Category: physics
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Quantum mechanics and Archimedes
A couple of citations from Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution, How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn “The departure of physics from the ancient scientific method started at the turn of the twentieth century, when an enormous increase in the range of observed phenomena demanded the creation of…
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Matter and little ghosts
An interesting citation from Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe, Chapter 4, Water, Ice, and Vapor, p. 42. By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms…
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Stephen Wolfram’s Computational Irreducibility
Stephen Wolfram Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/some-modern-perspectives-quest-ultimate-knowledge/ A good overview about computational irreducibility and how it could affect our quest for ultimate knowledge. Just one example from the paper. Let us imagine that the Universe is governed by just a few simple rules and they are completely determenistic. Yet, as they represent…
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Quantum Mechanics
Peter Woit, 2006, Not Even Wrong, The failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law After the Elegant Universe I have started Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit to see what opponents of the superstring theory say. In the Preface, there is a nice statement about quantum mechanics, p. xvi Part…