From PUP, the first chapter from In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday Questions by Paul J. Nahin. Can science crack the “hardest” question? There may have been more than one Big Bang, the Astronomer Royal has said and claims the world could be on the brink of a revolution as profound as Copernicus discovering the Earth revolved around the Sun. From past to present, into the future, the flow of time is central to human experience — why isn’t it central to physics? A debate over the physics of time: According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appears to pass — yet a number of physicists hope to replace this “block universe” with a physical theory of time. Ethan Siegel on how grand unification may be a dead end for physics.
Has physics gotten something really important really wrong? Adam Frank reviews The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin. What no new particles means for physics: Physicists are confronting their “nightmare scenario” — what does the absence of new particles suggest about how nature works? Hints of an exotic new particle has physicists geeking out about a mysterious fifth force in the universe. Seven ways to skin Schrodinger’s cat: Quantum physicists just can’t agree on how to handle the fundamental uncertainty that apparently underpins reality. Sabine Hossenfelder: “What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists”.
