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
181 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?
299 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!
220 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
27 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?
245 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
482 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
6 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
12 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?
178 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?
515 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?
4 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
16 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
2 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,..."

Judgment Day at the End of Time (the Essay Contest)
296 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..."

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
15 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
8 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
30 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
63 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
25 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
4 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
84 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
419 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!
7 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
72 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
193 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
101 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
7 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?
27 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..."