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Category: physics – Page 4

The juridical metaphor in physics has ancient roots. Anaximander, in the 6th century BCE, was perhaps the first to invoke the concept of cosmic justice, speaking of natural entities paying “penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time” (Kirk et al., 2010, p. 118). This anthropomorphizing tendency persisted through history, finding its formal expression in Newton’s Principia Mathematica, where he articulated his famous “laws” of motion. Newton, deeply influenced by his theological views, conceived of these laws as divine edicts — mathematical expressions of God’s will imposed upon a compliant universe (Cohen & Smith, 2002, p. 47).

This legal metaphor has served science admirably for centuries, providing a framework for conceptualizing the universe’s apparent obedience to mathematical principles. Yet it carries implicit assumptions worth examining. Laws suggest a lawgiver, hinting at external agency. They imply prescription rather than description — a subtle distinction with profound philosophical implications. As physicist Paul Davies (2010) observes, “The very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm” (p. 74).

Enter the computational metaphor — a framework more resonant with our digital age. The universe, in this conceptualization, executes algorithms rather than obeying laws. Space, time, energy, and matter constitute the data structure upon which these algorithms operate. This shift is more than semantic; it reflects a fundamental reconceptualization of physical reality that aligns remarkably well with emerging theories in theoretical physics and information science.

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A new analysis of the sky has finally confirmed where the missing half of the Universe’s visible matter has been hiding.

In the space around galaxies, it lurks as huge, invisible clouds of ionized hydrogen. Normally, this would be impossible to see – but a large international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has developed a technique that reveals its hiding places, out there in the darkness amidst the stars.

Survey programs confirm the missing half of the Universe’s material takes the form of an intergalactic mist of hydrogen expelled farther from the active cores of galaxies than anybody previously thought.

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By breaking a decades-old paradigm and rethinking the role that the dimension of time plays in physics, researchers from the University of Rostock and the University of Birmingham have discovered novel flashes of light that come from and go into nothingness—like magic at first glance but with deep mathematical roots that protect against all kinds of outside perturbations. Their findings have now been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Time is the strange dimension: Unlike its spatial siblings, it is a one-way street as the clock only ever ticks forward and never backward. Scientists have long been aware of time’s quirks, with the British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington musing about this “arrow of time” in his 1927 lectures. Nevertheless, whether it be because of or despite its uniqueness, time as a dimension for physics to play out in has long received far less attention than space.

Recently though, rapid progress in the research on so-called spatiotemporal crystals, objects with repeating patterns in time and space, has inspired a rethinking of the role time should play in our understanding of physics. Additionally, this has spawned the question of whether the uniqueness of time can be more than a mere quirk and instead lead to new effects ultimately useful in applications.

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Astronomers analyzing Webb’s data have found that early galaxies seem to favor a particular spin direction—an observation that defies the Cosmological Principle. If confirmed, this could suggest that the universe was born with a fundamental rotation, pointing toward radical theories like black hole cosmology.

But this is just the beginning. The telescope has also spotted galaxies forming far earlier than they should have, some potentially dating back to just 168 million years after the Big Bang. These findings contradict existing models of cosmic evolution, raising the possibility that our understanding of time, expansion, and even reality itself may be flawed.

Adding to the mystery, supermassive black holes have been detected in the early universe, defying expectations of how they should form. Could they be remnants of a previous cosmic cycle? Some researchers are now revisiting the Cyclical Universe Theory, which suggests our universe may be part of an infinite loop of creation and destruction.

With every new revelation, JWST is not just answering questions—it’s creating new ones. Are we on the verge of a fundamental shift in physics, or is there a simpler explanation we have yet to uncover?

The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered some of the most perplexing discoveries in modern astronomy, challenging everything we thought we knew about the cosmos. From galaxies that appear too massive and too developed for their age to a potential imbalance in galactic rotation, these findings are shaking the foundations of the Big Bang model. Could our universe itself have been born inside a black hole?

Continue reading “JWST Advanced Deep Survey Suggests Our Universe is Trapped inside a Supermassive Black Hole” | >

How likely is it that we live in a simulation? Are virtual worlds real?

In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philosophers begun to assess the statistical probabilities that our shared reality could in fact be some kind of representation rather than a physical place.
As we become more open to these possibilities, other difficult questions start to come into focus. How can we create a common language to talk about matter and energy, that bridges the simulated and simulating worlds. Who could have created such a simulation? Could it be an artificial intelligence rather than a biological or conscious being? Do we have ethical obligations to the virtual beings we interact with in our virtual worlds and to what extent are those beings and worlds ‘real’? The list is long and mind bending.

Fortunately, to untangle our thoughts on this, we have one of the best known philosophers of all things mind bending in the world, Dr. David Chalmers; who has just released a book ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy’ about this very topic. Dr. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specialising in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. He’s the founder of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference’ at which he coined the term in 1994 The Hard Problem of Consciousness, kicking off a renaissance in consciousness studies, which has been increasing in popularity and research output ever since.

Donate here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes.

What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Short Intro.
06:00 Synesthesia.
08:27 The science of knowing the nature of reality.
11:02 The Simulation Hypothesis explained.
15:25 The statistical probability evaluation.
18:00 Knowing for sure is beyond the reaches of science.
19:00 You’d only have to render the part you’re interacting with.
20:00 Clues from physics.
22:00 John Wheeler — ‘It from bit’
23:32 Eugene Wigner: measurement as a conscious observation.
27:00 Information theory as a useful but risky hold-all language tool.
34:30 Virtual realities are real and virtual interactions are meaningful.
37:00 Ethical approaches to Non-player Characters (NPC’s) and their rights.
38:45 Will advanced AI be conscious?
42:45 Is god a hacker in the universe up? Simulation Theology.
44:30 Simulation theory meets the argument for the existence of God from design.
51:00 The Hard problem of consciousness applies to AI too.
55:00 Testing AI’s consciousness with the Turing test.
59:30 Ethical value applied to immoral actions in virtual worlds.

References:

Continue reading “THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS & VIRTUAL WORLDS — David Chalmers PHD #16” | >

A research group at the University of Stuttgart has manipulated light through its interaction with a metal surface so that it exhibits entirely new properties. The researchers have published their findings in Nature Physics.

“Our results add another chapter to the emerging field of skyrmion research,” proclaims Prof. Harald Giessen, head of the Fourth Physics Institute at the University of Stuttgart, whose group achieved this breakthrough. The team demonstrated the existence of “skyrmion bags” of light on the surface of a metal layer.

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A study published in Physical Review Letters outlines a new approach for extracting information from binary systems by looking at the entire posterior distribution instead of making decisions based on individual parameters.

Since their detection in 2015, have become a vital tool for astronomers studying the early universe, the limits of general relativity and cosmic events such as compact .

Binary systems consist of two massive objects, like neutron stars or black holes, spiraling toward each other. As they merge together, they generate ripples in spacetime—gravitational waves—which give us information about both objects.

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Einstein imagined gravitational waves over a hundred years ago, but it wasn’t until 2016 that technology finally caught up. Now, researchers are pushing the boundaries again – this time with the help of an AI named Urania. Developed by Dr. Mario Krenn and his team, Urania has designed a series of

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Dark matter is a confounding concept that teeters on the leading edges of cosmology and physics. We don’t know what it is or how exactly it fits into our understanding of the universe. We only know that its unseen mass is a critical part of the cosmos.

Astronomers know dark matter exists. They can tell by the way galaxies rotate, by exploiting gravitational lensing, and by analyzing fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. But new research suggests that there might be another way to detect its presence.

The research is “Dark Matter (S)pins the Planet,” and it’s available on the arXiv preprint server. Haihao Shi, from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the lead author. The co-authors are all from Chinese research institutions.

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Whar may happen when the first truly smart robots appear, based on brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human.

Train them to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply.
within perhaps a century, they will displace humans in most jobs.
In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.
Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics.
and use ofstandard theories indicate a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems.

Associate Professor of Economics, and received his Ph.D in 1997 in social sciences from Caltech. Joined George Mason’s economics faculty in 1999 after completing a two year post-doc at U.C Berkely. His major fields of interest include health policy, regulation, and formal political theory. Recent book: The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule The Earth. Oxford University Press, 2016.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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