!"

Gods and Astronomers
5 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  May. 22, 2008 @ 17:46 GMT
"It’s good news this month—of a sort—for Catholics who are also science-savvy. Jesuit astronomer Fr. Jose Funes has announced in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that it’s okay for..."

Does Time Actually Move?
124 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 24, 2008 @ 19:42 GMT
"Perhaps the most lasting contribution to emerge from centuries of long-winded continental philosophy is the recognition that what nature does is distinct from what brains perceive. A perceiving..."

If the world ended tomorrow, would we notice?
4 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Mar. 31, 2008 @ 16:09 GMT
"In recognition of FQXi of Doomsday week, suppose the world ended tomorrow. In particular, suppose that, as discussed in Kate Becker's fun article, we live in a 'false vacuum', that can decay to a..."

. . . and a Side of Obliteration
4 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Mar. 29, 2008 @ 20:06 GMT
"Next April 1st-themed Item: In the mood for total planetary annihilation? Strange to say, there is a veritable genre these days of websites, discussion boards and other resources dedicated to the..."

Dark Matter: the Lighter Side
8 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Mar. 29, 2008 @ 19:59 GMT
"I’m not a nut, but I entertain at least one nutty idea. I can’t imagine any way for my nutty idea to be tested (that hasn’t stopped string theory), and I don’t see why anyone would want to test my..."

Do You See Dark Matter?
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Mar. 12, 2008 @ 20:16 GMT
"The good news is, it's foundational either way. In one version, a whopping 4% of the energy density of the universe is baryonic. Another way to say this, of course, is almost everything that exists..."

Unidentified Foundational Objects
6 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Feb. 27, 2008 @ 18:52 GMT
"The thing I respond to most strongly in these posts is the passion with which the issue is regarded on all sides. Whether we come down for or against counting UFO stories as credible evidence (of..."

Are UFOs Foundational?
10 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jan. 31, 2008 @ 16:48 GMT
"Readers of this blog have been pressing me (offline) this month with a sensible question: why am I not discussing the Stephenville UFO? After all, what could be more paradigm-shifting than..."

Hunting LGM
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jan. 12, 2008 @ 18:51 GMT
"Time to upgrade that so-last-season flip phone you are still carrying around in favor of a flashing lightweight earpiece? Tech moves so fast these days, in part thanks to the Law of Accelerating..."

Bang / Crunch / Bang
208 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Dec. 7, 2007 @ 21:18 GMT
"I was contacted recently by Peter Lynds, the young physics iconoclast who turned some heads back in 2003 with a paper purporting correctly to resolve Zeno's paradox by defining time as having no..."

An Exceptionally Simple Personal FAQ
161 posts  •  created by A. Garrett Lisi   •  Nov. 20, 2007 @ 04:33 GMT
"Over the past month I have been asked many questions about my personal history and opinions on life, the universe, and everything. I have also received many emails of encouragement from the general..."

The Big-Bang versus the Big-Bang
6 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Nov. 13, 2007 @ 20:47 GMT
""Big-bang" versus "Big bang" I spend a good bit of time thinking about what happened in the period of time between the Big-Bang and the Big-Bang. No, I'm not crazy (or at least not with respect to..."

A Hole in Messier
38 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Nov. 3, 2007 @ 18:17 GMT
"The sci-fi loving public and foundationally minded cosmologists alike are enamored of black holes. Black holes, as everyone knows, form from the crushed remains of certain burned-out stars -- those..."

Co-Travelers
4 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Oct. 5, 2007 @ 19:36 GMT
"By some reports (speakers of Russian correct me here) a passable translation of "Sputnik" is "co-traveler," in the sense of "one who travels alongside." There's a whole art to scientific designation..."

Pioneer Slows, Kilogram Goes
14 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Sep. 23, 2007 @ 15:11 GMT
"The late, great Carl Sagan was fond of including this line in his essays: "But I could be wrong." The idea is not merely humble, it is profound: we do not progress in our knowledge of the universe by..."

Summer in Space
2 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Sep. 7, 2007 @ 20:27 GMT
"The summer is at an end. As a capstone to it, I want to go against the mainstream (isn't that what FQX is all about?) of popular science journalism and say that this summer's furor over drunk..."

Peering Into the Void
5 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Sep. 1, 2007 @ 15:37 GMT
"By now you've probably heard about the hole in the universe, but it's an interesting enough discovery to bear repeating. Larry Rudnick, a University of Minnesota astronomy professor, is reporting in..."

The Convexity Club
14 posts  •  created by Matthew Leifer   •  Aug. 15, 2007 @ 16:37 GMT
"Plenty of people have been writing about the recent fqxi conference, which was excellent by the way, so I'll write instead about another fqxi-funded event that happened at the beginning of July in St...."

DNA Dust
3 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Aug. 13, 2007 @ 16:55 GMT
"Connecting to our ongoing discussion in these pages over the likelihood that we will be able to recognize alien life, the multiplicity of possible forms life probably takes, and the difficulties of..."

Questions about the foundations of the world: continental plate and glacier edition
2 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Jul. 30, 2007 @ 16:40 GMT
"I've recently returned from FQXI's inaugural conference in Reykjavik Iceland. After seeing (and driving through) the rift between the Atlantic and European plates, and later being told that the..."

Can We Recognize Aliens?
8 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jul. 21, 2007 @ 14:22 GMT
"The National Research Council has released a report on the search for alien life forms that warns -- rightly, in my view -- against "Terran" thinking. Terran, or Earth-based thinking, is the kind of..."

Why This Universe?
9 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Jun. 28, 2007 @ 19:50 GMT
"There's an excellent -- really -- article available for free download from Skeptic.com called "Why This Universe?" by Robert Kuhn. The title, disarmingly broad as it is (one thinks of "Love and..."

Open Source Science
2 posts  •  created by A. Garrett Lisi   •  Jun. 21, 2007 @ 18:26 GMT
"Nature (the magazine, not the universe) recently unveiled their new, open, online preprint archive: Nature Precedings It's intended to be the natural science equivalent to the physics arXiv. But..."

How do we fund Einstein without funding Crackpots?
28 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  Jun. 20, 2007 @ 17:32 GMT
"Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean has posted a very nice "Alternative science respectability checklist" . The extensive (and somewhat amusing...) commentary there brings up in places an important..."

Quantum Distractions
1 post  •  created by Matthew Leifer   •  Jun. 11, 2007 @ 22:25 GMT
"It's been a while since my last post and the number one rule of blogging is never to apologise for your absence. On the other hand, since fqxi is all about breaking the rules I'll say that I'm sorry,..."

Should we worry if we are weird?
8 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  May. 30, 2007 @ 18:06 GMT
"I've just finished reading an interesting paper by Hartle and Srednicki critiquing the assumption that 'we are typical', used in various cosmological model-testing arguments. Here is the basic..."

Baez on Quantum Foundations
2 posts  •  created by Matthew Leifer   •  May. 11, 2007 @ 12:10 GMT
"John Baez's protoblog This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics is about quantum foundational issues this week. It contains a discussion of some of the ideas that people working on the boundary of..."

Is the world made of wave-vectors?
71 posts  •  created by Matthew Leifer   •  May. 7, 2007 @ 20:44 GMT
"It seems appropriate to start my contribution to quantum foundational debates at fqxi with one of the most contentious issues in the subject - the status of the wave-vector. There are essentially two..."

Help Fight Negativity!
2 posts  •  created by A. Garrett Lisi   •  May. 3, 2007 @ 15:33 GMT
"Throughout his or her tortured existence, a mathematical physicist has two mortal enemies. These enemies are battled constantly, strike at any moment, and can merely wound or actually kill vast swaths..."

Quantum Grantmaking
17 posts  •  created by Anthony Aguirre   •  May. 1, 2007 @ 12:59 GMT
"At about 1 AM GMT on April 20, 2007, the Universe split into at least 32,768 nearly-identical copies. How? And did it really? The event was precipitated by yours truly gathering a..."

Vita Nuova
93 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 25, 2007 @ 21:46 GMT
"The days' big news, of course, was the second Earth. This was the discovery of the first "Earth-like" planet outside our solar system. The inglamorously named "581 c" is circling the red dwarf..."

Out of Plato's Cave?
183 posts  •  created by William Orem   •  Apr. 24, 2007 @ 14:19 GMT
"It's becoming something of a trope in contemporary science fiction: the character who believes himself to be in the real world finds out, through a series of enlightenment-style experiences, that what..."

Deferential Geometry
3 posts  •  created by A. Garrett Lisi   •  Apr. 19, 2007 @ 13:53 GMT
"We've had a series of late season storms sweep through Tahoe this past week. Flurries of snow swirl around briefly, then settle and melt in the spring sun. During a break in the clouds today C and I..."