Physics

Archive for Physics

BMS ep 87: Sabine Hossenfelder on “Dark Matter” in Physics, and the Limitations of Current Climate Models

Here’s the podcast episode with links, and below is the video.

This Is Setting Off My BS-Pattern Detector

This is a really smart guy; my son and I read (a lot of) his book Our Mathematical Universe. But around 14:15 when he starts asking questions, instead of saying, “Nothing,” I can think of a different one-word answer that’s far more accurate. I think the most obviously wrong step he takes, is to say […]

Here Comes the Sun

I was looking up “winter solstice” just to make sure I was thinking about the term right, and I came across this cool diagram. Although we all know (if vaguely) that the tilt of the Earth explains the seasons and the length of the day (though I think these are subtly different effects), for some […]

This Is What It Looks Like When Scientists Don’t Understand Something

Tyler Cowen linked to this Nature article, which I find unintentionally hilarious. The first sentence alone is magnificent: “Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe.” I beseech you, please do not lecture me in […]

The Origin and Structure of the Universe

I saw “Is Genesis History?” a few weeks ago and thought it was very well done. Given its heroic (some would say impossible) task–namely, to interview a string of PhDs to say that it’s not crazy to believe in the Genesis account–I thought it was very impressive. I’m not saying it is a slam dunk […]

Bohmian Mechanics

How did I never hear about this until this week? Anyway, it kinda sorta uses the distinction I was getting at in the comments over at Steve Landsburg’s blog. Then it purports to explain subatomic events without resort to weird quantum stuff. And best of all, it’s got “Bohm” in the title–like Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, […]