Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPhysics

deep-space-travel-part-of-the-first-image-from-nasas-new-james-webb-space-telescope-has-been-used-in-this-composition-credits-nasa-esa-csa-and-stscihttpswwwnasagovwebbfirstimages-stockpack-adobe-stock
Deep space travel. Part of the first image from NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope has been used in this composition. CREDITS: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScIhttps://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
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News
Date
August 20, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics
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Theoretical Physicist: Can’t Avoid a Beginning for Our Universe

Recent shakeups from the James Webb Space Telescope images invite fundamental questions like, Does the universe have a beginning?
News
August 20, 2022
6
Philosophy, Physics

The recent flutter over whether the James Webb Space Telescope’s data stream is a plus or a minus for the Big Bang and the Standard Model of the universe touched on some interesting cosmological issues. The Big Bang and the Standard Model support the assumption that our universe is finite and had a beginning. Could it have been eternal — with an infinite past instead of a beginning? The trouble is, as we saw last Saturday, when we try to apply concepts like infinity — typically used in mathematics — to the physical world, the basis of reality can collapse into absurdity. The world science observes seems to be finite; time starts at a certain point, flows in one direction, Read More ›

glowing-huge-nebula-with-young-stars-space-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Glowing huge nebula with young stars. Space background
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News
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August 14, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics
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Has a Superintellect Monkeyed With Our Universe’s Physics?

Groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle was a staunch atheist but then he tried showing that carbon, essential to life, could form easily. Steve Meyer explains.
News
August 14, 2022
9
Philosophy, Physics

In this second portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Steve Meyer discusses the ways in which groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) dealt with the fact that the universe seems fine-tuned for life. Hoyle’s widely cited comment on the subject was “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” That was an unsettling idea for Hoyle, who was a well-known atheist, and he certainly sought ways around it. How did he fare? Dr. Meyer, author of The Return of the God Hypothesis (Harper One, 2021), reflects on Hoyle’s struggle. Read More ›

the-big-bang-stockpack-adobe-stock
The Big Bang
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News
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August 13, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics
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James Webb Space Telescope Shows Big Bang Didn’t Happen? Wait…

The unexpected new data coming back from the telescope are inspiring panic among astronomers
News
August 13, 2022
7
Philosophy, Physics

Physicist Eric J. Lerner comes to the point: To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!” Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The Read More ›

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Time in space. 3d rendering illustration
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News
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August 6, 2022
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Physics
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Did Physicists Open a Portal to Extra Time Dimension, As Claimed?

That’s the way the story reads at Scientific American. But experimental physicist Rob Sheldon says not so fast…
News
August 6, 2022
6
Physics

At Scientific American, we were told last month: “Physicists have devised a mind-bending error-correction technique that could dramatically boost the performance of quantum computers”: “It is very exciting to see this unusual phase of matter realized in an actual experiment, especially because the mathematical description is based on a theoretical ‘extra’ time dimension,” says team member Philipp Dumitrescu, who was at the Flatiron Institute in New York City when the experiments were carried out. A paper describing the work was published in Nature on July 20. Opening a portal to an extra time dimension—even just a theoretical one—sounds thrilling, but it was not the physicists’ original plan. “We were very much motivated to see what new types of phases could Read More ›

crystal-prism-stockpack-adobe-stock
Crystal Prism
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Author
News
Date
August 2, 2022
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Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Physics
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Schrödinger Believed That There Was Only One Mind in the Universe

The quantum physicist and author of the famous Cat Paradox believed that our individual minds are not unique but rather like the reflected light from prisms
News
August 2, 2022
5
Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Physics

Consciousness researcher Robert Prentner and cognitive psychologist will tell a prestigious music and philosophy festival in London next month that great physicist Donald Hoffman, quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) believed that “The total number of minds in the universe is one.” That is, a universal Mind accounts for everything. In a world where many scientists strive mightily to explain how the human mind can arise from non-living matter, Prentner and Hoffman will tell the HowtheLightGetsIn festival in London (September 17–18, 2022) that the author of the famous Cat paradox was hardly a materialist: In 1925, just a few months before Schrödinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he Read More ›

businessman-and-technology-stockpack-adobe-stock
businessman and technology
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Author
News
Date
July 16, 2022
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Global Technology, Physics, Science Fiction
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Sci-Fi Predictions for the Future That Really Happened

The 1950s was often right too. It may depend on how badly we need something to happen
News
July 16, 2022
4
Global Technology, Physics, Science Fiction

Last week, we looked at a 1964 prediction of life in the 2020s that definitely did not happen: chimpanzees driving cars and doing housework. Back then, people who recognized that chimpanzees were intelligent seem to have known little about their natural characteristics. But in fairness, many predictions did come to pass, including the pocket-sized phone that could relay facial images, predicted in a 1956 magazine article: The journalist, Robert Beason, wrote about features such as touchtone dialing, video calling, voice recognition and small colour screens capable of being used as tiny televisions, built into compact devices. His interviewee, Harold Osborne, the retiring chief engineer of American Telephone & Telegraph also foresaw other common features of modern smartphones, such as quick Read More ›

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Terrariums
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Author
News
Date
July 10, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction
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Dartmouth Physicist Slams Matrix Idea That Life Is an Aliens’ Sim

A number of prominent people have taken philosopher Nick Bostrom’s idea that our universe is a computer sim seriously
News
July 10, 2022
5
Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction

Matrix fans, take heed: Dartmouth College physicist Marcelo Gleiser is not a fan of the idea that we are all living in a giant simulation created by intelligent aliens. He takes issue with it for ethical reasons as well as physics ones: “It is little more than a fancy excuse for escapist fantasizing.” Well, some prominent people in our world are escapists! That would include science broadcaster Neil deGrasse Tyson, driverless car entrepreneur Elon Musk, and former Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. Gleiser, author of The Island of Knowledge (2014), traces the idea that our universe is a computer simulation by advanced aliens to an influential 2003 paper by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute and Read More ›

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little bird flying out of bird cage, think outside the box
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News
Date
July 3, 2022
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Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Physics, Science
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Why Free Will Is Philosophically and Scientifically Sound

As Michael Egnor points out in a recent podcast, it has been nearly a century since determinism was toppled in physics
News
July 3, 2022
10
Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Physics, Science

In “Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Humans Have Free Will” a recent podcast at ID the Future, geoscientist Casey Luskin discussed science-based arguments against free will with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor (13:05 min). Are these arguments a serious challenge or are they just wishful thinking on the part of materialists? Here’s a partial transcript: Casey Luskin: Now I want to continue our conversation, Dr. Egnor, from the previous podcast, where we were talking about your debates on evolution news and views, responding to Dr. Jerry Coyne, the well known evolutionary biologist from the University of Chicago. Coyne is what you might call an honest atheist in that he’s willing to admit the implications that atheism and Darwinian materialism have for concepts like free Read More ›

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Twisted watch face representing the infinite time spiral
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News
Date
June 19, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics, Relationships
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Can the Future Reach Back and Affect the Past?

Researchers say that only elementary particles can really time travel but there is another way…
News
June 19, 2022
7
Philosophy, Physics, Relationships

If the future influenced the past, that would be retrocausality. As Victor Bhaura puts it, Retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another one) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past. Victor Bhaura, “Retrocausality — Future Influences Past Information Before Occurrence Of An Event” at Medium (June 8, 2022) Bhaura reminds us of a limerick called “Relativity” from 1923: There was a young lady named BrightWhose speed was far faster than light;She set out one dayIn a relative wayAnd returned on the previous Read More ›

colorful-background-made-of-fallen-autumn-leaves-stockpack-adobe-stock
Colorful background made of fallen autumn leaves.
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News
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June 19, 2022
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Biology, Philosophy, Physics, Religion
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Did Carl Sagan Think the Universe Shows No Design?

Like Fred Hoyle, he seems to have thought it showed design — until that view became politically associated with religion
News
June 19, 2022
6
Biology, Philosophy, Physics, Religion

It’s a complicated story. At one time, a religious skeptic like astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996) could write: The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle — another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn’t matter what you look like, or what you’re made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you’ll find it. It’s already here. It’s inside everything. You don’t have to leave your Read More ›

time-concept-hi-res-digitally-generated-image-stockpack-adobe-stock
Time concept. Hi-res digitally generated image.
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Author
News
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June 12, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction
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A Form of Time Travel That Might Be Possible…

In world of entropy, time runs in one direction and reversing it would create impossible contradictions. physicists say
News
June 12, 2022
7
Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction

Of the four dimensions, only time is mysterious. We can play games with the other three, the spatial dimensions — imagining, for example, 2- or even 1-dimensional universes, as in Flatland (1884). But in the end, they follow the rules. Time goes in one direction only and time travel — moving time in the other direction is easy to imagine in principle but full of nearly impossible conundrums in practice. Astrophysicists struggle to figure it out. Our brains are adapted to keeping track of the present (the experience of “now”) and the past (memory). But that only tells us how we come to be aware of time. It doesn’t tell us what time is. We get a bit closer, says Read More ›

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Data.
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Author
News
Date
June 2, 2022
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Artificial Intelligence, Environment, Physics, Science
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World’s Fastest Computer Breaks Into the Exascale

How fast? “If each person on Earth completed one calculation per second, it would take more than 4 years to do what an exascale computer can do in 1 second.”
News
June 2, 2022
4
Artificial Intelligence, Environment, Physics, Science

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee announced earlier this week that its Frontier Supercomputer, having broken the exascale barrier, is the world’s fastest. It can do more than a quintillion calculations per second: The Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory earned the top ranking today as the world’s fastest on the 59th TOP500 list, with 1.1 exaflops of performance. The system is the first to achieve an unprecedented level of computing performance known as exascale, a threshold of a quintillion calculations per second. Frontier features a theoretical peak performance of 2 exaflops, or two quintillion calculations per second, making it ten times more powerful than ORNL’s Summit system. News, “Frontier supercomputer Read More ›

time-and-space-travel-concept-abstract-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Time and space travel concept abstract background
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Author
News
Date
May 29, 2022
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Arts & Culture, Physics
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What Would Happen If We Traveled at 2x the Speed of Light?

We can’t reach the speed of light just by speeding things up, let alone exceed it. But are there other ways?
News
May 29, 2022
5
Arts & Culture, Physics

Recently, a 13-year-old in Mumbai asked philosopher of mathematics Sam Baron what would happen if someone were to move — hypothetically — at twice the speed of light. Baron replied, As far as we know, it’s not possible for a person to move at twice the speed of light. In fact, it’s not possible for any object with the kind of mass you or I have to move faster than the speed of light. Sam Baron, “Curious Kids: what would happen if someone moved at twice the speed of light?” at The Conversation (May 24, 2022) He explains why not as follows, To accelerate an object with mass, we have to add energy. The faster we want the object to Read More ›

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set of alien planet isolated on black background, nearby exoplanets (3d science illustration)
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News
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May 14, 2022
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Arts & Culture, Physics
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Among 5000 Known Exoplanets, There Are Some Really Strange Ones

Planets so strange that they prompt a rethink of the “planetary rulebook.”
News
May 14, 2022
6
Arts & Culture, Physics

PBS tells us that Hoth, the frozen planet in Star Wars, is not just imagination. It has a real-life counterpart among the exoplanets. Granted, astronomers call it OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb but even they think of it as “Hoth.” Here’s the video. Such strange planets are prompting a rethink of the “planetary rulebook.” Another strange one: Narrator: 51 Pegasi b is a gas giant, around half the mass of Jupiter, but so close to its star that part of its atmosphere may have been ripped away… Hannah Wakeford: These planets are baked by their stars’ radiation, the temperatures are in the thousands. David Charbonneau: Many astronomers didn’t believe it, because the planet was in the wrong place. It was enormous. It was massive, Read More ›

Independent Thinking
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Author
News
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May 13, 2022
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Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Physics
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A British Philosopher Looks For a Way to Redefine Free Will

Julian Baggini’s proposed new approach assumes the existence of the very qualities that only a traditional view of the mind offers
News
May 13, 2022
6
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Physics

British philosopher Julian Baggini, author of The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well (2021) argues against the idea of free will, as commonly understood (voluntarist free will). Citing the fact that the world is controlled by physics, he writes, No matter how free we feel, our understanding of nature tells us that no choice originates in us but traces its history throughout our histories and our environments. Even leaving aside physics, it seems obvious that, at the moment of any choice, the conditions for that choice have already been set, and to be able to escape them would be no more than the ability to generate random actions. And if all that Read More ›

light-teleport-with-business-panels-stockpack-adobe-stock
Light teleport with business panels
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post
Author
News
Date
April 9, 2022
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Arts & Culture, Biology, Physics
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Can We Teleport? Find a Wormhole? Survive the Universe’s Death?

Many ideas, once thought science fiction, have become science fact. How will these ones fare?
News
April 9, 2022
6
Arts & Culture, Biology, Physics

If anyone thinks that, by definition, none of this stuff could possibly happen, it’s worth remembering that many people would have said that decades ago about invisibility or the bionic hand. But here we are. Some things are impossible in principle, some in practice. In other cases, all we can do is see where we are in relation to the problem. Could humans be teleported to Mars? With teleportation, as in Star Trek, geologists could get from Houston to Mars to pick up some rocks injust minutes. Science writer Marcus Chown tells us that one reason the feat was considered impossible in the recent past was the inability to be certain of every atom in a human body, due to Read More ›

alien-planet-landscape-beautiful-forest-the-surface-of-an-exoplanet-stockpack-adobe-stock
alien planet landscape, beautiful forest the surface of an exoplanet
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post
Author
News
Date
April 2, 2022
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Biology, Chemistry, Physics
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NASA Develops a Scale for Assessing the Chances of ET Life

We’ve come a long way from mere snatches of (maybe) information to the need for standards in evaluating the expected incoming mass
News
April 2, 2022
5
Biology, Chemistry, Physics

Geoscientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, co-author with William Bains of The Cosmic Zoo (2017) and a number of other books on planetary habitability, thinks science needs standardized scales for assessing claims about extraterrestrial life. There are lots of claims: life on Mars detected by the Viking landers (1976), fossil life in a Mars-origin meteorite (1996), phosphine on Venus (2020) … all have some evidence in their favor. But scientists need a way to express degrees of certainty. Recently, NASA has proposed the Confidence of Life Detection Scale (CoLD), featuring seven benchmarks. The main problem is that evidence that might suggest life could just as easily be a non-biological process: Consider Jupiter’s moon Europa. A large asteroid impact could have volatilized ice on Read More ›

Girls eye with paint and earth
Girls eye with paint and earth
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post
Author
News
Date
April 1, 2022
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Philosophy of Mind, Physics
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New Scientist Offers a Sympathetic Account of Panpsychism

A serious, long form article shows that physicalism (“the mind is just what the brain does”) is failing
News
April 1, 2022
5
Philosophy of Mind, Physics

Panpsychism, the view that all nature participates in consciousness, has been growing under the radar for some time in science. But it is now coming into plainer view. New Scientist is one of the last places one might have expected to find a serious, long-form account of panpsychism — one that, in the context, amounts to a defense. Yet that’s just what science writer and filmmaker Thomas Lewton has been permitted by the editors to do. He tells us about his own journey at his site: “Studying physics, I thought telescopes and particle colliders would offer firm answers, but instead they raised more questions.” And at New Scientist, he tells us why: It can seem as if there is an Read More ›

view-of-a-white-marble-hindu-temple-stockpack-adobe-stock
View of a white marble hindu temple
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post
Author
News
Date
March 28, 2022
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Biology, Physics, Religion
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What Do Hindus Think About the Big Bang? The Cyclic Universe?

Hinduism posits a creator God but assumes the creation of cyclic universes
News
March 28, 2022
12
Biology, Physics, Religion

In last week’s Mind Matters News podcast, “Hinduism and the beginning of the universe,” neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviewed Arjuna Gallagher, a Hindu in New Zealand. The first podcast looked at what the world’s 1.2 billion Hindus generally think about the mind and the second explored the Hindu view of free will and evil. Gallagher hosts a YouTube channel called Theology Unleashed, which has featured many guests discussing the spiritual dimension of our lives — for example, philosopher David Bentley Hart and neuroscientist Mark Solms (along with Egnor). https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-179-Arjuna-Gallagher-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 A partial transcript, notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow: The Big Bang and cyclical universes Michael Egnor: How do Hindus understand creation? Is the universe eternal? Was it created at a Read More ›

science-and-research-of-the-universe-spiral-galaxy-and-physical-formulas-concept-of-knowledge-and-education-stockpack-adobe-stock
Science and research of the universe, spiral galaxy and physical formulas, concept of knowledge and education
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post
Author
News
Date
March 26, 2022
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Mathematics, Physics
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Unexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe

For example, brilliant physicist Richard Feynman called 1/137, the fine structure constant, “a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”
News
March 26, 2022
7
Mathematics, Physics

In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure of our universe too — and why they are critical does not make obvious sense. ➤ Perhaps the most fundamental and mysterious one is the fine structure constant of the universe: A seemingly harmless, random number with no units or dimensions has cropped up in so many places in physics and seems to control one of the most fundamental interactions in the universe. Its name is the fine-structure constant, and it’s a measure of the strength of the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic force. The current Read More ›