The aestivation hypothesis
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk sereneand primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich...
View ArticleThermodynamics of Shakespeare’s plays
Thermodynamics of computation is a subfield of physics that explores what the fundamental laws of physics say about the relationship between energy and computation. It has important implications for...
View ArticleBreakfast at Exo-Tiffany’s
A couple of weeks ago, on September 14th, an international team of astronomers reported they have spotted signs of phosphine (PH3) in Venus’s atmosphere(1), in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell...
View ArticleLooking for a better home… 100 light years away!
One of the narratives of the dominant litany I hate more is “we are living in the best possible world”. It is the quintessential of conformism, and given present geopolitical and social turbulence,...
View ArticleA Spin Glass Model of Social Fragmentation
With the availability of internet and social media the interconnectedness of people has increased tremendously over the past decades. Over the same time span, an increasing level of fragmentation of...
View ArticleBlack Box Physics
Do you remember Chris Anderson’s prediction about “The End of Theory”? It was 2008 and big data was all the rage. Now a new algorithm, devised by physicist Hong Qin at the U.S. Department of Energy’s...
View ArticleRoger Rabbit, Don Quijote, Darts and how to avoid the fate of dinosaurs
Imagine you are Roger Rabbit playing a dangerous game of chance, choosing between two unopened doors. Behind door number one you get a 500-kilogram grand piano being dropped on your head from a height...
View ArticleBreakthrough Prizes. We need a mission
The winners of the 2023 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Mathematics, and Fundamental Physics were announced on Sept. 22: Each of these five main prizes is $3 million. In addition, 6 New Horizons...
View ArticleBeauty is in the telescope of the beholder
This is not an ethereal landscape of time-forgotten tombs. Nor are these soot-tinged fingers reaching out. These pillars, flush with gas and dust, enshroud stars that are slowly forming over many...
View ArticleWhere Parallel Lines Converge
Since 2020, the “sonification” project at CNASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data...
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