multiverse – Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org
Illuminating scienceMon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2Does Nothingness Exist?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-nothingness-exist-20230726/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-nothingness-exist-20230726/#respondWed, 26 Jul 2023 19:30:49 +0000https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=128315The post Does Nothingness Exist? first appeared on Quanta Magazine]]>Aristotle argued almost 2,400 years ago that a perfect vacuum could never exist. Today, the concept of nothingness figures at least implicitly into almost every theory of modern physics. In this episode closing out season 2 of “The Joy of Why,” the theoretical physicist Isabel Garcia Garcia of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study talks with host Steven Strogatz about the impact...
]]>https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-nothingness-exist-20230726/feed/0Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-there-reasons-to-believe-in-a-multiverse-20230517/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-there-reasons-to-believe-in-a-multiverse-20230517/#respondWed, 17 May 2023 18:40:14 +0000https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=126041The post Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse? first appeared on Quanta Magazine]]>By definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics hint that there could also be unobservable universes beyond our own that follow different laws of nature. While the existence of a multiverse is speculative, for many physicists it represents a plausible explanation...
]]>https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-there-reasons-to-believe-in-a-multiverse-20230517/feed/0Why This Universe? A New Calculation Suggests Our Cosmos Is Typical.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calculation-suggests-our-cosmos-is-typical-20221117/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calculation-suggests-our-cosmos-is-typical-20221117/#respondThu, 17 Nov 2022 15:22:14 +0000https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=120649The post Why This Universe? A New Calculation Suggests Our Cosmos Is Typical. first appeared on Quanta Magazine]]>Cosmologists have spent decades striving to understand why our universe is so stunningly vanilla. Not only is it smooth and flat as far as we can see, but it’s also expanding at an ever-so-slowly increasing pace, when naïve calculations suggest that — coming out of the Big Bang — space should have become crumpled up by gravity and blasted apart by repulsive dark energy. To explain the cosmos’s...
]]>https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calculation-suggests-our-cosmos-is-typical-20221117/feed/0How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-underlies-everything-20220809/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-underlies-everything-20220809/#respondTue, 09 Aug 2022 13:32:15 +0000https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=117672The post How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything first appeared on Quanta Magazine]]>Millennia ago, Aristotle asserted that nature abhors a vacuum, reasoning that objects would fly through truly empty space at impossible speeds. In 1277, the French bishop Etienne Tempier shot back, declaring that God could do anything, even create a vacuum. Then a mere scientist pulled it off. Otto von Guericke invented a pump to suck the air from within a hollow copper sphere...
]]>https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-underlies-everything-20220809/feed/0A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature’s Laws
https://www.quantamagazine.org/crisis-in-particle-physics-forces-a-rethink-of-what-is-natural-20220301/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/crisis-in-particle-physics-forces-a-rethink-of-what-is-natural-20220301/#respondTue, 01 Mar 2022 16:12:58 +0000https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=112796The post A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature’s Laws first appeared on Quanta Magazine]]>In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn observed that scientists spend long periods taking small steps. They pose and solve puzzles while collectively interpreting all data within a fixed worldview or theoretical framework, which Kuhn called a paradigm. Sooner or later, though, facts crop up that clash with the reigning paradigm. Crisis ensues.