by Sean Carroll

Scientists don’t always agree with each other. Yes, I know; shocking but true. In cases of collegial disagreement, it’s often fun to quantify the extent of opinion by gathering a collection of experts and taking a poll. Inevitably some killjoy will loudly grumble that “scientific questions aren’t decided by voting!”, but that misses the point. A poll of scientists isn’t meant to decide questions, it’s meant to collect data — mapping out the territory of opinion among people who have spent time and effort thinking carefully about the relevant questions.

There’s been a bit of attention given recently to one such poll, carried out by Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, and Anton Zeilinger at a quantum foundations meeting (see John Preskill at Quantum Frontiers, Swans on Tea). The pollsters asked a variety of questions, many frustratingly vague, which were patiently answered by the 33 participants.

This plot gives the money shot, as they say in Hollywood: (more…)

by Futurism M.A

By Shannon Hall

This still from a computer simulation depicts the shape of a theorized five-dimensional black hole, which appears as a ring instead of a sphere. In the simulation, the black-hole ring starts off smooth, but then gives rise to a series of strange bulges.  Credit: Pau Figueras, Markus Kunesch, and Saran Tunyasuvunakool

Black holes are messy in four dimensions. But add a fifth, and a black hole could shatter the laws of physics, scientists have shown.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England and Queen Mary University of London have successfully simulated a black hole in five dimensions with a supercomputer. Instead of having a spherical shape, such a black hole resembles a very thin ring, which gives rise to a series of bulges. At first these bulges are connected via puny strings, but as time wears on those strings become thinner, until the bulges break off into their own mini black holes.

So what’s the problem? (more…)

by Josef Hasslberger

Physics, the science which should be explaining to us how the universe came about and what it consists of, seems to have arrived at the end of a blind alley. Its descriptions of the origin and the workings of our universe get more and more complex, less and less agreed-upon and they are definitely not going to accompany us into the 21st century. We are at the beginning of the space-age. In order to survive in that new age, we need clear and unequivocal descriptions of physical phenomena.

What I see as the most grave shortcoming of establishment physics is its adamant refusal to investigate or at least accept the possibility of a creative life force. There is also a one-sided emphasis on entropic, (explosive, radiative, centrifugal) phenomena in physics and consequently also in current technology, to the almost total exclusion of the constructively ordering, non-entropic phenomena such as brought about by implosion and centripetal or vortex motion.

The descriptive language used by physics is mathematics. It is adequate to describe a number of observed phenomena, but depending on what phenomenon is to be described, physicists conveniently switch mathematics, thereby changing their whole frame of reference. There is no one theory that can adequately describe all the forces known to exist and the search for a unified field theory is running into serious problems. (more…)

via The Guardian

In a neat demonstration of E=mc 2, physicists believe they can create electrons and positrons from colliding photons.

Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months.

The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the conversion of light into matter impossible in a laboratory.

But in a report published on Sunday, physicists at Imperial College London claim to have cracked the problem using high-powered lasers and other equipment now available to scientists.

“We have shown in principle how you can make matter from light,” said Steven Rose at Imperial. “If you do this experiment, you will be taking light and turning it into matter.” (more…)