Banner
Does Chat GPT Think, Is AI Research Physics, And Are We In A Universe Based On Voxels?

The answers to the title questions are, No, Yes, and why not.  What I have been doing instead...

A New Theory of Everything That Sets Scalars Equal To Tensors Looks Like Nonsense.

If your theory of everything has tensors set equal to scalars then it is wrong. Simply put...

Robert Zubrin's Credible Proposal to Save the ISS From Destruction.

Robert Zubrin, a great Aerospace Engineer and advocate for human space exploration, has a credible...

The Northern Lights Seen As Far South As Arizona. G5 Magnetic Storm To Continue Through Sunday.

The northern lights as one would expect and see them if they were in the frozen reaches of Canada...

User picture.
picture for Hank Campbellpicture for Robert H Olleypicture for Fred Phillipspicture for Chidambaram Rameshpicture for Patrick Lockerbypicture for Jerry Decker
Hontas FarmerRSS Feed of this column.

My research focuses on astrophysics from massive star formation to astroparticle physics. Born and raised in Chicagoland I have lived in Bellwood, IL since 1984 and attended public schools here... Read More »

Blogroll

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Chaya Raichick also known as LibsOfTikTok on Twitter has stated that LGBT people are evil and want to recruit children to be gay. This is not a matter of opinion, but much science has been done looking into the causation of LGBT identification. It is clear that the LGBT mating strategies found in humans are a matter of biology and neurology not just psychology and sociology. All those sciences, yes all of those are science, play a part. For instance, biologically transgender people are born (largely) one sex or the other. At the same time biologically and neurologically transgender people are born with brains that execute the mating strategy (gender) of the opposite sex.

The national ignition facility has reported at a press conference that they have gotten more energy out of a controlled thermonuclear reaction than was put in.  We’ve gotten out more energy from thermonuclear fusion before, using bombs.  The issue is getting the energy out in a way that is useful.  This relates to Elon Musk in that he is, like fusion power, one who will over promise but under perform.  The key difference that the researchers would tell you is that the media over promises and hypes up their work.  Meanwhile Elon Musk will overpromise on technology, free speech, space travel, tunnels, solar roofs, stock prices, and everything else.  These are things his “Twitter files” PR agents like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and othe

In science the things that have a tiny probability of happening are the things which make for the best headlines.  News reporters cover crashes, not safe landings or auto races where nothing goes wrong.  Transgender care for youth is like this.  Reuters and other media know that the trainwreck will get ratings. They wrote “No definitive research has established a link between social media use and gender identity among youths.”  Then published a story that presents this very thing as being the case ignoring all evidence.
 

Republicans tend to favor big, impressive science projects. While the Democrats have a portion of their constituency which believes, against all numerical proof, that money spent on space science could cure world hunger. This stereotype is only partially true but to the extent it is true the divided government result is great for science. This ensures that there is no constituency in Congress that will be able to agitate for cutting budgets for organs such as NASA, the Department of Energy (high energy physics), the National Science Foundation (so many things) and so on.

The most important service to physics can be revealing that there are problems to be solved rather than solving them.   As the Nobel laureates, prize winners, Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser  did by demonstrating the fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics.  Anton Zeilinger who also won for his key work on teleportation and quantum information.  These are kin to the fundamentals of electricity in terms of how they may effect human technology in the future. 
Spooky action at a distance 

The solution to the issue of dark matter and dark energy may be found by way of modifying Einstein's equations of General Relativity.  Working with Shane Larson of Northwestern University we may have found an analytical and exact solution to one such set of equations.  With this we may be able to test such proposals once and for all using the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, LISA. Exact solutions to the differential equations that describe fundamental physics are rare. So rare they are sometimes called by name.  As one of many collaborators in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, Fundamental Physics working group, solving such problems is just what I do.