But according to Richard Feynman and the laws of physics, that intuition is deeply misleading.
At the fundamental level, the equations that describe reality donât care which way time flows. The same mathematics behind Quantum Electrodynamics â the most precisely tested theory in science â work just as well forward in time as they do backward.
In this video, we explore why the past may not be as âgoneâ as it feels.
đ„ *In this video, we explore:* â Why the laws of physics donât distinguish past from future â How particles can be treated as moving backward in time in calculations â What time symmetry really means â and what it doesnât â Why our experience of time is not fundamental â How Feynman explained time without mysticism.
This isnât philosophy or speculation. This is how physicists actually calculate the universe.
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the properties of the perovskite family of materials can be used to create so-called quantum bits. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, pave the way for more affordable materials in future quantum computers.
According to the researchers from Linköping University, Sweden, behind the study, few within the field believed it would be possible. The reason is that the atoms in perovskite materials should, in theory, interact so strongly that the qubit would collapse before the calculation could be completed. However, the experiments conducted by the Linköping team show that it works.
âOur findings open up an entirely new research field,â says Yuttapoom Puttisong, associate professor at Linköping University.
Physics and phenomenology are usually taken to inhabit different worlds. Physics aims at a description of objective reality in mathematical terms. Phenomenologyâthe philosophical movement inaugurated by Edmund Husserlâis an a priori investigation into consciousness and into the ways things appear in experience. Physics deals with equations, invariants, and symmetries, aiming to represent reality minus observers; phenomenology seems to concern precisely what physics leaves out: subjectivity, consciousness, meaning. If the two meet at all, it is only in polite, but ultimately inconsequential, interdisciplinary dialogue.
My claim is that this picture is mistaken. Physics does not stand outside phenomenology. It presupposes the very structures phenomenology seeks to analyseâabove all, the structured correlation between subject and object through which objectivity first becomes intelligible. The task, therefore, is not to unite two distant domains, but to recognize a relation that has been there from the beginning.
To make this more tangible, consider what physics means by objectivity. Contrary to the image sometimes promoted in popular scienceâobjectivity as detachment from all observersâin spacetime physics, objectivity is defined by invariance across observers. A physical description is deemed objective if it holds regardless of the coordinate frame in which it is expressed.
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He wrote the award-winning essay, âAn Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death,â in which he argues that the transmissive theory of consciousness may actually be more consistent with emerging scientific insights than the dominant assumption that the brain generates consciousness.
In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Rouleau shares the main arguments from his essay, which touch upon his collaboration with Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the âGod Helmet,â and his work with Michael Levin on âmind blindnessââthe idea that science may be searching for mind in too restricted a place by focusing almost exclusively on neurons.
Further reading and scientific references discussed in this video:
Rouleauâs BICS Essay: âAn Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.â https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/indeâŠ
Rouleau, N., Levin, M., et al. (2025) (Preprint; forthcoming in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society). Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments. https://tinyurl.com/439rrn8z.
Materials from a new class of magnets could host permanent dissipationless spin currents when they enter a superconducting state.
Superconductors are famous for transporting electric charge with zero resistance. This ability underpins technologies such as MRI scanners, quantum computers, and sensitive magnetometers known as superconducting quantum interference devices. However, in the field of spintronicsâwhich seeks to process information using electron spin rather than chargeâachieving a similar long-range dissipationless transport has remained elusive. In ordinary metals, electron spins are highly susceptible to scattering and spin-orbit coupling, both of which cause spin currents to decay over short distances. Although research in superconducting spintronics based on ferromagnets has made progress [1, 2], ferromagnets produce stray magnetic fields that interfere with external circuit elements, and their internal magnetic fields tend to destroy superconductivity.
Electrons are tiny and constantly in motion. How they behave in a crystal lattice determines key material properties: electrical conductivity, magnetism, or novel quantum effects. Anyone aiming to develop the information technologies of tomorrow must understand what electrons do. At Forschungszentrum JĂŒlich, a new tool is now available for this purpose: a momentum microscope that was fully developed and built on site. âInternationally, we are currently seeing rapidly growing interest in this method,â explains Dr. Christian Tusche from Forschungszentrum JĂŒlich.
Dr. Christian Tusche already played a key role in advancing momentum microscopy during his time at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle. Since moving to JĂŒlich in 2015, he has continued to drive its development forward. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the Kai Siegbahn Prize in 2018 and the Innovation Award on Synchrotron Radiation in 2016. Most recently, he published a review article on the method in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
In recent years, numerous instruments have been commissioned at synchrotron facilities and X-ray lasers around the world. âThe new device we built together with the Mechanical Workshop is a real innovation. There is currently nothing like it available from any specialist company,â says Dr. Tusche.
Does the universe need observers to exist? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary OâReilly explore questions about entropy, spontaneous symmetry breaking, spectroscopy and more with astrophysicist Charles Liu.
Does the universe require observers for information to exist? From Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen interpretation to modern neuroscience and philosophy, the crew explores whether measurement creates reality or reveals it. How does the double-slit experiment fit into this? Are wave and particle behaviors determined by how we measure them?
The conversation turns to information itself. What do physicists mean by âinformationâ? How is entropy connected to hidden information in a system? We discuss entropy through everyday examples like coin flips, burning wood, and boiling water. How does this relate to quantum computing? We explore how astronomers separate cosmic redshift from stellar motion using spectroscopy, how interstellar dust and extinction curves complicate observations, and why mapping that dust is both a challenge and a source of discovery.
We discuss why the Big Bang didnât form a black hole, how spontaneous symmetry breaking may have split the fundamental forces, and whether science can meaningfully investigate the universeâs earliest moments. Wrapping up, the team looks ahead to multi-messenger astronomy, next-generation telescope technology, exotic ideas about the speed of light, and how information continues to reshape what we know about the cosmos.
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Matter. What is reality? And if itâs so fundamental, why do we all experience it so differently? Join us for a marathon through the discoveries and paradoxes that suggest modern physics is pointing to a deeply uncomfortable truth: that our picture of the universe is far from complete, and what we think about reality may be completely wrong.
00:00 Reality Is Already Broken 00:57 Scientists Build a Window into the Fourth Dimension 23:16 The Physicist Who Says Reality Is Not What It Seems 1:28:45 The Black Hole Paradox That Keeps Physicists Awake at Night 1:50:40 Sean Carroll: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics 2:46:40 What are the foundations of reality?
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