Wednesday, January 22, 2025
What Everyone Gets Wrong about AI
Most politicians totally misunderstand the trouble that artificial intelligence is going to bring. This isn’t a race for profit, it’s a race for power. And that power will be in the hands of a few very rich people. Does that sound like a good future?
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
There’s a Third Type of Particle and We Never Knew
Up until last week, physicists believed that matter is made up of only two types of particles: those whose spin has full-integer values (bosons) and those whose spin comes has half-integer values (fermions). But in a new paper, a group of researchers turned the world of physics upside down by mathematically proving that a third type of particles – the “paraparticles” are possible.
Saturday, January 18, 2025
New Study Finds Alien Life Must Be Similar To Us
Everybody probably wonders how aliens might look – if they even exist. Will they look like the classic bug-eyed martian men? Or maybe more like octopuses? Nobody really knows but a group of researchers recently claimed they have figured out universal rules for howlife must evolve.
Friday, January 17, 2025
Physicists Claim This $2 Billion Experiment Can Tell Us Why We Exist
Fermilab has spent almost $2 billion on its Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). Physicists have claimed that the experiment is worthwhile because learning more about neutrinos will tell us why we exist, why the universe hasn’t disappeared, and why the universe is full of something rather than nothing. None of that is true.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Community Notes are a Bad Idea
As the Trump inauguration approaches, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is changing its content moderation policies. They are doing away with fact-checkers and will instead implement community notes similar to X/Twitter’s. Rumours say that YouTube is working on a similar feature. I think this is a bad idea, and it won’t end well, both for social media companies and us.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Climate Engineering Is Coming, But Not Like You Think.
Climate engineering is a last ditch effort to protect humans from climate change – and we’re getting closer every day. Unfortunately, attempts of scientists to study the consequences of climate engineering have been stalled by environmental activists repeatedly. It’s a problem because climate engineering will come, and we would be better off if we understood the consequences.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Physicists Say They Know How Cold Fusion Works
Nuclear fusion reactors require massive amounts of heat and pressure to re-create conditions similar to those at the center of the Sun. Cold fusion (sometimes called “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions”) is the idea that we could make nuclear fusion work instead at much lower energy within certain materials, typically palladium. This research area has been plagued by fraud, hype, and just bad science. But now, a group of physicists say they've figured out the theory for how it works.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
Sunday, January 12, 2025
I Believe The Universe Might Be Able To Think.
In my second book, Existential Physics", I wrote about the possibility that the universe might be able to think. You might think I’m joking, or gone off the deep end, or both – but hear me out.
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Have Researchers Found The First Evidence For String Theory?
The BBC claims that researchers have found the first evidence for string theory, citing a recent discovery of long-wavelength gravitational waves that might indicate the existence of so-called “cosmic strings.” Crazier still, they think that this could allow time travel! But do these gravitational waves actually mean that cosmic strings exist? And what, if anything, does it have to do with time travel?
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Is Carbon Dioxide Removal the Next Stock Market Bubble?
According to the New York Times, carbon dioxide removal tech is “the new climate gold rush.” Investors have poured billions of dollars into the tech, and market analysts predict that it might become a trillion-dollar industry in the future. But does reality match the hype? Let’s look at what the numbers really say.
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
String Theory Can Be Proven Wrong, String Theorists Say
String theory is one of the leading theories of everything, but it’s been criticized for being impossible to prove wrong – if it can’t be falsified, there’s no way to test it against empirical evidence. Now, though, a group of scientists claim they’ve found a way to prove the theory wrong, making it more legitimate. I am not convinced.
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
Will We Get AGI In 2025?
The recent announcement of OpenAI’s o3 has caused rumours that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has arrived. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a model that’s smarter than humans at “a lot of hard problems” will be available by the end of 2025. But what does that even mean, and what can we expect for 2025?
Sunday, January 05, 2025
The Hydrogen Bubble Is Finally Bursting
Over the past decade, governments all over the world have invested heavily into the hydrogen economy, that is the idea to use hydrogen to store and transport energy from intermittent renewables. Over the past year, stocks of most key companies in the business have tumbled by as much as 50%. There are good reasons for this.
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Quantum Hype Goes Crazy. But Why?
Late last year, quantum computing stocks saw a massive spike in value, with companies like D-wave, Rigetti, and Ion Q jumping by more than 600%. What’s behind this sudden shift? Is it all hype, or something else? I recently came across an interesting recording of a panel discussion that sheds light on what is going on. Let’s take a look.
Thursday, January 02, 2025
Climate Scientists are Very Confused
Over the course of 2024, global temperatures hit record highs, yet again. Climate scientists are beginning to worry that temperatures are increasing faster than their models led them to expect. A paper that recently appeared said that the reason for the rapid warming is a reduction in certain types of clouds. If this is correct, and if that’s a trend, it’s very bad news. Welcome to 2025.
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Dark Energy Is Not Real, New Data Analysis Finds
According to our current understanding of astrophysics, the universe is not only expanding, but also growing at an ever-increasing rate. The most-accepted model for this expansion attributes the accelerated expansion to dark energy – but what if it’s wrong? A group of astrophysicists have offered up a different explanation, which they call the “timescape” model. They claim that it fits the data better than dark energy. Let’s take a look.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
You can also use AI to create your own quizzes on my platform.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
You can also use AI to create your own quizzes on my platform.
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